[Rys]

We've covered NVIDIA's G80 in terms of the architecture and its possible image quality. Now it's the turn of general performance analysis. We investigate general game performance at high resolution using a number of titles, before checking out AA and AF scaling and general shading.

Our NVIDIA G80 Architecture and GPU Analysis hinted at what's possible, and it's here that we'll flesh it out a bit further.

[Evildeus]

Great article

[icecold1983]

Thank You

[Jawed]

The sampler hardware -- and remember it's fully threaded, independantly of shading threads -- is a serious G80 architecture strong point, and thus a competing architecture in the same space will have to do something similarly strong to keep up or best what NVIDIA have managed to build.

You write this as if R5xx doesn't have fully decoupled texturing "threads" - which is rather curious.

Jawed

[Rys]

Originally Posted by Jawed

You write this as if R5xx doesn't have fully decoupled texturing "threads" - which is rather curious.

Jawed

Didn't mean it to come across that way, hence the sentence separation, so it was more of a comment about general sampler performance. Will adjust the language to make it clearer.

[Geo]

Originally Posted by Jawed

You write this as if R5xx doesn't have fully decoupled texturing "threads" - which is rather curious.

Jawed

I don't know that you need to go any further than the graph which that comment is analyzing for "what he meant by that".

[Mendel]

2560x1600 results would be of particular interest to me though it isn't impossible to extrapolate and imagine rough estimates.

[Jawed]

I miss the fill-rate graphs But I like the "percentage-drop" graphs

It's interesting to see how 4xAA per cycle in G80 really chews through available bandwidth - put another way, all these years of having only 2xAA per cycle were well justified as the bandwidth simply wasn't there.

Jawed

[Jawed]

Originally Posted by Geo

I don't know that you need to go any further than the graph which that comment is analyzing for "what he meant by that".

Er, no. It was a forward-looking statement: "and thus a competing architecture in the same space". I'm afraid the entire paragraph reads like hyperbole for the sake of it, clearly missing the fact that decoupled texturing is hardly new.

Why would AMD introduce a new GPU without this feature when it's already stamping out two GPU designs with it? Why couch this analysis of a key architectural point of G80 in terms that raise the question? It's just bizarre editorialising, not analysis.

Are there HL2:LC performance figures for AA+AF anywhere in the article? I couldn't find them, I'm a bit confused why HL2:EP1 and HL2:LC results are used in different tests...

Jawed

[Mark]

Originally Posted by Mendel

2560x1600 results would be of particular interest to me though it isn't impossible to extrapolate and imagine rough estimates.

We would have liked to have done 2560x1600 in lieu of 2048x1536, but that's the highest we could go with the available displays.

Originally Posted by Jawed

I miss the fill-rate graphs But I like the "percentage-drop" graphs

Have an example of the fillrate graphs you'd like to see?

[trinibwoy]

Good job guys. Looking forward to the CUDA article - that's what sets B3D apart from the regular benchmarking crowd. One thing - the introduction mentions the use of synthetic benchmarks yet they don't appear in the article

[Gouhan]

Great stuff from B3d as usual.
Just was curious if you by any chance have compared Vista and XP results particularly in SC: Chaos Theory.
Obviously GF7 has some dodge drivers in Vista, but i found the G80 much better under Vista than in XP so might that make the GTS look a little better if the tests were under Vista?

[Jawed]

Originally Posted by Mark

Have an example of the fillrate graphs you'd like to see?

http://www.beyond3d.com/content/reviews/2/16

Though the colours are a bit confusing. The expanding tables are nice there, too

As a side comment, the Rage3D FPS graphs are the best - I'm sure they won't mind if you "steal" the concept

Jawed

[Gouhan]

BTW results were with HDR on, which now I see wasn't on in this performance analysis, my mistake.

[Mark]

Originally Posted by Jawed

http://www.beyond3d.com/content/reviews/2/16

Though the colours are a bit confusing. The expanding tables are nice there, too

So a line graph essentially

As a side comment, the Rage3D FPS graphs are the best - I'm sure they won't mind if you "steal" the concept

Jawed

An example of the graphs you like on Rage3D then?

[Geo]

Originally Posted by Jawed

Er, no. It was a forward-looking statement: "and thus a competing architecture in the same space". I'm afraid the entire paragraph reads like hyperbole for the sake of it, clearly missing the fact that decoupled texturing is hardly new.

Why would AMD introduce a new GPU without this feature when it's already stamping out two GPU designs with it? Why couch this analysis of a key architectural point of G80 in terms that raise the question? It's just bizarre editorialising, not analysis.

I think you're parsing it differently than I would. That an aside was tossed in mid-stream to remind readers of the features included doesn't necesarily mean that was the action part of the "forward looking" part of the sentence. I took that to be "something similiarly strong", ie. a performance point made in the performance article.

[Jawed]

Originally Posted by Mark

So a line graph essentially

Yes, with colours that don't confuse.

An example of the graphs you like on Rage3D then?

http://www.rage3d.com/reviews/video/.../index.php?p=9

Without necessarily reducing the count of AA/AF settings being graphed, compared with what B3D is currently doing in the G80 article. Rage3D's clickable settings not only cut the space used on the page which makes understanding easier, but the "animation" is a nice visual shortcut for the trends.

So, similarly animated fillrate graphs for the different settings would be super-groovy

Jawed

[trinibwoy]

Originally Posted by Jawed

Rage3D's clickable settings not only cut the space used on the page which makes understanding easier, but the "animation" is a nice visual shortcut for the trends.

Completely agree. Love those Rage charts.

[Mark]

Oh yeah, the clickable thing. Well I certainly don't mind stealing my own concepts, and it would certainly work well enough here in this particular case, so we'll see.

[Jawed]

Originally Posted by Mark

Oh yeah, the clickable thing. Well I certainly don't mind stealing my own concepts, and it would certainly work well enough here in this particular case, so we'll see.

Thinking about it some more, the organisation of colour in the Rage3D FPS graphs is better, too. Colour per GPU on an FPS chart is ok if there's only 2 or 3 GPUs being compared, but I think the Rage3D charts show that using colour for resolution and simply using a consistent ordering for the GPUs being compared, down the Y axis, is what really makes them work so well.

Jawed

[Mark]

Originally Posted by Jawed

Thinking about it some more, the organisation of colour in the Rage3D FPS graphs is better, too. Colour per GPU on an FPS chart is ok if there's only 2 or 3 GPUs being compared, but I think the Rage3D charts show that using colour for resolution and simply using a consistent ordering for the GPUs being compared, down the Y axis, is what really makes them work so well.

Jawed

You're right about that as well, I'm not sure why I reversed the axis or why I hadn't noticed before.

just so everyone is aware, I am Ratchet, formerly Rage3D's hardware editor and the originator of those Rage3D click-able charts, so no need reporting to Rage3D that Beyond3D is stealing their chart style and presentation ideas

[silent_guy]

Thank for the article!

Would it be possible to add page titles to the page navigation drop box? This would avoid the binary search guessing game when trying to locate a specific page.

[Tokelil]

Originally Posted by silent_guy

Would it be possible to add page titles to the page navigation drop box? This would avoid the binary search guessing game when trying to locate a specific page.

I miss the page title in the navigation as well. Also the old fill-rate graphs was nice for spotting bottlenecks, so I hope we'll see those back in some form.

[Jawed]

Are the AF scaling results:

http://www.beyond3d.com/content/reviews/7/16

with HDR turned on or off?

Jawed

[Mark]

Originally Posted by Jawed

Are the AF scaling results:

http://www.beyond3d.com/content/reviews/7/16

with HDR turned on or off?

Jawed

HDR was on