Anand has Farcry 1.2 patch and tests SM3.0

[Brandon]

Brandon, the numbers between you and AT vary considerably. It almost appears one or more of the cards may not be using AA on both sites benches. Is there a chance the ATI card was not using AA? There is a thread below where a user with the 4.6 drivers selected AA thru the in-game menu and it was not applied (pic in first post). Yet AA was working great when forced thru the CP. Thanks

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33765414

ellingsen: Yes, you and Chris Ray are correct, AA is handled the opposite on ATI cards, you have to use the control panel to set AA in Far Cry. IIRC it was the 61.11 driver where NVIDIA forced users to use the app to set AA in Far Cry instead of the control panel, I remember because I complained about it.

The reason our overall results vary so considerably is because we're using AA & AF on both NVIDIA cards, whereas Anand is using just AF on his NV boards. If you look at both of our ATI numbers with 4xAA/8xAF you'll see they results are pretty similar, with mine a little higher (most likely because my CPU is faster).

I'm sure he'll update his graphs accordingly. Right now the ATI boards are doing more work than the NVIDIA cards (4xAA & 8xAF versus just 8xAF on the NV cards) which is why the consistently come out ahead by such a large margin.[/b]

 

[weeds]

my 5900 with aa set to high in the game, produces 6xaa according to
system.cfg

r_FSAA_samples = "6"

 

[rainz]

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/far_cry_sm30/

nv 40 with AF optimizations OFF

nv 40 with AF optimizations ON

Are you sure those are with optimizations off because Tech-Report got similar numbers to Firingsquad in their test and they left the drivers to default (which would mean optimizations are left on). The FiringSquad review also doesn't indicate they turned it off.

Hi guys, thanks for the email pointing me to this thread, been awhile since I've been on here sorry.

To answer your questions, yes I cut and pasted the system setup page wrong, when copying it over from another article I forgot to update the DX9 section, I will fix that now. I also missed copying my conclusion from the template I was using, that will be fixed shortly!

To address your questions on performance, it looks to me like AT is running his "4xAA/8xAF" Far Cry scores with AA disabled. My bet is he is using the control panel to set AA, which doesn't properly apply AA, you have to set it in the app via "r_FSAA_samples" or boot the game up and adjust it manually. In fact, once I try to set 4xAA in the control panel my scores mirror his exactly. I'll go back and re-run those numbers with just 8xAF so you can all see.

Are you serious Brandon ? How a reviewer can make this kind of error.

RainZ

 

[ellingsen1]

Thanks Brandon,

When I look at PC Perspectives benches of the Ultra versus the XT-PE they also show the Ultra easily beating the XT with AA/AF. I guess these benches are probably messed up also.
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=55&type=expert&pid=5

What's wierd is I never seen so many vastly different results on web sites. I wonder if the path selection and location used in the custom demo makes that big of a difference in the scores?

 

[digitalwanderer]

I'm sure he'll update his graphs accordingly.

Yeah, I'm sure he will....just like he updated that ridiculously questionable Quake3 graph that was pointed out to him was wrong, for MONTHS!

 

[fallguy]

I remember that. Just for kicks, got a link to it? (Im sure it in your favs )

Thanks for the info, and response, Brandon.

 

[John Reynolds]

my 5900 with aa set to high in the game, produces 6xaa according to
system.cfg

r_FSAA_samples = "6"

Hmm, I just checked NVIDIA's reviewers guide for the 6800s and it states that following:

Low = 2x for both
Med = 4x for NV, 2x for ATI
High = 4x for NV, 6x for ATI

But this is avoided by using the Catalyst's CP to set the AA for the game when testing ATI cards, and setting the AA via the application itself for NV boards.

I can see where a reviewer trying to rush something out for a particular time/date could make a mistake or two in this situation.

 

[ChrisRay]

quick question

what do the far cry aa settings equate to in the nvidia and ati cards.

low = ?
medium = ?
high = ?

???????????

Low = 2x for both
med = 4x for both
high = 4x for NV, 6x for ATI

hmm I was under the impression


Low (2x Nvidia)
Medium (4x Nvidia)
(High 4x Nvidia)

Low(2x ATI)
medium (2x Ati)
High (6x ATI)

I was under the impression you had to force AA in the control panel for ATI cards when wanting 4x, Now I could be wrong and my information might be outdated.


*edit* oops I see you updated your post when I was making mine

 

[Brandon]

To answer some of your posts, yes, I think it's an error a reviewer could easily make, because other apps I've tested like IL-2 Sturmovik, LOMAC, and CoD aren't affected by this, you can use the control panel to set AA. Like I said, NVIDIA slipped this change in quietly, I believe in their 61.xx drivers but my memory could be wrong. The max AA NVIDIA supports in Far Cry is 4x with 6800, I've never been able to get the 8x setting to work.

Finally, if you look at the Tech Report article Scott wrote, you'll see the X800 XT PE and 6800U are very close. Granted he isn't using the same demos, but the margin between both boards is slim, NV doesn't have a decisive advantage.

 

[digitalwanderer]

But don't you think that the reviewer should visibly NOTICE the lack of AA?!?!

Jeeze, I sure would. Mebbe this goes a long way to showing why Anand never saw a problem with the nV3x's image quality...

 

[ChrisRay]

I doubt they would notice if they just custom loaded time demos and walked off or something.. When I was doing my benches, I did them in game with fraps. It was very obvious what was happening in Control Panel with Anti Aliasing.

 

[Stryyder]

I knew that review was crap after I read this...

We tried many times to benchmark this game using FRAPS, but our ability to be repeatable was worse than what demo playback gives us.

So, why are we at all OK with using FarCry's built-in demo mode? Because much of FarCry game play has to do with sneaking around, walking through the levels, and taking in the scenery. No, it's not the all-encompassing perfect benchmark, but it isn't the worst thing that we've seen either (*cough* - 3dmark - *cough*). We've compared the demo mode to our very non-repeatable FRAPS benchmarks of walking around levels and we are comfortable with the reliability of the scores that we get from the demo for that purpose.

Also, when we were informed that this patch was coming down the pipe, NVIDIA sent along a couple demos to test the performance difference with the new SM3.0 path enabled. Ubisoft is going to include these 4 demos with their patch, but we were obviously a little wary of just throwing these numbers up. We took a close look at the demos, and we are including them alongside our original custom demo and a new custom demo that we recorded for this article. The reason why we are including the NVIDIA provided demos is that they are definitely sections of the game that are really parts of the gameplay. Whether these are representative of overall gameplay or not, there are definitely experiences in the single player mode of the game that are represented by the demos.

His whole testing methodology is suspect, the fact that he wasn't savy enough to question his results or test on multiple AA/AF levels or the fact that he couldn't see that AA wasn't enabled on the NVIDIA cards is beyond negligent. That review has already been linked on the NVDA Yahoo finance message boards. Not very professional for a professional pay site. You figure an editor or Anand would have checked it.

 

[Stryyder]

I doubt they would notice if they just custom loaded time demos and walked off or something.. When I was doing my benches, I did them in game with fraps. It was very obvious what was happening in Control Panel with Anti Aliasing.

That would be great if they didn't say that there were no image quality issues one would assume they would notice AA not being on in any image quality comparisons.

 

[ChrisRay]

I doubt they would notice if they just custom loaded time demos and walked off or something.. When I was doing my benches, I did them in game with fraps. It was very obvious what was happening in Control Panel with Anti Aliasing.

That would be great if they didn't say that there were no image quality issues one would assume they would notice AA not being on in any image quality comparisons.

Kinda makes you wonder doesnt it? Maybe they just looked at the common scenes such as archive. I know that was one of the first place I looked.

Buit then again, They didnt notice Anti Aliasing. I dunno. You'd have to send these questions to them.

We tried many times to benchmark this game using FRAPS, but our ability to be repeatable was worse than what demo playback gives us.

So, why are we at all OK with using FarCry's built-in demo mode? Because much of FarCry game play has to do with sneaking around, walking through the levels, and taking in the scenery. No, it's not the all-encompassing perfect benchmark, but it isn't the worst thing that we've seen either (*cough* - 3dmark - *cough*). We've compared the demo mode to our very non-repeatable FRAPS benchmarks of walking around levels and we are comfortable with the reliability of the scores that we get from the demo for that purpose.

Also, when we were informed that this patch was coming down the pipe, NVIDIA sent along a couple demos to test the performance difference with the new SM3.0 path enabled. Ubisoft is going to include these 4 demos with their patch, but we were obviously a little wary of just throwing these numbers up. We took a close look at the demos, and we are including them alongside our original custom demo and a new custom demo that we recorded for this article. The reason why we are including the NVIDIA provided demos is that they are definitely sections of the game that are really parts of the gameplay. Whether these are representative of overall gameplay or not, there are definitely experiences in the single player mode of the game that are represented by the demos.

I dont agree with this conclusion either, I had no trouble benchmarking in fraps. It just takes longer. It may have been "too much effort". I'm sure most people here who have tested this patch would agree. The amount of time given to do this was slim to none.

 

[DegustatoR]

Why even leave the AF optimizations enabled for the NV boards? When an app requests AF and trilinear is enabled, trilinear filtering is performed on all texture stages by ATI boards. Unless all testing is being done by just using the CPs to force AF.

AF opts are disabled by default in a new ForceWare CP. TF opts are enabled. Which is exactly as X800's are working (well, not exactly b/c ati made some new 'optimizations' (i'd call them 'cheats' actually) involving texture lod variation for some of mip-levels; these are working on R350 also and nv40 doesn't have anything similar).

 

[jvd]

Which is exactly as X800's are working

Well it depends. What do you have the bar set to under options for ati ?

 

[Galduta]

 

[jvd]

ek what does the 1.2 patch change in sm 2.0 to make it loose 12fps and 8fps respectively ?

 

[AlNom]

get your pitchforks out, guys!!!!! illegal optimizations!!!! burn them at the stake!!!!!!!!

 

[Galduta]

ek what does the 1.2 patch change in sm 2.0 to make it loose 12fps and 8fps respectively ?

I also want to know it..about 15 %