AMD: R8xx Speculation
- Thread starter Shtal
- Start date
DX11 has a tough road ahead. It is definately the future and a welcome change, but i doubt we see any full DX11 titles for a few years yet.
There are two things that need to happen before you see mainstream games make full use of DX11:
1) Next-gen consoles that run DX11. Consoles are the dominant force in game development. Most games start out on the console and then are ported to PC. Consoles still run DX9-ish so most people make full use of this.
2) A large percentage of users who have DX11 at the INTEGRATED graphics level. You will never see truely mainstream games like Sims or WoW go DX11 until everyone with a 5year old bargain PC can run it.
DX10 is starting to see some use because it is just eye-candy. DX10 has nothing that will break a game when used on DX9. A DX10 game on DX9 hardware: bummer, the water doesnt look as nice, or the clothes arent as cool, or the explosion wasn't as real, but the water, clothes and explosions are still there.
DX11 has so many departures from older DX's that it is not just eye-candy that can be turned on and off. DX11 brings about whole new ways of building game engines that will be so engrained that you must have completely different engines and logic paths if you make full use of DX11 until it becomes the norm and you can code exclusively for DX11.
Who knows what can be accomplished with tess. and compute shaders. Whole logic systems and AI could be built into the CS and would not even run on the non DX11 hardware, forcing the huge re-coding.
Something DX11 has that DX10 did not, is the performance advantage and the Windows 7 advantage. DX11 (as well as ATi's DX10.1) will allow better performance for sweet features rather than DX10's 'I think i see the difference, but OMGz i just lost half my FPS'. Also, there are still people holding out on XP machines that hate Vista with a passion that will finally be won over by Windows 7. I am one of those. I ran win 2k until XP SP2 came out, and now that I have been running Win7 RC1 for some time, i will jump on 7 when it comes out.
If DX11 was to take over fast, it would require that ATi stop shipping any non-DX11 parts and go DX11 exclusive from integrated to the high end. Intel would have to make their integrated DX11 compatable (they have what, over 50% of the market?) and Nvidia would have to speed things up. Its great that ATi will have DX11 parts before DX11 is even released, but like others have said, there will be no big hurry for it. Perhaps this is why ATi is making such a stink of Eyefinity. There has to be something that people want NOW and can use on CURRENT games to enhance their experience.
Eyefinity IS cool and can be used NOW, but it will also take 58xx level hardware to push those kinds of megapixels. This is another reason why ATi is in no real hurry to get sub 58xx level hardware out.
-Plack
There are two things that need to happen before you see mainstream games make full use of DX11:
1) Next-gen consoles that run DX11. Consoles are the dominant force in game development. Most games start out on the console and then are ported to PC. Consoles still run DX9-ish so most people make full use of this.
2) A large percentage of users who have DX11 at the INTEGRATED graphics level. You will never see truely mainstream games like Sims or WoW go DX11 until everyone with a 5year old bargain PC can run it.
DX10 is starting to see some use because it is just eye-candy. DX10 has nothing that will break a game when used on DX9. A DX10 game on DX9 hardware: bummer, the water doesnt look as nice, or the clothes arent as cool, or the explosion wasn't as real, but the water, clothes and explosions are still there.
DX11 has so many departures from older DX's that it is not just eye-candy that can be turned on and off. DX11 brings about whole new ways of building game engines that will be so engrained that you must have completely different engines and logic paths if you make full use of DX11 until it becomes the norm and you can code exclusively for DX11.
Who knows what can be accomplished with tess. and compute shaders. Whole logic systems and AI could be built into the CS and would not even run on the non DX11 hardware, forcing the huge re-coding.
Something DX11 has that DX10 did not, is the performance advantage and the Windows 7 advantage. DX11 (as well as ATi's DX10.1) will allow better performance for sweet features rather than DX10's 'I think i see the difference, but OMGz i just lost half my FPS'. Also, there are still people holding out on XP machines that hate Vista with a passion that will finally be won over by Windows 7. I am one of those. I ran win 2k until XP SP2 came out, and now that I have been running Win7 RC1 for some time, i will jump on 7 when it comes out.
If DX11 was to take over fast, it would require that ATi stop shipping any non-DX11 parts and go DX11 exclusive from integrated to the high end. Intel would have to make their integrated DX11 compatable (they have what, over 50% of the market?) and Nvidia would have to speed things up. Its great that ATi will have DX11 parts before DX11 is even released, but like others have said, there will be no big hurry for it. Perhaps this is why ATi is making such a stink of Eyefinity. There has to be something that people want NOW and can use on CURRENT games to enhance their experience.
Eyefinity IS cool and can be used NOW, but it will also take 58xx level hardware to push those kinds of megapixels. This is another reason why ATi is in no real hurry to get sub 58xx level hardware out.
-Plack
I think there is a bit of a difference between a vendor supporting the new DX standard and one choosing to support a proprietary feature like PhysX or CUDA.
While I don't disagree with your basic argument, you say this as if DX is somehow not a proprietary standard.
When Is the last time anyone but nVidia had influence on PhysX or CUDA?
Just going to throw in my $0.02 on the pricing debate... I am plenty happy with the current pricing scheme.
38xx replaced the R600 for less cost, less heat, roughly same performance. 2xxx series is not the greatest comparison due to the R600 fiasco, but it was a much needed move by ATi.
4670 replaced the 36xx, but came in at almost the performance level of a 3850 and slightly undercut the price while also cutting power consumption and board size. 4670 also came with 512MB, whereas most 3850's at that point (and price point) were 256MB. Otherwise the 46xx added nothing as DX 10.1 was already in place.
57xx is looking to come in at around 4850 to 4870 performance levels while cutting power and ADDING DX11, Eyefinity, and who knows what else. The price will be about the SAME as current 48xx parts while adding features and cutting power. Note that the part is 57xx. This is not the normal replace a x8xx with a x6xx part. There is still going to be a smaller, cheaper part for the 56xx market.
So yes, the pricing is starting to creep up, but this is also probably due to no pressure from NVidia. Nvidia never even came out with a desktop DX10.1 part (which might be understandable since it was pretty much ATi that spearheaded 10.1 in the first place). I will say this there is no reason for ATi to release anything under the 58xx at this point in time because they are just competing with themselves.
Until DX11 becomes the must-have or until there is pressure from the green team, ATi will just continue on cutting prices on the 4xxx series to clear their inventory and THEN switch to the 57xx and lower series. There will be no huge pull for DX11 any time soon since DX11 will for now just be eye-candy on a few high-end games (Crytek for example) since there is no established DX11 base, and no support from Intel or Nvidia at this point which makes it about as 'proprietary' as DX10.1 currently is (Kudos to ATi for having the two latest DX revisions be basically proprietary due to the slowness of the green and blue teams!)
The other thing is, why are we complaining about a "midstream" part that performs well above a typical midstream system? How many games need a card faster than current 4870 hardware while pushing cheap 1650x1050 monitors and have <$200 CPUs? Why price cards so cheap that they outrun everything else in the system? If you want to push 3x1080p monitors, you are going to spring for a High-end card anyway, as well as a high end CPU and high end everything else.
Besides, why are we comparing a BRAND NEW card to a bargin bin 4850 from 1.5 years ago?
-Plack
38xx replaced the R600 for less cost, less heat, roughly same performance. 2xxx series is not the greatest comparison due to the R600 fiasco, but it was a much needed move by ATi.
4670 replaced the 36xx, but came in at almost the performance level of a 3850 and slightly undercut the price while also cutting power consumption and board size. 4670 also came with 512MB, whereas most 3850's at that point (and price point) were 256MB. Otherwise the 46xx added nothing as DX 10.1 was already in place.
57xx is looking to come in at around 4850 to 4870 performance levels while cutting power and ADDING DX11, Eyefinity, and who knows what else. The price will be about the SAME as current 48xx parts while adding features and cutting power. Note that the part is 57xx. This is not the normal replace a x8xx with a x6xx part. There is still going to be a smaller, cheaper part for the 56xx market.
So yes, the pricing is starting to creep up, but this is also probably due to no pressure from NVidia. Nvidia never even came out with a desktop DX10.1 part (which might be understandable since it was pretty much ATi that spearheaded 10.1 in the first place). I will say this there is no reason for ATi to release anything under the 58xx at this point in time because they are just competing with themselves.
Until DX11 becomes the must-have or until there is pressure from the green team, ATi will just continue on cutting prices on the 4xxx series to clear their inventory and THEN switch to the 57xx and lower series. There will be no huge pull for DX11 any time soon since DX11 will for now just be eye-candy on a few high-end games (Crytek for example) since there is no established DX11 base, and no support from Intel or Nvidia at this point which makes it about as 'proprietary' as DX10.1 currently is (Kudos to ATi for having the two latest DX revisions be basically proprietary due to the slowness of the green and blue teams!)
The other thing is, why are we complaining about a "midstream" part that performs well above a typical midstream system? How many games need a card faster than current 4870 hardware while pushing cheap 1650x1050 monitors and have <$200 CPUs? Why price cards so cheap that they outrun everything else in the system? If you want to push 3x1080p monitors, you are going to spring for a High-end card anyway, as well as a high end CPU and high end everything else.
Besides, why are we comparing a BRAND NEW card to a bargin bin 4850 from 1.5 years ago?
-Plack
How does that relate to the fact that DX is a proprietary standard which only exists on Microsoft operating systems?
Multiple vendors have input on directx which sees use across multiple platforms.
PhysX runs on CUDA and you need to pay to support it.
chavvdarrr
Veteran
oh, yeah, saying the truth now is "nv pr".DegustatoR---> Full time NV PR exclusively for Beyond3d
Should I go back and search for claims how great DX8.1 is and trueform will change the world?
Or find threads with promises for "GPU computing done right on ATi hardware" ?
Or find where some people wrote: "see, first ever video encoding/decoding software accelerated from GPU" - and it NEVER, EVER worked years after that?
And now claiming that being able to run 1 or 2 games on triple monitors is big deal?!
Who's to guarantee that this feature will not die into oblivion or even disappear from CCP? SHould I search for such "features" that were lost less than an year after shouting loudly about it?
I'm all for faster, better hardware. I'm big fan of AMD - in fact I never had any intel-inside PC. Was pro-S3 and anti-NV, then pro-ATi.
But what some of you do here is shameful and complete rubbish.
Weird, the board IQ is going down even though people are almost the same.
MS cooperates with NV, AMD and others to have a system working for all. The interest of MS is to have broad support. MS is not a direct competitor of the IHVs, they dont produce GPUs.
NV is a direct competitor of AMD.
HTH
Everything is proprietary if we are going that route. Windows and DX is proprietary, so why should people even code games for that? O wait, that is because that is what 90% of the market uses, and because Red, Green and Blue all support it.
CUDA was made by Nvidia for Nvidia hardware. Stream is by ATi for ATi. DX and OpenCL are for anyone to use. DX is still proprietary, but the fact that everyone uses it makes it become standard.
DX10.1 might be considered ATi-only even though it is part of the industry standard DX. Didnt ATi go to microsoft about that one since Nvidia had microsoft cut a bunch of stuff from DX10?
-Plack
CUDA was made by Nvidia for Nvidia hardware. Stream is by ATi for ATi. DX and OpenCL are for anyone to use. DX is still proprietary, but the fact that everyone uses it makes it become standard.
DX10.1 might be considered ATi-only even though it is part of the industry standard DX. Didnt ATi go to microsoft about that one since Nvidia had microsoft cut a bunch of stuff from DX10?
-Plack
IIRC, the register specs since R5xx have been posted....
I'd agree with you if I hadn't played a couple a few days ago.
Sure, Microsoft has to deal with the lowest common denominator a lot, like when ATI was only able to support FP24 and PS2.0 for DX9.
You mean back when nVidia insisted on partial precision so they could get their dx9 checkbox feature?
No difference at all. From an ISV point of view it all comes down to the size of the market. PhysX now (and for a couple of years ahead) will have much higher market penetration than DX11 so it makes more sense for an ISV to implement GPU PhysX first and DX11 later.I think there is a bit of a difference between a vendor supporting the new DX standard and one choosing to support a proprietary feature like PhysX or CUDA.
Well, the rest of the world WILL just stop and wait. Not for "them" but for DX11 having some kind of a footprint in a PC h/w space. And even when it will get some footprint the usage of DX11 effects and functions will be pretty minimal at first.
I mean that CUDA is a developement environment and infrastructure first, proprietary runtime environment second.
Both OpenCL and DXCS have their roots in CUDA and i'm quite sure that most of CUDA tools will work with them eventually -- up to the point where you might be able to write a program once and then "compile" it for CUDA+OpenCL+DXCS automatically.
VisualC++ is proprietary, IC is proprietary but everybody use them and most of "free" alternatives are much worse. Proprietary doesn't mean bad automatically, especially if that's some kind of a developement environment we're talking about.
I understand that AMD has nothing else to do but to bash CUDA and say that OpenCL and DXCS are the future but last time I checked no one was arguing with that even on the NVIDIA side. So all this CUDA/PhysX bashing looks like a lame attempt to get some free publicity after utterly failing with it's own proprietary stuff (CTM, CAL, Stream, etc -- everyone seems to forget that AMD has almost exactly the same proprietary GPU Compute stuff that NV has).
I'd agree with you if I hadn't played a couple a few days ago.
True, I should revise to say 'won't be many DX11 titles for some time'. There is what, Dirt2 and the next Crytek game and a few others with DX11 patches? Both of which look sweet
Cry always goes balls-out regardless of what the market is doing I do hope DX11 gets here soon, but there are still a lot of games that don't even put much of DX10 to use.
-Plack
Deg, I am curious, what was the last time you wrote C?
Just a thought point, do you think ATi has put up money for developers of DX11 games? In the form of ATis form of TWIMTBP? I doubt many studios will choose to support DX11 at first due to the dollars involved in extra programming hours vs. how many boxes will get moved soley for the DX11 checkmark.
But never discount motivated programmers that just want to see sweet features in their games
-Plack
But never discount motivated programmers that just want to see sweet features in their games
-Plack
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