Bizarre's Technical Director Talks about Next Gen Consoles

[Jawed]

I found this part interesting. Am I reading it wrong or is what he's saying going against what people here have been saying about shader balance being in favor of pixels. Might this change in next gen games?

If so then the unified shader aproach may turn out for the best.

Well here's a screenshot from ATI's Project tech demo for the release of the X850XTPE:

http://www.cupidity.f9.co.uk/Demo2.jpg

Over 600,000 polys. A 720p frame is 921,600 pixels.

By the way 12fps is due to the 9800 Pro it was running on (with 4xAA). You'd get at least double that on an X850XTPE, and prolly double that again on Xenos...

Jawed

 

[Urian]

By the way 12fps is due to the 9800 Pro it was running on (with 4xAA). You'd get at least double that on an X850XTPE, and prolly double that again on Xenos...

Sorry, but no.

X850 runs at 520Mhz no?

520*16*8=Pixel Shader=66,5GFLOPS.

520*6*8=Vertex Shader=30GFLOPS.

If I am not wrong the Power of the X850 is 96GFLOPS and Xenos power is 240GFLOPS.

 

[Jawed]

Hey, until we see that tech demo actually running on Xenos, who knows? I'm just guessing.

There's all sorts of fancy stuff going on in that demo, hence the shitty frame rate.

Xenos could be 4x faster for all we know...

I just used that because it's lying around on my hard disk and the number of polys is there for all to see.

Next-gen games are definitely going to be poly-rich...

Jawed

 

[jvd]

urian your forgeting that the efficency of the tech will increase each generation aside from simply increase the clocks .

Your also forgetting that the 9800 isn't capable of 4x fsaa at not performance hit to fillrate . The xenos is able to output 4 pixels per rop giving it 4x fsaa at no fillrate cost . The 9800pro can't .


Lots of diffrences . The xenos will be more powerfull than a 9800pro . I would think it be more powerfull than the r420 tech too

 

[seismologist]

What's that supposed to be demoing? It doesn't really looks that impressive...


Some of the more impressive shader applications I've seen have been stuff like lighting and hair modelling which I think are related to pixel shading.

 

[Jawed]

For the second time, I posted that pic so that you can see how many polys there are, and for people to consider the approximate 1:1 ratio between polys and pixels in a scene.

The tech demo is based on early work for Crytek's next generation engine, supposedly (prolly 10 months old now...).

Jawed

 

[seismologist]

the ratio is interesting. How does that number compare to a current gen scene like in Far Cry?

I'm just saying if that's the result of an increase then maybe more poly's isn't the answer and the balance should be shifted to whatever it takes to make better textures and lighting.

Something closer to those Motorstorm renders. Didn't look too poly-rich yet the realism was outstanding.

 

[pc999]

The xenos will be more powerfull than a 9800pro . I would think it be more powerfull than the r420 tech too

If it would´t why are they using a Xenos instead a costum R520?

I expect Xenos to be better than a R520 (or they would use a R520), a at the R520 reviews we should be able to do some nice comparitions with RSX (if it ided is a g70+ ~10%speed).

 

[jvd]

why ?

Because the xenos was made for a certian reason . To give 720p at 4xfsaa and fp 10 hdr with very very little performanceh it . So they were given a res that all games will run at and worked towards it .

In the pc you have many diffrent target reses and the 10mbs of edram woulnd't serve you well at 1600x1200 also the rops in the xenos wont be enough to fill scenes bigger . Add t othe fact that alot of what xenos offers dx 9 doesn't take advantage of .

r520 is aimed at extremely high res with extremely high fsaa and with fairly uncomplex shaders . Its in a market where its main advantage will be ints fillrate and bandwidth advantage over the last generation as the games its running will be made for those generations .


You will see a form of xenos in the pc sector . Just not at this time .

 

[c0_re]

So in my eyes, this new generation of consoles is extremely exciting, and on an open and even playing field - it's all going to come down to the developers, the games and how it's all marketed!

Great read had nice things to say about both systems, exactly how I feel.

 

[cthellis42]

Utterly refreshing, IMHO. Hooray for techies! ^_^

 

[aeriic]

Both use GPU's based on the same base direct-x9, shader 3.0 functionality, but somewhat extended in ATI's case.

I found this comment interesting. What extra DX functionality could this be? Would it be stuff which will be in WGF 2.0, or custom? And finally: could the combination of RSX and Cell be able to emulate this functionality as well, and if so, why would ATI/MS decide to include this on the GPU itself instead of using CPU/GPU to achieve this?...

 

[DotProduct]

The Pixel <-> Polygon Rate doesnt stop at 1.
For games with an huge amount of ovedraw even 3million polygons make sense + something like 1/2 of the polygons will be transformed, but not rasterized due to backface culling.