Low 2d Direct 2d score with GTX 970/4790k

[David (PassMark)]

any news

No.
But we haven't chased Microsoft over the issue either. So it possible they did something and didn't tell us.

[jussi77]

bump:
any news (fix or possible workaround) on this one yet?

[palmiris]

Yes, I was surprised as well. I did some sleuthing and tracked down one of the Direct2D developers. I’ve been coding in DOS / Windows for almost 30 years. As you might expect I’ve contacted Microsoft several times during the period. This response is perhaps the most intelligent response out of MS for the last three decades.

Hello,
I have a Sapphire AMD Radeon 7750 HD 1GB GDDR5 (pci-e 3.0) installed on a pci-e 1.0a slot (working well).

I had the same problem with Direct2D score under windows 8.1 x64. It had a very low score near 5. I tried all AMD drivers however this score never increased.

What I did is, after reading the comments here, upgraded to windows 10 x64. Reinstalled the same driver (15.12) which I also used in windows 8.1.

Now the problem for an unknown Microsoft reason is fixed.

I get a Direct2D score near 30 (waooo).

Microsoft made me upgrade my operating system since my AMD Radeon 7750 HD was not working well on my PC.

By using Passmark Performance Test, we have shown that windows 8.1 has problems with Direct2D, on AMD Radeon Graphics Cards

Note:
On Nvidia GT 240 no problem at all. I got a score of about 12 which is normal. I installed this graphics card it to see if it is a hardware problem with my pci-e slot, but it wasn't.

[jussi77]

any news (fix or possible workaround) on this one yet?

[David (PassMark)]

magical contact at Microsoft

Yes, I was surprised as well. I did some sleuthing and tracked down one of the Direct2D developers. I’ve been coding in DOS / Windows for almost 30 years. As you might expect I’ve contacted Microsoft several times during the period. This response is perhaps the most intelligent response out of MS for the last three decades.

[pal2002]

Microsoft got back to us & confirmed it is an operating system bug.

This is the detail from Microsoft.

"My team has investigated your report, and we’ve uncovered an issue that explains the regression. In particular, we found that one particular optimization from an older Direct2D geometry rendering code path had not been included in a newer code path. As users update to Windows 10, their graphics drivers are being updated as well. These newer graphics drivers typically use the newer code path, which, as mentioned, lacks that one particular optimization. So even though many scenarios see improved 2D rendering performance with the new drivers, a few scenarios are showing performance regressions, as your report pointed out.

With the cause of the problem in hand, our team is actively evaluating our options for closing this gap."

Yay looks like this is finally getting fixed.

I'm curious though as to what magical contact at Microsoft did you have. My typical experience of asking for support on MS forums amount to wonderfully useful solutions such as "restart your computer" and "try updating your drivers"

[David (PassMark)]

Microsoft got back to us & confirmed it is an operating system bug.

This is the detail from Microsoft.

"My team has investigated your report, and we’ve uncovered an issue that explains the regression. In particular, we found that one particular optimization from an older Direct2D geometry rendering code path had not been included in a newer code path. As users update to Windows 10, their graphics drivers are being updated as well. These newer graphics drivers typically use the newer code path, which, as mentioned, lacks that one particular optimization. So even though many scenarios see improved 2D rendering performance with the new drivers, a few scenarios are showing performance regressions, as your report pointed out.

With the cause of the problem in hand, our team is actively evaluating our options for closing this gap."

[David (PassMark)]

I don't think so. I think you are interpreting the information from Firefox incorrectly. I think this means that Firefox decided that Direct2D didn't work so well on your machine (or they haven't tested it yet) and so they didn't use it from Firefox. I don't think this say anything about the availability of Direct2D in the O/S.

[Xanedon]

Hmm, According to Firefox Direct2D is Blocked for the graphics driver version.


went to about:support in firefox down under graphics.



It appears the D2D is disabled on the latest driver versions.

[David (PassMark)]

PerformanceTest executes the same 2D test, with the same code, on all operating systems. So really any change in performance has to be due to the O/S or the video card drivers (assuming you haven't changed the hardware).

Given that it happens on cards from Intel, nVidia and AMD, I think the only conclusion is a change in the operating system caused the problem. Microsoft either accidentally broke something and hasn't noticed, or maybe deliberately accepted lower performance as a trade off to enable some other feature (e.g. multiple desktops in Win10).

I've made some effort to contact Microsoft, but no response as yet.

[Xanedon]

Just to chime in, I originally joined into the forum researching the confusingly low 2D scores on my system as well. I just did a new build out for windows 10 and everything is looking swimmingly... except for 2D.

My baseline from this morning:
http://www.passmark.com/baselines/V8...id=45619151573

I'll have to dig into it a bit more and see if its consistent with a few more runs, but definitely something that when you look at the averages for the 980 Ti I would expect it to be a bit higher.

[pal2002]

Hi, wanted to chime in on this after finding this thread via google.

Just upgraded from windows 7 (fully patched SP1) to windows 10 and all the passmark scores remained more or less constant EXCEPT direct2d that took a nosedive (31 -> 17) and that took the total 2d graphics score from 1000+ down to 790. This is on an overclocked GTX 960.

I never installed windows 8 on this machine but your hypothesis seem right - and whatever update that caused this got carried to windows 10 as well.

http://www.passmark.com/baselines/V8...id=44578459786 <-score on windows 7

[David (PassMark)]

We had another customer complain of similar behaviour in the Direct2D last week and did a bit more investigation.

What we found that the Direct2D benchmark results jumped between a slow and fast result (like in the chart posted above). Our test was on a Intel GPU, so it isn't something that is in the video card device drivers, as the post above was a AMD GPU.

What we saw was that that you didn't need a patch update to observe the fast / slow behaviour. You could run the test 100 times and then maybe 5 times in 100, you would get a fast result. The other 95 runs would give a slow result. We were unable to find a pattern or trigger condition that would to force a fast result. While there is probably some deeper cause, it superficially at least seems random.

We also tested on Win10 and Win7 (but with different hardware) but didn't see this behaviour. The Direct2D results were very consistent on Win10 and Win7.

Our theory at the moment is that there was a Win8 operating system patch that broke Direct2D some time back and Microsoft never noticed.

[NoelC]

I have a hunch the performance will magically be restored in Win 10.

-Noel

[David (PassMark)]

Interesting. We weren't aware of any issue, but Noel looks like he has been tracking it much more carefully than we have. Easy to believe that some O/S patch or driver changes effects the performance however.