Hitman Update 1.1.0 - DirectX 12 Internal Benchmark Results

 

Hitman was recently patched and upgraded to 1.1.0. There’s some controversy around this particular update, but this entire title has been controversial since Square Enix announced it would release Hitman in an episodic fashion. AMD has also release their latest drivers [16.4.1] as well. We already know that AMD worked closely with IO Interactive to implement “Async Compute” which is something that AMD hardware has been supported since the 7000 series. As usual AMD was thinking ahead of time. When GCN first released it was back in 2011/2012. This basically allows AMD GPUs to perform more work in parallel rather than the serial data structure we’ve been seeing in DX9\10\11 with a single main thread.

Other than a few special developers who actually built their engines around multi-core support, most games use only a single thread. Combine the single thread usage with the DX11 Draw Call limitation and you’ll easily reach a bottleneck. Modern CPUs are much faster, but GPUs are still more powerful and quicker. So basically the GPU uses a lot of it’s time “waiting” on the CPU to send data. If that data is being sent in a serial manner then powerful GPUs are wasting energy and performance. If the CPU is sending data constantly in a parallel manner, then you can have concurrent operations executing on the GPU as well. This ensures that that GPU always has something to process. This is the future of computing in general. CPUs are getting close to a point were concurrent operations and parallel programming must take advantage of multi-core support we have had for many years now. Believe it or not Quad cores aren’t being fully utilized in a ton of apps.

You are probably wondering what the point is. Well the point is that AMD hardware is capable of running games better when using asynchronous workflow. The other point is that a lot of PC gamers need to understand what DX12 and Vulkan is providing for the PC gaming community and innovation. This is something DX12 and Vulkan provides, thanks heavily to AMDs Mantle technology.

Update Patch 1.1.0 - Broken

  The results that originally posted came from the Internal Benchmarks that the devs supplied. I have ran a my own Real Time Benchmarks™ and it appears that the results aren't accurate. For example I checked the data and although the cores are working it appears that the settings aren't being set properly. My vRAM usage @ 4K was only using 3129MBs.  As we all know at 4K the 4GB vRAM can throttle performance. As far as I can tell after setting and saving the graphical options there appears to be no difference in the "actual" settings. SMAA appears to be the only working option. I'll update the results once the devs address this issue and release another patch.

  Eventhough the I'll need to benchmark everything again I can still use the current data. Since all of the graphical settings are the same I can use this to see how well the Fury X performs with the DX11 Draw Call limitation removed.

 

Patch 1.1.0 -DX11 - 4Ghz 1920x1080	Patch 1.1.0 - DX12 - 4Ghz 1920X1080	Patch 1.1.0 Performance % Increase
10278 frames	11293 frames	10% [9.87%]
89.40fps Average	99.11fps Average	11% [10.86%]
10.87ps Min	14.86fps Min	37% [36.70%]
284.33fps Max	463.00fps Max	63% [62.83%]
11.19ms Average	10.09ms Average	10% [9.83%]
3.52ms Min	2.16ms Min	39% [ 38.63%]
92.00ms Max	67.29ms Max	27% [26.85%]

 

  Although you can't really rely on the max and min results in this benchmark, this patch does allow for "Apples to Apples" comparisons with the graphics. From my previous test the FPS Averages I benched during the Real Time Benchmarks™ matched the internal benchmark so they are accurate. With the CPU performing more work you clearly see the benefits. DX12 definitely improves the performance. With my PC running 4Ghz + DDR3 1400Mhz we see a decent frame rate average increase by 11% Now if the devs can push out a quick fix I can start benchmarking again. Then we can see if the patches and AMD driver updates will indeed increase performance.

  When I overclocked my CPU even further to 4.8Ghz + DDR3-2095Mhz I was able to pull 126fps @ 1080p + DX12. This puts my FPS average 27.15%over my 4Ghz + DDR3-1400Mhz overclock. So DX12 appears to be working fine in this game as far as removing the CPU limitation. Here's a chart with the DX12 4Ghz vs DX12 4.8Ghz performance differences. 

 

Patch 1.1.0 -DX12 - 4Ghz 1920x1080	Patch 1.1.0 - DX12 - 4.8Ghz 1920X1080	4.8Ghz DX12 Performance % Increase
11293 frames	14381 frames	27% [27.34%]
99.11fps Average	126.02fps Average	27% [27.15%]
14.86fps Min	17.04fps Min	15% [14.67%]
463.00fps Max	671.75fps Max	45% [45.08%]
10.09ms Average	7.94ms Average	21% [21.30%]
2.16ms Min	1.49ms Min	31% [ 31.01%]
67.29ms Max	58.69ms Max	12% [12.78%]

 

  I'm sure gamers using newer AMD and Intel CPUs\architectures will benefit more unless they hit the GPU limit. Now we just have to wait for IO Interactive to sort out the graphic setting issues.

 

Update Patch 1.1.0 Fixed

  The developers have resolved the graphical problems as well as other issues in the game. I can now benchmark the game with 100% maxed settings properly. I've ran my benchmarks and the only FPS average difference is I can see is the 4K average FPS. This isn't bad news at all due to the amazing increase. The overall FPS Average increased by 22%! I am running AMDs latest drivers as well [Crimson 16.4.2 Hotfix]

Apples to Apples

Day 1 -DX12 - 4.6Ghz - 3840x2160 [4K]	Patch 1.1.0 [Fix] - DX12 - 4.6Ghz 3840x2160  [4K]	4.6Ghz DX12 Performance % Increase
4081 frames	5020 frames	23% [23.01%]
36.02fps Average	43.82fps Average	22% [21.65%]
5.24fps Min	10.02fps Min	92% [91.22%]
65.61fps Max	532.19fps Max	711% [711.14%]
27.76ms Average	22.82ms Average	18% [17.79%]
15.24ms Min	1.88ms Min	88% [ 87.66%]
190.95ms Max	99.82ms Max	48% [47.72%]

 

Day 1 - 4.6Ghz vs Patch 1.1.0 [Fix] - 4.8Ghz

Day 1 -DX12 - 4.6Ghz - 3840x2160 [4K]	Patch 1.1.0 [Fix] - DX12 - 4.8Ghz 3840x2160  [4K]	4.8Ghz DX12 Performance % Increase
4081 frames	4975 frames	22% [21.90%]
36.02fps Average	43.43fps Average	20% [20.57%]
5.24fps Min	11.47fps Min	119% [118.89%]
65.61fps Max	545.76fps Max	732% [731.82%]
27.76ms Average	23.02ms Average	17% [17.07%]
15.24ms Min	1.83ms Min	88% [ 87.99%]
190.95ms Max	87.21ms Max	54% [54.32%]

 

  The tighter RAM timighs with 4.6Ghz gives me a slightly better FPS Average, but the larger memory frequencies shows better Max and Min FPS. The actual difference is so minor that it doesn't really matter all that much. The 4K performance increase is all that matters in this case. Great work IO Interactive and AMD!