Carmack on best current video cards for Doom3

[pascal]

IMHO we need a better interview than this one to take more deep conclusions.

Dave: is it possible to you to interview Mr. Carmack? I think a B3D interview could be much better than this extremelly simple interview. We could suggest some questions.

What I understand from the interview:
- The Radeon graphics architecture is better (feature set, precision, etc)
- The Radeon microarchitecture (implementation) is not as good/efficient as the GF.
- The drivers need more QA work specially to be used for development of new games.

This rise me some questions:
- Is the Radeon higher precision slowing down the Radeon pipeline?
- Will R300 be better because the team implementing it is the Artx team? Maybe they will do a better implementation of the graphics architecture.
- How much time to have the Radeon drivers in the same level as the GF drivers?

 

[Hellbinder]

pascal, thats not what he is saying at all..

this is what he is saying.

1. the 8500 pixel pipeline is better in every way

2. The Nvidia Vertex pipline is EASIER TO USE, and better implimented.

that is what he is saying.

 

[pascal]

Hellbinder

You said almost the same think I said without the formalities

Where he said nvidia pipeline is easier to use? thanks

 

[pxc]

]pascal, thats not what he is saying at all..

this is what he is saying.

1. the 8500 pixel pipeline is better in every way

hehe, except speed. He says the GF4 does the 2-3 passes faster needed for rendering than the 8500 does in 1 pass.

The R200 was very important for ATi and I'm really looking forward to the R300. NV may have a lot of tricks up their sleeve from purchased 3dfx tech and their experience with efficient memory interfaces, but I think it will be the R300 that comes out as a more interesting part.

 

[Doomtrooper]

You don't need to code it differently. It's just that the GF3 clamps the results when some part of the calculations goes over 1.0, even intermediate results. Due to the higher internal range of up to 8.0 the Radeon 8500 can keep higher numbers in the registers when combining, which allows for better lighting dynamics, as shown in both examples.

I was waiting for you to correct me

Anyhow now that my limited 3d Knowledge has been smashed I will go back to doing what I do best..gaming

 

[Bambers]

hehe, except speed. He says the GF4 does the 2-3 passes faster needed for rendering than the 8500 does in 1 pass.

The ti4600 does run at higher speeds than the 8500.

That picture of the ball showing the diffuse bumpmapping is actually from atis treasure chest demo.

 

[Randell]

Its amazing how six months ago, when JC commented on the GF3v8500 everybody jumped on the ATI drivers/hardwre then, now JC compares the 8500 to the Gf4, and that's really close, ATI are still being jumped on by people. Thats fine, my 8500LE was cheaper than a Gf3Ti200 when I got it. The only Gf4 card I would have bought, the Gf4Ti200 is still not available 7 months later

 

[Humus]

One thing to remember regarding 2-3 pass vs. single pass is that while it saves you some precious bandwidth it costs you a lot in terms of latency. Especially when dealing with 7 texture reads in the same shader, which will be problematic even for a memory controller like the GF4 one. So I wouldn't talk too much about ATi having a poor implementations.

 

[Crusher]

The only Gf4 card I would have bought, the Gf4Ti200 is still not available 7 months later

I'm not sure what that is, but if you mean the GF4 Ti 4200, I saw one in Best Buy last weekend.

 

[pxc]

I was waiting for someone else to call him on that.

The first previews for the GF4 came out on Feb 6, 2002, that's also when the first mention of the Ti4200 came out. That's less than 4 months ago. Ti4200s have been available through mail order for over 3 weeks now and retail at Best Buy for a week.

 

[Randell]

3 things:-

1. One yes its a typo, so shoot me.
2. I meant 7 months after I got my 8500. I should hope that in that time a more competitive product came out.
3. I'm in the UK not good 'ol USA. No Ti4200's here yet.

 

[Evildeus]

3 things:-

1. One yes its a typo, so shoot me.
2. I meant 7 months after I got my 8500. I should hope that in that time a more competitive product came out.
3. I'm in the UK not good 'ol USA. No Ti4200's here yet.

3 http://www.microdirect.co.uk/pricelist/videocards.htm

 

[mboeller]

3 things:-

3. I'm in the UK not good 'ol USA. No Ti4200's here yet.

You have not searched within the last two weeks, or? In germany the
first no name Ti4200-cards are available since mid may

 

[Bambers]

3 things:-

1. One yes its a typo, so shoot me.
2. I meant 7 months after I got my 8500. I should hope that in that time a more competitive product came out.
3. I'm in the UK not good 'ol USA. No Ti4200's here yet.

3 http://www.microdirect.co.uk/pricelist/videocards.htm

Pity they don't say if they have any in stock. I've just used several price comparison sites and checked several online retailers and I cannot find a single ti4200 thats in stock to buy. 128Mb 8500s are also pretty non existant in the UK too.

 

[Randell]

Sure I can show you any number of online prices, but stock? Different matter.
Anyway we digress.

TBH I doubt whether I'll even still be using an 8500 when Doom3 hits the streets

 

[Dave B(TotalVR)]

Evildeus...

Funny you should link to micro-direct, I lived 5 mins walk from it when I was at uni.

Got my monitor from there, not the cheapest (though still cheap) and never had any probs with them.

 

[McElvis]

Evildeus...

Funny you should link to micro-direct, I lived 5 mins walk from it when I was at uni.

Got my monitor from there, not the cheapest (though still cheap) and never had any probs with them.

Yep, I've had dealings with them before. No problems here either.
Not quite as cheap as I can get through trade, but not far off.

 

[Evildeus]

Evildeus...

Funny you should link to micro-direct, I lived 5 mins walk from it when I was at uni.

Got my monitor from there, not the cheapest (though still cheap) and never had any probs with them.

Yes funny .

In fact, i'm french and here we have GF4TI for 2 weeks at least, so i don't really understand why UK doesn't ship some.

 

[Xmas]

Humus's game engine shown here, the 1st shot he is showing what the Geforce 3 and 4 supports with [0,1] while the Radeon 8500 supports [-8, 8]. You can see the difference higher precision rendering does for image quality.

Geforce 3-4
http://esprit.campus.luth.se/~humus/3D/range1.jpg

Sure there are advantages of higher color range, but this is not what the demo looks like on a gf3/4.

 

[Humus]

That's true. The screenshots were from during the development of the engine, I later changed my way of doing things and now it should look the same on both Radeon 8500 and GF3/4.