Author Topic: AVX Builds  (Read 12336 times)

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Offline The E

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To add to our ever-increasing collection of TLAs and ETLAs, I give you: AVX.

For those that do not know, AVX is the latest iteration of special instructions to speed up vector calculations, like SSE and its derivatives before.
One very important note: Since AVX is comparatively new, these builds are NOT XP-compatible, and require at least:

-Windows 7
-Intel Sandy Bridge or later
-AMD Bulldozer or later

Please test these for the usual things, but especially test them for performance compared to SSE2 builds. These builds are based on SVN rev 9786.

http://blueplanet.fsmods.net/E/FSAVX.7z
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Offline Cobra

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Sandy Bridge is second-gen, right?
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Offline Dragon

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Would they work on Vista, or is Windows 7 an absolute minimum?

 

Offline The E

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7 is the absolute minimum.
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Offline Trivial Psychic

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Offline Veers

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On the Blade Itself, I get a low of about 42fps on 3.7 release, and about 46-48fps on the AVX. Normally sits on about the 58-60fps mark anyway.

Otherwise, any specific way to record the performance between the two builds?
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Offline Macfie

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I notice a slight improvement with the AVX build.  I pretty much get the max frame rate (120FPS) with just about everything but what I've noticed is I get less warnings that FSOPen is maxing out a processor and the warning number has gone from being around 100% to 97%.  Any chance of starting to see AVX builds in the nightlies?
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Offline Cobra

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Eh, but these are only compatible with second-gen and higher i-series processors, I believe. I think the amount of i3/5/7 users here are a minority.
To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet, only one grain will grow. - Metrodorus of Chios
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Offline Kobrar44

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Eh, but these are only compatible with second-gen and higher i-series processors, I believe. I think the amount of i3/5/7 users here are a minority.

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=85616.0

Yeah, 40% is lesser than 50, so technically..
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Offline Luis Dias

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AVX is the new SSE2 :D

This is great The_E! More performance for free!

 
The gains here seem pretty marginal though.
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Offline The E

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As are the gains between no SSE and SSE, and SSE and SSE2. Sure, they're marginal, but that's pretty good for something that requires basically no effort.
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Offline Luis Dias

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42 pfs to 46-48 (according to Veers) is more than 10% increase in performance. Nothing to sneer at.

 
I didn't know there was a hardware survey back in September until I saw the link posted above.  I don't normally view the Gaming Discussion forum.  I have now added my hardware entries into the poll.

Maybe you should re-advertise that poll in a few different areas to get a greater participation from more HLP readers?

The Core series processors are out there more than you might think.  True, many are probably 1st generation.  I just recently upgraded to a Sandy Bridge myself.  (Core i5 2400)  But, we might be surprised how much support for AVX we have today and don't realize it yet.  Even a marginal gain is still good, and might be worth adding an AVX build to the nightlies soon.  I believe SSE2 is currently the "standard" build right now?

 
 
As are the gains between no SSE and SSE, and SSE and SSE2. Sure, they're marginal, but that's pretty good for something that requires basically no effort.

It does require differentiating between builds in a way which doesn't needlessly confuse the average user, though.
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Offline Luis Dias

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That is not a problem. SEE builds already "taught" the community on that one.

 

Offline chief1983

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So we would have No SSE, SSE, Standard (SSE2), and AVX.  I still feel like 'standard' being a moving target is going to be confusing to many, but at least it hopefully gets the majority of users using a build that works for them and has the best performance.
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Offline Luis Dias

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I really could not be more happy having the trouble of going to check if my PC has AVX if that means better performance.

 

Offline Fury

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So we would have No SSE, SSE, Standard (SSE2), and AVX.  I still feel like 'standard' being a moving target is going to be confusing to many, but at least it hopefully gets the majority of users using a build that works for them and has the best performance.
In the HLP survey poll SSE has 1.2 %, SSE2 8.33%, SSE3 44% and AVX 46.4% share of total votes associated with CPU choices. I would suggest making either SSE3 or AVX the next standard build and dropping SSE2 builds, leaving SSE as the last bastion for legacy CPU's. That would leave us with AVX, SSE3 and SSE builds.