Unreal Engine 3 on R420 at GDC

[John Reynolds]

Saying you don't sell hardware is 'VERY' misleading. I sometimes think PR thinks everyone is 14 years old.

Aside from the nVidia logo being displayed on startup, in what way does UT2003/2004 favor one IHV's hardware over the other? I mean, if you're going to cry foul over this particular situation then to be consistent and fair you have to cry foul every time any of the graphics IHVs announce a relationship with a developer. These games haven't pulled a Tiger Woods 2004, and to blame one developer for the actions of others seems rather illogical to me.

 

[McDusty]

Saying you don't sell hardware is 'VERY' misleading. I sometimes think PR thinks everyone is 14 years old.

Im sure if Sony said "We don't sell dog food!", Doomtrooper would chime in with "Ah, well they do, you see ... they made a game called 'Dogs Life', which promoted dogs (over cats), making more kids want dogs, hence more dog food was sold"

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Maybe 'MarkRein' is also complete bullshit....

No, that's his normal posting style.

 

[Toasty]

Okay I just got back to GDC myself.... While I didn't get to see Epic's closed door booth, I did attend the presentation by Tim Sweeny and Mark Rein at the AMD booth (a very worthwhile presentation btw). In their discussions of developing for Unreal Engine III on AMD64 platforms Tim did mention that both ATI and Nvidia had recently provided them with samples of their next generation hardware and that it was "nice" to see performance improve from ~6fps to ~20fps. There was no elaboration as to which product ran at 20fps; my personal take of Tim's comment was that he was indirectly implying that they were both doing about 20fps but that's just conjecture.

Unfortunately that is about the only good tidbit of next-gen hardware info I was able to acquire the entire conference

 

[MuFu]

Cool thread. 8)

Nice to get confirmation that there are R420s are running on 9800XT-esque boards minus the RAM sinks, huh?

The non-Pro perhaps?

 

[Doomtrooper]

Aside from the nVidia logo being displayed on startup, in what way does UT2003/2004 favor one IHV's hardware over the other? I mean, if you're going to cry foul over this particular situation then to be consistent and fair you have to cry foul every time any of the graphics IHVs announce a relationship with a developer. These games haven't pulled a Tiger Woods 2004, and to blame one developer for the actions of others seems rather illogical to me.

I would say 'brilinear' was the start of it...after all it was the main target and was not a big deal to Epic. As I also said it is very hard for a developer to portray hardware superior that is INFERIOR 'without' resorting to what EA did..which was forcing the other card to render a inferior shader and/or not allow a certain visual function.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7006

 

[AlphaWolf]

Aside from the nVidia logo being displayed on startup, in what way does UT2003/2004 favor one IHV's hardware over the other? I mean, if you're going to cry foul over this particular situation then to be consistent and fair you have to cry foul every time any of the graphics IHVs announce a relationship with a developer. These games haven't pulled a Tiger Woods 2004, and to blame one developer for the actions of others seems rather illogical to me.

I would say 'brilinear' was the start of it...after all it was the main target and was not a big deal to Epic. As I also said it is very hard for a developer to portray hardware superior 'without' resorting to what EA did..which was forcing the other card to render a inferior shader and/or not allow a certain visual function.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7006

You are claiming that epic was responsible for brilinear?

 

[Miksu]

Well, I think that the original author of this thread is the same person who started posting some nVidia-hype recently at the nVnews. If someone from nVnews mod-people is reading this thread, maybe they should check the ip from 'Wenzula' and compare that info with someone from this forum.

 

[Doomtrooper]

I think that thread includes some information that you should read, the key point being:

Read into that what you will. Looks like NVIDIA discussed this texture filtering thing with Tim/Epic and Tim knows about it but he didn't say if he/Epic actually approves of it... or whether such an approval is asked for or needed by NVIDIA

We already know what that little 'trick' did for performance

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4772&highlight=filtering

 

[AlphaWolf]

I think that thread includes some information that you should read, the key point being:

Read into that what you will. Looks like NVIDIA discussed this texture filtering thing with Tim/Epic and Tim knows about it but he didn't say if he/Epic actually approves of it... or whether such an approval is asked for or needed by NVIDIA

We already know what that little 'trick' did for performance

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4772&highlight=filtering

Again how does that make Epic responsible for it? They obviously know about it, does that mean they can/want or need to do anything about it? Perhaps if there was a huge outcry from FX card owners Epic would do something to change the situation.

While I am certain most FX owners would prefer to have it as an in game option, I am not sure most would choose trilinear over brilinear given only that choice.

Personally I would like to see it as an option on ATI cards.

 

[Doomtrooper]

Naive is the best word as I can come up with for the above statement

 

[AlphaWolf]

Naive is the best word as I can come up with for the above statement

Your tinfoil hat is on way too tight.

 

[Mark]

cool thread... how about some screenshots from UE3 Mark?

 

[digitalwanderer]

First off, WOW!

You do a damned impressive entrance Mr. Reins, thanks for coming and thanks for clearing things up. Very stylish, very classy; me approves! 8)

I do belive this was some ATI PR joke ...

I very much doubt that ATI's PR would partake in such activities and if there was one board they wouldn't do it at if they were so inclined it would be here.

Yeah, I think ATi is bright enough to know not to mess with B3D if they ever felt like pulling something like that...which I don't think they'd ever do in the first place.

There are far too many easier ways to get FUD out much more credibly if ATI wanted to, and without the risk factor.

ATi just don't want people to know anything about the R420 yet.

 

[Doomtrooper]

Your tinfoil hat is on way too tight.

Are you trying to insinuate a member of the TWIMTBP program (hell probably the base design for that program as Epic signed way back prior to TWIMTBP when 3DFX was still around) would not be allowed 'inclusions'

Let me tell you a little thing called 'reality'...example of reality:

http://www.beyond3d.com/downloads/traod/

Reality:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8176&highlight=tomb+raider

"Core and Eidos believe that Tomb Raider: AOD performs exceptionally well on NVIDIA hardware"

I have a piece of land in Florida for ya.

 

[bloodbob]

*bloodbob buys more tinfoil company shares

 

[Fodder]

example of reality:

If potential customers with FX cards think TRAOD is going to suck on their shiny new card, they don't buy it. That'll halve Eidos' sales (from 2 to 1 ).

 

[kemosabe]

Cool thread. 8)

Nice to get confirmation that there are R420s are running on 9800XT-esque boards minus the RAM sinks, huh?

The non-Pro perhaps?

That's what still bothers me. Unless I was imagining things, Dave seemed to tacitly corroborate the general R420 board design that was described by SpellSinger. Was this a nugget of truth amidst the many exaggerations/lies or just a bizarrely coincidental fabrication?

 

[dizietsma]

I wonder if SpellSinger will ever return to the thread after being outed and if he doesn't how long Doomtrooper will continue to defend him.

Spellsinger is a strange developer IMO, if he comes out with ATi rocks but nvidia will need a psu the size of Windscale ... talk about burning your bridges. It continued to go down hill when Dave tried to wheedle him out on the R420 memory ( no heatsinks needed it seems for the cool running GDDR3 ?? ) and now it seems his guess at describing the scene didn't take into account someone else was there and knew the real deal.

As for Mark Rein swearing, there is a time and a place for swearing and that was it. I think most people would be able to put it into context as Mark's way of showing how outraged he was by such complete bollox.

Regards

Andy

 

[siconik]

Good, Ati owning Nv once more

Good, Ati owning Nv once more

Yeah, same feeling here...

...
I still feel we needed another gen of products with ati still very much in the lead and I'm really hoping that this will still happen. Because finally people were starting to see that nvidia is just a company and will do whatever it takes even if that is lieing to be on top and aren't any better than ati .

But if nvidia wins this gen all the lessons learned will be lost

...
R3x0 6*AA is awesome & nv3x aa is decidedly not.

Based on that, you could fairly reasonably expect nv40 to have inferior aa and r420 to have even better aa (rumor is of 8*aa).

This can manifest itself in making the r420 look like its running higher res.

I think the TWIMTBP $$ just kicked in....and no I'm not kidding.

Heh.