View Full Version : Nvidia glamours PC gaming market
Nvidia: Console Software Sales Flat, PC on the Rise (http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-pc-console-sales-battlefield-3-bf3-pc-gaming,13499.html)
vidia certainly has something to say about that, and the company's response isn't a sleek new near-$3,000 gaming laptop, nor is it some hot new PC title...despite Battlefield 3, Skyrim and Rage being right around the corner. Instead, Big Green is bringing cold, hard facts to the table. In short, it's all about the almighty dollar and how that cash is wielded by you, John Q. Consumer. I met with Nvidia recently to talk about gaming in general, as well as look at some exciting new hardware coming out in the near future. The latter is hush-hush until next month, but when it comes to the state of PC gaming, it's open season.
:???:
theres a more complete writeup somewhere which includes more slides
like this one
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/1288/games4t.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/35/games4t.png/)
Edit: found it
http://techgage.com/article/nvidia_talks_pc_gaming_trends/
pjbliverpool
24-Sep-2011, 12:07
That slides funny. I'd love to know exactly how they put it together. 40% higher performance in 2005 is stretching it a bit though.
The fastest single GPU back then was the 7800GTX 512.
That slides funny. I'd love to know exactly how they put it together. 40% higher performance in 2005 is stretching it a bit though.
The fastest single GPU back then was the 7800GTX 512.
16 ROP-s and 256bit GDDR3 are the reason for higher performance. RSX has just 8 ROP-s and 128bit GDDR3.
pjbliverpool
24-Sep-2011, 14:25
An extra 50Mhz core clock too (10% higher). Still seems like stretch to claim 40% greater performance overall though but I guess it's possible.
An extra 50Mhz core clock too (10% higher). Still seems like stretch to claim 40% greater performance overall though but I guess it's possible.
Considering the memory system was cut in half, I would not doubt the 40% greater performance figure one fucking bit.
bigtabs
24-Sep-2011, 15:17
Isn't that just the raw power though? Driver overhead would cut that down some.
So is the consensus the slide is true or not ?
Squilliam
25-Sep-2011, 01:33
That slides funny. I'd love to know exactly how they put it together. 40% higher performance in 2005 is stretching it a bit though.
The fastest single GPU back then was the 7800GTX 512.
That looks a lot closer to 60-80% than 40%... I think they're being liberal. I suspect they're talking high end SLI systems which cost 5* the cost of the console...
trinibwoy
25-Sep-2011, 01:39
What exciting new hardware is hush hush till next month?
If PC hardware is 8x faster or whatever it certainly hasn't mattered much for visuals. Developers spend way more time coming up with brilliant ways to make the consoles render something new while we just buy NV/AMD's latest stuff for no good reason. And there's also the whole API/driver inefficiency problem that has been brought up by various developers.
Nice for Davros's multi monitor setup though.
bigtabs
25-Sep-2011, 02:41
He must be using Windows 8 already.
NVIDIA is a huge part of the problem .... them holding back UE development as far as AA is concerned, pushing FXAA but not pushing MSAA ... even with API overhead we shouldn't be stuck with bad anti-aliasing on the PC, we have far too much fillrate for that.
bigtabs
25-Sep-2011, 11:50
NVIDIA is a huge part of the problem .... them holding back UE development as far as AA is concerned
Proof or it didn't happen. (I have no idea, it just sounds juicy and I'd love to know more).
Isn't that just the raw power though? Driver overhead would cut that down some.
Understatement of the year. ;)
Small detail, but the RSX is also connected to XDR2 with 128bit, yes? So in that respect, RSX has had some 'driver overhead' of its own? ;)
pjbliverpool
25-Sep-2011, 16:38
He must be using Windows 8 already.
:lol:
Proof or it didn't happen.
I have no proof, just all these UE games using DX9 and driver hacks to do MSAA (Batman gate). Tim Sweeney never using DX10.1 to solve some of the fundamental problems of deferred rendering and MSAA, even though he is now doing it with DX11 for his next gen engine with the same techniques which would have worked for DX10.1 ... meh, I just see all these sponsorships from both NVIDIA and AMD with developers and never does it end up with technology which is inapplicable for consoles for some reason (except useless shit like bolted on tesselation to round off some corners).
How strange, you don't suppose it's because they (and the game developers) are beholden to Microsoft and Sony do you? Cause I certainly do.
almighty
25-Sep-2011, 20:10
NVIDIA is a huge part of the problem .... them holding back UE development as far as AA is concerned, pushing FXAA but not pushing MSAA ... even with API overhead we shouldn't be stuck with bad anti-aliasing on the PC, we have far too much fillrate for that.
Nvidia have a lot of options for AA on PC, They even have an official tool for forcing super sample AA on pretty much any game regardless of what API it uses.
And I've always been able to force AA in ANY unreal engine 3 game..
homerdog
30-Sep-2011, 15:15
The original Gears of War on PC supported MSAA through the DX10 path. Since then I don't know if any UE3 games have had anything above DX9. IDK how this is NVIDIA's fault; Rocksteady could have put in a DX10 path for Batman but they didn't because they don't give a shit. NVIDIA came along and said "hey you can do it in DX9 with this extension" and that's how it ended up. Otherwise I doubt there would be any AA at all in that game.
That slides funny. I'd love to know exactly how they put it together. 40% higher performance in 2005 is stretching it a bit though.
The fastest single GPU back then was the 7800GTX 512.But question is, does the graph only count single GPUs or also SLI setups?
If PC hardware is 8x faster or whatever it certainly hasn't mattered much for visuals. Considering that 8x faster HW is running the (often poorly ported) console ports at 4x more pixels + AA + 2x higher FPS it's not really a surprise they haven't needed to push out something too much different to consoles in terms of visual effects.
Though from the original article I liked the retail vs DD images best :)
pjbliverpool
30-Sep-2011, 18:11
But question is, does the graph only count single GPUs or also SLI setups?
At the bottom end of the graph I'd say probably but at the top end I'd say no.
If PC hardware is 8x faster or whatever it certainly hasn't mattered much for visuals.
You do not consider moving from blurry (often sub) 720p -> 1920x1080/1920x1200 a huge improvement? How about moving from tearing and shaky 25-30 fps to smooth 60 fps with vsynch? Antialiasing (no shimmering edges) and anisotropic filtering (sharper textures / no under/oversampling) also improve the image quality a lot.
720p->1080p is 2.25x pixels to render, and 30 fps -> 60 fps is another 2x. Frame rate and resolution bump together already require a 4.5x faster GPU. Add in some high quality antialiasing and anisotropic filtering, more/better post filters, parallax mapping, higher quality meshes and increase the texture and shadowmap resolution up by a few notches and we are at 8x.
BF3 is a good example. All their early marketing trailers and gameplay videos were shot from the PC version (highest settings). Lots of players were really disappointed in the image quality when they downloaded the PS3 / Xbox 360 beta version, because they expected that 6 year old console hardware could reach the PC image quality... or even be near it.
Man from Atlantis
05-Oct-2011, 10:39
"Performance power and visual fidelity are not things that should be compared," CEO Cevat Yerli told NowGamer in an interview. Referring to a recent report by Nvidia, which states that its top graphics card is nine times the power of current consoles, he added. "Nine times more brute force power might not result in nine times more visual quality. It may, in fact, only result in 50 per cent more visual quality. Any benefit we get from increased hardware power today, is applied more and more to the finer details."
The power-to-beauty ratio isn't quite as high as you might think. "There is a diminishing return with every increase in power," added Yerli. "I would expect from a ten times more powerful spec set-up, a perceived improvement of visual experience, somewhere between a factor two, or two and a half. You would not get much more than that."
source (http://www.nowgamer.com/features/1077429/crysis_consoles_and_crytek_cevat_yerli_interview.h tml)
If you were to have the same assets, but running on a PC that had a ten times faster GPU, you would get a ten times faster frame rate, but that’s not what you want. That’s not a visual improvement.Yeah, but I can crank up resolution and AA and get better visuals still.
I agree completely with Cevat Yerli. The visual improvements surely arent going to increase linearly with hardware performance. We need more clever algorithms instead of rendering more and more triangles/pixels/frames in a brute force way.
Scott_Arm
05-Oct-2011, 18:21
I'd like to see a PC game that targets 720p or lower that aims to use power for more than resolution and AA. I've always thought the same about the consoles. What could you do with a 480p game? Games at 2560x1600 don't approach the realism of a film on DVD. People hate upscaling though. The one problem with fixed resolution displays.
homerdog
05-Oct-2011, 18:22
More powerful hardware lets you layer on more complex effects and realistic lighting on top of allowing for better assets. 10x more powerful hardware will make a tremendous visual difference if you build a game specifically for that hardware.
DarthShader
05-Oct-2011, 18:46
I got a question, how does one _measure_ visual fidelity and declare a two times improvment? I thought those things are subjective... ;)
Scott_Arm
05-Oct-2011, 18:46
It was sort of a rhetorical question. As far as I know, no one has intentionally targeted such a low resolution to push individual pixel fidelity like that. Alan Wake is maybe the closest we've seen to that approach. It would be an expensive experiment, but one I'd like to see done ;)
homerdog
06-Oct-2011, 00:03
Just imagine what a game would look like if it were tailored specifically for a GTX580 and designed to run at 720p with good AA. It would be so much better than current console games your eyes would burst out of your skull and you wouldn't even care.
IMO it was a mistake for Epic to run the Samaritan stuff at 4MP. It would hardly look any worse at 1/4 that resolution if it used good AA.
4mp, what was was it run at
I cant seem to find any info of the res, only a few sites having a 1920x1080 video which the claim is full quality
Ninjaprime
06-Oct-2011, 06:32
I think their pdf said it was 2560x1600.
I agree completely with Cevat Yerli.
Yeah well, I dunno if Cervat is the best person to listen to about this, after the 300,000 polygon concrete barriers, underground water meshes and so on... (Not to mention the overall poorly optimized Crysis/WH.)
Of course there's a process of diminishing returns; game visuals aren't any different than anything else. Cars have (extremely) diminishing returns in the horsepower/top speed relationship for example (because as we all know, cars and computers are completely analogous, which explains the prevalence of car/computer comparisons on web forums. :lol:)
That said however, I think we can find someone who can succeed better in utilizing computing horsepower better than Cervat and crew. They've kinda failed in that regard IMO.
That said however, I think we can find someone who can succeed better in utilizing computing horsepower better than Cervat and crew. They've kinda failed in that regard IMO.
Cryengine 3 is using the limited console resources very well. It offers one of the best visual experiences on the current consoles. I don't think BF3 demo (Frostbite 2) visuals were better on the same console hardware, and it seems to have more frame rate issues than Crysis 2. Or are you implying that both Frostbite 2 and Cryengine 3 are not utilizing the resources well? You could of course say that Tech 5 fares better, since it manages solid 60 fps, but it has completely static lighting (specular highlights have also been baked to virtual texture, so it doesn't even need any normal maps).
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