AMD gaming performance too low ?

So since i switched from AMD to Intel i have been testing my collection, and a few stand out, for example Mass Effect 3 (and before you ask i know exactly just how much of a ****ty console port it is), in my setup i altered the game files to put in 2048/4096 textures instead of the regular 512/1024 for armor/weapons/etc and kicked up the quality on the options file above the normal maximum, plus using FXAA Injector for lighting effects, end result is amazing, is what it SHOULD have been in the 1st place. With my 8370 4.7ghz i was able to use 4xSGSSAA with nVidia Inspector and very rarely would dip below the magic 60fps on heavy fight/explosions scenes. With this 6700k same 4.7ghz i'm using 8xSGSSAA for perfect non-jaggies image and it NEVER dips below 60, and the 980Ti seems to be hitting roughly the same temps.

There are other titles with the same interesting differences and i'm certain there will be many more i have never tried, but my question would be, just how much of this is bad programming and how much of it is the higher IPC showing ? are most/all games programmed to work on Intel and AMD is just tagging along or...

It's probably a combination of the AMD naturally being slower, and also, your decent graphics card tending to be CPU-limited.... I'm sure a 980 Ti loves CPU power.

980ti a "decent" graphics card... funny stuff! A single card with Haswell at 4.7 isn't cpu limited.

I'd lean more towards IPC differences than programming personally. It will be interesting to test Bulldozer against haswell against zen and see where things land.

It will be interesting to test Bulldozer against haswell against zen and see where things land.

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Interesting? You do have a flair for understatement , ED. LOL

One of the most concerning parts of the Bulldozer/Piledriver architecture its inability to manage its cores correctly. The architectures goal is to do pattern recognition in threads, and offload to cores that have similar or dependent threads. This way each module can work on a goal of its own, independent of the other modules. Bulldozer is great with patterns, and can figure them out fairly quickly, and create a pipeline that enables fast predictions and results with a relatively high success rate.

With gaming, you can have a fair number of predictive cases, such as rendering the same scene for a long time (resting, long pause at a scree, cut scenes, etc) but when high changes occur, the CPU has to figure out what to do with these new threads. This creates race condition scenario that is shown as FPS loss. Its not your GPU, its your CPU not moving fast enough to keep the GPU saturated, and with enough information to finish a frame in time for rendering.

Then gaming with AMD should benefit more than I thought (due to limited knowledge) from Zen. Closing the gap with Haswell/Broadwell and saving gamers $50-$100 for a better GPU they can actually take advantage of would be hitting one out of the park for that particular market.

My concern would be that Intel hasn't had any real motivating need to come out with a big 'tock' in quite a while. Could they be holding back a big jump? A 20% increase , a month before Zen , could be devastating.

There was a youtube video showing AMD CPU doing as good/better than an 4c/8t Intel...

But how many people buy equipment based on benchmarks without ever looking at their particular needs? If the Intel rigs on Anandtech are ahead , people will lean that way. I haven't seen the video you're referring to , but youtube probably has a video of a liverwurst sandwich winning WW II.

I thought it was pretty well established that Intel provided that last little bit with high end cards? The difference between 160 fps and 140 fps is silly , but people do buy numbers. I swear , the more I learn the more I want to buy an Alienware and be done with it. (Not really. LOL)

Alaric said:

Closing the gap with Haswell/Broadwell and saving gamers $50-$100 for a better GPU they can actually take advantage of would be hitting one out of the park for that particular market.

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That's assuming their not gonna pull an Intel and up the prices ?

From the ZEN thread http://wccftech.com/amd-zen-cpu-8-core-summit-ridge-launching-october/

AMD’s plan, our sources tell us, is to price high core count parts very competitively. Undercutting Intel’s mainstream CPUs by offering more cores with competitive – Broadwell level – single threaded performance at Intel’s mainstream i5 and quadcore i7 price points. Essentially offering Haswell-E / Broadwell-E comparable parts in the mainstream $400-$150 segment. A space that’s currently occupied by Intel’s mainstream quadcore I7, i5 and dual core i3 CPUs

Read more: http://wccftech.com/amd-zen-cpu-8-core-summit-ridge-launching-october/#ixzz42ur3awqv

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I'd just like to say that if tuned properly the AMD can do quite well even in SLI. These are two of my subs. FX with 2x770s and i7 with 2x770s this is 1440p notice the difference in the GFX score

I love Catzilla , but I've had problems with consistency , and not a few hundred off , but almost a couple thousand between benchmarks on the same rig. I was really pleased with my highest score , but have never gotten close to it again. I'll cede that it may be tuning differences , because I have no idea what my password is anymore. I'll see if I can get in and find out if my memory is completely accurate. I do remember dropping a lot of points after a Catzilla update , too.

You have to watch the subtests on Catzilla. If you're getting discrepancies like that it's instability and one of the tests will be way out of norm for score.