Everything scoring highly except Direct2D which is lowest of the low? (Win 8.1)

[Stilez]

I upgraded my video card (Radeon HD 5670 1GB to Radeon R9 370 2GB) because I'm a heavy 2D user - as you've reported in the past, 2D gets neglected and my card was several generations out of date.

I just benchmarked my PC and everything is top-end (as it should be with a hexacore overclock and G.Skill 2400 ) with much of it in the 90 - 99 percentile, except Direct2D which is right near the bottom with a benchmark score of 11 (25%). Nothing else was running at the time.

I read the thread a year or so back about a Direct2D optimisation omitted in modern Windows; I'm on up-to-date Windows 8.1 x64, so I don't know if that's been neglected and only Windows 10 was fixed.

My other 2D benchmarks were vectors=30, font/text=234, filters=937, vectors2=114, windows=110, render=801 (mostly 70 - 80%). The Diredct2D score is way below normal for this card. Embarrassingly the Windows part of the 2D score is also way below the score for my old card - and for every other HD 5670 in the database - even though they are much older and the video card charts say they're much slower.

Any ideas what might be going on, and if there is anything I can do to boost performance on Direct2D?

Thanks!

[David (PassMark)]

I had a look at all Direct 2D the results for the R7 370 card. There is a surprising large range of results (7fps to 60fps, with an average of 33 and median of 30) and it isn't the expected bell curve either. There are a couple of small peaks at 11fps and 55fps. So that would imply there there some common configurations out there with wildly different performance profiles.

It might be that specific driver versions did better or worse. Or different operating system impact the performance. The CPU used also has an impact with good single threaded performance being important.

[DavidLee]

Well, it has been 2+ years since anything was posted on this subject but, I can assure all that Microsoft has NOT fixed the Direct 2D bug in Windows 8 / 8.1. They are completely slacking on this issue - likely intending all 8 / 8.1 users to become frustrated with low performance scores, (for those of us who benchmark our hardware and want best performance results), and want us to upgrade to their Windows 10 (Windows As A Service, or WAAS). Windows 10 can be disabled by Microsoft when the end of the extended support date arrives; (unlike the EULA for earlier versions of Windows, which simply states that the OPERATING SYSTEM (NOT windows "service") will no longer receive updates - but does not provision a disabling of the OS on the end of support date.) Windows 10, With the latest DirectX 12 updates, gets great Direct 2D scores with cards that have the hardware to support high 2D benchmarking. I have two very similar Intel X99 chipset based MB systems with Xeon E5-26XX series CPU's. The Win10 system has a somewhat lower performing AMD Radeon RX-480 Graphics card, (compared with the Nvidia GTX 1060 card in this system) but gets the Direct 2D benchmark scores seen in Windows 7 score results, and in Passmark score result averages for these cards overall.)
I'm pretty sure that Microsoft knows this is a fixable bug issue and just doesn't care... Not their problem: They have already rolled out Windows as a service 10; (and, I'm sure, earnestly desire that you buy into that.)

[David (PassMark)]

2D performance is a very low priority for Microsoft, even on Win10.


See also these threads
https://www.passmark.com/forum/pc-ha...GTX-970-4790k=

https://www.passmark.com/forum/perfo...ormance-scores

But having said that, during recent development of PerformanceTest V10, we rewrote some of the 2D tests to use DirectX (instead of GDI / GDI+). Using DirectX for 2D definitely gives better performance than GDI, but,

1) The developer needs to write a *A LOT* more code to do anything useful in DirectX, compared to GDI.

2) The DirectX code is a lot more obscure and poorly documented than GDI+. So a much higher level of expertise is required to code for it.

3) DirectX has serious compatibility problems. So the code that works on Win10 won't always work on Win7. And older video cards don't support DX11 & DX12 for example.

But one could argue that if the developer has the time, expertise and only cares about Win10 and new video cards, then good 2D performance is possible using DirectX.