nvidia shader compiler details

[kemosabe]

Hey, Dig.....you do realize what you're missing next door, right?

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=252939#252939

 

[StealthHawk]

At the end of the day if you really really really REALLY must nitpick of something this small then just download one of the many sets of "quality" drivers that have been made, will sort out all your problems.

Well theres nothing that i can do which will stop ANY company from doing what they obviously think is best for their situation, PERSONALLY i don't see much difference when these "optimisations" are put in, but i do understand why they're put in. Moaning on a forum wont solve anything other than cause arguments between users etc. Not only do i not see much difference but IF i was that botherd i'd do something about it, download changed drivers, turn up the quality more whatever. Its not a realistic problem, its just nitpicking.

I see where you're coming from, but at the end of the day its all rather blown out of proportion, IQ blah blah blah, as i said if you're really THAT bothered then simply download quality enhanced drivers, i've heard they're very good.

Let me re-phrase that, its not an unresolvable problem, i think thats more accurate to what i actually mean.

Just reading about the new starstorm drivers, they're based of the latest official forceware and so incorperate all the bug fixes and everything, yet have detail quality increased and hacks so things like PS2.0 work in games which were previously forced off, sounds like theres lots of other fixes aswell.

As far as i know the omega drivers are also very good for texture quality.

I'm going to download the starstorm drivers now and test them out see what they're like

I never said you couldn't edit the drivers yourself, i exepct you're very competant. However my point was simply that the official nvidia drivers are not the only drivers end users can freely download.

I guess you missed my point Either I'm not being clear enough, or you're not believing what I'm saying.

My point is this: Contrary to what you've been pushing, there is no way for me or anyone else to get full quality and turn off "features" like forced brilinear. I can't do it, and "quality" drivers can't either.

 

[bloodbob]

So we are forced with 50% bilinear / 50% trilinear now so if we put up with that what to stop IHV forcing 75% bilinear / 25% trilinear? then 87.5% bilinear / 12.5% trilinear?

 

[ChrisRay]

So we are forced with 50% bilinear / 50% trilinear now so if we put up with that what to stop IHV forcing 75% bilinear / 25% trilinear? then 87.5% bilinear / 12.5% trilinear?

doesnt Nvidia alrdy do 75%/25% in the performance Mode of there drivers. And Pure Billinear in High performance mode

 

[Deco-Rj]

Some ppl here are very concerned about consumer's rights..so:

I feel cheated that Ati created the ps2.0 standard and led us to belive that it was nice and fast and that's what dx9 was and would be about.

Now, with ps3.0 knoking at the door, anyone can see that ps2.0 was all about making Ati's short shader crunching hardware look better, and thousands of ppl who bought Ati cards to play Hl2 and Ps2.0 games are just stuck with hardware that probably will never see another ps2.0 title ever again.

And ppl are here complaining about the consumer's rights and trying to find "cheats" or "optimizations" that noone notices and noone cares about.

hehe Ati is really nice to consumers, they even made a little Hl2 Dollar's for Fps chart to boost sales on 9600's but now..oops..there's no Hl2, and oops...they decided not to bundle anymore, but just forgot to tell the buyers! And guess what? most of the bundles were cancelled on the 9600's! As Ati decided to charge the "partners" for the bundle they of course cancelled them on the cheaper hardware..


Ps 3.0?

"let's try to steer atention away from that until we have decent performance on r500"...

I just would like to see the reaction of the ppl that were here last year screaming their panties off at Nvidia for not being "full dx9/ps 2.0 compatible" now that Ati won't have a single full dx9/ps3.0 compatible piece of hardware untill 2005.


So please, find whatever bugs or cheats or optimizations you must, but cut the crap on consumer's rights.

 

[FUDie]

Some ppl here are very concerned about consumer's rights..so:

You joined just to spew this crap?

I feel cheated that Ati created the ps2.0 standard and led us to belive that it was nice and fast and that's what dx9 was and would be about.

ATI created ps2.0? Sorry that's incorrect. It was a collaboration betwen MS, ATI and NVIDIA at the very least. You think ATI proposed _pp?

Now, with ps3.0 knoking at the door, anyone can see that ps2.0 was all about making Ati's short shader crunching hardware look better, and thousands of ppl who bought Ati cards to play Hl2 and Ps2.0 games are just stuck with hardware that probably will never see another ps2.0 title ever again.

That's funny! What about NVIDIA's PS 2.x products? Sure, they can run longer shaders than ATI's products, but what does it matter when they are so slow anyway? Who's the one promoting slow products? I think you are confused.

And ppl are here complaining about the consumer's rights and trying to find "cheats" or "optimizations" that noone notices and noone cares about.

People do care, why you think people are discussing it? You have a weird sense of logic.

Ps 3.0?

"let's try to steer atention away from that until we have decent performance on r500"...

I just would like to see the reaction of the ppl that were here last year screaming their panties off at Nvidia for not being "full dx9/ps 2.0 compatible" now that Ati won't have a single full dx9/ps3.0 compatible piece of hardware untill 2005.

Pretty poor comparison. Is ATI marketing their PS 2.0 parts as PS 3.0? No, ATI is selling PS 2.0 parts that are very good products. Is there better on the market? Nope. So please tell me how consumers have been hurt.

So please, find whatever bugs or cheats or optimizations you must, but cut the crap on consumer's rights.

You really are from left field, eh?

-FUDie

 

[Dave Baumann]

Errr, you don't just decided to cancel a bundle - the deal would have been struck for a certain number of games for free and then more at a discounted rate. Its not unreasonable to assume they would sell the alloted amount and then need to recoup the charges for the ones that they are paying for.

As for the PS2.0 standard - that is a Microsoft standard, that ATI supported first. Every vendor that produced a new graphics chip in 2003 supports that standard, as will Intel in 2004. It will be the base platform for some time thanks to this and games will be designed PS2 and greater (witness Unreal Engine 3).

 

[dan2097]

Some ppl here are very concerned about consumer's rights..so:

I feel cheated that Ati created the ps2.0 standard and led us to belive that it was nice and fast and that's what dx9 was and would be about.

Now, with ps3.0 knoking at the door, anyone can see that ps2.0 was all about making Ati's short shader crunching hardware look better, and thousands of ppl who bought Ati cards to play Hl2 and Ps2.0 games are just stuck with hardware that probably will never see another ps2.0 title ever again.

And ppl are here complaining about the consumer's rights and trying to find "cheats" or "optimizations" that noone notices and noone cares about.

hehe Ati is really nice to consumers, they even made a little Hl2 Dollar's for Fps chart to boost sales on 9600's but now..oops..there's no Hl2, and oops...they decided not to bundle anymore, but just forgot to tell the buyers! And guess what? most of the bundles were cancelled on the 9600's! As Ati decided to charge the "partners" for the bundle they of course cancelled them on the cheaper hardware..


Ps 3.0?

"let's try to steer atention away from that until we have decent performance on r500"...

I just would like to see the reaction of the ppl that were here last year screaming their panties off at Nvidia for not being "full dx9/ps 2.0 compatible" now that Ati won't have a single full dx9/ps3.0 compatible piece of hardware untill 2005.


So please, find whatever bugs or cheats or optimizations you must, but cut the crap on consumer's rights.

AFAIK the nv3x is even worse at crunching long shaders than the r3xx due to limits like register limitations. ATI also did not create the ps2.0 standard. ps3.0 is not that disimilar from ps3.0 so theres no reason to think ps2.0 will not be used primarily in the future for dx9 shading taking into account its large uptake (all the r3xx and the nv3x and in the future the s3 deltachome X, XGI volario and intels new integrated graphics)

 

[Genghis Presley]

Some ppl here are very concerned about consumer's rights..so:

I feel cheated that Ati created the ps2.0 standard and led us to belive that it was nice and fast and that's what dx9 was and would be about.

Now, with ps3.0 knoking at the door, anyone can see that ps2.0 was all about making Ati's short shader crunching hardware look better, and thousands of ppl who bought Ati cards to play Hl2 and Ps2.0 games are just stuck with hardware that probably will never see another ps2.0 title ever again.

And ppl are here complaining about the consumer's rights and trying to find "cheats" or "optimizations" that noone notices and noone cares about.

hehe Ati is really nice to consumers, they even made a little Hl2 Dollar's for Fps chart to boost sales on 9600's but now..oops..there's no Hl2, and oops...they decided not to bundle anymore, but just forgot to tell the buyers! And guess what? most of the bundles were cancelled on the 9600's! As Ati decided to charge the "partners" for the bundle they of course cancelled them on the cheaper hardware..


Ps 3.0?

"let's try to steer atention away from that until we have decent performance on r500"...

I just would like to see the reaction of the ppl that were here last year screaming their panties off at Nvidia for not being "full dx9/ps 2.0 compatible" now that Ati won't have a single full dx9/ps3.0 compatible piece of hardware untill 2005.


So please, find whatever bugs or cheats or optimizations you must, but cut the crap on consumer's rights.

Troll.

-GP

 

[Tim Murray]

-snip-

Troll.

-GP

Dude, anyone who uses the term "ppl" at B3D is probably a troll.

 

[hoom]

NVIDIA has no ethical responsibility to admit that their product is inferior in any way to the competitions'. Inferior is a subjective term anyway, as there are some things NVIDIA cards do better than ATI cards.

Well lets just for arguement say that NV & ATI are making high tensile structural metal rods.
There are specifications for certain tensile strengths which are in a force per square area format right?
Now if NV releases 'standard x' rod at 10mm diameter, then it is found by independent testing that in fact the 'standard x' rod is of inferior quality material (insufficient force per square area) but they make it with slightly larger diameter to enable it to just about reach the amount of tensile strength that should be expected from a 10mm 'standard x' rod, then the product is actually inferior and people who use it may find that it doesn't fit endpieces properly, or that it may fail in use due to not being quite up to strength or maybe the inferior metal suffers a higher fatigue rate...

NV would have an obligation to stop marketing that rod as being 'standard x'

Its true that gaming gpus are not licenced for life critical applications, but they certainly can financially hurt several other dependant companies or even put them out of business (devs, reviewers, M$, board partners, benchmark vendors, hardware suppliers...).

 

[hoom]

What I'm trying to say is that I would not be so deeply critical of Nv if they had done a meaculpa something like this:

Hey, we did most of the design of fx before the dx9 spec was finalised & were somewhat surprised when M$ chose not to base the dx9 spec on our design and instead added a whole bunch of things that don't go to well with our dx8++ design.
By then it was too late to make a major redesign.

We don't think there'll be many games that actually come out with substantial amounts of ps2.0 shaders before our next chip, this time designed with the full dx9 spec in mind -the nv40- comes out (& it will kick ass).

Until then, our cards are clearly faster at many of the current & upcoming dx7/8 titles.
Furthermore, what we're going to do is invest heavily in developer relations and hire a team of expert shader writers to aid and encourage developers to make the most of the dx8++ features of fx and to take what few ps2.0 shaders do come out & shoehorn them into our hardware so that you the consumer will still get nearly all the benifits of dx9 even though our cards are not per se dx9

Sure its damage control but add in a bit of marketing lingo & it would come across as pretty logical & even positive for NV.

If they'd done that, I wouldn't be so deeply critical.
I'd hope they would really get nv40 right.
I may even have bought an fx5600 as I originally intended rather than winding up somewhat later on with a 9800np after I worked out how sub par nv3x is & how superior r300 was/built up enough $$$ to actually buy an r3x0.
As it is, I hope nv40 bombs & NV goes bye bye because they have lost the right to be at the top through all their bs & cheating.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

What I'm trying to say is that I would not be so deeply critical of Nv if they had done a meaculpa something like this:

Actually, I wouldn't even expect or "demand" nVidia to do that. Asking a company to basically "apologize" for their current product is beyond what I think is really reasonable.

That being said, I'm critical of nVidia primarily because of how exceedingly difficult they try and make "getting at the truth" behind their products.

It's one thing to market your strengths, and downplay your weaknesses. This should be expected. It's something else to:

1) Lie. (pipeline configuration debacle)
2) Cheat. (drivers)
3) Smear. (Discreditation campaign against Futuremark)

That's what really tees me off. Rather than bite the bullet and shave a few bucks off the selling price to compete, they prop up their products by doing things that are beyond the point of "acceptable."

 

[hoom]

But couched in positive marketing style terms, that kind of admission could look quite positive & would for the most part have excused most of the driver cheats etc because everyone could just say 'oh well, they have to do that because M$ didn't lock down the dx9 specs early enough/teamed up with ATI just because NV wanted to have some profit margin on the xbox gpu/NV was trying to push ahead the boundaries while ATI & M$ were sitting back'

Admitting it & doing it openly as a way to get nearly dx9 out of dx8 is much better in my opinion.
I think they would have retained much more market share that way rather than all the disenfranchised ex NV fans there are now.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Admitting it & doing it openly as a way to get nearly dx9 out of dx8 is much better in my opinion.

Well, I agree it would be "better", but I still think it's not particularly reasonable.

 

[hoom]

Better for marketshare, better for public opinion, better for just general openess = reasonable to me

Thats the thing, I don't think NV ever really thought reasonably about it, they just figured they'd be able to bludgeon people into line regardless of the truth.

 

[ChrisRay]

But couched in positive marketing style terms, that kind of admission could look quite positive & would for the most part have excused most of the driver cheats etc because everyone could just say 'oh well, they have to do that because M$ didn't lock down the dx9 specs early enough/teamed up with ATI just because NV wanted to have some profit margin on the xbox gpu/NV was trying to push ahead the boundaries while ATI & M$ were sitting back'

Admitting it & doing it openly as a way to get nearly dx9 out of dx8 is much better in my opinion.
I think they would have retained much more market share that way rather than all the disenfranchised ex NV fans there are now.

Nah, If they had actually gone out of their way to say "Hey Everyone We do DX 9.0 Ok, And DirectX 8.0 great, ATI woulda had a field day with marketing. One thing I have learned about marketing,. Never ever downplay anything about your product, Make it look like the greatest thing since Sliced bread and people will believe it.

Nvidia has actually done a reasonable job of keeping afloat, There original benches, For the FX 5900, 5900 Ultra, 5800 Ultra,(Heck most reputable (IE sites alot of people visited) gave there hardware pretty decent reviews,

Smaller sites may have done helped unfold information later, But with Nvidia using the media in its favor (Gosh I cant help but think how funny it is How Nvidia turned Kyle into their Puppet) They did a good job of marketting their product.

 

[John Reynolds]

People, please stop the back 'n forth sniping at each other.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

People, please stop the back 'n forth sniping at each other.

?? Who's sniping

 

[Doomtrooper]

PS 2.0 will be the standard for DX9 games until PS 3.0 parts become affordable and have good market penetration at the mid level range.
As I've been told many times developers code for the installed user base...I'm looking forward to see PS 3.0 in action and if it offers more visuals than 2.0.

I'm all for progression