No one is using PS 1.4! See inside for details.

[OpenGL guy]

A certain IHV has claimed that no one is using PS 1.4 and, therefore, using PS 1.4 in a benchmark is silly. That same IHV has stated that Doom III and UT2003 will be two of the three hottest games (I believe the third was Half-life 2) this year.

Guess what? Doom III and UT2003 both (yes, both) use PS 1.4 or equivalent. Obviously, Doom III is an OpenGL program and there isn't such a thing as "PS 1.4", however, it does use PS 1.4 functionality if supported (assuming better functionality isn't available). UT2003 does actually use PS 1.4.

There you go. Now you know that no one is using PS 1.4... Should John Carmack and Tim Sweeney and co., be offended?

P.S. Of course, I am not giving an exhaustive list of PS 1.4 using programs.

 

[Hellbinder]

Why not???

ATi should have that damn list plastered all over the place.

 

[McElvis]

Maybe they are just trying to get the list 100% accurate.

It would not look good to list a game that then turned out not to support PS1.4...

 

[John Reynolds]

From my understanding, the list of PS1.4 games isn't that 'exhaustive' at all. But when compared against the total # of games that use shaders at all, it's a respectable percentage of such games.

 

[nooneyouknow]

The number of titles is not the issue. The issue is how many games can truly benefit from them? To me, that is the issue. To follow-up on OpenGL Guy's comments, I imagine HL2 will have PS1.4 (and beyond) as well. I can say that the first one was Independance War 2, with the patch they released last October. I imagine with DX9, there will be more games this year supporting PS 1.4 since they only gain install based by using them as opposed to just 2.0 shaders.

 

[Ante P]

Madden 2003
Tiger Woods 2003
Nascar 2003
NeverWinter Nights
Doom3
UT2003
Unreal 2 (ucomming patch which will also add PS 2.0 support, dunno if a similar patch is planned for UT2003)
New World Order
Independance War 2
Shrouded Isles (DAoC expansion)

3DMark2001
3DMark03
ATis own demos
3rd party demos
The Codecreature engine
Mad F/X (3D visualization and animation package)

etc.

I'd say there's plenty of PS1.4 if you just bother to look for it.

And of course Doom3, UT2003/U2, Codecreatures, MadF/X etc. will spawn other titles and mods too for that matter.

 

[Bambers]

A certain IHV has claimed that no one is using PS 1.4 and, therefore, using PS 1.4 in a benchmark is silly. That same IHV has stated that Doom III and UT2003 will be two of the three hottest games (I believe the third was Half-life 2) this year.

Guess what? Doom III and UT2003 both (yes, both) use PS 1.4 or equivalent. Obviously, Doom III is an OpenGL program and there isn't such a thing as "PS 1.4", however, it does use PS 1.4 functionality if supported (assuming better functionality isn't available). UT2003 does actually use PS 1.4.

There you go. Now you know that no one is using PS 1.4... Should John Carmack and Tim Sweeney and co., be offended?

P.S. Of course, I am not giving an exhaustive list of PS 1.4 using programs.

A certain IHV also said this:

Conspicuously absent from these scenes, however, is any ps1.3 pixel shaders. Current DirectX 8.0 (DX8) games, such as Tiger Woods and Unreal Tournament 2003, all use ps1.1 and ps1.3 pixel shaders. Few, if any, are using ps1.4.

Yet both tigerwoods 2003 and ut2003 use ps1.4 don't they?

 

[JD]

Devs are not going to be using 1.4 exclusively as it's ati's tech. It's just a bonus for ati cards. Majority will use 1.1 and probably use this as a fallback from 1.4. Devs must be careful when falling back to 1.1 shaders so that it doesn't screw things up because of precision, rounding or whatever.

 

[Ostsol]

Just to play devil's advocate: other than Doom 3, which among these games -needs- to use PS 1.4 or ATI_fragment_shader in order to achieve the desired effect in a single pass (while PS 1.1-1.3 would use multiple passes)?

 

[OpenGL guy]

Just to play devil's advocate: other than Doom 3, which among these games -needs- to use PS 1.4 or ATI_fragment_shader in order to achieve the desired effect in a single pass (while PS 1.1-1.3 would use multiple passes)?

UT2003. In any event, if you could do it as 1.1 or 1.3 single pass, then there wouldn't be a need to call it 1.4, right?

 

[SpellSinger]

ATI impliment good technology. Microsoft released DX8.1 18 months ago. Games are supporting the technology. Nvidia doesn't like it as they were eclipsed and have used dubious marketing methods to ensure ISV's don't support this more advanced hardware. My respect for Nvidia is gone. I thought they were a great company but now I believe that they have mislead or tricked developers into believing ATI was not as strong in market share and technology. I hope ATI kicks their ass.

 

[jjayb]

Devs are not going to be using 1.4 exclusively as it's ati's tech

Since when did this become "ati's tech"? Funny, I always thought it was dx8.1 tech that anyone could use. Just that some chose not to use it. Now they're crying in their beer.

Nvida must think they are AOL. They think their customers are stupid. Maybe they should come up with a special package. Free aol for 6 months when you buy a gforcefx.

 

[Brent]

IMO ATI was very forward looking with ps 1.4 capability in the 8500

while it may not show a performance increase in games like ut2k3, 3dmark03 shows that it can have positive effects on performance vs. ps 1.1

now that i've read about it more and seen all the comments i'm all for ps 1.4, i see its advantages over ps 1.1-1.3

i hope more games implement it

 

[THe_KELRaTH]

And lets not forget that while it's been discussed that UT2003 / Unreal 2 has PS 1.4 support, whats more important is that it's the Unreal Warfare engine having PS.1 4 support which is the core for many new and future titles.

 

[Reverend]

IMO ATI was very forward looking with ps 1.4 capability in the 8500

And similarly in a "IMO" kinda post, it isn't ATI that is "forward looking" by including ps_1_4 in their 8500.

This applies to every IHV with their latest chips - NVIDIA wasn't "forward looking" with the first available DX8 chip (NV20).

It is about who is able to release the "latest tech" during a certain time period.

while it may not show a performance increase in games like ut2k3, 3dmark03 shows that it can have positive effects on performance vs. ps 1.1

ps_1_4 is more than just the capacity and ability to reduce the number of passes for a given pixel/texture program, which can affect performance... but performance-per-se, I am sure, is not the only consideration.

Your comment, as I quote it, is a telling example.

[edit]NV30 = NV20

 

[Evildeus]

3dmark03 shows that it can have positive effects on performance vs. ps 1.1

Can you explain to me where you see that? Cos i didn't see that when talking with friend and comparing my 4200 to their 8500...

 

[Bjorn]

3dmark03 shows that it can have positive effects on performance vs. ps 1.1

Can you explain to me where you see that? Cos i didn't see that when talking with friend and comparing my 4200 to their 8500...

Edit: -5 + 3 = -2 Still a positive effect though

 

[JD]

Devs are not going to be using 1.4 exclusively as it's ati's tech

Since when did this become "ati's tech"? Funny, I always thought it was dx8.1 tech that anyone could use. Just that some chose not to use it. Now they're crying in their beer.

Nvida must think they are AOL. They think their customers are stupid. Maybe they should come up with a special package. Free aol for 6 months when you buy a gforcefx.

The 1.4ps is very architecture dependant. You need six texture stages for 1.4 and it has that loop back mechanism ie. phase instruction. I think it was put into dx8 to appease Ati.

The way I see it is that devs can take one of two paths either pick common features and run with them or write hw dependant paths. Thus ps1.4 are useful to those who write hw dependant paths and not so useful to those who stick with common features on all hw. And yes, ps1.4 do bring advantage over 1.3. More precision, more instructions, more tex. samplers, easier programming, etc. The same that 2+ shaders bring us. No doubt some will bring back this debate when dx9 games come out but then we will talk 2+ versus 3 shaders or 3+ and on and on...

 

[Evildeus]

Edit: -5 + 3 = -2 Still a positive effect though

Huh?

You are kidding

 

[Hellbinder]

Evildude..

Can you explain to me where you see that? Cos i didn't see that when talking with friend and comparing my 4200 to their 8500...

The 8500 has hardware issues (in the form of some internal limitations) that hold back its performance from what it should be. PS 1.4 cant save it in some cases.

On the other hand, It was shown here and at Rage3d that the R300 series definetly bennefits from the 1.4 optimizations. Adding about 400 points and 3-4 FPS in the heavy Shader tests over PS 1.1 hardware.