View Full Version : This is why the R300 won't do well!
Let me explain.
Assuming that the R300 is realesed about 3 months before the NV30 and assuming it whipes the floor with Ti4600, the R300 still has one major hurdle to get over.... and that is popular hardware sites like Anand and Toms!
I can already see the reviews at Anand
"Conclusion.
ATI 300 is definately the fastest card at the moment. If you enjoy high res gaming with all the eye candy turned on, then this is the card for you. But with the looming threat of the NV30 just around the corner, it really is hard to recommend this card." :roll: Notice the mention of upcoming hardware, NV30.
Now, three months later. The NV30 is released, assuming it performs about 10% faster than R300.
"Conclusion.
Once again Nvidia has shown its dominance in the industry and produced yet another industry leading architecture. With performance to burn and features to keep evrey one happy, this is THE card for any hard core gamer." :roll: Notice no mention of upcoming hardware, R300 refresh.
Would he mention the R300 refresh (once again, assuming) just around the corner? Ofcourse not. So here we have a (possible) situation where ATI has actually taken the lead in terms of product development/cycles but unfortunately it will be down played by biased hardware sites. I am talking about hardware sites that have a HUGE influence on the online buying public. :evil:
Its a shame really, both cards will be unbelievable, very similar in performance and features.... yet one will 'own' the other in some peoples eyes.
That is one hurdle I just can't see ATI getting over!
"Conclusion.
ATI 300 is definately the fastest card at the moment. If you enjoy high res gaming with all the eye candy turned on, then this is the card for you. But with the looming threat of the NV30 just around the corner, it really is hard to recommend this card."
[..snip...]
"Conclusion.
Once again Nvidia has shown its dominance in the industry and produced yet another industry leading architecture. With performance to burn and features to keep evrey one happy, this is THE card for any hard core gamer."
The first statement was absolutely perfect. I laughed pretty damn hard, after I read that.
The second one, some might take as profound.
Kristof
06-Jun-2002, 07:37
Actually this can turn into a cyclic thing...
"Conclusion.
NV30 is definately the fastest card at the moment. If you enjoy high res gaming with all the eye candy turned on, then this is the card for you. But with the looming threat of the Fantastic BitBoys Product just around the corner, it really is hard to recommend this card."
Cough, Just used BitBoys as an example it could be other companies... like Matrox, 3DLabs, PowerVR (I am NOT suggesting anything - just general talk), ATI, Trident, SIS, VIA, ... There will always be something else around the corner, and when hype is compared with reality, reality will always lose (else Marketing did a bad job hyping the unannounced top secret product).
K-
Randell
06-Jun-2002, 08:59
actually if you look at Anands conclusions for a lot of new hardware he normally adds somethinh like this;
'But if you have Gf3 class hardware is it worth upgrading now? With no DX9 games likely to be out for another 18 months then you might as well wait until prices come down later in the year.'
You presume that most consumers buy a card based on anantech and tommie, you are far from the truth with that I wonder why the Radeon did so well that card didn't get really fair reviews either........
I think The R300 best card for doom3 has more impact.....
but most buy their card based on info form friends and what they had b4 (if they happy they buy same brand) And the general vidcard buyer isn't going to visit toms or anan........... only hobyist, job related, hardcore gamers........ and on the salesman aldo they usually don't know what they talking about :D
just my 2 cents.
I think you're greatly exaggerate the influence of Anand and Tom, any Hardware review site for that matter.
People like us, who hang out at Hardware sites, read reviews and try to inform themselves well are still a minority, most people go into a store and buy the card with the most ompressive package and numbers on it (wow 256MB of 8ns SDRAM, that's gotta be better than 128MB of 4ns DDRAM, I mean 8 is better than 4 right?), or take their children's reccomendation, the card that was recommended in last month's issue of PC gamer - never overestimate the average consumer I say... ;)
Actually this can turn into a cyclic thing...
"Conclusion.
NV30 is definately the fastest card at the moment. If you enjoy high res gaming with all the eye candy turned on, then this is the card for you. But with the looming threat of the Fantastic BitBoys Product just around the corner, it really is hard to recommend this card."
I completly agree however they have very seldom done this when reviewing the nVidia product. However it seems to happen more fequently when the review a non-nVidia product. Who knows, it just could be dumb luck.....
Doomtrooper
06-Jun-2002, 15:12
I would say 3Dwonderboy is correct, I have some 'contacts' at ATI that I speak to occasionally and they really don't consider Anand or Tomshardware that big of a factor in the big scheme of things, sure they worry about their 'IMAGE'.
ATI is making some big changes to the way it used to do business, with new board partners to John Carmacks famous 'PLAN' where he stated ATI has been on the phone with him constantly trying to get driver bugs resolved.
The thing that will make ATI cards a hit is if the R300 comes out of the doors swinging with no driver issues, already running Doom 3 has done wonders and shows what the power of Carmack http://www.smilies.org/basesmilies/worship.gif can do :)
Chalnoth
06-Jun-2002, 16:07
What's sad is that most people actually take the recommendation of the people in the store. I still remember when I went to purchase my GeForce DDR at Software Etc. (It was the only place I could find one! They were all sold-out online...), the guy tried to tell me that he liked Voodoo's....I had a hard time not laughing in his face...
Anyway, I think that the shadow of the NV30 will be the biggest obstacle to the R300. With 120 million transistors, it's really probable that the NV30 will be *the* DX9 part, and everything else will just be sort of DX8.5.
Doomtrooper
06-Jun-2002, 16:08
Anyway, I think that the shadow of the NV30 will be the biggest obstacle to the R300. With 120 million transistors, it's really probable that the NV30 will be *the* DX9 part, and everything else will just be sort of DX8.5.
Twice ???
Ummmm No again :roll:
John Reynolds
06-Jun-2002, 16:59
Online reviewers do have a lot of influence in the software they choose to use as benchmarks. And since most tend to carbon copy each other, the card that can run those one or two (Q3/3DMark) benchmarks the fastest gets perceived as the best gaming card, which isn't always true. And if Carmack releases a Doom 3test this fall, then we'll definitely see Nvidia and ATi scrambling to optimize their drivers for that one game.
Doomtrooper
06-Jun-2002, 17:03
Very true...
Chalnoth
06-Jun-2002, 17:11
One thing:
If ATI does manage to pull out a very good card with good drivers _close to launch_ for once, it may just do well in the marketplace. It's not that it can't succeed just because of nVidia...if the R300 can indeed stand on its own, and isn't labelled as a "DX8.5" part as I suspect, then it may indeed do very well.
I didn't mean Anand and Toms exclusively, they were just examples. Its even worse if you pick up a popular PC magazine.... the trend is just the same, but worse because these magazines DO have influence on the general public.
Example: The average family is looking to buy a pc, and asks thier friend who they believe is an expert because he/she reads mainstream pc mags. Ofcourse the friend will only repeat what he/she has read in the mag. Now, ofcourse there would be no problem at all if the mags weren't so biased and ignorant. I think its safe to say that 70% of mags fall into this category.
Don't you guys find this frustrating? Or is it just me.
This is exactly why I think Beyond3d is in a diferent class to most major publications, be it online or in print format! :D
Randell
06-Jun-2002, 17:53
What's sad is that most people actually take the recommendation of the people in the store. I still remember when I went to purchase my GeForce DDR at Software Etc. (It was the only place I could find one! They were all sold-out online...), the guy tried to tell me that he liked Voodoo's....I had a hard time not laughing in his face...
I bet the same guy recommends the Gf4MX eh?
Joe DeFuria
06-Jun-2002, 18:52
If ATI does manage to pull out a very good card with good drivers _close to launch_ for once, it may just do well in the marketplace.
You are continuing to perpetuate the notion that the R-300 is some "DX 8.5" part, and the NV30 is some radical new architecture that is even beyond DX 9. But let's run with that. Because you apparently haven't thought of the consequences related to drivers.
So assuming the above, and asuming R-300 come out first, then it will be nVidia that will be under immense pressure to have "good drivers close to launch." I don't recall nVidia having shown to have any special advantage in the "new drivers for a new architecture" department. So if R-300 can leverage much of the current Radeon driver work (because it is DX "8.5"), and ATI has a few month head start on shipping, ATI is likely to have very solid drivers in comparison to the NV30.
I didn't mean Anand and Toms exclusively, they were just examples. Its even worse if you pick up a popular PC magazine.... the trend is just the same, but worse because these magazines DO have influence on the general public.
And that is bad because... ? Magazines and Review Sites are the only source of information people really have to judge wether a product is worth their money or not. They can't trust the company's PR material and reviews in mags and on the net are the best thing you'll ever get to a "fair comparison" without actually purchasing and comparing yourself, I think its good to have them, no reason to be scared of them...
Example: The average family is looking to buy a pc, and asks thier friend who they believe is an expert because he/she reads mainstream pc mags. Ofcourse the friend will only repeat what he/she has read in the mag. Now, ofcourse there would be no problem at all if the mags weren't so biased and ignorant. I think its safe to say that 70% of mags fall into this category.
Don't you guys find this frustrating? Or is it just me.
If you can get frustrated because of that kind of thing then maybe its time to take a step back and relax for a while.
Of course you're right, some magazines and sites run ridiculously irrelevant benchmarks, even today they often don't even mention any of the IQ enhancing features (FSAA, Aniso, etc.), let alone test or compare them. That makes over half of the reviews out there incomplete and often useless - and I didn't even get started about what else annoys me in some reviews. Fact is though, having all those reviews is still a good thing, as they represent the kind of comprehension a slightly above-average user actually has of these products.
As for bias, give me a break! Seems like some people prefering either Nvidia or ATi will never be happy unless some reviewer calls "their" cards the ultimate doomsday device of 3D graphics. Most top sites and mags are well aware of their influence and responsibility IMHO, and while they will never be totally unbiased, they usually do a pretty good job of keeping it fair IMHO. Not all of them manage to be as open-minded and unbiased as Beyond 3D has in the past, but unless you don't take fansite reviews serious, there's usually not that much to get upset about unless you take little things much too serious.
Ignorance is something much worse, the V5 for example was often dissed for its lack of T&L compared to the GTS, while the great FSAA often didn't get much notice - but in games of that time the FSAA was MUCH more important, reviewers just often didn't get it. I don't believe that today's cards are doomed to that fate, e.g. Radeon and Geforce are too similar to each other in most ways for that kind of thing to happen - so unless the next generations bring several *truly* unique features each, I don't see much danger of something like that happening again...
Ailuros
06-Jun-2002, 19:03
On a sidenote I just bought a Ti4400 and I don't think I'll consider an upgrade before next spring. I would have quite a ball though if both competitors rush their products out the door as much, that some people should have second thoughts on what they were wishing for.
I'll better have a mature product with mature drivers, than something that takes vendors months to iron out.
Neither of the above is necessary to be fact but when you hear people from either sides "the XXX will be first out" "no no no the YYY will be first out" or alternatively "the XXX will be DX9 compliant" "no it will be DX8.99 compliant" it gets that certain comedic touch. Ignore me I should go back to "read only" mode.
Chalnoth
06-Jun-2002, 21:27
Let me clarify more of what I mean by the possibility of the R300 being more 'DX8.5" than DX9.
I'm not trying to say that the NV30 will be lightyears ahead, but that it looks like it will be noticeably ahead in features (And almost certainly performance...by a good margin). In reality, I expect it to be a little bit less than the difference between the original Radeon and GeForce3. I fully expect the R300 to be noticeably ahead of the Parhelia in features and performance.
Note that it is also absolutely certain that both video chips will offer some features that the other does not. It may even be true that the non-overlapping features will be equal in number. What is more important is which features are more forward-looking and will be used to great effect. I have a strong belief that nVidia's featureset will be significantly more complete in this aspect (Based on just a little more than past history...).
Joe DeFuria
06-Jun-2002, 21:38
I'm not trying to say that the NV30 will be lightyears ahead, but that it looks like it will be noticeably ahead in features (And almost certainly performance...by a good margin).
Why? I still cannot figure out how you are reaching such conclusions. Not based on what is known / rumored publically, or based on past history. How does one begin to guess that NV30 would almost certainly be the performance leader by a good margin?
Chalnoth
06-Jun-2002, 21:46
Performance? Three main reasons:
1. Smaller die process + more transistors.
2. They've done it since the TNT2 Ultra.
3. Recent processors have been significantly ahead of ATI (the only significant high-end competition currently) on a per-clock basis (for both core and memory).
And, the fourth reason that means a little bit less to me:
nVidia has more money to spend on R&D.
Dave Baumann
06-Jun-2002, 22:04
nVidia has more money to spend on R&D.
According to the official information, Nvidia spent $89.9 in the first quarter of fiscal 2003: $52.4 on R&D (= Research & Development) and $37.4 on the administrative expenses. We should point out that for the whole fiscal 2002, Nvidia spent $153.9 million on R&D. It worth noticing that Nvidia`s research and development expenses rise 1.7-1.8 times every year.
We would like to add that the nightmare rival of Santa-Clara based company, ATI Technologies spent $149,4 million on R&D in the fiscal 2001 (it is not the same compared to Nvidia`s one). For the second quarter of fiscal 2002, the Canadian company spent $41.7 million on R&D.
Joe DeFuria
06-Jun-2002, 22:05
I think those reasons are misplaced.
1. Smaller die process + more transistors.
First of all, current speculation has NV30 at 120 million, and R-300 at 107 million. Not a big difference. Second, more transistors doesn't directly mean more performance. (Yes, given a similar number of transistors on smaller die process = faster performance). I would argue that more transistors is a better case for more features, and more bandwidth is a better case for more performance, and rumor has it ATI will have substantially more bandwidth.
2. They've done it since the TNT2 Ultra.
But what has been the TREND since the TNT-2 ultra? It's obvious to me that with every generation, ATI has been closing the performance gap with every generation, and has actually been pretty consistent in "out featuring" nVidia with every generation. The latest example: It will be approaching 2 YEARS in between nVidia doing a major revamp of the graphics core (NV20, and NV30 if it ships Nov / Dec). It will have been under 1 year between R-200 and R-300, if R-300 ships in Aug / Sept.
3. Recent processors have been significantly ahead of ATI (the only significant high-end competition currently) on a per-clock basis (for both core and memory).
Only true if you look at certain situations. (Try anisotropic filtering.) I don't agree that nVidia has been significantly ahead of ATI, when you compare direct generations.
Radeon 8500 is ATI's "first gen" DX8 part. So is nVidia's Geforce3 / Ti. They are pretty much directly comparable clock for clock, IIRC. ATI has yet to release their "second gen" DX8 part, akin to GeForce4 TI. (We'll see how the RV-250 does.)
Please recall that Radeon 8500 shipped about the Same time as GeForce3 TI, not GeForce4 Ti.
Chalnoth
06-Jun-2002, 22:18
First of all, current speculation has NV30 at 120 million, and R-300 at 107 million. Not a big difference. Second, more transistors doesn't directly mean more performance. (Yes, given a similar number of transistors on smaller die process = faster performance). I would argue that more transistors is a better case for more features, and more bandwidth is a better case for more performance, and rumor has it ATI will have substantially more bandwidth.
No, more transistors don't directly mean more performance. What they do mean is that there is more freedom for performance-enhancing features.
But what has been the TREND since the TNT-2 ultra? It's obvious to me that with every generation, ATI has been closing the performance gap with every generation, and has actually been pretty consistent in "out featuring" nVidia with every generation.
nVidia was light-years ahead of ATI at the release of the GeForce DDR, and just about as far with the release of the GeForce3. ATI only caught up later, and it should be a given that ATI's products would have more features six-twelve months after the release of the nVidia product.
Only true if you look at certain situations. (Try anisotropic filtering.) I don't agree that nVidia has been significantly ahead of ATI, when you compare direct generations.
Try aniso + FSAA. The truth is, the Radeon 8500 only comes ahead in one special circumstance: aniso with no FSAA. And do not forget that ATI has had more R&D time. This time around, nVidia has had significantly more R&D time (More time since the last big architectural change, the GF3).
And The GeForce3 Ti 500 is still clocked at only 250/500 (if I remember correctly...I'm sure about the memory) and yet it still usually outperforms a 275/275 8500. It most certainly outperformed the 8500 when it was released...
Doomtrooper
06-Jun-2002, 22:48
Try aniso + FSAA. The truth is, the Radeon 8500 only comes ahead in one special circumstance: aniso with no FSAA. And do not forget that ATI has had more R&D time. This time around, nVidia has had significantly more R&D time (More time since the last big architectural change, the GF3).
And The GeForce3 Ti 500 is still clocked at only 250/500 (if I remember correctly...I'm sure about the memory) and yet it still usually outperforms a 275/275 8500. It most certainly outperformed the 8500 when it was released...
1) Although ATI's FSAA is not the fastest, it delivers better IQ
2) The Geforce 3 Ti 500 was faster than a 8500 on its debut BECAUSE all Nvidia did was raise the clock speed, shrink the die..did not add any new features at ALL besides a new name and enjoyed USING the same drivers they had been working on for a entire year on the Geforce 3 :roll: ..Then 4 months later releases another chip call the Geforce 4...I wonder how Ti 500 owners felt :lol:
3) The Geforce 3 can't do truform at ALL ??
4)The Geforce 3 and 4 can't do multiple Pixel shader effects due to lack of support of PS 1.4.
5)The Radeon 8500 has a SUPERIOR anisotropic filtering...since you base everthing off speed alone then ATI's implementation is better.
6)Geforce 3 and 4 still can't properly uses texture compression ??
Yes I can see where you think a Geforce 3 and 4 chip are BETTER :lol:
You speak as though FSAA is the end all of graphics....far from it..by a long shot. Thats all you got to brag about..FSAA..big DEAL.
oh my, oh my...
this is not good. I am sensing upcoming flame war...
DoomTrooper, I ask you nicely... please stop before you have even started yet. I _know_ what I am talking about.
I am just lurker of many fan boards to know each other backgrounds.
Doomtrooper
06-Jun-2002, 23:16
No can do, nothing I posted was incorrect although Chalnoth has posted alot of incorrect posts..especially stating that a Geforce 3 chip is more advanced than a 8500 GPU..that is simply incorrect.
*Nappe1 whispers loudly: "DoomTrooper: yes, I _Know_ damn too well there is big mistakes in Challnoth's replies, But I doubt that you are able to change that... "
Chalnoth
06-Jun-2002, 23:39
No can do, nothing I posted was incorrect although Chalnoth has posted alot of incorrect posts..especially stating that a Geforce 3 chip is more advanced than a 8500 GPU..that is simply incorrect.
Dude, I said the GeForce3 was more advanced than what ATI had at the time, and that by a good margin.
The Radeon 8500 was out six months after the GeForce3.
Doomtrooper
07-Jun-2002, 00:36
No can do, nothing I posted was incorrect although Chalnoth has posted alot of incorrect posts..especially stating that a Geforce 3 chip is more advanced than a 8500 GPU..that is simply incorrect.
Dude, I said the GeForce3 was more advanced than what ATI had at the time, and that by a good margin.
The Radeon 8500 was out six months after the GeForce3.
Not a Ti 500 ?? You state so often.
Doomtrooper
07-Jun-2002, 00:37
*Nappe1 whispers loudly: "DoomTrooper: yes, I _Know_ damn too well there is big mistakes in Challnoth's replies, But I doubt that you are able to change that... "
I know...I Know :-?
/bangs head on desk
Chalnoth
07-Jun-2002, 00:43
Not a Ti 500 ?? You state so often.
Of course not. Please if you notice that my statements "woudld be right if..." then that *is* what I meant...I don't like long-winded posts, and when I do post very short ones, I try to be as absolutely accurate as I can.
OpenGL guy
07-Jun-2002, 00:54
I suppose Chalnoth thinks that the Geforce 4 is more advanced than the 8500 as well... Never mind that Geforce 4 only has PS 1.3, doesn't support Truform, etc.
:)
P.S. Performance isn't everything... Remember the Voodoo?
Not a Ti 500 ?? You state so often.
Of course not. Please if you notice that my statements "woudld be right if..." then that *is* what I meant...I don't like long-winded posts, and when I do post very short ones, I try to be as absolutely accurate as I can.
Shame you fall wide of the mark so often.
Joe DeFuria
07-Jun-2002, 00:58
Chalnoth,
You have completely side-stepped my arguments.
1) You totally ignored observance of the "trend" I spoke of. (Has ATI been consistently closing the gap between it's performance and nVidia or the other way around).
2) You are conveniently mixing Geforce 3 TI performance (shipped same time as Radeon 8500 ), with "original" GeForce3 timing (shipped 6 months earlier.)
There are two ways we can attempt to make "apples to apples" comparisons here:
1) Take the two product lines (R200 and NV20), at any single point in time, and compare them.
OR
2) Take the two product lines, at the same RELATIVE TIME ELAPSED since the release of the architecture that makes up the product's core technology.
And I submit to you, that number 2 is the more relevant in this case, because it seems very likely that both R-300 and NV-30, "new cores" will be launched in "similar" time frames.
This is NOT a case where nVidia will launch the NV30 first, followed by R-300 6 months later. If anything, it will be closer to the other way around.
Doomtrooper
07-Jun-2002, 01:01
Unlike you I do not make bold statements of what card is going to be better, judging speed from looking at some magazine article stating 120 million vs 107 million transistors and claiming a Nvidia win just by transistor count is not objective.
Pentium 4 Northwood: 55 million transistors
Athlon XP: 37.5 million transistors
Transistor number means nothing, The Radeon 8500 has 60 million and does Truform, PS 1.4...
Geforce 4 has 63 Million and supports, PS 1.3 and .....
Transistor number means nothing...
In reality, I expect it to be a little bit less than the difference between the original Radeon and GeForce3.
... but nothing like the Radeon 8500 compared to either the GeForce3 or the GeForce4, I suppose? :)
ATI's folly has historically been in the implementation details, rather than the product vision. I wouldn't bet any money on Nvidia out-doing ATI on any featureset issues. The only safe bet would be that the featuresets of ATI and Nvidia's next-gen products won't overlap completely, leaving us consumers to pout over insufficient support for Desirable-Feature-XYZ.
We might also guess, given current directions, that a fair amount of Nvidia's transistors will be dedicated to achieving additional quality (texture sampling, pixel sampling) with relatively little real-world impact. Nvidia's competitors will pursue optimizations in different areas, and we'll see a continuation of highly subjective comparisons between the products, with people comparing under whatever conditions they favor most, and seeing vastly different relative performance as a result.
Ah.... to have something fun to talk about again...
Hate to interrupt you two flirting, but lets throw a few notes to each of you in here before the yelling really starts:
nVidia was light-years ahead of ATI at the release of the GeForce DDR, and just about as far with the release of the GeForce3. ATI only caught up later, and it should be a given that ATI's products would have more features six-twelve months after the release of the nVidia product.
The first part I think is correct, or does anybody want to tell me the Rage core was even remotely comparable to a GeForce, I think not? Though light-years makes it sound a bit overly dramatic I think in this case its somehow true. Now the second part however is up for debate, the GF3 sure was a fairly advanced piece for the time, but not nearly as much ahead compared to Radeon as the original GeForce compared to a Rage. At that time ATi was already close on Nvidia's heels with the R8500 which would have embarrassed the GF3 had it come out earlier.
Also, when you say that it should be a given that ATI's product would have more features coming out 6 months later, how come that Nvidia's next product (GF4), coming out 6 months after that didn't have more features compared to a Radeon8500? Shouldn't that be a given too? I think that for this round - DX8 hardware - ATI did a better job feature-wise than Nvidia, their whole GF3/4 line is slightly behind in features, no refresh changed that. The GF4 for many people is still the more attractive card because of its speed, but luckily tastes differ...
As for the next generation, that remains to be seen, but it certainly looks as if Nvidia has been loosing some major ground the past 2 years...
1) Although ATI's FSAA is not the fastest, it delivers better IQ
R8500 has slightly better textures in FSAA that's all, GF3/4 needs to activate aniso to compete but even so is usually still faster - the next Nvidia drivers should significantly speed up Aniso, we'll see how it compares once they do.
2) The Geforce 3 Ti 500 was faster than a 8500 on its debut BECAUSE all Nvidia did was raise the clock speed, shrink the die..did not add any new features at ALL besides a new name and enjoyed USING the same drivers they had been working on for a entire year on the Geforce 3 ..Then 4 months later releases another chip call the Geforce 4...I wonder how Ti 500 owners felt
Your point being? Let me remove all the anti-nvidia sentiments of your statement, what remains: at release and quite some time after, the Ti500 was faster and had better drivers, none of the R8500 "better" features were/are used by games, hmmm I really see why the R8500 was such a better card at the time ... :roll:
3) The Geforce 3 can't do truform at ALL ??
Why should they? First of all who really cares about Truform as such (I don't mean HOS in general, its not as if ATi had invented them), it'll never get great industry recognition as a standard, and I don't care if the breasts on some wolfenstein chick look better... ;)
4)The Geforce 3 and 4 can't do multiple Pixel shader effects due to lack of support of PS 1.4.
Not entirely certain if its corrent in the way you said it but yeah GF3/4 can't do PS 1.4. Now name me any game that actually requires this. None, oh I see...
5)The Radeon 8500 has a SUPERIOR anisotropic filtering...since you base everthing off speed alone then ATI's implementation is better.
Anistrophic filtering is the one argument we hear about all the time. Some people treat is as if it were the holy grail of 3D or something, well let me tell you its not! It's nice to have it and have it at good speed, but its not as if the R8500 quality and speed were so vastly superior and important to overall IQ that other cards can't compete, get down from that trip. Personally I'd prefer good fast FSAA over Aniso in gameplay any day! Maybe that's because I do tend to actually play my games, i don't just walk around looking at floors and walls to check if the aniso looks good :roll: jaggies are far more distracting even at higher resolutions than slightly blurrier textures, all IMHO of course.
6)Geforce 3 and 4 still can't properly uses texture compression ??
Strange, it seems to work just fine on mine in any game I threw at it that supports it...
This could go round and round all over again. I can understand that Chalnoth's answers kinda annoyed you Doomtrooper, he writes in a bit provoking pro-nvidia style, but responding with those 6. points certainly doesn't help you look any better. While a grain of truth is behind most of the statements, they look like nothing other than deliberate provocation and I think that kind of dirt should be stirred up elsewhere...
Doomtrooper
07-Jun-2002, 01:54
The Geforce 4 still doesn't handle texture compression properly or does a couple of threads here with screenshots and Epic themselves stating its not fixed prove it :roll:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=992
No game supports Pixel Shader 1.4 yet .... yet PS 1.4 will be a part of Dx 9..you add it up.
Your point being? Let me remove all the anti-nvidia sentiments of your statement, what remains: at release and quite some time after, the Ti500 was faster and had better drivers, none of the R8500 "better" features were/are used by games, hmmm I really see why the R8500 was such a better card at the time
My POINT being its really objective to compare a NEW Dx 8.1 card and drivers, supporting the most support for advanced effects to a year old die shrunk Geforce 3 drivers... :-?
Was a Ti 500 a brand new GPU which required new drivers ??
Why should they? First of all who really cares about Truform as such (I don't mean HOS in general, its not as if ATi had invented them), it'll never get great industry recognition as a standard, and I don't care if the breasts on some wolfenstein chick look better
I DO, as I paid MONEY for my card too and want to see features used that enhance the realism of games, because you don't have that feature doesn't mean it isn't to important too thousands of 8500 owners.
Developers seem to like it also, Serious Sam:2, RTCW, SOF:2..lets not forget displacement mapping requires N-patches or truform...ATI has already done the hardware to do this with the 8500.
R8500 has slightly better textures in FSAA that's all, GF3/4 needs to activate aniso to compete but even so is usually still faster
I respect your perference for Anisotropic over FSAA, but the 8500 supports FSAA :)..not as fast but still capable. How would a 8500 look with FSAA and Anistropic look :-?
As for your comment on games, I play games ALOT and IMO I don't notice jaggies @ 1600 x 1200 16X Anistropic...look me up on Ng stats if you don't think I play games. :wink:
To illustrate why I think ATi is catching up a small timeline:
recent past:
Nvidia ATi
TNT2 Rage
GeForce256
GeForce2GTS
Radeon
GeForce2Pro/Ultra
Geforce3
Geforce3Ti R8500
Geforce4Ti
close future:
Nvidia ATi
R300
NV30
This is just from the top of my mind, I didn't look up the dates but I've been following the whole industry closely since the Riva128 and I think the general chronology should be correct. Not entirely sure if the Radeon came slightly before or after the GTS but I think it was after?
To me it looks like ATI will be able to release 3 major new generations in the same timeframe that Nvidia has needed for 2. The DX7 part was quite delayed from Nvidia's, the DX8 part was slightly delayed and the DX9 part will likely be out before Nvidia's, that's definitely catching up in my eyes! Also, each generation has had more features than the comparable Nvidia generation, so what could that mean? Letting history alone speak for the next generation chips would be foolish, but following the trend, it'd be ATi's turn to deliver first and better...
Ailuros
07-Jun-2002, 02:00
While a grain of truth is behind most of the statements, they look like nothing other than deliberate provocation and I think that kind of dirt should be stirred up elsewhere...
If I would be playing devil's advocate I'd say it takes two to tango. Unless someone is that skilled to play "flamewar" in front of a mirror :o
Ailuros
07-Jun-2002, 02:03
You forgot the GF2 PRO :)
The Geforce 4 still doesn't handle texture compression properly or does a couple of threads here with screenshots and Epic themselves stating its not fixed prove it :roll:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=992
I read that thread, and while there's not been much in the way of conclusive evidence shown in there, it does look like there still might be a problem. In that case its annoying that Nvidia didn't seem to have entirely removed the bug, although it took people quite a long time to notice, so it must've gotten a lot better. I activated the Quality trick though, guess out of habbit, so I've never had any reason to complain yet...
No game supports Pixel Shader 1.4 yet .... yet PS 1.4 will be a part of Dx 9..you add it up.
I still don't see how that's significant, a R8500 won't allow you to play a DX9 game any better than a GF3/4 would - and those games are still years away, so why care?! This sounds like a my car has bigger tires than yours kind of argument...
My POINT being its really objective to compare a NEW Dx 8.1 card and drivers, supporting the most support for advanced effects to a year old die shrunk Geforce 3 drivers... :-?
Was a Ti 500 a brand new GPU which required new drivers ??
Sorry I still don't get it, are we arguing about what card was better at release or which is better now, or what else? Let me explain my viewpoint: I DON'T care for any specific company! I want good cards, solid drivers (and I want real good OGL drivers for my 3D CGI Programs which ATi simply hasn't delivered in the past) and whoever gives me that will get my bucks. Why should I be interested in how long a driver development team has had time to adapt their drivers to a new hardware? Its completely uninteresting to me and it should be to you too. This isn't about fairness, its about delivering the product, and if the R85000 drivers at release were all but reliable and stable, then that's my reason for not purchasing it. Wether the driver team has had less time for the drivers is none of my concern...
I DO, as I paid MONEY for my card too and want to see features used that enhance the realism of games, because you don't have that feature doesn't mean it isn't to important too thousands of 8500 owners.
Developers seem to like it also, Serious Sam:2, RTCW, SOF:2..lets not forget displacement mapping requires N-patches or truform...ATI has already done the hardware to do this with the 8500.
I didn't intend to attack you or any Radeon owners feeling towards Truform, its just that I think it in itself isn't an all too revolutinary feature. HOS is something else though and I hope we'll see good use of them in the future, but I hardly think the "Truform" implementation will be up to the task of handling the new forms of HOS once games start really using HOS. It's nice to have it, but its not changing the way games are played in any way like lets say the introduction T&L that will allow us to play the highly detailed UT2003 or similar upcoming titles. If its good for a little eye candy that's good, I'll admit. ;)
As for Serious Sam, last i saw there were still artefacts, was that fixed? Also, when do you ever get even close enough to an enemy in that game to even notice truform, I try my best to keep my distance usually... ;)
I respect your perference for Anisotropic over FSAA, but the 8500 supports FSAA :)..not as fast but still capable. How would a 8500 look with FSAA and Anistropic look :-?
As for your comment on games, I play games ALOT and IMO I don't notice jaggies @ 1600 x 1200 16X Anistropic...look me up on Ng stats if you don't think I play games. :wink:
I know the R8500 supports FSAA and actually looks sweet with it, never doubtet that. I also didn't say you were not playing, just that to notice the difference between aniso on a R8500 and a GF3 you'll have to stop playing and start looking really hard! ;)
Unlike you I prefer playing in medium resolutions like 11*8 or 12*10 with Quincunx or 4x FSAA, depending on the game, so seems like both of us made the perfect choice in cards for their personal preferences, good for us! :)
If I would be playing devil's advocate I'd say it takes two to tango. Unless someone is that skilled to play "flamewar" in front of a mirror
I have seen these two (and others) arguing with each other a bit too often now, so I guess I was getting weak and wanted to fire some flak back at some of the statements that always annoy me from both sides, be it Nvidia or ATi supporters (don't like the word fan, hehe), its always the same stuff. Sorry if I came on flaming brightly myself, I tried to stay at least somewhat calm...
You forgot the GF2 PRO :)
yeah, too many refreshes eh? ;)
I believe it was released at the same time the Ultra was though...
Doomtrooper
07-Jun-2002, 02:49
If I would be playing devil's advocate I'd say it takes two to tango. Unless someone is that skilled to play "flamewar" in front of a mirror
I have seen these two (and others) arguing with each other a bit too often now, so I guess I was getting weak and wanted to fire some flak back at some of the statements that always annoy me from both sides, be it Nvidia or ATi supporters (don't like the word fan, hehe), its always the same stuff. Sorry if I came on flaming brightly myself, I tried to stay at least somewhat calm...
You forgot the GF2 PRO :)
yeah, too many refreshes eh? ;)
I believe it was released at the same time the Ultra was though...
Gollem,
Please don't try to play referee, you posted your opinions on this forum just like me, your opinion is not the same as mine..so disagreements happen..
As for the drivers please don't try to tell me as a former Geforce 3 owner that went through growing pains with that card there was no driver related game or graphic issues..or Nv_disp.dll errors that have made headlines since WinXP's release..thx.
Geeforcer
07-Jun-2002, 03:12
It worth nothing that yet to be released Parhelia doesn't support PS 1.4 either. From the looks of it R200 and RV250 will be the only chips to offer it.
Doomtrooper
07-Jun-2002, 03:21
Is having the best implementation a bad 'thing' ??
ATI released some PR for 2002/2003 stating over 100 games supporting specific ATI features, I'm sure Ps 1.4 will be part of it..not everyone upgrades every year so if someone picks up a Rv 250 or 8500 in 8 months for $99 and get great visual quality because of it...that isn't a bad thing.
We still haven't heard anything about UT 2003, Sweeny specifcally stated they hadn't even put specific code for shaders yet.
Ailuros
07-Jun-2002, 03:21
Gollum,
My comment wasn't aimed at you, but rather the other two individuals you were referring to, hence: it takes two to tango. Meaning that neither is innocent and you seemed to be taking sides or at least it looked to me that way. Plus I usually avoid the line of fire :wink:
I just skip those posts and try to search those educated ones from which I can actually learn something; in fact my only purpose for coming here.
As far as the GF2 PRO comment it was rather sarcastic. You missed in fact more ATI products in that comparison but I don't think it's of any importance, at least not to me.
Wasnt there a game, NWO or something like that, to already annouce supoprt for PS1.4.....hmm maybe I can find that link over at Rage.
Also a number of games are aleady supporting turform. Like take the screen shot of the sniper scope in RtCW as it goes from a blocky octogon to something more circular. Thats something thats hard to miss. Like it or not, Trufrom is being used and in some games it does offer a better difference.
Ailuros
07-Jun-2002, 03:32
Back on topic:
Doomtrooper,
The way I see it PS 1.4 is much closer (not due to it's number of course) in programmability to upcoming PS 2.0, thus giving developers more options (developers may correct me heh).
With the advent of dx8 hardware in NV20 NVIDIA was touting the absolute necessity of VS and PS. No games with excessive use of pixel shaders show up, just a few to be counted on one hand.
ATI manages to surpass PS upon the R200 release allowing up to 6 textures/pass and PS 1.4 was the thing to have, while NV contradicted that PS aren't even present yet in games.
(If the above wasn't originating from official PR but the fanbases of either company isn't that important to me; it definitely originates from somewhere even indirectly).
Now the song can flip to either side of each company's PR and/or marketing strategic, but in the end who cares? Most of us hardware enthusiasts will have already PS 2.0 hardware when PS will become mainstream. It might interest developers I couldn't care less since I can't use it *edit*:right now.
Chalnoth
07-Jun-2002, 03:40
Shame you fall wide of the mark so often.
Except for my statements like "nVidia has superior hardware," which is obviously an opinion (I don't believe I have to specify that it is such...it should be understood), if you're not believing the rest of what I'm saying, then you're not reading it the way I intended to write it. Of course, that doesn't absolutely mean that I'm not at fault...I'm sure I've misspoken a number of times, but you should use a little common sense and faith :P
Doomtrooper
07-Jun-2002, 03:44
http://www.ati.com/playati/gamemaker/nwo/index.html
Q: What Hardware 3D features does New World Order support?
A: Vertex and Pixel Shaders of course, TruForm on ATI hardware. Bumpmapping, environment mapping, hardware skinning, shadow buffers and all that. It is honestly hard to not support this, as it is so easy to do with the latest hardware.
Q: Can you give us some examples of how New World Order takes advantage of those features?
A: Player models can be skinned using hardware, which greatly speeds up the rendering and in turn allow us to pump out more detail. Dynamic per-pixel lighting and shadowing, especially with bumpmapping really pushes graphics to the next level.
Q: What feature of the Radeon 8500 do you like the most? And why?
A: That would be the 1.4 pixel shaders without a doubt. This is still beyond what any competitor has and really makes a difference. There is also a certain smoothness to playing on the 8500 that I like.
So Our 1st Ps 1.4 Game :)
Doomtrooper
07-Jun-2002, 03:46
Back on topic:
Doomtrooper,
The way I see it PS 1.4 is much closer (not due to it's number of course) in programmability to upcoming PS 2.0, thus giving developers more options (developers may correct me heh).
With the advent of dx8 hardware in NV20 NVIDIA was touting the absolute necessity of VS and PS. No games with excessive use of pixel shaders show up, just a few to be counted on one hand.
ATI manages to surpass PS upon the R200 release allowing up to 6 textures/pass and PS 1.4 was the thing to have, while NV contradicted that PS aren't even present yet in games.
(If the above wasn't originating from official PR but the fanbases of either company isn't that important to me; it definitely originates from somewhere even indirectly).
Now the song can flip to either side of each company's PR and/or marketing strategic, but in the end who cares? Most of us hardware enthusiasts will have already PS 2.0 hardware when PS will become mainstream. It might interest developers I couldn't care less since I can't use it *edit*:right now.
Very true yet stating big deal about PS 1.4 is confusing as part of the dx9 spec is (as i understand it) that you must support all pixel shaders from 1.0 -> 2.0 inclusive. so, in theory, anyone that wants to make a dx9 part will have to support ps1.4.
Chalnoth
07-Jun-2002, 03:47
1) You totally ignored observance of the "trend" I spoke of. (Has ATI been consistently closing the gap between it's performance and nVidia or the other way around).
Because I don't see any relevance...just because ATI is "gaining lost ground," as it were, doesn't mean they'll be ahead soon, if ever. They're still playing catch-up.
2) You are conveniently mixing Geforce 3 TI performance (shipped same time as Radeon 8500 ), with "original" GeForce3 timing (shipped 6 months earlier.)
When? Where? I'm speaking about both in separate situations. Tell me, what ATI video card was available when the GeForce3 shipped? When I say just GeForce3, that's the ATI card I'm comparing it to.
And I submit to you, that number 2 is the more relevant in this case, because it seems very likely that both R-300 and NV-30, "new cores" will be launched in "similar" time frames.
And what, pray tell, can you conclude from this? The fact that ATI launched both the original Radeon core and the Radeon 8500 core later means that they have absolutely no excuse in being beaten by the GeForce2 GTS and GeForce3 Ti 500, respectively, at launch. ATI had more time to get the cores up to performance, and the architectures were released later, so logic dictates that if ATI was nearly as good as nVidia at engineering, their products should be unequivocally superior.
This is NOT a case where nVidia will launch the NV30 first, followed by R-300 6 months later. If anything, it will be closer to the other way around.
Well, it does appear like it's probably going to come to that, but I doubt it's going to be anywhere near a 6-month lag...more likely a 2-month lag, or something in that range.
And, by the same analogy I gave before, nVidia will have absolutely no excuse if their core is not unequivocally superior to ATI's, given the later launch date and smaller die process.
Please don't try to play referee, you posted your opinions on this forum just like me, your opinion is not the same as mine..so disagreements happen..
Don't want the job of a referee no thanks, as you might have noticed I have also disagreed with Chalnoth though, so its not as if I had a problem with you specifically, far from it, I just argue with what I personally don't agree to, just like you. Unlike you or Chalnoth though, I tend to be a bit less vendor specific in my statements, I can actually try too hard sometimes, to the extent of arguing against my own opinion, hehe. I won't claim I am truly neutral or unbiased though, that's kinda impossible IMHO. Personally, at the moment I still have a slight (very slight) preference for Nvidia products (the product, not the company), but I've grown to apreciate the R8500 a lot the past 6 months. I still have a romantic urge for a new PVR product too and am very much looking forward to this fall... ;)
As for the drivers please don't try to tell me as a former Geforce 3 owner that went through growing pains with that card there was no driver related game or graphic issues..or Nv_disp.dll errors that have made headlines since WinXP's release..thx.
Where did I even mention drivers except for this weird "fairness" point you brought up, that's got little to do with me "telling you" anything? Even so, does Nvidia having some issues with their drivers too, make ATi's often much more serious troubles of the past any less significant? Nvidia's drivers are not perfect, but up until the last few months usually much less troublesome than ATi's, there's not much evidence to contradict this now is there, or are you one of those supporting a kind of conspiracy theory amongst all hardware reviewers to diss the Radeons at release by making up problems? The detonators almost always worked well with both mainstream and more "niche" games (which older radeon drivers often used to have problems/glitches with, just refer to the reviews at simHQ and there are many more) and most high-end CGI application's OGL works without a hitch (while the radeon I once had to use at office used to be laggy, buggy and kinda unstable). The situation has changed however and continues to do so, I will say it again, Radeon's drivers obviously are very good by now, but they weren't always and please don't try arguing around this as it has been proven fact again and again in the *past* - we live in the here and now though so this point is moot as the issues on both sides are fairly minor now.
I personally have never (until this week that is, just had a problem installing a new card's drivers, over on 3dgpu board, but that looks more like a WinXP problem) had significant problems with nvidia's drivers since the detonator/TNT timeframe, *but* I stopped installing all those beta detonators a year ago, as the few extra FPS are usually not worth the trouble IMHO. The days of huge performance gains with small beta leaks are long gone and I don't care about 200 points better 3DMark scores either. In games the only problems I remember could usually be solved by activating fog table emulation or a patch to the game itself (not a driver issue), newer drivers were rarely neccessary and if so already available. I've read about some Nv_disp.dll errors, so it must be an issue, but I never encountered it and I've had like 7 different Nvidia cards with drivers going back to the time before they were even called detonators...
Would it help you feel better if I mentioned some other issues Nvidia cards have had, like the GeForce incompatibilities with the AGP of older VIA based motherboards, power consumption problems, heat of the GF256, bad quality RamDacs and 2D output from some manufacturers, lack of overscan mode for TV-Out, I could go on for a while?! Now if those don't make the Radeon look better I don't know what will... ;)
Doomtrooper
07-Jun-2002, 03:57
I was referring to..
I want good cards, solid drivers (and I want real good OGL drivers for my 3D CGI Programs which ATi simply hasn't delivered in the past) and whoever gives me that will get my bucks. Why should I be interested in how long a driver development team has had time to adapt their drivers to a new hardware?
Like I said, the Geforce 3 drivers on debut were far from perfect..so comparing apples to apples here..not a Ti500 which Chalnoth was comparing the Radeon 8500 too, a better comparison would be Geforce 3 and Radeon 8500..not the TI series..as one company has a year advantage on driver fixes. Or even a Geforce 4 as it was not exactly smooth either...new products bring new problems.
Chalnoth
07-Jun-2002, 03:59
Like I said, the Geforce 3 drivers on debut were far from perfect..so comparing apples to apples here..not a Ti500 which Chalnoth was comparing the Radeon 8500 too, a better comparison would be Geforce 3 and Radeon 8500..not the TI series..as one company has a year advantage on driver fixes.
The main question I'd like to ask here is, which company fixed their drivers more quickly? I do know that simHQ did an article in March, roughly six months after the release of the 8500, that exposed some pretty severe driver problems. Anybody know of any GeForce3 review in the August timeframe that showed bad driver problems?
As far as the GF2 PRO comment it was rather sarcastic. You missed in fact more ATI products in that comparison but I don't think it's of any importance, at least not to me.
Yeah I got that, hence my joke about the too many refreshes, although I actually feel that nvidia has indeed been refreshing far too much, heh.
I didn't mention any of the MX, AIW, LE or MAXX products, have I missed any major product launches by ATI (Radeon7500 maybe but I see that as a kind of MX product)? I wanted to stick with the companies main "product cycles" and architectures for the comparison, only in NVidia's case just posting a new architecture would make that list rather short! ;)
Joe DeFuria
07-Jun-2002, 04:07
The main question I'd like to ask here is, which company fixed their drivers more quickly?
I would say that overall, they have both been improved at a similar rate. Radeon 8500's drivers have improved "staedily" in quality and performance since its release.
GeForce3 drivers progressed differently. Performance hardly increased at all until 6+ months after release with the Detonator 4s.
And both cards have gone through the odd quirks and "use this driver set for this game", "this driver set has this issue with this game" type of thing.
Doomtrooper
07-Jun-2002, 04:08
I refuse to get into a posting match about driver problems dude, one click through Nvnews forums brings up all kinds of issues..does Nvidia have as many issues with games..no since developers use Nvidia cards 70% of the time.
Example of a complete farce:
http://www.gta3forums.com/ib/ikonboard.cgi?s=3cfdd6643a6bffff;act=ST;f=43;t=245 78
Subj: RE: Talonsoft Technical Support
Date: 05/06/2002 14:10:05 GMT Standard Time
From: ssharpe@Talonsoft.com
To: Jut1233456@aol.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)
To be honest, in a strict hardware and driver comparison only, the lowest end GeForce card can run rings around almost any Radeon card. As far as assumptions go, you can assume whatever you want. As far as the truth goes, I'm just passing along information that I got in a .pdf format document because they were so secretive in the production that they wouldn't let us know anything else about it. To be honest, in a strict hardware and driver comparison, the lowest end GeForce card can run rings around almost any Radeon card. Now, to answer your questions:
1. To run the game at an acceptable level, I'd say a desktop computer that meets the recommended requirements, with a video card that has a faster processor than most Radeons (i.e. GeForce 2, which now costs about fifty bucks and will last a couple of years)
2. To receive email notifications on new game information or possible patches or updates, you can go to our website and register here: http://www.take2games.com/register because Technical Support cannot supply information of a patch until an official release has/has not been made.
Stacey Sharpe
Level Two Technician
410-933-9191
ssharpe@take2baltimore.com
Take2 Baltimore
Hmmm..now that is FUNNY..a Geforce 1 beating a 8500...
Now ATI..
TOPIC -Reaction to inherited driver errors?
Jeff Royle
ATI Guru
This question refers to a partial role of the Developer Relations team actually. As I'm part of this group I have a certain knowledge of how we handle many of these cases.
There are a high number of games that were developed on non-ATI boards which means any driver bugs they have may be worked around in code. If the game is not tested on ATI boards before release and these bugs found, the game goes gold and ships that way. When the bug is eventually found and determined to be a game bug, we contact the developers of the game and let them know. We can then request a patch if they are willing and even offer advice on how to fix it. ATI will not knowingly break a driver to make a game work.
In rare cases, developers will not create a patch and then we can only take note of the title and try to remember the bug for future reference. The state of the development community seems to be shifting for the better these days and many bugs are hammered out well in advance of shipping, some later on. We do our best to get all titles tested and bugs found.
The biggest problem we encounter is that end users don't always realize it's not a driver issue that causes the problems. When the game is written as above, on different graphics hardware and bugs are just accepted and worked around in code then it's hard for us to say "But the problem is in the game" because end users see it works for other people on different graphics hardware. ATI already has a bad rap for drivers and yet we won't intentionally leave a bug in a driver. Competitors occasionally will leave a known bug in the driver maybe because they are afraid of what everyone will think when they actually fix it.
Recently I've seen a trend where developers let us know of bugs in the competitor drivers which acts as a heads up for us. Then when other developers come across a problem we can offer the advice that it may not be a bug on our side.
This has gotten too long winded and poorly worded I'm sure so that's it for now.
Jeff
Note for the GTA email was referring to poor performance on a 8500, and ALL cards are having issues with this game.
Chalnoth
07-Jun-2002, 04:18
Fairly interesting quote there, but entirely to be expected. The only thing I didn't really like was that he said, "and yet we won't intentionally leave a bug in a driver." Of course ATI doesn't. That doesn't mean they don't exist.
Regardless, it will be very interesting just how things pan out for this next generation. The playing field is much more even in so many more ways than what we've seen in the past.
Oh, and one last thing. Don't forget that nVidia got its 'good driver' reputation back around the time of the TNT2, when many game designers were still developing for 3dfx, who was notorious for bad drivers among developers (They had to do a ton of workarounds...). There's no reason that ATI can't get a 'good driver' reputation now.
Joe DeFuria
07-Jun-2002, 04:39
Fairly interesting quote there, but entirely to be expected. The only thing I didn't really like was that he said, "and yet we won't intentionally leave a bug in a driver." Of course ATI doesn't.
The point (that ATI was implying) was that nVidia CAN intentionally leave bugs in the driver. But they don't get perceived as "bugs", because the code "works" on their hardware. This is typically the result of "bad" code that SHOULD break when run on good drivers, but it doesn't. (Because the hardware / drivers are "forgiving.")
Now, if nvidia ever FIXES such a bug when discovered, it could cause any game code that relies on this lax behavior to break. Thus, it doesn't get fixed. Meanwhile, if some competitor's card handles the code "properly", it will break. The competitor is left with a choice: try and get the game developer to fix and patch their code, or "break" their driver so that it mimics the behavior of the competitor's product, even if that's wrong.
The latter option only further promotes sloppy coding, and bloated drivers.
Note that I'm NOT blaming nvidia for some sinister plot or anything. The situation is merely the inevitable consequence of developers basically using a single development platform in recent history.
Now that ATI is gaining major acceptance with developers, we should start to see things even out a bit.
It's no "coincidence" that nVidia's drivers started "improving" with the TNT series. That was when the developer platform began its shift to nvidia products, because the nvidia hardware from that point on was seen as the most "advanced".
Doomtrooper
07-Jun-2002, 04:46
The situation is merely the inevitable consequence of developers basically using a single development platform in recent history.
Can anyone say GTA !! That is why I posted both those quotes even though Jeff Royle was replying to 'The Plan' of Carmack and driver issues.
It's obvious what the tech was told to say as they are trained on what to say (my wife works for DELL and I hear it all day).
Edit:
It also shows what platform this game was designed on and the developer is now a partner in selling Nvidia based cards :lol:
LittlePenny
07-Jun-2002, 05:02
This thread reminds me of the song "Anything you can do, I can do better"
Chalnoth
07-Jun-2002, 06:47
The point (that ATI was implying) was that nVidia CAN intentionally leave bugs in the driver. But they don't get perceived as "bugs", because the code "works" on their hardware. This is typically the result of "bad" code that SHOULD break when run on good drivers, but it doesn't. (Because the hardware / drivers are "forgiving.")
The problem here is that we can't see this unless we are developers of said games. You can speculate all you want, but you won't know the truth unless you have access to the source and/or the drivers' code.
Now, if nvidia ever FIXES such a bug when discovered, it could cause any game code that relies on this lax behavior to break. Thus, it doesn't get fixed. Meanwhile, if some competitor's card handles the code "properly", it will break. The competitor is left with a choice: try and get the game developer to fix and patch their code, or "break" their driver so that it mimics the behavior of the competitor's product, even if that's wrong.
Yes, that's entirely true. The only question is, how often are such bugs discovered, and how often are they fixed? And, at no time should the enabling of such things as anisotropic filtering or FSAA affect game-side bugs. As a quick example, some of the bugs that were reported on the Radeon 8500 in that March article at simHQ that I keep referring to were related to enabling FSAA.
Of course, the best piece of evidence I have is JC going on record stating that he hasn't seen a driver bug in nVidia's drivers in a very long time. Obviously, you have to take into account that JC develops exclusively in OpenGL, so this tells you nothing about nVidia's Direct3D drivers.
Sharkfood
07-Jun-2002, 06:58
The fact that ATI launched both the original Radeon core and the Radeon 8500 core later means that they have absolutely no excuse in being beaten by the GeForce2 GTS and GeForce3 Ti 500, respectively, at launch.
The Radeon 8500 core *was* superior at product launch.. you seem to be confusing core technology with driver technology.
It's like comparing Game A w/ 5 patches to Game B just released. In the software realm, the largest portion of QA occurs "in the field," so to speak. Drivers are the main hindering point for any *new* hardware as the real lionshare of QA occurs by the end consumer. Not a good trend, but one that this 6-month product cycle insists upon.
All truth be known, the 10.80 drivers at GF3 launch sucked about as hard as the CD drivers that shipped with the 8500 (7189 or so for 9x/me). I was one of those people that ran out to buy a shiny new GF3 only to discover the performance was lesser than a GF Ultra/Pro in most everything tried and anisotropy didnt work for crap on half the titles. At least at the launch point of the 8500, these cards performed better than their replacement lines of sister products (i.e. Radeon 64DDR's) in every case given.
Chalnoth
07-Jun-2002, 07:09
The Radeon 8500 core *was* superior at product launch.. you seem to be confusing core technology with driver technology.
I'm not entirely certain where you're getting this...and I really believe you're remembering wrong. Got any good benchmarks from that time?
All truth be known, the 10.80 drivers at GF3 launch sucked about as hard as the CD drivers that shipped with the 8500 (7189 or so for 9x/me). I was one of those people that ran out to buy a shiny new GF3 only to discover the performance was lesser than a GF Ultra/Pro in most everything tried and anisotropy didnt work for crap on half the titles. At least at the launch point of the 8500, these cards performed better than their replacement lines of sister products (i.e. Radeon 64DDR's) in every case given.
The main question I have here is, how long did it take for the GF3 to display nearly no issues? If I remember correctly, most of the forum posts disappeared roughly 1-2 months after the release of the GeForce3 (In fact, most of the problems were gone before most people could actually get the card, if I remember correctly...).
As for its performance at launch, don't forget that the GeForce3 had lower clock speeds than the GeForce2 Ultra. The Radeon 8500 had significantly higher clockspeeds than the Radeons it replaced.
Got any good benchmarks from that time?
Again - core was superior, not drivers.
But could we just skip this already numerous times covered topic named "how these cards performed half a year ago"? One could easily do a search in this forum or in the net, if there's need for such info.
Is this too much to ask ? 8)
The Radeon 8500 core *was* superior at product launch.. you seem to be confusing core technology with driver technology.
I'm not entirely certain where you're getting this...and I really believe you're remembering wrong. Got any good benchmarks from that time?
Chalnoth, core being technically superior doesn't mean it would be the fastest. you just can't compare tech only in light of benches.
Even my Matrox G400 16MB SH was able to get over 400 fps.
you ask, in what software? my answer: at winamp plugin Geiss with a resolution of 320x200x16bpp.
so being the fastest, doesn't mean being most advandced and vice versa. you just can't compare everything with those damn fps numbers.
technically Radeon 8500 is still ahead GF4Ti series.
Chalnoth
07-Jun-2002, 07:31
technically Radeon 8500 is still ahead GF4Ti series.
Not in every way, and less so in real-world situations.
Let's break it down:
1. Anisotropic filtering. The GeForce3/4's implementation is clearly more complete, supporting all angles of surface as well as trilinear filtering.
2. FSAA. The GF3/4's FSAA far exceeds the performance of the Radeon 8500's, due to the use of a superior method. (Update: Yes, the 8500's FSAA does look better in certain limited situations, particularly when alpha tests are used, but those situations are rapidly decreasing, as games are starting to use alpha blends instead. I do know that Morrowind uses them, and alpha blends are very apparent in the UT2k3 shots we've been seeing).
3. Pixel shaders. Here's the heart of it, isn't it? But, the fact is, it is shaping out that future games are going to use identical pixel shader effects whether you use a Radeon 8500 or Geforce 3/4 product. Apparently, even DOOM3 level designers aren't using the greater precision of the overbright lights available in the 8500's pixel shaders. The result is that PS1.4 should be giving the Radeon 8500 a performance advantage, only. The problem is that the GeForce 4, if not the GF3 Ti 500, still managed to outperform the Radeon 8500 in most heavy PS situations. The 8500 doing one pass to the GF3/4's two to three passes at similar or lower performance really doesn't impress me.
4. Truform. If you really like technological arguments, then Truform isn't really any more advanced than the RT-patches available in the GeForce3/4. The only thing that the GF3/4 are missing is the control point generating hardware (The 8500 generates control points from normals, and then uses the same bezier patches that you would use on a GeForce3/4 for interpolation). I've also argued that I actually prefer RT-patches, as they are far more flexible. Obviously RT-patches simply cannot be implemented into existing games, and backwards-compatibility isn't trivial to implement with them, but they are a significant step forward in implementing very high-poly scenes (largely since once the minimum hardware is assumed to have them, geometry LOD becomes absolutely trivial).
OpenGL guy
07-Jun-2002, 07:44
The problem here is that we can't see this unless we are developers of said games. You can speculate all you want, but you won't know the truth unless you have access to the source and/or the drivers' code.
There used to be numerous examples of games there were written with the Voodoo boards in mind. Then they would break if you happened to do something as evil as reorder your texture formats or even add a NEW format (like DXT1). These required driver hacks to work around in order for end-users to have a good experience. These are just two examples, but there are plenty more... D3D games seem to have more bad behavior like this than OpenGL games... of course, there are many more D3D games around.
Yes, that's entirely true. The only question is, how often are such bugs discovered, and how often are they fixed? And, at no time should the enabling of such things as anisotropic filtering or FSAA affect game-side bugs. As a quick example, some of the bugs that were reported on the Radeon 8500 in that March article at simHQ that I keep referring to were related to enabling FSAA.
You think forcing on AA when an application is not aware if it is a piece of cake? Why do you think nvidia disables AA so much depending on application behavior? Why do you think nvidia's first attempts at forcing on AA with supersampling went so poorly? Applications do funky things... developers get these weird ideas in their heads that make life for driver developers tough. Best we can do is take care of the problem on a case-by-case basis unless they fall into a general theme.
Now, you may say that the application can do whatever they want as long as they follow the rules of the API. Well, that's true, but if you want things to work well, then it helps to put some effort into optimizing your code so that you don't do silly things.
Let me give you my all time pet peeve: Unreal. Here's a game that has a depth complexity of 1 for nearly everything except alpha blended polygons (like the HUD). Also, the application is completely multitexture unaware. So what do we get? A useless Z buffer (because of software occlusion detection) and a lot of wasted bandwidth because of the multipass rendering. The OpenGL driver for the game draws a scene like this: Draw this triangle fan (like a rectangular part of a wall) with a lightmap, now draw same fan with the base texture, now draw same fan with gloss map (or whatever it was). Now, let's draw another triangle fan with a lightmap, followed by same fan with base texture and finally same fan with gloss map. See a problem here? If the base textures are the same (and they often were in Unreal), then you've changed state much more than you was necessary. Also, by drawing everything as individual fans, you aren't getting good batching.
Now, don't think I am picking on Tim Sweeney's engine, I am not. It was a good engine for software rasterizing and looked quite good at the time. It's just has a poor design for hardware accelleration.
Damn, I ranted much more than I wanted to...
Sharkfood
07-Jun-2002, 07:45
I'm not entirely certain where you're getting this...and I really believe you're remembering wrong. Got any good benchmarks from that time?
It's quite simple, really. The same core purchased end of summer last year can currently best the GF3 in several benchmarks, offers TruForm, PS1.4 and higher fillrate. I don't recall any ATI guys making a midnight run and secretely changing the hardware on any of my cards.
The main question I have here is, how long did it take for the GF3 to display nearly no issues? If I remember correctly, most of the forum posts disappeared roughly 1-2 months after the release of the GeForce3 (In fact, most of the problems were gone before most people could actually get the card, if I remember correctly...).
It actually took a lot longer than that. It wasnt until the 12.90 level that Ultra-like performance could be achieved by the GF3. Just a quick perusal of file dates within the drivers puts nvdisp at 2/27/01 for the 10.80s and 6/7/01 for the 12.90s. And this was just the "equal" level. The core really didnt even begin to get exploited until about the 22.40/22.80 level a few months past that as well.
I'd also point out that anisotropy STILL hasnt been delivered on the GF3, with the exception of OpenGL. It's still unsupported/undelivered to this day in both the GF3 and GF4, so for a "featureset" of the card, there simply is no such feature as it hasnt been delivered by NVIDIA... and no, it doesnt work properly with 'tweakers' and this can be clearly shown for the past several driver revisions. This wont stop websites from benchmarking this though.
"Nearly no issues" is subjective. I'd argue 20 fps in Diablo2 versus over double on a V5 or 8500 or other case examples might have higher applicability to Quake3 or 3dMark2001 benchmarks. Everyone will have their own opinion as to where the "nearly no issues" mark truly is. IMO, it's still not there and NVIDIA has both hardware and driver improvements that still need to be implemented to round off their products.
Cheers,
-Shark
Chalnoth
07-Jun-2002, 07:56
There used to be numerous examples of games there were written with the Voodoo boards in mind.
From what I've heard of Voodoo driver quality (I believe most of it has actually been from Sweeney), I believe that wholeheartedly. But do you know of many workarounds on the developer-side from nVidia's drivers?
You think forcing on AA when an application is not aware if it is a piece of cake? Why do you think nvidia disables AA so much depending on application behavior?
When does nVidia disable AA? I haven't noticed it...though my game library isn't overly-large.
Regardless, I didn't say it was easy. I just said that there's no excuse for it not working entirely correctly.
Let me give you my all time pet peeve: Unreal.
Hehe, I love Unreal :) Probably for the same reasons....it's got tons of problems with hardware rendering....and yeah, I've been following it for a long time, and I did know that most of the problems revolved around the engine being designed with software rendering in mind (something that it did far better than anything else I've seen...though by the time Unreal was released, everybody else was going hardware...). Very interesting about exactly how it renders, though...does make sense that that would kill performance in many situations.
Chalnoth
07-Jun-2002, 08:04
It's quite simple, really. The same core purchased end of summer last year can currently best the GF3 in several benchmarks, offers TruForm, PS1.4 and higher fillrate. I don't recall any ATI guys making a midnight run and secretely changing the hardware on any of my cards.
Only the 8500 still manages to trade many benchmarks with the original GeForce3. Truform I don't want. PS1.4 only has the potential to increase performance, but it doesn't appear to be working for ATI in that regard. The higher fillrate isn't an additional plus (that's wrapped up in performance).
It actually took a lot longer than that. It wasnt until the 12.90 level that Ultra-like performance could be achieved by the GF3. Just a quick perusal of file dates within the drivers puts nvdisp at 2/27/01 for the 10.80s and 6/7/01 for the 12.90s. And this was just the "equal" level. The core really didnt even begin to get exploited until about the 22.40/22.80 level a few months past that as well.
But what about stability? That's the heart of the issue here. The performance of the GeForce3 was still good, and it offered significantly better 3D image quality than the GeForce2 Ultra.
I'd also point out that anisotropy STILL hasnt been delivered on the GF3, with the exception of OpenGL.
Of course it's "been delivered." The performance isn't as high as it could be, or will be, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't take it over ATI's aniso any day.
"Nearly no issues" is subjective. I'd argue 20 fps in Diablo2 versus over double on a V5 or 8500 or other case examples might have higher applicability to Quake3 or 3dMark2001 benchmarks.
Never benchmarked Diablo II, but I do know that my GF4 Ti 4200 has virtually no slowdowns...I've actually been playing the game a fair amount online recently, too. My old GeForce DDR only had slowdowns in very busy situations online. Besides, I really don't have any problems with poor Direct3D performance in a game like Diablo II that isn't truly 3D. It's when a game that actually runs true 3D has poor performance that I'm bothered.
Sharkfood
07-Jun-2002, 08:45
But what about stability? That's the heart of the issue here.
So suddenly your definition of "superior core" means the heart of the issue is stability? In that case, 3dfx had the highest superior cores ever made? :)
Of course it's "been delivered." The performance isn't as high as it could be, or will be, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't take it over ATI's aniso any day.
You need to re-read what I posted very carefully. No, anisotropic filtering has not been delivered for Direct3D. Not now, not in the past.. not ever. It's only recently found it's way into the OpenGL display settings, but Direct3D is still undelivered and unsupported.
Many NVIDIA fans have "theorized" this is due to some assanine "WHQL" issue, but this is the default fallback arguement these people use to try and create escapes for their favorite IHV. In the past 3dfx has disqualified previous AA settings myths for WHQL and now ATI does the same with their WHQL cert drivers with anisotropic filtering adjustments right in the WHQL drivers.
In all reality, it's "not done" yet or in other unsupportable limbo. It only takes someone to actually look at their cards to see this... but since it's "unsupported", we're totally at the whim of leaked information, rumors and hints to even assure if the imbedded/unsupported "hack" for now is even being implemented correctly (i.e. NvMax and Rivatuner).
Even if comprehensive testing is performed, it's readily apparent these "hidden/unsupported" registry entries arent functioning properly in Direct3D. Using either tool and verifying the registry settings *they think* are correct for this rumored/unsupported functionality, you see a small benchmark change, but NO change in visual quality. Is this a supported function in your book?
http://shark_food.tripod.com/nfs/nfs.html
The control- Quake3 works as delivered, albeit very subtle difference between 4x and 8x. The truth being- 8x setting works as delivered and can measure a visual and performance change to verify said functionality works. We have never had either/or/both with Direct3D to date.
Again, since we are at the whim of Tweak designers to testify what settings do what, it's anyone's guess what proper function is supposed to be, if there is a registry key change or other special settings that are mutually exlcusive for 8x, or whatever the situation may be. This can *hardly* be miscontrued with "delivered" anisotropic filtering in Direct3D.
Cheers,
-Shark
BoardBonobo
07-Jun-2002, 09:04
[quote]
1) Although ATI's FSAA is not the fastest, it delivers better IQ
2) The Geforce 3 Ti 500 was faster than a 8500 on its debut BECAUSE all Nvidia did was raise the clock speed, shrink the die..did not add any new features at ALL besides a new name and enjoyed USING the same drivers they had been working on for a entire year on the Geforce 3 :roll: ..Then 4 months later releases another chip call the Geforce 4...I wonder how Ti 500 owners felt :lol:
3) The Geforce 3 can't do truform at ALL ??
4)The Geforce 3 and 4 can't do multiple Pixel shader effects due to lack of support of PS 1.4.
5)The Radeon 8500 has a SUPERIOR anisotropic filtering...since you base everthing off speed alone then ATI's implementation is better.
6)Geforce 3 and 4 still can't properly uses texture compression ??
Those are all good points but :)
1. In what way is the FSAA IQ better on the Radeon. Any high level of FSAA slows the Radeon down too far to make it any use.
2. That's totally undeniable :D The GF3 and on to GF4 was just a big marketing coup for nVidia. Lot's of cash for that R&D budget.
3. TRUFORM is a feature that isn't required on a card that can push enough polygons to produce a to produce smooth models anyway. And in any scenario that requires real time generation of (here I'll use JC's example) shadows it is totally useless, the stencil buffer can't be truformed and recalculation would wipe out performance. It could also be the reason the R200 is slower than it shoud be. Scanning each vertex in order to tesselate it could be the reason the R200 stalls, that little problem that JC pointed out. So maybe n-patches isn't such a hot feature after all. And may have even been the feature that crippled the R200.
4. That's never going to be a problem. PS 1.4 will only ever be used in some nice demos by ATI (and mighty tasty they are too!) :roll: . DX9 and PS2.0 will completely swamp it. I didn't really see the point in ATI investing the time in that at all.
5. As the index of this site shows, nVidia may finally be getting their thumb out of their ***es and concentrating on Aniso quality for the latest driver release. Hi res. game play with good Aniso and 4x FSAA that'll be fun (Dungeon Siege can only get better).
6. The texture compression bug seems to be either fixed or mightly improved in the latest driver releases. And who's got time to stand around admiring the sky in QIII. Sure way to get your ass fragged!!
7. I'm heading for a total flambé with this post but it's all fun and games :D
And I've got a copy of Dungeon Siege now if you want some more benchmarks...
SurfMonkey
Dave Baumann
07-Jun-2002, 09:17
A couple of points here:
Scanning each vertex in order to tesselate it could be the reason the R200 stalls, that little problem that JC pointed out. So maybe n-patches isn't such a hot feature after all. And may have even been the feature that crippled the R200.
The tessellation unit is something that sits before the vertex shader – if N-Patches aren’t used then it won’t even be called for; i.e. it won’t ‘scan the vertex’
4. That's never going to be a problem. PS 1.4 will only ever be used in some nice demos by ATI (and mighty tasty they are too!) . DX9 and PS2.0 will completely swamp it. I didn't really see the point in ATI investing the time in that at all.
ATi developer support have been investing in it – they even went to the trouble of adding PS1.4 into the Lithtech engine themselves, so they said at last years ECTS. There was lots of talk of NOLF2 so its going to be interesting to see if that uses it. There have been a couple of other developer who have talked about using it as well.
5. As the index of this site shows, nVidia may finally be getting their thumb out of their ***es and concentrating on Aniso quality for the latest driver release. Hi res. game play with good Aniso and 4x FSAA that'll be fun (Dungeon Siege can only get better).
I’m sure the performance will go up but I don’t think its going to fundamental change how they are doing it so they are operating within certain confines; I don’t think its going to end up at 8500 speed doing it.
Sharkfood
07-Jun-2002, 09:27
1. In what way is the FSAA IQ better on the Radeon. Any high level of FSAA slows the Radeon down too far to make it any use.
Same with the GF3 and GF4. As neither card has "FSAA" but instead "HRAA", you are technically specifying modifications to IQ that the GF3/4 isn't performing (namely texture antialiasing) so FSAA on the 8500 and HRAA on the GF3/4 are two opposing features that cannot be directly compared.
NVIDIA did the right thing though. They have carefully labeled their IQ enhancement technologies away from the standard naming conventions of previous knowledge. Coining "HRAA" or "Accuview" rather than "Full-Scene Antialiasing"- I'd say ATI needs to do the same with their anisotropic filtering-feature.. like "SharpIQ" or something since it does more (and less) than simply adding additional texture samples/filtering (different method, LOD shift, etc.etc.).
In essence, I could make a videocard today that had about the power of a GeForce2, put a checkbox in the display properties labeled "FSAA" and all it did was perform a 2x2 box/post filter and did so with no performance hit. All the Anands and Tom's of the world would publish their fancy AA performance graphs and all things would be equal, right? :)
It's only going to get worse as more and more different/innovative methods to improve IQ are devised in consumer 3D hardware. If it means an end to Toms/Anand fancy graphs throwing totally incomparable IQ as if "equivalent", I'm all for it. :)
Chalnoth
07-Jun-2002, 11:22
Even if comprehensive testing is performed, it's readily apparent these "hidden/unsupported" registry entries arent functioning properly in Direct3D. Using either tool and verifying the registry settings *they think* are correct for this rumored/unsupported functionality, you see a small benchmark change, but NO change in visual quality. Is this a supported function in your book?
http://shark_food.tripod.com/nfs/nfs.html
Yes, it is true that there is no official driver-level forcing of aniso, but you can enable aniso through some games (Not many have the option, unfortunately...but at least most games today have an option for trilinear...many games don't even have that...). Additionally, the aniso *is* there and *is* working through the reg hacks (I actually use NVmax...though probably not for too much longer...). And, unlike the site claims, there is indeed a difference between 4x and 8x in those screenshots. I didn't even have to look that hard...one swap between the images in different windows made it obvious. Still, the difference will certainly not be seen in all situations. Remember that the max degree of aniso is only applied in situations where it is needed, and not all scenes need the higher degrees of aniso (which is why nVidia's 8-degree is frequently compared to ATI's 16-degree...there simply aren't many surfaces that need 16-degree aniso).
Sharkfood
07-Jun-2002, 11:48
...). And, unlike the site claims, there is indeed a difference between 4x and 8x in those screenshots.
Would you mind pointing out *where*?
The Quake3 shots were offerred as a control- which means those do indeed show a visual difference. I am unable to see *any* difference whatsoever between Morrowind and NFS at 4x->8x... nor anything else in Direct3D for that matter.
In morrorwind shots there is a difference between no-af and 8x-af shots. The first small "concavity" seems a little bit clearer ...
Crusher
07-Jun-2002, 12:10
You know, the talk about texture compression on the GeForce being "broken" seems grossly exaggerated to me. I've been using a GeForce 2 GTS 32MB card for two years now, and while I'll be the first to admit that the sky in Quake 3 has always, and probably will always, look like utter crap with texture compression turned on, I've seen screenshots posted in other threads here that are just horrible. Looking at these screenshots, even I would be turned off from an NVIDIA product, if in fact that is what the game actually looked like.
The truth is, as bad as the sky looks in Quake 3 with texture compression enabled, at no time is it even close to the level of degredation shown in these dubious screenshots. Even when I've tried to make the game look butt-ass ugly (320x200x16, 16 bit textures, TC enabled, etc.), I can't even come close to the gut-wrenching sights depicted by the screenshots I've seen here. And there is another side to the issue as well... these screenshots are used to try and show how much better other manufacturer's products are compared to NVIDIA's when it comes to texture compression. However, the screenshots from the competing products doesn't look any better than the typical scene I'm used to seeing on my card. In all your arguing about which is better, you forgot the simple fact that the sky in Quake 3 with texture compression enabled looks like shit no matter what. Quake 3 is an old game, and while I have nothing but respect for John Carmack, it seems you all have forgotten the possibility that the type of texture compression used in Quake 3 is old, ugly, and meant strictly to improve performance. It was never meant to look good.
In contrast, I urge you to look at a little game that I rarely hear anyone on these message boards mention--EverQuest. I assume that the main reason this game isn't discussed is that it is old, and the code is so hidden that you can't tell what it's doing. I'm not going to stand here and say that it's a graphical wonder either, it's certainly not. It does, however, allow you the option of using texture compression. It doesn't say what type of compression it's using, and perhaps one of you can figure that out, but I will say that on my GeForce card, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference visually speaking, between having the texture compression enabled or disabled. When running in 32 bit color, the sky is seamless and without banding. The latest expansion includes high resolution textures for the older areas of the game as well, and those all look pretty damn good, even with texture compression.
Which brings me to another concern I have...
I have never programmed with OpenGL, and I'm not familiar with which extensions are a part of the API, and which are added to it by the different manufacturers and require hardware-specific function calls. I have worked some with Direct3D, however, and from what I've seen most, if not all of it, is completely abstracted from the hardware manufacturer. You call DrawPrimitive() and it draws a primitive, and it's up to the hardware driver to implement it correctly. I find it a little hard to believe that a software programmer using D3D can implement something that works properly on an NVIDIA card, but doesn't work as well on an ATI card, and it was being caused by their code. I would go so far as to wonder how it would even be possible to tailor to one type of card in Direct3D. Even if it were possible, how likely would it be to occur? Imagine the lengths someone would have to go to to pick and choose so many specific routines to make one card perform considerably well compared to another.
I think a more likely scenario is exactly the opposite. That is when an average developer creates a game using only the most abstract, basic code possible, fully utilizing what Direct3D provides them. I could very easily see how this type of situation would show a drastic difference in perofrmance and visual quality between two different video cards, due to their different (possibly bugged) implementations of these functions. In fact, I wonder if the only reason we don't see this kind of difference in all video games, is because the more capable/talented developers take the time to alter their code to work around the problems existing in the generic implementations, implementing certain functions differently for different hardware in order to and balance out the performance disparities.
Sharkfood
07-Jun-2002, 12:21
SvP-
there is a difference between no-af and 8x-af shots. The first small "concavity" seems a little bit clearer ...
The post read as:
there is indeed a difference between 4x and 8x in those screenshots. I didn't even have to look that hard...one swap between the images in different windows made it obvious.
I am hard pressed to find *any* difference between 4x and 8x in the NFS or Morrowind shots whatsoever... nonetheless "obvious" ones. Would you disagree?
Crusher-
In contrast, I urge you to look at a little game that I rarely hear anyone on these message boards mention--EverQuest. I assume that the main reason this game isn't discussed is that it is old, and the code is so hidden that you can't tell what it's doing.
Oh my GOD! Don't even get me started on Everquest. NVIDIA cards have always had an absolutely horrible time with the texturing in EQ. Where were you a year ago when I was posting V5, ATI and GF3 shots of EQ??? It's true some of these issues have been fixed in Luclin as the newer higher detail textures have been "nerfed" to disallow the compression problems, but prior to the high-detail Luclin textures of recent, it was absolutely GHASTLY to play this game on my GF3.
The borders near texture boundries were blocky, 2x2 and 4x4 pixel squares that caused them to line up incorrectly. The "blotches" of brown to white never lined up correctly in Everfrost or similar zones and it was a god aweful mess. Not to mention the "black pixelated" polar bear skins from disgusting errors in the TC.
EQ was the "poster child" for what is wrong with NV+TC for the longest time. It's just a good thing they completely revamped ALL the textures with Luclin, and did so in such a way to address faultering points in NV texture compression... as the textures before hand were near flawless on every card EXCEPT the GTS/GF3.
Cheers,
-Shark
Would you disagree?
No, because there is no difference between 4x and 8x shots. And if there is, the dust on my screen has greater impact on difference between 2 shots :D
I misinterpreted your last statement and thought you were talking about "af in Direct3D in general", but you were talkkig about "4x af -> 8x af in Direct3D in general". :oops:
Sharkfood
07-Jun-2002, 12:46
No, I'm talking about having working, supported anisotropic filtering in Direct3D.
Not some registry "hack" with "unsupported, undefined behavior" much like I've had for the past year with the GF3 and now the GF4. There have been very similar issues with the "hacked, unsupported, undefined behavior" registry tweaks with anisotropic filtering in Direct3D and will likely continue to be until the feature is ready... surely it is not at current.
THAT was the point- it's not ready for primetime and never has been. You can poke registry values, download tweakers/hack toys, and run benchmarks until you are blue in the face. It means nothing and you are simply shooting in the dark. This is *not* what I define as a "supported" or "delivered" feature- nor could I fathom someone considering it as such.
Ciao!
-Shark
Crusher
07-Jun-2002, 12:55
but prior to the high-detail Luclin textures of recent, it was absolutely GHASTLY to play this game on my GF3.
Then I can only assume you did something to your video card or driver settings to cause it, because I've been playing EQ for almost 3 years, and it's never been "ghastly". The color banding in the sky used to be terrible, but that was because of the 16-bit color limitation... it didn't look any worse on my GeForce 2 than it did on my Voodoo 3. With the option to use 32-bit color, that's gone. The only other noticably-bad image problem I have seen is with FSAA enabled. Their overlay GUI, which was written back in the GLIDE days and doesn't appear to have been updated much since then, has never looked great with FSAA enabled. When the first FSAA enabled GeForce drivers came out, the GUI would bleed and blur all over the screen. I suspect a good part of that was because of the drivers at the time, but I think part of it has to do with how they're rendering the GUI. Now, about the only remanants of that is a slight blurring of the text on the default buttons. At this point I could go into an hour long rant on their inability to prevent the rendering of polygons that are obviously out of view, and their aggrivating insistance on forcing you to use some of the new "high detail" models that look like they were designed by a blind person with 7 fingers, and because of the ammount of memory the models and animations consume, no normal computer on earth is capable of running the game adequately, let alone with FSAA enabled... but I'll try to restrain myself from going off on that tangent more than I have.
Sharkfood
07-Jun-2002, 13:19
Then I can only assume you did something to your video card or driver settings to cause it
lol. There was absolutely nothing "done wrong" as it was posted on their forums at least a dozen times a month concerning these very issues. In fact, VI even went so far as to declare TC should be left OFF when using NVIDIA videocards (by name). lol.
The color banding in the sky used to be terrible, but that was because of the 16-bit color limitation... it didn't look any worse on my GeForce 2 than it did on my Voodoo 3.
We aren't talking about 16-bit banding. lol. Would you label Q3 skies as 16-bit banding too? hehe. No, like I said- the blatant and obvious *errors in textures*, as in the example I already gave (black-pixel splotched polar bears, which were supposed to be all white, but on NVIDIA cards had a collage of random black pixels on them).
Well, and your statement about the V3 given it's post-filter having *no* effect at 16-bit supports the mythical nature of claims already, so there is really little point to continue...
Their overlay GUI, which was written back in the GLIDE days and doesn't appear to have been updated much since then, has never looked great with FSAA enabled.
And if you were to venture outside of one particular manufacturer's version of videocards, you'd also see this is a platform specific issue. It work(ed) marvelously with the V5, as well as the 8500 with AA enabled.
, no normal computer on earth is capable of running the game adequately, let alone with FSAA enabled... but I'll try to restrain myself from going off on that tangent more than I have.
Not to defend the obviously piss-poor coding on the part of Verant, I play it quite comfortably on an 8500 at 1024x768x32, all Luclin models enabled, 2xQAA, spell particles on and spend lots of time on Luclin as well as in larger guild raids of 60+ people in ToV and ST... Sure, it will occasionally dip to 18-22 fps, but for the most part the game remains totally playable. I can't say the same for my GF3 or Ti4600 though- not to mention the completely unreadable chat window when AA + AF is enabled.
Cheers,
-Shark
1. Anisotropic filtering. The GeForce3/4's implementation is clearly more complete, supporting all angles of surface as well as trilinear filtering.
2. FSAA. The GF3/4's FSAA far exceeds the performance of the Radeon 8500's, due to the use of a superior method. (Update: Yes, the 8500's FSAA does look better in certain limited situations, particularly when alpha tests are used, but those situations are rapidly decreasing, as games are starting to use alpha blends instead. I do know that Morrowind uses them, and alpha blends are very apparent in the UT2k3 shots we've been seeing).
The problem I have is you say one is more complete thus better which is fine. But then the other one which is less complete and has known issues wins because its faster? I dont get it. Limited cases? Couldn't you say the same thing about ATI's looks worse only in limited cases? Sorry but I think its a double standard. Your forgeting that ATIs FSAA was suppose to be programable by the devloper. And if it every will work that way, then that would be neat. Also dont forget that the alpha blend does blur a bit :)
3. Pixel shaders....
How many more quote do you need to see from develeopers saying they enjoy the power and flexibility of PS1.4? Like it or not that is an advatage for the ATI 8500.
4. Truform...
And now we have a feature that is actually used in games that requires developer support. I have seen that we have 15+ games that use turfrom now with plenty more on the way. Dose not matter to the gamer which method is better. Alls that maters to the gamer is that they can see a difference that makes the game look better for them. Sure RT pathes or other froms of HOS my have more advatages, but who cares until they are in a game that makes use of them.
Sharkfood
07-Jun-2002, 13:33
Crusher-
Yes! I happen to have a couple old shots of pre-Luclin EQ on my HD from events of days past. Some that show at least the mipmap distortion that occurred prior to the Luclin trilinear/new textures!
http://shark_food.tripod.com/eqgf3.txt
You can see these two spots that 2x2 or 4x4 distortion that occurred during mipmapping. It was indeed ghastly. I focused in on it with these two parts. I'm still digging to see if I have any shots of polar bears... there must be one here somewhere. :)
Simon F
07-Jun-2002, 14:16
Applications do funky things... developers get these weird ideas in their heads that make life for driver developers tough. Best we can do is take care of the problem on a case-by-case basis unless they fall into a general theme.
Now, you may say that the application can do whatever they want as long as they follow the rules of the API. Well, that's true, but if you want things to work well, then it helps to put some effort into optimizing your code so that you don't do silly things.
Hear Hear! Rarely are such true words spoken. Other's that are a "joy" are multiple "begin scene, end scene" calls per scene (err, hello?) and marking fully opaque textures as transparent.
Doomtrooper
07-Jun-2002, 15:02
4. That's never going to be a problem. PS 1.4 will only ever be used in some nice demos by ATI (and mighty tasty they are too!) . DX9 and PS2.0 will completely swamp it. I didn't really see the point in ATI investing the time in that at all.
Again for sake of being somewhat objective, for a DX9 part the card must support PS 1.0-2.0 to my understanding, so to say Ps 1.4 will never be used is wrong :roll:
We have not seen what Unreal Tournamanent supports for shaders as Sweeny said it s really a Dx7 engine with Dx 8 features overlayed into it.
That comment about demos is simply wrong Monkey....NWO is a PS 1.4 game with over 100 titles being released over the next year supporting 8500 features, be it shaders or truform (MANY titles already support truform).
http://www.ati.com/playati/gamemaker/nwo/index.html
Q: What feature of the Radeon 8500 do you like the most? And why?
A: That would be the 1.4 pixel shaders without a doubt. This is still beyond what any competitor has and really makes a difference. There is also a certain smoothness to playing on the 8500 that I like.
Doomtrooper
07-Jun-2002, 15:10
4. Truform. If you really like technological arguments, then Truform isn't really any more advanced than the RT-patches available in the GeForce3/4. The only thing that the GF3/4 are missing is the control point generating hardware (The 8500 generates control points from normals, and then uses the same bezier patches that you would use on a GeForce3/4 for interpolation). I've also argued that I actually prefer RT-patches, as they are far more flexible. Obviously RT-patches simply cannot be implemented into existing games, and backwards-compatibility isn't trivial to implement with them, but they are a significant step forward in implementing very high-poly scenes (largely since once the minimum hardware is assumed to have them, geometry LOD becomes absolutely trivial).[/quote]
Will you say the same thing about Nv30 or will it be 'ok' because Nvidia supports n-patches with Nv30...or how about displacement mapping...will you also say thats 'easy' to implement in hardware and really 'no big deal'.
If a feature can bring more realism to a game that is done in hardware I really can't see what your arguement is..developers like it and last time I looked you were not coding for a developer :wink:
Typedef Enum
07-Jun-2002, 15:39
As an aside...You want to talk about a joke of a test release? NWO had to be the dumbest release in quite some time.
I still can't get the stupid thing to work correctly, and I know I'm not the only one. I went back to VoodooExtreme/ShackNews, just to see if I was the only guy having problems, and saw a slew of issues. I think Matt @ 3dgpu even stated on their front page that he couldn't even get the thing to run.
Doomtrooper
07-Jun-2002, 16:20
As an aside...You want to talk about a joke of a test release? NWO had to be the dumbest release in quite some time.
I still can't get the stupid thing to work correctly, and I know I'm not the only one. I went back to VoodooExtreme/ShackNews, just to see if I was the only guy having problems, and saw a slew of issues. I think Matt @ 3dgpu even stated on their front page that he couldn't even get the thing to run.
A great example when a game is developed and optimized on a certain platform..besides some weird shadow glitches runs smooth on my 8500, I do remember Dronez having graphic issues and Aquanox on a 8500...hmmm..refer to Jeff Royles comments :)
Crusher
07-Jun-2002, 17:07
Well, I can't say I recall seeing anything like that in EQ, but my memory isn't perfect and you claim that was from a year or so ago. It looks to me like it's over-compressing the mipmaps in your screenshot... more like jpeg artifacting than noise. Or perhaps you were using a lower quailty mipmap setting in the D3D driver settings, and that caused some problems. If I could find a place to upload some images to, I've got a couple of screenshots I just took with texture compression on and off... it's pretty clear to me that it's working fine, with no noticable difference in the image quality. Perhaps with the new textues they're using mipmaps generated on the fly, or maybe they're just using a different compression format. I have a hard time believing the texture itself makes much difference (apart from the color format of course). If they're using the same texture compression format, they should have the same artifacts, regardless of size or style.
Chalnoth
07-Jun-2002, 17:17
I dont get it. Limited cases? Couldn't you say the same thing about ATI's looks worse only in limited cases? Sorry but I think its a double standard. Your forgeting that ATIs FSAA was suppose to be programable by the devloper. And if it every will work that way, then that would be neat. Also dont forget that the alpha blend does blur a bit :)
Alpha blends are just plain superior to alpha tests. The difference is particularly obvious when lots of alpha textures are used in the same scene (such as when there's grass or something of the like...). All that the alpha blending is doing is applying the usual texture filtering to the edges of the textures as well. Also, alpha blends are vastly superior to alpha tests when viewed at large distances, particularly on older hardware that doesn't support anisotropic filtering. The only bad thing is that alpha blends aren't always trivial to implement in software (they aren't order-independent, and thus alpha textures must be drawn last...in back to front order).
And if you think it odd that I think this is a limited case that can generally be ignored, think of it this way. Multisampling is most certainly the way FSAA is going. I'd be rather suprised if the R300 didn't support multisampling AA, actually. The NV30 most certainly will.
Crusher
07-Jun-2002, 17:34
A great example when a game is developed and optimized on a certain platform
Again, I don't see how you can make such claims so easily... it's not trivial to bend Direct3D to a specific video card, and I can't imagine too many developers restrict themselves to one card when they're testing their code. If you create a vertex buffer, set a directional light, set a texture, and draw the triangles in Direct 3D, and it turns out to be faster or look better on Card A than on Card B, how is that the programmer's fault? You seem to be suggesting that they buy computers that only have NVIDIA cards, and use some special hidden NVIDIA function calls inside Direct 3D. That's getting to the point where you have to wonder why they even use an API if they're going to try and get that specific with their code. As I said before, I think it's much more likely that if a game has a drastic performance change going from one card to another, it was made using just the basic rendering calls in a way that should theoretically work fine on anything... and they are just content with leaving it that way, whereas in some situations, developers want to equalize performance more, so they manipulate their code to get rid of the performance difference.
For example, say you have two cards that can both support vertex buffers with 16,535 verticies. Developer Alpha and Developer Beta are both making games, and plan to support both of these cards. They both make vertex buffers that have 16,535 verticies and render them, and for both developers it turns out to run twice as fast on one card than the other. Maybe Developer Alpha just concludes it's an issue with the driver, and since they're behind schedule already, they choose to leave the code as it is rather than spend days trying to troubleshoot someone else's problem. Developer Beta has a little more insight into what the problem could be, and a little more time to work on fixing it. They might try to split the vertex buffer into 64 smaller vertex buffers, and in doing so find that it brings the performance of the second card to roughly the same level as the first card. It might have been a hardware issue where the card can't render large vertex buffers efficiently, or perhaps it was a driver issue as Developer Alpha thought. When the games are released, the public might look at both games and accuse Developer Alpha of tailoring their code to one card, when in fact it was Developer Beta who tailored their code. Then, after a while, a driver bug is found and fixed in the second card that was having the performance problems. With the new drivers, Developer Alpha's game runs much like Developer Beta's game. Since the method Developer Beta used to skirt the problem still works, they don't need to patch their game, so the public never knew they did anything to begin with. Their code is still split to support the two cards differently, and it might not be quite as efficient to use 64 buffers instead of 1, but they're content.
Or, maybe it's as you say, and the lazy developers just tailor everything they do to the one and only video card they ever work with, and don't give a damn about the other cards out there. None of us will ever know for sure, but I think my theory sounds a lot more down-to-earth.
edit:
That's not to say it's never happened... I doubt people who developed tech demos (e.g. DMGZ) for NVIDIA cards cared too much about whether or not things were working properly on other cards. Likewise, apart from making sure things were at least getting rendered, I doubt the guy who wrote the VillageMark program spent a large ammount of time making sure it would run as fast as possible on anything not made by Imagination Tech. Same for ATI, Matrox, S3... but in terms of actual games, or truely independent 3rd party benchmarks, I don't see there being any incentive to ignoring one card over another, or intentionally making your program run better on a particular card.
Or, maybe it's as you say, and the lazy developers just tailor everything they do to the one and only video card they ever work with, and don't give a damn about the other cards out there. None of us will ever know for sure, but I think my theory sounds a lot more down-to-earth.
Every play a game called Tribes2 on a non-nVidia card? What about the trying to play the oringal Unreal (or tribes) on anything other than a 3DFX card? Thats 3 games that we designed to run on one brand of card and had horrible issues on other cards. Developers would love nothing more to have the time and knowledge to ensure that every card works eqaully as well. But fact is most of them just can not do that....
Dave Baumann
07-Jun-2002, 18:10
Likewise, apart from making sure things were at least getting rendered, I doubt the guy who wrote the VillageMark program spent a large ammount of time making sure it would run as fast as possible on anything not made by Imagination Tech.
Not necessarily the case - I don't know how many times this has been said on these forums before but the guy that wrote Villagemark even took the trouble to contact NVIDIA's dev support to ask their prefered method of vertex buffering when using T&L and implemented that.
Crusher
07-Jun-2002, 18:40
Never played Tribes 2, but I've played both Unreal and Tribes on my GeForce 2, and they both run quite well these days. However, I don't see how that relates to this argument, since we're not debating whether or not a GLIDE game that is ported to another API can run as well as it did on a 3dfx card. We're talking about games developed under a single API running on different cards that all support that API, yet somehow being tailored to one card manufacturer over the others. That wasn't possible with GLIDE.
And kudos to the programmer of Villagemark. Makes me feel better about it being labeled a benchmark and not just a tech demo. My argument still stands without that example, though. I'll agree there is some basis for assuming tech demos are designed for specific hardware, but I don't think most games or developers do that, and I think it's a pretty hefty accusation to make with no proof. The more I study 3D programming, the more credit I have to give the programmers out there. It's not something an idiot can do, and I think it's unfair to accuse them of making mistakes only an idiot would make, and it's equally unfair to claim they're favoring a particular video card when doing so can only hurt their sales and reputation. The days of being able to sell a video game that only runs on one type of card died with the Voodoo 2.
We're talking about games developed under a single API running on different cards that all support that API, yet somehow being tailored to one card manufacturer over the others. That wasn't possible with GLIDE.
The Tribes2 reference still stands. Also even in D3D in those games the 3DFX cards ran faster that nvidia cards at most resulotions. Which hints that the game was coding for one praticular hardware, 3dfx. Ask you self why UT only support textures in 256x256 in 256 colors (as its a left over restriction by the older voodoo cards). More current examples would be Giants as it ran like crap on anything other than nVidia for a while. Then you can look at Dronez which is OpenGL game that again has talored GF3/4 OpenGL calls that can work on the 8500 and other cards but are not support as the developer has not released a patch for that. Vulpine is the same way (although thats an BenchMark). I am sure we can find plenty more examples if you want them. Fact is most developers are lazy and will take that path that optimizes their chance of sales while minimizing their effort. Croteam seems to be the only ones that really go out of their way and provide optimizations for about every card out there.
OpenGL guy
07-Jun-2002, 20:21
From what I've heard of Voodoo driver quality (I believe most of it has actually been from Sweeney), I believe that wholeheartedly. But do you know of many workarounds on the developer-side from nVidia's drivers?
This is tough to say. So many applications change their behavior completely depending on what card they are being run on. Check out Serious Sam, for example.
When does nVidia disable AA? I haven't noticed it...though my game library isn't overly-large.
Regardless, I didn't say it was easy. I just said that there's no excuse for it not working entirely correctly.
Application uses lock, AA disabled. There are many more cases, but I don't want to look for the info, and maybe I shouldn't reveal what I know anyway. Remember, I am talking about the user forcing on AA, not the application and this generally means DX7 or older apps. I'm sure someone at nvidia could give you the appropriate information.
So your saying their's no excuse for forcing on AA to not work? Ever hear of bugs? :roll: Like I said, applications can do funky things. As you find the cases that cause problems, you fix the them, but you have to find them.
Chalnoth
07-Jun-2002, 22:10
Ask you self why UT only support textures in 256x256 in 256 colors (as its a left over restriction by the older voodoo cards).
No, there are 512x512 textures in UT (The naked four-armed chick picture is one such texture...), and, of course, 1024x1024 textures with DXT1 enabled. But yes, all of the non-DXT1 textures are in 8-bit palletized format (with 256 32-bit colors to choose from...).
Unreal/UT really don't have much legacy at all from Glide. The reason that it has so many problems is that it was designed around software rendering. The much lower-level nature of Glide allowed Unreal/UT to run best on 3dfx cards. After all, since the Unreal/UT rendering engine simply is not well-suited for hardware rendering, the ability to have direct control over the hardware means a whole heck of a lot. Standardized API's attempt to keep everything safe, so when there are lots of state changes (and there are tons in UT...which was okay for software, or, it turns out, for Glide, but not for D3D or OpenGL), standardized API's tend to start getting bogged down real fast.
Unreal/UT also had a plethora of textures that changed each scene, another thing that is not easy on hardware rendering (Though now I wonder if it's possible to generate the procedural textures entirely in hardware through pixel shaders...I know you can generate some procedural textures, but I wonder if you could do all of those that UT uses?).
Doomtrooper
07-Jun-2002, 22:15
A great example when a game is developed and optimized on a certain platform
Again, I don't see how you can make such claims so easily... it's not trivial to bend Direct3D to a specific video card, and I can't imagine too many developers restrict themselves to one card when they're testing their code. If you create a vertex buffer, set a directional light, set a texture, and draw the triangles in Direct 3D, and it turns out to be faster or look better on Card A than on Card B, how is that the programmer's fault? You seem to be suggesting that they buy computers that only have NVIDIA cards, and use some special hidden NVIDIA function calls inside Direct 3D. That's getting to the point where you have to wonder why they even use an API if they're going to try and get that specific with their code. As I said before, I think it's much more likely that if a game has a drastic performance change going from one card to another, it was made using just the basic rendering calls in a way that should theoretically work fine on anything... and they are just content with leaving it that way, whereas in some situations, developers want to equalize performance more, so they manipulate their code to get rid of the performance difference.
For example, say you have two cards that can both support vertex buffers with 16,535 verticies. Developer Alpha and Developer Beta are both making games, and plan to support both of these cards. They both make vertex buffers that have 16,535 verticies and render them, and for both developers it turns out to run twice as fast on one card than the other. Maybe Developer Alpha just concludes it's an issue with the driver, and since they're behind schedule already, they choose to leave the code as it is rather than spend days trying to troubleshoot someone else's problem. Developer Beta has a little more insight into what the problem could be, and a little more time to work on fixing it. They might try to split the vertex buffer into 64 smaller vertex buffers, and in doing so find that it brings the performance of the second card to roughly the same level as the first card. It might have been a hardware issue where the card can't render large vertex buffers efficiently, or perhaps it was a driver issue as Developer Alpha thought. When the games are released, the public might look at both games and accuse Developer Alpha of tailoring their code to one card, when in fact it was Developer Beta who tailored their code. Then, after a while, a driver bug is found and fixed in the second card that was having the performance problems. With the new drivers, Developer Alpha's game runs much like Developer Beta's game. Since the method Developer Beta used to skirt the problem still works, they don't need to patch their game, so the public never knew they did anything to begin with. Their code is still split to support the two cards differently, and it might not be quite as efficient to use 64 buffers instead of 1, but they're content.
Or, maybe it's as you say, and the lazy developers just tailor everything they do to the one and only video card they ever work with, and don't give a damn about the other cards out there. None of us will ever know for sure, but I think my theory sounds a lot more down-to-earth.
edit:
That's not to say it's never happened... I doubt people who developed tech demos (e.g. DMGZ) for NVIDIA cards cared too much about whether or not things were working properly on other cards. Likewise, apart from making sure things were at least getting rendered, I doubt the guy who wrote the VillageMark program spent a large ammount of time making sure it would run as fast as possible on anything not made by Imagination Tech. Same for ATI, Matrox, S3... but in terms of actual games, or truely independent 3rd party benchmarks, I don't see there being any incentive to ignoring one card over another, or intentionally making your program run better on a particular card.
Crusher,
Are you trying to tell me a game like Dronez which supports only specific Nvidia Opengl extensions is not optimized for that card
No offense but my Radeon 8500 doesn't use those proprietary extensions too well
You take a game developed on a certain vendors hardware using Their drivers and can honestly say that same game will run well on all hardware...hey I'm sure ATI has made some poor drivers, in fact I KNOW they have :)....but it's not always ATI's Fault
Sharkfood
08-Jun-2002, 00:47
Crusher-
It looks to me like it's over-compressing the mipmaps in your screenshot... more like jpeg artifacting than noise.
That's kinda how I described it too. hehe. It's only the odd mipmap here and there and it was very obvious when playing. Neither my V5 nor a Radeon 64DDR had this problem once TC was enabled. I *really* wish I had a shot of a polar bear handy but can't find one. The full-white hide had actual black pixel sets of 2x2 and 4x4 randomly spread across their backs. VI support "fixed" this issue by explaining NVIDIA cards should not have texture compression enabled.
If I could find a place to upload some images to, I've got a couple of screenshots I just took with texture compression on and off...
Like I said, they fixed this with the Luclin upgrade. It required a complete re-do of all textures, which over time, they have been doing for quite some time. I dont recommend texture compression now for the simple reason of faster zone times. :) But with or without, the quality is now almost identical.
I have a hard time believing the texture itself makes much difference (apart from the color format of course). If they're using the same texture compression format, they should have the same artifacts, regardless of size or style.
It could possibly be color format and driver bugs, but who knows? I can tell you that you will see the exact opposite problem with the new Frank Herbert's Dune game. It's a motley, color collage on an 8500, but looks perfect on any NVIDIA card. I have no idea if this is a compression problem or simply a rare texture format that is broken in the ATI drivers.
You're thinking of Tribes1 JB. Tribes2 was notoriously harsh on 3dfx cards and pretty much any card non Nvidia made (Radeon's just recently started performing better in the game).
The first installment otoh ran about the same as a GF2 in DX as drivers matured, and trumped it royally when in Glide mode.
Tribes2 was notoriously harsh on 3dfx cards and pretty much any card non Nvidia made (Radeon's just recently started performing better in the game).
Nope I stated earlier that Tribes2 only ran well on nVidia cards and you backed up me. Thanks!
Crusher
08-Jun-2002, 04:52
Are you trying to tell me a game like Dronez which supports only specific Nvidia Opengl extensions is not optimized for that card
No, after checking the Dronez webpage, it's pretty clear they developed some of their game to exploit the GeForce 3 and Pentium 4 (they even say so on their website). But, the game doesn't appear to be released yet, only the demo. And to their credit, they claim the engine has been in development for 3 years. It's possible they implemented the GeForce 3 specific functions back in the day when the GeForce 3 was the only card capable of doing it. I also wouldn't be suprised if NVIDIA, after working with them to support those features, paid them to produce the demo using only their extensions for pixel and vertex shaders, and to not update it to support other cards. But if they decide to release the game that way, instead of adding in extensions for other manufacturers, then they aren't very bright.
This makes me wonder though. If a game were to be made using TRUFORM, would you accuse them of tailoring to ATI, or would they simply be making the most of the technology that's available at this time?
Doomtrooper
08-Jun-2002, 05:28
Are you trying to tell me a game like Dronez which supports only specific Nvidia Opengl extensions is not optimized for that card
No, after checking the Dronez webpage, it's pretty clear they developed some of their game to exploit the GeForce 3 and Pentium 4 (they even say so on their website). But, the game doesn't appear to be released yet, only the demo. And to their credit, they claim the engine has been in development for 3 years. It's possible they implemented the GeForce 3 specific functions back in the day when the GeForce 3 was the only card capable of doing it. I also wouldn't be suprised if NVIDIA, after working with them to support those features, paid them to produce the demo using only their extensions for pixel and vertex shaders, and to not update it to support other cards. But if they decide to release the game that way, instead of adding in extensions for other manufacturers, then they aren't very bright.
This makes me wonder though. If a game were to be made using TRUFORM, would you accuse them of tailoring to ATI, or would they simply be making the most of the technology that's available at this time?
Truform isn't proprietaty, all truform is is n-patches and is a part of Dx 8.1...so if someone decides to support n-patches in hardware the DX extension is there for everyone
The same goes for PS 1.4...
Chalnoth
08-Jun-2002, 05:39
Truform isn't proprietaty, all truform is is n-patches and is a part of Dx 8.1...so if someone decides to support n-patches in hardware the DX extension is there for everyone
The same goes for PS 1.4...
Where's the logic in that? Only the Radeon 8500 currently supports those technologies.
Of course, support for those technologies doesn't mean that the Radeon 8500 was a primary development platform. It just means that the game designers wanted their game to look as good as possible for people that supported the features.
Doomtrooper
08-Jun-2002, 05:42
Logic is simple... :roll:
If someone wanted to use these effects , features that was used in Dronez they couldn't because they are proprietary....EVEN if they had the hardware.
Big Difference and really not that hard to understand.
Chalnoth
08-Jun-2002, 06:25
What features were used in DroneZ that couldn't be done on an ATI video card?
As far as I know, ATI's OpenGL extensions are every bit as complete (Well, except for the lack of support for anything like nVidia's NV_evaluators extension, the OpenGL form of RT patches) as nVidia's. It just requires that the developer program for both...fortunately programming for either hardware isn't that different...
Althornin
08-Jun-2002, 08:21
What features were used in DroneZ that couldn't be done on an ATI video card?
As far as I know, ATI's OpenGL extensions are every bit as complete (Well, except for the lack of support for anything like nVidia's NV_evaluators extension, the OpenGL form of RT patches) as nVidia's. It just requires that the developer program for both...fortunately programming for either hardware isn't that different...
Are you intentionally missing the point here?
Dronez uses nVidias PROPRIETARY EXTENSIONS. (which are as complete as ATI's, except for a lack of support for N-Patches (:)))
We know ATI's hardware can do it.
The problem is in use of proprietary extensions. Were Dronez to use the standard non-proprietary calls or have both sets of extensions programmed in, no-one would be upset about it.
Fact is, they DIDNT.
If your game uses PS1.4, then any PS1.4 card will work with those extensions.
If your game uses proprietary nVidia extensions, then only nvidia cards will work. you do see the difference, right? Hopefully, love for nVidia hasnt blinded you here...
Crusher
08-Jun-2002, 08:48
IS there a standard extension to do the things they used the NVIDIA proprietary extensions for? If not, you can't blame them for using those extensions, only for not including the similar ATI ones when they became available. If there is, why is OpenGL allowing people to create proprietary extensions to do the same thing they're creating standard extensions for?
Chalnoth
08-Jun-2002, 08:57
So? Game developers who use OpenGL today need to program for the various extensions of each vendor. It's not nVidia's fault, or ATI's. Fortunately, OpenGL 2.0 is supposed to alleviate most of this problem.
Dave Baumann
08-Jun-2002, 09:59
It's not nVidia's fault, or ATI's.
I don't think you'll find much agreement there. The fractions with shader language in opengl many consider to be NVIDIA's fault since they made the extensions proprietry - not exactly within the spirit of OpenGL. When ATi can along at least they didn't make their extensions proprietry and even worked with Matrox on them which is why they are being moved to EXT status rather than ATI_ extensions.
Chalnoth
08-Jun-2002, 10:29
Not many extensions actually end up as EXT extensions. There are far, far more vendor-specific extensions.
Besides, in many ways, the low-level nature of the pixel and vertex shaders does mean it actually makes sense for each vendor to have their own extensions...to make the best use of their individual hardware. Of course, it isn't that great for developers...
Dave Baumann
08-Jun-2002, 10:39
There are far, far more vendor-specific extensions.
Yes, but not all of them are closed.
Besides, in many ways, the low-level nature of the pixel and vertex shaders does mean it actually makes sense for each vendor to have their own extensions...to make the best use of their individual hardware. Of course, it isn't that great for developers...
Yeah, I mean, what the point of even having standard API’s? Much better each vendor just to have their own API… :roll:
Doomtrooper
08-Jun-2002, 15:05
Yeah, I mean, what the point of even having standard API’s? Much better each vendor just to have their own API… :roll:
Exactly...
Ichneumon
08-Jun-2002, 16:28
When folks are talking about *proprietary* NV extensions, that means exactly that Chalnoth. Until relatively recently (end of last year i think) Nvidia was trying to force people to pay them, to license the use of their OpenGL extensions. That made a lot of bad blood between Nvidia and the rest of the OpenGL ARB and Nvidia has since backed down on that issue.
The result of that though was that ATI, together with Matrox, implemented a lot of the same types of functionality in different extensions and different ways. They actively worked together and with other manufacturers to make extensions that supported multiple hardware. That has caused a fork in the extensions that has been difficult to bridge.
The primary cause of this was Nvidia not allowing others to implement the extensions without a license. So others worked together and said screw you to Nvidia and did it their own, more open way, leaving nvidia out of it for the most part. Nvidia's attitude was seen by some as an attempt to hijack the API and in a sense turn it into their own proprietary API.
Chalnoth
08-Jun-2002, 17:59
Which is more a result of the current marketplace conditions than anything else.
Each company did what it could do in its own case. Only nVidia had the clout (or thought it did...) to attempt to force the use of its own extensions. The rest *had* to go open.
Blaming nVidia is silly, because any other company would have done the same in their place.
Crusher
my oringal point was in response to your quote:
Or, maybe it's as you say, and the lazy developers just tailor everything they do to the one and only video card they ever work with, and don't give a damn about the other cards out there. None of us will ever know for sure, but I think my theory sounds a lot more down-to-earth.
Now that we have shown you that many times developer send time and money to optimize their game for one brand of card over another maybe you want to rethink some of this. Another example is the GF3 enhacned version of Giants. Techinally anything that was done there should run just fine on a 8500 but does not, again thanks to the developers.
If not, you can't blame them for using those extensions, only for not including the similar ATI ones when they became available.
Kind of shows you that developers are lazy to go back and change their code doesnt it?
IS there a standard extension to do the things they used the NVIDIA proprietary extensions for? If not, you can't blame them for using those extensions..
If they made these ext open and standard then fine, but the since they are proprietry and nVidia tried to charge for them. Big difference here. Did we all happen to forget why its called OpenGL instead of just GL?
Game developers who use OpenGL today need to program for the various extensions of each vendor. It's not nVidia's fault, or ATI's.
Once they make the specific, then yea its there fault, be it ATI, 3DFX, nVidia, ect....
Sabastian
08-Jun-2002, 21:56
Which is more a result of the current marketplace conditions than anything else.
Each company did what it could do in its own case. Only nVidia had the clout (or thought it did...) to attempt to force the use of its own extensions. The rest *had* to go open.
Blaming nVidia is silly, because any other company would have done the same in their place.
Oh dear god. You just finaly gave up on defending nvidia as if it was not using a proprietary extension and now that you find it is true you change your argument to rationalise their actions for making the extension proprietary. What kind of blinkered approach is that ? Oh yeah nvidia can do know wrong, how silly of me to forget. :roll:
Sabastian
Chalnoth
09-Jun-2002, 05:06
I just have to say: So what? My argument still stands, and ATI still did release their own OpenGL extensions.
Doomtrooper
09-Jun-2002, 05:24
Chalnoth,
So you are saying that Matrox has their own API , ATI has their own API and Nvidia has their own API, and PowerVR has their own API..
Ummm :roll:
Sharkfood
09-Jun-2002, 05:26
So what? My argument still stands
You dont have an argument. It went from declaring NVIDIA would never do such a thing to a reversal of "Well, anyone would have done the same thing in their place"- when every single 3d graphics chip maker HAS been in their place for the past 8+ years and never did any such thing. So therefore that claim is totally invalid.
and ATI still did release their own OpenGL extensions
You are still grasping at non-existent straws. Of course ATI added their own OpenGL extensions.. as did 3dfx, SGI, Matrox, S3 and everyone else. That is the whole point of the ARB is to review and extend the API and this becomes a necessity as new hardware and unsupported features arrive in this hardware.
The part you trying to avoid is that these new OpenGL extensions become part of the API- not property solely owned by the company that has desired to add them. This goes against the entire basis of OpenGL and NVIDIA is the first company to pull this kind of nonsense.
If NVIDIA wanted to, they could freely implement, include and support all ATI, 3dfx and SGI extensions that have been added to the API in past years. This isn't the reverse case with the new shader extensions NVIDIA has hijacked the API against and it took ATI/Matrox (3rd time saying this now) to put non-proprietary, usable extensions into the API.
If you are still unclear to the difference, please ask. I'm sure more people will be more than happy to explain this in more depth if needed.
Cheers,
-Shark
Doomtrooper
09-Jun-2002, 05:33
Omg a post that I and Shark agree with :wink:
Ichneumon
09-Jun-2002, 06:27
I just have to say: So what? My argument still stands, and ATI still did release their own OpenGL extensions.
Yes... ATI has done their own OpenGL extensions (many of them in coordination with other video card companies mind you).
But the point that I don't understand how you can possibly be missing is that anyone can use the ATI OpenGL extensions. Any company, if their hardware supported it or they built hardware to support it, could use the ATI extensions in their drivers. Nvidia tried to charge companies to be able to use and support their OpenGL extensions.
Do you still not understand the massive difference between those two positions?!?
Edit: Oh, and Sharkfood... I believe at least originally S3 was licensing their S3TC extension in OpenGL. That was why the Rage128 series and other contemporary cards at the time often only had s3tc support in DX (because they could since S3 licenced it to Microsoft). I assume somewhere along the line that changed though, but I don't know the history on it.
And to add to what sharkfood said further, it wasn't until the rest of the ARB took a liking to the approach that ATI/Matrox was going with their shader extensions that Nvidia swallowed their pride and made their shader extensions open... however that was FAR to late for it to actually matter, because ATI/Matrox (and i think 3dlabs was interested in their approach as well IIRC) were already going a different direction... Those divergant approaches to the shader exensions apparantly aren't easy to reconcile with the approach Nvidia took to their shader extensions.
Why must this board be so anti-Nvidia? I mean you would think Nvidia has killed your children!
I like Nvidia like I liked 3DFX in their heyday, but that doesn't mean I am going to take a crap on ATI.
Some of you have to learn some RESPECT and it really wouldn't hurt if you were to be a little humble either.
Sheesh, its the same people with the same tired arguments and dislike for Nvidia that makes this forum really crappy. I didn't say a$$ kissing, I said being humble and a little open minded.
Sharkfood
09-Jun-2002, 07:14
I believe at least originally S3 was licensing their S3TC extension in OpenGL. That was why the Rage128 series and other contemporary cards at the time often only had s3tc support in DX
Actually, my understand of the S3TC extension was the extension was fully open, but the underlying technology would need license if you wished to use S3's propriety format.
MesaGL and WickedGL both implemented the extension without license and simply used their own form of pack/unpack codewithout tromping on the IP from S3.
Docwiz-
Why must this board be so anti-Nvidia?
It has nothing to do with being pro-This or pro-That, it has to do with being pro-factual information and pro-honest depiction.
Any discussion of events worthy of criticisim should be openly discussed, and occurs here with all vendors- be they NVIDIA, ATI, 3dfx, NEC/PVR, Matrox, Bit Boys (if you want to call them a "vendor" heh), and 3DLabs. All have their skeletons and all have interesting histories and angles to discuss and evaluate.
I'd also disagree with your assessment of the forums here. I can already point out several dozen threads (a couple on the main page right now) that go on for 4 or 5 pages of discussions condeming non-NVIDIA hardware, and a single post pointing out a contrary issue concerning NVIDIA either results in 'well, let's just end the discussion now' or "Thread Closed" :)
Althornin
09-Jun-2002, 07:16
Why must this board be so anti-Nvidia? I mean you would think Nvidia has killed your children!
I like Nvidia like I liked 3DFX in their heyday, but that doesn't mean I am going to take a crap on ATI.
Some of you have to learn some RESPECT and it really wouldn't hurt if you were to be a little humble either.
Sheesh, its the same people with the same tired arguments and dislike for Nvidia that makes this forum really crappy. I didn't say a$$ kissing, I said being humble and a little open minded.
No, you'd actually think that nvidia made some proprietary OpenGl extensions.
this board is far from anti-nVidia. Why is it that unless you bow down and NEVER disagree with nVidias actions that you "think nVidia killed your children"? Get real...
And why should we be humble? about what?
Exactly what has happened here that we should be humble about? Please make some sense, cause i dont get it....
Chalnoth, i think you should read back over your posts and notice hgow your "argument" has changed.
I dont see how (except by intentionaly ignoring) you are missing what several people are telling you....
Chalnoth
09-Jun-2002, 07:32
Actually, my understand of the S3TC extension was the extension was fully open, but the underlying technology would need license if you wished to use S3's propriety format.
No, I'm pretty sure that's not true. I do know that it is entirely possible to use S3TC textures in Direct3D without a liscense, as Microsoft liscensed the tech from S3 for that purpose (I have a feeling MS wouldn't allow it in D3D otherwise...), but in OpenGL, other companies needed a liscense (this may have since changed...). I do know that nVidia now supports S3TC in OpenGL due to a cross-liscensing agreement with S3.
Chalnoth
09-Jun-2002, 07:36
Chalnoth, i think you should read back over your posts and notice hgow your "argument" has changed.
I dont see how (except by intentionaly ignoring) you are missing what several people are telling you....
I think you're seeing only what you want to see from what I've said. Regardless, it doesn't matter to me. All of the programmability is going to go open-source with OpenGL 2.0 (and perhaps sooner...).
Oh, and don't forget that ATI may have not wanted to support nVidia's extensions in the first place...such would force programmers to use ATI's extensions for decent compatibility.
Ichneumon
09-Jun-2002, 07:37
[quote]
Actually, my understand of the S3TC extension was the extension was fully open, but the underlying technology would need license if you wished to use S3's propriety format.
MesaGL and WickedGL both implemented the extension without license and simply used their own form of pack/unpack codewithout tromping on the IP from S3.
Ahhh rightright. You're probably correct. It has been a while. :)
I have been here for two years and I just have not posted.
I have seen a lot more anti-nvidia stuff here and it comes from people that are the leaders of either the website or this board.
Its kind of like the Anti-Nvidia club, which takes an office right next to the anti-Microsoft club.
There is way more bashing against Nvidia by both Daves, Reverend, Joe, etc.... They seem to think they know a lot, but I see them being wrong quite a bit.
This board used to be pro 3DFX and anti nvidia and then when 3DFX got bought out by Nvidia, they stayed anti Nvidia and became pro ATI.
Of course I want competition, but ATI is doing well and so is Nvidia and this talking smack around here is alarming.
I come here for information and enlightenment, but all I see is a flamewar all the time on who came out with toasted bread first and how fast its toasted. I don't care, just give me the goods.
As much as I know Chalnoth knows what he's talking about in certain subjects, he's becoming obvious in his alliance with a certain company. As well as displaying his lack of experience with cards other NVIDIA-based, which in turn tells us whether his comments vis-a-vis comparisons are valid or not.
Although that quote is from another thread, I think this pretty much sums it up!
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think thats just a nice way calling some one a.... whats the word...fan boy. Sorry, couldn't resist. :wink:
multigl2
09-Jun-2002, 08:25
I have been here for two years and I just have not posted.
I have seen a lot more anti-nvidia stuff here and it comes from people that are the leaders of either the website or this board.
Its kind of like the Anti-Nvidia club, which takes an office right next to the anti-Microsoft club.
There is way more bashing against Nvidia by both Daves, Reverend, Joe, etc.... They seem to think they know a lot, but I see them being wrong quite a bit.
This board used to be pro 3DFX and anti nvidia and then when 3DFX got bought out by Nvidia, they stayed anti Nvidia and became pro ATI.
Of course I want competition, but ATI is doing well and so is Nvidia and this talking smack around here is alarming.
I come here for information and enlightenment, but all I see is a flamewar all the time on who came out with toasted bread first and how fast its toasted. I don't care, just give me the goods.
or as shark said, we're pro facts and reason. Chalnoth simply abandoned both in his arguements in this thread.
Its kind of like the Anti-Nvidia club, which takes an office right next to the anti-Microsoft club. Or maybe, just maybe, we're against nV's and MS's certain reprehensible actions. I'm not sure why a company deserves respect or humility on our parts if the people running it display neither.
Anyway, I'm not sure why you and Chalnoth can't seem to grasp our problem with proprietary extensions. Maybe if you were made to pay a licensing fee for every .gif you've ever used? :p
Sabastian
09-Jun-2002, 12:17
I have been here for two years and I just have not posted.
I have seen a lot more anti-nvidia stuff here and it comes from people that are the leaders of either the website or this board.
Its kind of like the Anti-Nvidia club, which takes an office right next to the anti-Microsoft club.
There is way more bashing against Nvidia by both Daves, Reverend, Joe, etc.... They seem to think they know a lot, but I see them being wrong quite a bit.
This board used to be pro 3DFX and anti nvidia and then when 3DFX got bought out by Nvidia, they stayed anti Nvidia and became pro ATI.
Of course I want competition, but ATI is doing well and so is Nvidia and this talking smack around here is alarming.
I come here for information and enlightenment, but all I see is a flamewar all the time on who came out with toasted bread first and how fast its toasted. I don't care, just give me the goods.
I find this board fairly balanced personally. At this site you can find fairly objective and knowledgeable opinions and facts. Hey if you want pro nvidia garble you can go to nvnews.net same goes for ATi at Rage3d. For the most part the net is packed full of people who are biased one way or another to a degree. But I disagree with your declaration that this site is entirerly anti-nvidia. There are quite a number of posters here that are pro nvidia but there also seems to be a nice mix really. There is even some who are pro bit boys..... ;) Kyroll, ATi, Matrox. My point here is I find that the knowledge base here is very rich.
Posts like yours only stifle intellectual debate for fear of appearing bias one way or another. Personally I am bias against nvidia because of the 500$ video card in my machine that I bought a couple of years ago that had extreme driver issues for nearly a year. (Annihilator Geforce Pro) At any rate I think possibly you post would be more relivent if it were posted at say nvnews.net or Anandtech.com to name a couple only the reverse message should be used. Nvidia is not the second comming and if they are a good company they will stand to the critical views. IMHO I personally think that you have it all backwards and that people have been fooled into thinking nvidia is a flawless company. Nvidia is over rated IMHO and I post my opinion regardless of the forum. Thankfully I can do that but it stands in the face of what you say in your post. All your argument does is bolster my argument that there are way to many pro-nvidia fan boys out there who will say or do anything it seems to sway others or at least stifle others into to saying nothing critical about nvidia which is the real problem IMHO.
sabastian
I agree with pretty much all the arguments made against the way Nvidia tried to license their OGL extensions to others, they got what they deserved and many other vendors are now going another way - they might even end up having to support the ATI/Matrox extensions in the future, who knows? I do think though that if ATi or another company would have been in NVidia's place (come to market first with an important so far in OGL unexposed feature), they would have probably done the same thing - namely trying to come up with a proprietary OGL extensiosn first, instead of going open source right away - in this business companies have pretty much always tried to gain profit from innovations they brought to the market, everybody is usually very protective of their IP and often tries to establish *his* way of doing things as standard as long as it can be afforded or thought possible (be it by licensing *their* tech to MS' next DX, introducing OGL extensions, having their own API or something else). In this case Nvidia probably overestimated their influence. IMHO the ATi/Matrox co-operation and making their extensions an open standard is a direct result of the current market situation, in which Matrox and ATi have both lost major ground to Nvidia in the past, its more of a strategic co-operation to take market leverage away from Nvidia, than creating extensions in "the spirit of open source".
This is supposed to be a 3D technology board though last i checked, so I think the ethics, marketing of products and company politics shouldn't really be that much of an issue - the technology should speak for itself, not clouded by some company politics, it should be about better looking and faster graphics than bitching about which company's PR department, lawyers or driver team sucks more...
Sabastian
09-Jun-2002, 12:27
I agree with pretty much all the arguments made against the way Nvidia tried to license their OGL extensions to others, they got what they deserved and many other vendors are now going another way - they might even end up having to support the ATI/Matrox extensions in the future, who knows? I do think though that if ATi or another company would have been in NVidia's place (come to market first with an important so far in OGL unexposed feature), they would have probably done the same thing - namely trying to come up with a proprietary OGL extensiosn first, instead of going open source right away
FYI ATi was in the postition being the number one graphics card supplier only a few years ago but never attempted any sort of manipulation of the competitive environment.
Sabastian
Dave Baumann
09-Jun-2002, 12:57
There is way more bashing against Nvidia by both Daves, Reverend, Joe, etc.... They seem to think they know a lot, but I see them being wrong quite a bit.
With what?
This board used to be pro 3DFX and anti nvidia and then when 3DFX got bought out by Nvidia, they stayed anti Nvidia and became pro ATI.
I do find that amusing – because we talk about something we don’t like from a vendor its instantly that were biased. Why? Would I have agreed with ATi or Matrox or PowerVR making propriety extensions? Of course not, although in their market position it wouldn't be as much of a concern because they are not in as strong a position to force their hand and it would have been folly to do so.
However, this board is about being open to ideas and technology from all the 3D vendors out there, not the ‘everything nVIDIA does is perfectly right’ board, as some readers out there seem to think. nVIDIA does a whole hell of a lot right, of course, there no way they would be where they are now if they didn’t, but that doesn’t mean that alternative viewpoints and technology is wrong either which is what some posters seem not to appreciate.
So, if you feel there’s anti-nVIDIA sentiment perhaps its also playing a little devils advocate.
Edit: Docwiz, having looked over your posting history you made 4 posts more or less decrying you 'can't beleive the anti-NVIDIA sentiment'; well, this doesn't really say much for you. Instead of just saying that over and over again how about actually contributing something valuable to the forum. You talk about respect, but respect for what? There's very little respect to be given to someone who pops up now and again and says the same thing without contributing anything valuable themselves.
The 'Dave' hath spoket.
And Lo he hath four spots and Lo' he was wiseth.
Sorry I couldnt resist ... heheh
I think the argument originally started by this thread and then leading to what we have now (Pro and Anti blah blah) is over.
My opinion is: if there was no NVIDIA there would possibly be no push for TnL and no response for FSAA by 3dfx. I did say 'push' I didn't say they would not exist now, just would be in a less advanced form.
NVIDIA brought competition to the market when 3dfx (3DFX) 'ruled' which was good. Now NVIDIA 'rule' ATI has brought some competition (in the form of Radeon 8500).
It's history repeating itself, an open market brings great competition but there is no reason to become attached to one brand/company in this market as tomorrow it maybe Matrox who 'rule'.
Lets get down and dirty and play some games!
... There is even some who are pro bit boys..... ;)
...
sabastian
hmmh... I wonder who those could be. 8)
John Reynolds
09-Jun-2002, 15:21
hmmh... I wonder who those could be. 8)
I never thought I would see vaporware fanboys. :o
I never thought I would see vaporware fanboys. :o
heh heh :) John, usually ppl see what they want to see... and you are no exeption... ;)
and don't even try to figure out what I ment with that...
-----
"When there's a will, There's a way..."
Dave Baumann
09-Jun-2002, 16:45
And Lo he hath four spots and Lo' he was wiseth.
For a while I'd wondered if you seen photos of me as a teen or something, and then I twigged what you were referencing! :) Personally I view them as 'pips'.
Doomtrooper
09-Jun-2002, 17:19
ftp://stuff:stuff@65.93.75.55/itschy.gif
LOL very funny and fitting DT!
This an anti nvidcrap board :lol: where did you get that Idea.
This is one of the best sites on the net, If you think there is an anti nvidia campeign going one here you are not reading correctly.
They make nice cards with 4 year old bugs, loads of driver issues(you say they aren't there lol read all the boards across the net they outweigh any card by far) but awsome rawspeed, they have a very unpopulair market strategy, and letting one pay for their OGL for instance ......really Evil :evil:
But serious there are negative and positive things to say about any vidcard or hardware in genereal for that matter They all are mentioned on this board......... and a flame war I didnt' really see one aldo a discussion with some fire in it well nothing wrong with that..........I love beyond3D it's da place to be it was back then(3 server providers b4 this one) it still is now
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