Today we are taking a short look at a feature included in ATI's Catalyst 5.12 drivers - Dual Core optimisations. The article also includes a Q+A session with Phil Rogers. Phil is ATI's senior software architect and as a whole it makes for very interesting reading.
Driverheaven: How do the driver optimisations differ between AMD and Intel CPUs - if at all?
Phil Rogers: Currently we use the same multithreading path for both AMD and Intel. I suspect that your question comes from seeing larger gains on Intel for some applications. The optimizations are equally effective on both CPUs, but we tend to hit graphics hardware performance limits sooner on AMD due to their faster single core performance.
One other thing to note on this is that our multithreading path is also enabled for Intel's Hyperthreading. Again it is the exact same path. Naturally we see a smaller gain for hyperthreading vs dual core, but its nice to deliver some value from this work to the large installed base of HyperThreaded PCs.
DriverHeaven
Driverheaven: How do the driver optimisations differ between AMD and Intel CPUs - if at all?
Phil Rogers: Currently we use the same multithreading path for both AMD and Intel. I suspect that your question comes from seeing larger gains on Intel for some applications. The optimizations are equally effective on both CPUs, but we tend to hit graphics hardware performance limits sooner on AMD due to their faster single core performance.
One other thing to note on this is that our multithreading path is also enabled for Intel's Hyperthreading. Again it is the exact same path. Naturally we see a smaller gain for hyperthreading vs dual core, but its nice to deliver some value from this work to the large installed base of HyperThreaded PCs.
DriverHeaven
