[Richard]

Voodoo Extreme has a story (with a YouTube movie link) of the PC's version of Gears of War. At this moment, rumour has it the game is going to be Vista-only.

[Zaphod]

Originally Posted by Richard

At this moment, rumour has it the game is going to be Vista-only.

Being published by Microsoft Game Studios, I find this not surprising in the least. I expect MS themselves to have released their last game that will (officially) run on XP (regardless of D3D10 features).

I do wonder, though, whether they'll start providing incentives for third parties to go Vista only as well. Judging from comments given by developers and publishers regarding high-profile titles already in the pipeline, this transition won't be as quick as MS might have liked otherwise.

[AlStrong]

I shudder to think what sort of hardware will be needed to attain the mostly solid 30fps @720p. I do hope they have increased texture resolutions all around though.



Thinking aloud:

I really wonder just how low-level those guys coded the game for the 360 such that the DX9 API becomes 'limited' or slower by comparison. I know Mark Rein has mentioned DX10 support for UE3.0, and I also wonder if they'll leverage that more due to the greater exposure of features.

Somewhat related to their AA support that Sweeney has commented on for UT3

[Fu3lFr3nzy]

Originally Posted by AlStrong

I shudder to think what sort of hardware will be needed to attain the mostly solid 30fps @720p.

Oh man, I can only imagine the horror and disappointment for alot of rigs out there if the game is not optimized for DX9 hardware *shrugs*

Lost Planet anyone?

Great news if true though. I've been planning on upgrading to DX10/Vista this fall to coincide alot of Windows games, and this title just makes the upgrade that much sweeter

[kyleb]

Lost Planet runs better and looks better on my C2D/x1950xtx setup than it does on the 360, I don't see any reason why Gears would be any different.

[Fu3lFr3nzy]

Well atm I have a X1800XT and im suffering crappy frames

[pjbliverpool]

Originally Posted by Fu3lFr3nzy

Well atm I have a X1800XT and im suffering crappy frames

But Lost planet looks quite significantly better on the PC than the 360 so its not an apples to apples comparison. Even in DX9 the PC version is quite a bit more complex, just look at the detail on the buildings for example....

Given that Gears is such a massive game and built on UE3 I would *hope* it will be well optimised. And if well optimised it should run fine on X1900's and above, especially if they don't improve any of the graphics. The X1800 may struggle a little with the shaders.

[Fu3lFr3nzy]

I never said the PC counterparts of the game looks worse than the X360 version

*being more specific* I was just saying that if the game had poor optimization in general, I can definately see many out there with rigs that are quite dated not having alot of fun with this game unless they tone down the settings significantly.

Of course, with a game like this, its a no brainer that you need to have a decent rig if you ever wish to max it out

It doesnt matter much to me, like I said, im upgrading my rig this year so ill be enjoying this one way or the other

[mito]

all I have to say is:

IT'S UPGRADE TIME FOLKS!!!

[pjbliverpool]

Originally Posted by Fu3lFr3nzy

I never said the PC counterparts of the game looks worse than the X360 version

*being more specific* I was just saying that if the game had poor optimization in general, I can definately see many out there with rigs that are quite dated not having alot of fun with this game unless they tone down the settings significantly.

Of course, with a game like this, its a no brainer that you need to have a decent rig if you ever wish to max it out

It doesnt matter much to me, like I said, im upgrading my rig this year so ill be enjoying this one way or the other

Don't you just love that anticipation of getting a new rig

Im already thinking about moving to G90 when it comes out and im on a GTS now!

Regarding Lost Planet, I think its worth remembering that Xenos is pretty damn powerful and combined with the improved graphics even at the basic level, we should certainly expect the game to tax PC hardware.

I see Xenos at around X1950Pro level so I wouldn't expect anything less than that to achieve a good 30fps at 720p even at reduced graphics (of 360 equivilent levels) - and thats assuming a near perfectly optimised port. I think the game does deliver that level of performance so it seems fairly well optimised to me.

[Davros]

Originally Posted by AlStrong

I shudder to think what sort of hardware will be needed to attain the mostly solid 30fps @720p. :

720 ouch havnt played a game at that low res for years
+ why should it run badly isnt xenos a bit like a 7800gs in power ?

[Skrying]

Originally Posted by Davros

720 ouch havnt played a game at that low res for years

What? You realize 720p is 1280x720, you must be on the bleeding edge constantly.

[John Reynolds]

Hmm, very linear shooter with no jumping and a design that leans very heavily on the use of cover. Not sure how this game is going to translate over to the mouse + keyboard.

[Davros]

hell no but the last time i played at a lower res (1024x768) was in the quake 2 days and i did that on a gf256 spent the last few years at 1280x1024 on a 17lcd and that is far from bleeding edge
infact on this board im considered pretty low end 7600gt

[Davros]

Originally Posted by John Reynolds

Hmm, very linear shooter with no jumping and a design that leans very heavily on the use of cover. Not sure how this game is going to translate over to the mouse + keyboard.

/me has visions of killzone

[Skrying]

Originally Posted by John Reynolds

Hmm, very linear shooter with no jumping and a design that leans very heavily on the use of cover. Not sure how this game is going to translate over to the mouse + keyboard.

Easily, why wouldn't it be better than a gamepad? R6:Vegas pulls off similar controls very easily.

[AlStrong]

Originally Posted by John Reynolds

Hmm, very linear shooter with no jumping and a design that leans very heavily on the use of cover. Not sure how this game is going to translate over to the mouse + keyboard.

Don't forget, very slow paced. Characters don't move very fast, and even the roadie run is more of a jog.

why should it run badly isnt xenos a bit like a 7800gs in power

Smoke-heavy effects, HDRR, post-processing (e.g. motion blur on fast turning, bloom, DOF) - these are all pretty heavy memory bandwidth and shader intensive features.

The AA implementation, itself, on the 360 is rather unique in that it affects non-dynamic objects, and apparently would require D3D10 on PC - having to do with the level of feature exposure:

http://www.beyondunreal.com/daedalus...t.php?id=10581

PCGH: Is there a possibility to make deferred shading and edge-smoothing work at the same time on DX9 graphics cards?

Epic: Unreal Engine 3 uses deferred shading to speed up the calculation of dynamical lighting and shadows. Integrating this feature together with multi-sampling requires control of the edge-smoothing at a much deeper level than the DX9 interface can provide. So, on the PC, multi-sampling will only be supported under DX10.

PCGH: How exactly are you utilizing the functions of Direct X 10?

Epic: Unreal Tournament 3 will ship with full DX10 support, with multi-sampling being the biggest visible benefit of the new graphics interface. Additionally, with DX10 under Vista we have the possibility to use the video memory more efficently, to be able to display textures with a higher grade of detail as it would be possible with the DX9 path of Vista. Most effects of UT3 are more bound to the fillrate than to basic features like geometry processing. That's why DX10 has a great impact on performance, while we mostly forgo the integration of new features.

There's also the nature of their multi-threading:

PCGH: What is the maximun number of threads that can be calculated separately? Will there be a performance-boost if a quad-core system will be used?

Epic: We're able to scale the thread-structure pretty well. There is a primary thread for the gameplay and a second one for rendering. On systems with more than 2 cores we run additional threads to speed up various calculation-tasks, including physics and data-decompression. So the overall performance benefits greatly from a quad-core processor. Although we haven't looked into the matter yet, I expect an even further performance increase through CPUs with more than 4 cores in future UE-based games.

------------

Tim Sweeney: The Gears of War experience on Xbox 360 taught us to optimize for multi-core, and to improve the low-level performance of the key engine systems. This has carried over very well to PC. The division of UE3's rendering and gameplay into separate threads, implemented originally for 360, has brought even more significant gains on PC where there is a more heavyweight hardware abstraction layer in DirectX, hence more CPU time spent in rendering relative to gameplay.

Some discussion here: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=41728


A clear benefit to older systems is their streaming tech, so presumably, the RAM requirements are relatively lower compared to other high-end games.

We could go into the endless discussion of target market and the people who have such hardware to run it, but methinks a lot of that "destroyed beauty" art design philosophy is going to be very literal to many gamers.

[Skrying]

Originally Posted by Davros

hell no but the last time i played at a lower res (1024x768) was in the quake 2 days and i did that on a gf256 spent the last few years at 1280x1024 on a 17lcd and that is far from bleeding edge
infact on this board im considered pretty low end 7600gt

Wonder what games you're playing then, my X1950 Pro struggles in a few games at my LCDs 1680x1050 and I've dropped it in order to play those. I'm more than willing to drop resolution in order to have higher details in other areas.

[AlStrong]

Originally Posted by Skrying

Wonder what games you're playing then, my X1950 Pro struggles in a few games at my LCDs 1680x1050 and I've dropped it in order to play those. I'm more than willing to drop resolution in order to have higher details in other areas.

mm... indeed. Resolutions such as 1600x1200, 1680x1050, 1920x1200... these are all 2-2.5x as many pixels as 720p that need to be rendered/shaded/overdrawn (smoke) - I'm not an expert, but it seems that mid-range systems will **** the bed just as much as Lost Planet. I'd be interested to see the effect of changing memory bandwidth in Lost Planet or comparing similarly clocked R520/R580 (to gauge shader power).

[Davros]

Originally Posted by Skrying

Wonder what games you're playing then.

These


Apart from oblivion and gothic3(possibly more a lack of ram problem than gfx power) im quite happy
with how they run

[mito]

Originally Posted by Davros

Apart from oblivion and gothic3(possibly more a lack of ram problem than gfx power) im quite happy
with how they run

nice collection you have there.

[Skrying]

Originally Posted by Davros

These

Apart from oblivion and gothic3(possibly more a lack of ram problem than gfx power) im quite happy
with how they run

You're not using features I consider needed for me, again I'd personally drop resolution before other features. I'm also sure many others would as well.

[Davros]

thanks ive been collecting pc games since 1980 i reckon i have about 1200 to 1500 games

ps: you can play the first game i ever bought here:
Zork - the Great Underground Empire :
http://thcnet.net/zork/index.php

ps: not sure if you need a dx9 card

[Davros]

Originally Posted by Skrying

You're not using features I consider needed for me.

Like ?

you seem to be saying that i cant be playing games at high detail @ 1280x1024 on a 7600gt
so i googled a few benchmarks

all done at 1280x1024 4xaa 8xaf
splinter cell 3 : 40fps
far cry : 67fps
fear : 32fps
quake 4 : 38fps

[Skrying]

Originally Posted by Davros

Like ?

Like the sliders maxed in the game, for example in Oblivion you're clearing not doing so. Also AA and probably AF. A 7600GT will not do that in Oblivion especially at above 1280x720.