Anand has his head in his...

[TKS]

anus is such an unused word. It needs to be used from time to time. but not in the title. Anychance you can edit that for us TKS.
btw, welcome to b3d.

As per request...changed the title to insinuate rather than offend. BTW, thanks for the welcome ES

 

[TKS]

TRUE, and we don't need more stupid threads on the same topic.

Well sxotty, thanks for the welcome to Beyond3d. You're as warm as a pond in Greenland. This being my first forray into the forums here, the board style and operation has not been fully learned...hence my inability to know that another thread was posted about this AND where exactly I should post it. However, instead of using the exclusive 'we' you could have addressed me personally and included me in the membership to the forum here and corrected me as to the right process and/or place to include such a thread...and even if the thread is needed at all.

That post took me a very long time to construct and was thought out much by myself. I'm not a programming wiz...just an enthusiast. Your comment dismissing my post as 'stupid' isn't a good way to start things off for a new member. I can assure you that I did all requested of me in this thread and will strive not to offend anyone nor post 'worthless' info/opinions (nor have I ever since the old BBS days). Sorry you got us off on the wrong foot...And I hope we can get back on the right one.

 

[Reverend]

edit: Rev TRAOD might have a lot of stuff written b/c it is bugy, all the past TR titles have been pathetically buggy so I would not be surprised.

Anand/Derek did not comment on any potential bugs within the game that they may have discovered. They commented on what they perceive as DX9 features that are "needlessly" used. For example, they said that the DoF effect does not necessarily need to be achieved via ps_2_0 shaders. That is not a bug but a choice of implementation. Did Anand/Derek comment on the use of shaders in the rest of their extensive game testing suite? Were those shaders any good and make sense in those games? That's my point.

Tell that to IHVs that have evangelized DoF implementation via shaders. These evagelism documents are both public and is what I would presumed are evangelized in private to developers as well. DoF vis shaders are also "advertised" by hardware review websites during their preview/coverage of new video cards... because that is what those documents supplied by the IHVs say.

Personally, I have found more bugs in TRAOD that pertains to game logic that there are to rendering. But that is not the point of this discussion.

I'm not defending TRAOD just because I spent quite a but of time making it available as a benchmark. I think the gameplay, with its game logic bugs, are not very good. But, again, that is not the point.

Then again, Patric Ojala may have something to say about this

 

[Philipp S. Gerasimov]

the "PS 2.0+" only works in opengl icd but never in d3d driver .

DX9:

PS_2_x with assembler = PS2.0+
PS_2_a with HLSL (with summer 2003 SDK update) = PS2.0+

PS_2_x is not equate ps 2.0+ in somewhere.

fp buffer, 1024 instructions slot ... they still only work in opengl icd .

anywy, i hope Rel55 d3d driver can offer truly fp render target format .

1024 is = 512 instructions + 512 constants
fp textures for nv3x will be ... hmm I cannot say

 

[jjayb]

It's a bit strange to see three pages of explaining TRAOD. Perhaps there's a reason...

Probably the same reason we saw a 3 page write-up about 3dmark03 at HardOCP. A friendly suggestion from an IHV?

 

[Dave Baumann]

Well, it should be fairly obvious thats the case. First, where did Anand and Derek gain that level of knownledge on Pixel Shaders to be telling the developer of Tomb Raider what should be best for his game. Second, ATI certianly aren't going to be telling people not to use DX9 shaders.

Of course, this tirade is fairly pointless - both IHV's will have been in contact with the developer and suggested their methods for how best to implement this, and clearly the developer has decided that PS2.0 is the best way to go for his game.

 

[Pete]

You want a response, you post something a lil on the edge...otherwise people look at it and say, "oh great another opinion on the same lame BS." Hence, why I went with something that a few more people would read. We live in a world where shock value is the only thing...if you don't have the headline, you don't have the readers/viewers.

This is an online forum, not a newspaper. Every post here is "another opinion on the same BS," and most posts are "another same opinion on BS." I view B3D as more sophisticated as other boards, thus "shock value" is not only wasted here, it's frowned upon. And it's obvious you lost viewers/readers because of your needlessly sensationalistic "headline."

I welcome you to this forum, but please reconsider your view on shock value. It may be welcome in other forums, but not here. Most people here are more concerned with signal than noise.

 

[Fred da Roza]

As for the Anand article itself, I find it a bit "odd" that there were comments (mostly criticisms) about the DX9 implementations in TRAOD... but that there were almost none for all those other games that were tested. Not that I disapprove of anyone voicing their opinions on such subjective topics (i.e. are the implementations good or bad?) but if Anand/Derek could spend as much time/pages as they did with expressing their opinions about TRAOD, why haven't they done the same with the rest of the games? Or is it because all those other games really have excellent API feature implementation that Anand/Derek knows about?

It's a bit strange to see three pages of explaining TRAOD. Perhaps there's a reason...

Well, it should be fairly obvious thats the case. First, where did Anand and Derek gain that level of knownledge on Pixel Shaders to be telling the developer of Tomb Raider what should be best for his game. Second, ATI certianly aren't going to be telling people not to use DX9 shaders.

Of course, this tirade is fairly pointless - both IHV's will have been in contact with the developer and suggested their methods for how best to implement this, and clearly the developer has decided that PS2.0 is the best way to go for his game.

Not that I disagree but clearly the 2 of you are suggesting there are ulterior motives behind Anand’s TRAOD comments and possibly Anand’s article. Since Anand was provided with and allowed to publish benchmarks on the NV38 before anyone else I think it would have been naïve to think otherwise. IIRC Kyle mentioned something about having to use the 52.xx dets for the early preview. What is being offered and is expected in return. Is it just an early preview if the det 52.xx are used? Were you offered the same? How heavy handed does nVidia push their agenda and does ATI do exactly the same thing.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Not that I disagree but clearly the 2 of you are suggesting there are ulterior motives behind Anand’s TRAOD comments and possibly Anand’s article.

I’m not suggesting that there were ulterior motives behind the article, I’m just saying that it seems fairly clear where that commentary on TR:AOD has come from.

IIRC Kyle mentioned something about having to use the 52.xx dets for the early preview.

Well, Lars has stated that they were offered the NV38 early, but chose to wait for official drivers.

How heavy handed does nVidia push their agenda and does ATI do exactly the same thing.

I can’t speak for what ATI has done with others, however, I can’t think of an instance where they have had a specific agenda pushed in exchange for a review – on the driver side, its clear that ATI doesn’t even let anyone do a review on non-official drivers at the moment, to my frustration on the 9800XT review.

 

[Fred da Roza]

I’m not suggesting that there were ulterior motives behind the article, I’m just saying that it seems fairly clear where that commentary on TR:AOD has come from.

Was this one of the conditions for the early preview?

Well, Lars has stated that they were offered the NV38 early, but chose to wait for official drivers.

You can't say first hand?

I can’t speak for what ATI has done with others, however, I can’t think of an instance where they have had a specific agenda pushed in exchange for a review – on the driver side, its clear that ATI doesn’t even let anyone do a review on non-official drivers at the moment, to my frustration on the 9800XT review.

So when nVidia provides review samples do they normally set conditions on the review?

 

[ben6]

Conditions, no. They'd like you to use the latest drivers and if you've never done a review for the target market maybe they'd like a preview of the methodology of how you're going to do the review. But will they normally refuse a card based upon your acceptance/non-acceptance of conditions, I've never had NVIDIA do that to me.

I got a Quadro FX 3000 from NVIDIA recently, the only condition was that I keep the PR person informed of the progress of the review. I think that was fair .

 

[Dave Baumann]

I’m not suggesting that there were ulterior motives behind the article, I’m just saying that it seems fairly clear where that commentary on TR:AOD has come from.

Was this one of the conditions for the early preview?

You would have to ask Derek and Anand about that. But my guess is that they have had a breifing in no uncertain terms about this game as a benchmark.

You can't say first hand?

For this, no. Clearly this is an arrangement with NV US PR and given that Anand has this and Tom's and [H] both appear to have been offered but passed they appeared to have been targetting "the big three". Unfortunatly I deal with Euro PR and they are usually behind in terms of samples.

So when nVidia provides review samples do they normally set conditions on the review?

I wouldn't say its normal, but it has occured before. I'll say that it certainly felt that we were far less likely to get access to an NV30 had we not agreed not to used 3DMark03.

 

[WaltC]

I’m not suggesting that there were ulterior motives behind the article, I’m just saying that it seems fairly clear where that commentary on TR:AOD has come from.

After a year of nVidia publicly saying the same thing Anand said, more or less, I should think the source of his opinion would be obvious to everyone at first glance. I would think the source of any similar opinion would be as obvious, in fact. I don't necessarily conclude he has "ulterior motives" for spinning the data as he does here, either, but about the best thing I could say in light of all of the evidence furnished this year by numerous independent and credible sources, information which Anand must ignore in order to state his opinions, is that he is simply out of his depth and is relying on nVidia to steer his opinions in this regard. That's the best thing, the most complimentary, that can be said, I think.

It certainly was no accident to see Eidos trashing its own DX9 software in the same statement in which Eidos plugs nVidia hardware by name, nor was it an accident that the latest patch removes the in-game benchmark which demonstrated the weaknesses of nV3x hardware DX9 feature support. Obviously, this wasn't done for the benefit of Eidos' customers, who I imagine had no objection to the included benchmark, and might have seen it as a software feature in the game which made it a more interesting purchase. Nope, the only intended beneficiary here was the nVidia Corporation, without a doubt. I've never seen a software publisher do something like that to his own software for the sake of an IHV. However, the action is entirely congruent with what nVidia's been doing and saying about such software all year long. There's nothing in the least unique or unusual about nVidia's behavior towards the TR benchmark in this regard.

nVidia's message to whatever portion of the world can be cajoled into listening is, "DX9 software stinks until we say it doesn't." The truth is it only stinks on nV3x, which is why, of course, nVidia is saying it...

Well, Lars has stated that they were offered the NV38 early, but chose to wait for official drivers.

I think there can be no doubt that use of non-officially released drivers was a required part of the deal in showcasing nVidia's prototype, pre-shipping hardware. They did much the same thing with Valve with the 50.xx's, when they declared their shipping DX9 drivers for their shipping DX9 hardware to be "invalid" [quote, unquote] for actually running DX9 games. Instead, the "valid" DX9 drivers were only available to developers and press for the purpose of running comparative benchmarks with their competitor's shipping products and drivers. Gosh, how that must have warmed the souls of nVidia's DX9-product customers everywhere around the world...

I can’t speak for what ATI has done with others, however, I can’t think of an instance where they have had a specific agenda pushed in exchange for a review – on the driver side, its clear that ATI doesn’t even let anyone do a review on non-official drivers at the moment, to my frustration on the 9800XT review.

Yes, instead of a multitude of confusing "beta" drivers released by unknown sources to proliferate the Internet, none of which nVidia claims as "valid" for doing anything except running benchmarks against competitor's products, much less as being fit for public use and nVidia's official support, ATi has pretty much stuck to the really "odd" habit of releasing nothing but public drivers it officially supports all year long.

I just wanted to underscore your comments with my own observations on these matters all year long.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

this my opinion based upon what I read in the review and what we know to be true about the nV30 series.


Anand and the reviewer clearly favor the nV30 for some reason, Although the Radeon card shows it's true power without all of the driver and image quality hacks, they really do not want to concede that it is the DX 9 king and has been since it's launch over 1 year ago. It is quite clear that they ignore obvious driver hacks and do not make clear mention of questionable results.

like it or not, developers that are being forced to code for an inferior ill equipped card will only add cost to the games that we buy and that vendors product line. Nvidia has to get the cash from somewhere and so does anyone who programs for a specific nV30 path.

John Carmack should have told nVidia to get their act together instead of kissing their rear and making a special port just so nVIdia can have near the same frames that everyone else will have. (Doom III looks to be very dated now) and you can bet your last dollar that it was directly releated to nVidia and their crappy hardware called nV3X.

personally I do not think it is reasonable to ask an ATI owner to pay more for a title because their competitor could not produce a quality product.

compare the following

MAX IQ = ATi winner

MAX IQ Rendering speed = ATi winner

DX 9.X performance = ATI winner

DX 8.X performance = Nvidia winner

Quality Drivers = ATi winner (funny how nVidia called the kettle black and got caught doing things far more hedious than anything ATI has done in the last 4 years) Funny how nVidia and ATi have changed places

FSAA quality = ATi winner

ANSIO quality = Nvidia winner with ATi being a very close second (Nvidia has the technically superior solution) but now we come to find out that nVidia has been playing around with that as well)

Cooling solution noise and space = ATi winner (I see that the dustbutser has come back)

Nvidia cannot hope to compete with it's current hardware and I hope that they will get it all sorted out in the nV40 series as competition is good.

 

[TheMightyPuck]

Shouldn't it be "rectum"? Anatomically speaking?

 

[Rugor]

I've posted a lot on this review elsewhere, so I'll add two cents here.

I think it was very shoddy journalism. Anand has previously stated he will not publish any further reviews with unreleased drivers, that went out the window with this review. I don't even want to talk about the screenshots he posted which do nothing to support any of his IQ contentions.

The whole TR:AOD thing made me queasy. The only PS2.0 heavy game in the entire suite, so it's the only one they attack. Gunmetal is seen as a good DX9 benchmark despite the fact Nvidia helped develop it and it uses VS2.0 and PS1.1. The Matrox Parhelia, which is NOT a DX9 card can run Gunmetal in hardware. Makes for a good DX9 bench in my eyes.

It was a sign of how far they have fallen.

 

[jb]

Shouldn't it be "rectum"? Anatomically speaking?

Rectum (wrecked him), heck it all most killed him......

And thus end's Jb professional carer as a comic