Catalyst Omega - A Closer Look

👤by Tim Harmer Comments 📅18-12-14
VSR Performance Cost


During AMD Virtual Super Resolution testing we maintained the quality settings of our previous tests and opted to incrementally change the in-game rendering resolution.







We should admit to being somewhat surprised with the bullish way our ASUS R9 290 Direct stood up to rendering at higher resolutions. Even though the R9 290 is an excellent card, and can be acquired for as little as £235, one doesn't immediately expect playable 4K scenes using only a single GPU. We should stress however that our testing conditions were chosen for repeatability of conditions rather than complexity. The inclusion of VSR, and the fact that higher resolution rendering doesn’t horrendously tank frame rates to below playable levels, is a big step forward for AMD.

The way that the R9 290 copes with VSR resolutions, even in newer titles, is also very promising for FreeSync. At present reliable frame rates above 30fps, and generally between 40 and 60fps, are the ideal conditions for getting the best out of FreeSync and 1440p on the R9 290 seems to hit just this sweet-spot.

There was a pronounced downside we experienced specifically with Assassins Creed Unity: texture popins. Even given the well-documented problems of notorious console port Assassins Creed Unity, texture pop-in was even more noticable the higher our rendering resolution went; this is despite the 4GB VRAM and 512bit bus of the R9 290. In order to cope with these higher resolutions, whether simulated by super-sampling or output directly to a high resolution panel, development studios will need to improve their processes such that these problems are no longer an issue.




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