At the end of last month, AMD published their first beta driver with support for Windows 10’s hardware accelerated GPU scheduling feature, NVIDIA was a bit earlier to add support for this, and we tested that last month as well, so if you haven’t already, you should check out that report here. Today, we’ll be testing the Navi-based RX 5700 XT to see if there’s any performance gains to be had by enabling the feature.
Graphics Card Test Setup and Methodology
All game benchmarks are taken from a 3-run average either in-game or using the title’s built-in benchmark utility. Performance is recorded using OCAT: the open-source frontend for PresentMon, which itself is an open-source capture and analytics tool which supports modern APIs such as DirectX 12 and Vulkan.
For our graphics card reviews, we use a 3rd generation Ryzen-based system with components supplied by AMD, ASUS, GIGABYTE, Western Digital, DEEPCOOL and Nixeus. Thanks to all those who support us by supplying vital components for our test systems, without them reports like this would not be possible.
Graphics Card Test Bench | |
CPU | AMD Ryzen 9 3900X |
Motherboard | GIGABYTE X570 AORUS PRO WiFi |
RAM | G. Skill Trident Z Neo – DDR4-3600 CL18 32GB |
GPU | ASUS ROG Strix RX 5700 XT |
Storage | WD Black SN750 1TB NVMe SSD (OS), 480GB Patriot Burst SSD, 960GB ADATA SU655 SSD |
Cooler | DEEPCOOL Castle 240 RGB all-in-one liquid cooler. |
Case | Phanteks P350X |
PSU | DEEPCOOL Quanta DQ1250 |
Monitor | Nixeus EDG 34 |
Software Configuration | |
OS | Windows 10 Build 2004 |
Drivers | Radeon™ Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.5.1 Beta |
Radeon RX 5700 XT – Windows 10 GPU Scheduling Performance
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
We test this title during a 60-second gameplay segment in the ‘Hidden City’ portion of the game.
Far Cry: New Dawn
We test this title using the game’s built-in benchmark utility.
Forza Horizon 4
We test this title using the game’s built-in benchmark utility.
HITMAN 2
We test this title during a 60-second gameplay segment in the ‘Santa Fortuna’ map.
Resident Evil 3
We test this title in a 60-second gameplay segment during the rocket launcher chase with Nemesis through the streets of Raccoon City.
Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
We test this title using the game’s built-in benchmark utility.
Gears 5
We test this title using the game’s built-in benchmark utility.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint
We test this title using the game’s built-in benchmark utility.
Conclusion
Looking at the results, it is kind of a mixed bag. For some titles, performance increased as much as 3%, but for others, performance was either virtually the same or even a bit worse. In the case of Far Cry: New Dawn, we saw our 99th percentile score 8% slower with GPU scheduling on, but that result is very much an outlier of the bunch.
With not even a 1% increase in overall performance across the board, enabling hardware accelerated GPU scheduling on your Navi GPU surely isn’t going to hurt, but it likely won’t help much either. While the performance increases in HITMAN 2 and Resident Evil 3 aren’t nothing, the overall performance improvement is fairly negligible and is within the margin of error.
That’s pretty much it for this one. Please let us know in the comments if there are any other titles or scenarios you’d like to see us test in the future.