It can be assumed that the GPU clocks are slowed down

Dec 18, 2014 07:38 GMT  ·  By

Energy efficiency has been getting more and more important, and Advanced Micro Devices is one of the major backers of this general movement on the technology front. In fact, the latest technology it's working on is all about that.

You might or might not know that AMD's current director of Public Relations is a man by the name of Chris Hook.

By extension, you may or may not know that he frequents various forums under the handle of AMD_Chris.

Not so long ago, Hook disclosed information about a new technology that Advanced Micro Devices was preparing for the Radeon graphics cards: Dynamic Frame Rate Control.

What Dynamic Frame Rate Control does

Dynamic Frame Rate Control, or DFRC for short, offers you a slider through which you can limit the frame rate to a certain upper limit.

Some will say that this is what V-Sync is for, but that's not entirely correct. The two features go about things completely differently.

V-Sync forces the GPU to draw frames at the same speed as a monitor's refresh rate, but the GPU still runs at full clocks even then, unless the 3D load is very low, prompting the driver to change the power state.

DFRC, by comparison, underclocks the GPU clocks when frame rates would otherwise go above the imposed higher limit. At least that's how everyone reckons it works. AMD says that DFRC was supposed to reduce power consumption, and that's the best way it could go about it for something of this nature. The power savings are described as “mind blowing” but no numbers are given, sadly.

High frame rates aren't really needed to enjoy games

There are benchmarks and other programs which specifically count frame rates, and the quality of a graphics card is often gauged by seeing how the frame rate differs in the same game compared to another board.

However, the truth is that it doesn't need to go all that high in order for us to enjoy a film or game. There's a reason films are shot in 24 fps, and why 60 Hz is the standard refresh rate. Even if a graphics card can draw a game at over 100 fps, our eyes won't notice the difference.

Considering that, we can definitely see the appeal in capping the frame rate to 60 Hz and forcing the GPU to use less power. Especially since AMD's future GPUs will be based on the 20nm process, and thus, have a natural disadvantage in energy efficiency compared to NVIDIA's 16nm.

AMD readies DFRC (4 Images)

AMD Radeon R9 295X only wishes it had DFRC
R9 200 card owners will only be able to read it and weepAMD Radeon R9 390X will probably possess DFRC
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