Hi all Radeon users,
If you haven't already checked into this new software package yet........
AMD has finally made some features globally available to all Radeon GCN based GPU's.
The 2 features that I think most folks were interested in are 1. Enhanced Synch and 2. Radeon Overlay.
But there is another feature that I have looked at since I have this Rx Vega 64 card.....Radeon Chill.
This feature was a white-list based feature when 1st introduced but AMD has now made this feature available to all games, either globally or thru individual game profiles. This feature works by interpreting mouse (or in our case, HOTAS controls) control inputs (ie, user input within the game) to determine GPU animation rates\usage to then determine the amount of GPU power\rate to maintain FPS to maintain game smoothness but reduce GPU power\temp usage where it can. This was originally invented by a company called HiAlgo to enhance gaming on laptops. AMD acquired them in 2015 and have been working to implement this into Radeons w\ the 1st foray in Radeon ReLive.........
I have upgraded to Radeon Software Adrenalin w\ driver 17.12.1 and have tested this on my box and can report that it does indeed work.....in the case of my ref Rx Vega 64 8Gb card using the Liquid Cooled vbios.....it works VERY WELL.
According to my MSI AB\HWINFO32 graphs (yes I still use these.....) running AHIII Dx11 w\ Radeon Chill enabled the GPU frame rate was pegged on 89-90 FPS w\ the only dip in FPS occurring during a screen freeze, the frame time graphs were very clean and consistent around 10-12 ms w\ the only spike also occurring during a screen freeze. GPU clock speeds were showing to be capped between 1293 MHz thru 1412 MHz regardless of where I was or what was going on around me. Graphs ran w\ Radeon Chill disabled were not as smooth showing more fluctuation across all GPU graph lines even though the game ran just fine, but not quite as smooth as w\ Radeon Chill enabled (as reflected in the GPU frametime graphs differences). This verifies to me the ability of Radeon Chill to actually lower control input lag as claimed. Operating temps were also visably more stable (as would be expected w\ any reduction in GPU power usage....GPU temps maintained between 40*C-46*C regardless of game loads).
I used the global AMD-set map for Radeon Chill as I use the global settings exclusively so that I can use my Windows CMD-created shortcuts for the game to have Windows auto-apply CPU priority\affinity selections to AHIII game client upon execution (AMD Radeon Settings profiles won't allow this) to optimize the game running on my Ryzen 7 1800X 8-core CPU. While running Radeon Chill I also noted that the CPU usage also lowered relative to GPU usage as well (this also makes sense as it is the CPU that is processing the control inputs into the game client along w\ some graphical input). All in all a pretty good initial result\improvement............
Activate it by toggling the F11 key once the game is up and running after it is enabled in Radeon Settings.
This is good news to me.......anything that increases efficiency w\o affecting gameplay operation\performance is a good thing, whether it's a hardware or software solution.
Eventually I'll get around to testing the rest of this package.
Looking good so far..........
YMMV
