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Futuremark on Async Compute: No vendor specific optimizations, our benchmarks are fair and accurate

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Asynchronous Compute is a feature that has been in the spotlight for a while. As we’ve seen, more and more developers are taking advantage of it via their DX12 implementations in their game engines. And from the looks of it, this feature will stay relevant for a very long time.

A few days ago, Futuremark released its new DX12 benchmark that took advantage of Async Compute. Futuremark’s 3D Mark DX12 Time Spy Benchmark has an option to disable or enable Async Compute and as you may have guessed, AMD’s GPUs see a significant boost when this option is enabled.

In a lengthy post, Futuremark detailed its Async Compute implementation. Without going into a lot of tech details, the team claimed that its implementation is the same on every hardware.

“The implementation is the same regardless of the underlying hardware. In the benchmark at large, there are no vendor specific optimizations in order to ensure that all hardware performs the same amount of work. This makes benchmark results from all vendors comparable across multiple generations of hardware.” claimed Futuremark and continued:

“Whether work placed in the COMPUTE queue is executed in parallel or in serial is ultimately the decision of the underlying driver. In DirectX 12, by placing items into a different queue the application is simply stating that it allows execution to take place in parallel – it is not a requirement, nor is there a method for making such a demand. This is similar to traditional multi-threaded programming for the CPU – by creating threads we allow and are prepared for execution to happen simultaneously. It is up to the OS to decide how it distributes the work.”

Futuremark concluded that its benchmarks can be considered accurate, relevant, and impartial as they are ‘built using a process that’s been government vetted for fairness and neutrality.’

“For benchmarks to be relevant and useful tools, they must be fair, impartial, and unbiased. This is why 3DMark Time Spy, and all other Futuremark benchmarks, are developed with industry-leading hardware and software partners through our Benchmark Development Program using a process that’s been government vetted for fairness and neutrality. This process ensures that our benchmarks are accurate, relevant, and impartial.”