RT perf in Metro Exodus EE for RDNA2 is really good, but gimped by HairWorks.

A few tech guys on twitter running benches on the new enhanced edition release to test ray tracing perf uncovered something that we used to see in the old days.

Remember when HairWorks would force tessellation factors of 64x for no visual benefit, just to neuter perf on AMD GPUs as they were weaker on tessellation?

Now its happening but with RT.

Link:

6800XT

HairWorks literally destroys performance/frame times in this scene.

Looks like a nasty case of a billion triangles on HairWorks + RT triangle intersection overload.

I suspect HairWorks does not get a simplified geometry model into the BVH acceleration structure like everything else. It retails the full triangle load within the AS, so each ray has to test against an excessive volume of triangles within a small area of a BVH.

Besides these, it appears that 4A Games did a great job optimizing RT performance on RDNA2 GPUs.

GPU profiling for more info:

It seems like they are basically doing everything right in terms of RT. Occupancy's very good, TONS of async compute, RT is done with Inline-RT (as far as I can tell right now). It's extremely impressive.

I have been saying that RDNA2 would do well with RT when using DXR1.1, with the feature MS added with AMD collaboration on the new consoles, for inline RT (a more optimized method of casting rays & especially for extra bounces or long ray distance).

This is what 4A Games used to ensure RT performs well for the release of the game on these new RDNA2 consoles.

Yet NV sponsored the Metro series and they obviously snuck in their HairWorks that throws a wrench into the RT pipeline.

Couldn't AMD force the Tesselation to 16x max as default for every game?

Wow I was just about to enable this setting and decided against it on my 6800xt.

I couldn’t find anything online a few hours ago, but great timing. Thanks!

We're going to need HUB to include this in their editorial direction.

Maybe they just discovered that having a simplified version of the hair in the acceleration structure led to unacceptable visual glitches?

Is there no way to disable hair works?

At least you can turn it off. Anyone remember the Crysis 2 invisible tesselated ocean debacle?

That was fake news through and through.

The ocean under the map was never tessellated during gameplay. It was culled. Wireframe mode specifically disables culling since it's meant to show everything.

Wouldn't they mind now look into valhalla performance to find what amd did to gimp nvidia cards and not just in few scenes with certain graphics settings, but for the whole game.

AMD doesn't have any black box technology for game developers (AFAIK), so it is really up to the devs, but still worth looking into.

Nothing, the answer to this is literally nothing. NVIDIA's drivers are garbage and have a massive overhead, every time in Valhalla you have a wealth of draw calls the CPU chugs. Not to say it never happened (Tomb Raider Tress FX) but this case is literally NVIDIA gimping NVIDIA.

This makes me worried for The Witcher 3's raytracing update then. It had a hairworks issue back when it launched and by the sounds of this we're probably going to be repeating history again...

HairWorks can be turned on in both Witcher and in Metro. It's off by default in both. I have absolutely no worries about the morons who will enable it on AMD cards.

As someone just trying Metro's new update on a 6800xt @ 3440x1440p, it makes no difference. My game can't get higher than 35fps even with the latest AMD update, with tessellation disabled, etc.

Game is either broken which is highly likely since I saw someone with a 6900xt pulling over double my fps at 2560x1440p on slightly higher settings (extreme, I was using ultra) or something else is going on. GPU use is 100% though so I dunno..

NV: "Hey A4 you're doing too good a job in making RT good in Big Navi, we meant make it an RT showcase FOR US"

A4: But but, optimizing for several platforms is our job so our customers are happy!

NV: "m8 we paid for metric tons of marketing for this and several million copies of the game for bundles, do as I say, or else..."

Hairworks is an optional Nvidia feature that is turned off by default. Stop blaming the game or "big company bad" because you turn on a vendor-specific feature on a GPU made by the other company.

Ehh this isn't true. Vega, RDNA1 and 2 are Tessellation monsters and if its just hair works, they tank through it.

The problem is not hairworks itself as AMD cards can do absurd tessellation on par or better than Nvidia this problem is born from the nature of the tech combined with ray tracing so only fix is excluding it from RT.

Or creating the BVH structure for the hair too.

So the stance here is that Nvidia should change their own tech because it's unfair towards amd? Wow, both are huge corporates that don't give a damn about the consumer as long as they buy their products.

That's all fine and good, but won't help when all the benchmarking sites test with it on when they test with ultra settings.

Ultra preset doesn't even turn hair works on though? The fortunate thing about it is it only applies to certain creatures anyways. So taiga with that stupid giant bear that has a boatload of fur. I must admit, the fur does look badass compared to without hairworks, but the performance hit is super high on everything not just AMD.

Nvidia gimping amd with hair works... Nothing amd would ever do in amd sponsored implementations...

literally all of AMD’s current solutions are open source and are vendor agnostic.

Hairworks has been open-source since 2016 and does not require Nvidia hardware to run.

RDNA is still shit at tessellation. news at 11

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| Remember when HairWorks would force tessellation factors of 64x for no visual benefit

This was never true, and the reduced tessellation factors you could force through amd's shitty control panel massively reduced the visual quality (especially in witcher 3) and caused serious jank and glitches.

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There is no conspiracy, your victim complex is ridiculous

You obviously don't know your history.

CDPR went out of their way to reverse engineer HairWorks libraries to add in the support for custom tessellation factors in further updates to precisely address the crap performance. They changed the default from x64 to x32, and added sliders allowing users to reduce it to x16 or x8. Visual artifacts appeared at x8 so it was not recommended.

It was because the tech community raised the issue back then and it made it into the tech press that HairWorks was destroying perf, that CDPR did that to the benefit of ALL gamers, AMD OR NV users.

the numbers are right there in the links above

You need to proof that they purposely gimped it. And still then it's normal business practicess performed by every side. Amd is doing everything Intel and Nvidia are doing as well. They aren't a 'better' company. They don't care about the customer any more then any other company. The numbers are the only thing that count.

If you make claims like

Remember when HairWorks would force tessellation factors of 64x for no visual benefit, just to neuter perf on AMD GPUs as they were weaker on tessellation?

Now its happening but with RT.

you have to present proof that this is done purposefully. If you have no proof, then you're just making stuff up. Which, of course, wouldn't be the first time for you.

Get off the conspiracy train, Phobo, it's not good for you.

Exactly, the fact that you're forced to use hairworks on amd gpu's proves Nvidia is actively trying to gimp... Oh right, you don't have to turn it on. Or you could just force the tessellation factor via adrenalin. Nvidia does shady shit all the time, like with Project cars way back when, on the other hand this is just drama for the sake of drama.

Nvidia is really awesome, not at all a company made by a child...

Then turn off hairworks. PROBLEM SOLVED! Its always AMD = VICTIM, NVIDIA = BAD.

there definitely few individuals with a victim mentality that's for sure.

Errr no. It's not hairworks. Wake up and smell the coffee fanboys. Nvidia has better RT period. They have 2 years lead on AMD and it shows. Same with DLSS.

This is precisely why I won't consider ever buying an Nvidia product at this point in time. Their company culture is to project the idea that they are the performance leader by making a superior product, when in reality they do unethical things like this (one thing in a very long list of unethical things) instead of competing on the merits of a great product at a fair price.

Edit: Found the Nvidia fan boys... lol

Current AMD gpus are aa fast or even faster than Nvidia at actual geometry in games and Tessellation.

The problem is not Tessellation. The problem is hairworks adding to the BVH structure of RT.

And my question is: why is that a problem when it's going to "gimp" performance on both sides? Has anyone actually tested the same exact same scene with a 3080 before throwing accusations?

This is classic Phobochai. Throwing fuel to the amd fanboy fire just for the fuck of it.

You are free to disagree with me. You're not free to constantly get personal with your vendetta. I have not burned your house, or killed your dog.

If you hate me, fair enough. But don't hate me so much that you have to shitpost when people actually are having a discussion.

Also, I bring this here because of great discussion on the tech twitter that I thought this sub could also contribute further.

It's funny how AMD hardware conveniently runs worse in Nvidia sponsored games, but Nvidia cards do just fine in AMD sponsored games.

Oh GEE I wonder WHY??

just set tessellation to 16x or 32x(your taste, your choice) max on radeon settings(control panel)