Diminishing returns with advancing 3d hardware?

F

Freak'n Big Panda

Regular
It seems like the amount of processing power required to move to every next graphical level is increasing at a rate faster than the hardware can keep up with. If you compare say Reven Shield to GRAW... there's differences for sure, however they are minimal compared to say doom to quake for example. The difference being that GRAW kills my rig (2.2ghz a64 + 7800GTX) whereas raven shield runs absolutely perfectly on my 9500pro and AXP 1600+ from 2002... This might be an over generalization but it seems like new games require rediculous amounts of processing power for very minimal improvements over last gen (GRAW, Fear, X3 etc). If this trend is explained with deminishing returns (as you increase detail and approach photorealistic rendering processing costs will raise exponetially) how is the 3d industry going to adapt to that? People arn't going to want to upgrade (and spend everal hundered dollars) if it only brings a small visible imporvement.

P.S I wasn't really sure where this should go so I posted here, feel free to move it wherever.
 
In my limited knowledge, 3 and 4 year old systems run most of new games not too badly (at low resolutions of course), where as 4 years ago (as I remember) 3 year old systems were basically antiques. Seems heat has slowed down the hot new hardware. Lots of Torque though in terms of playing higher resolutions.
 
I also feel we're spoiled now, reading previews, interviews etc. about doom3 I was still "oooh " and "aaaah", but not much later it turned into "meh."

doom was impressive, duke3D was impressive, quake was impressive, Unreal and Quake3 were great incremental progress (wow, pretty hires textures). Now the jaw-dropping things have been commoditized, and it's hard to be impressed when you already know how games will look in a few years (higher textures and normal map, better real time lighting and shadows.)
There are also "critical points" where things start to look good : good enough res, good enough polygon counts, good enough textures.
In the 2D realm, think VCS 2600, NES, SNES : stone age, dark ages, good enough. Neo-Geo is better than SNES for sure, but you can perceive them both in the same ball park.

it's a bit like cell phones.

- wow, I can take a phone everywhere, how great is that!
- guys look at my new phone, it's tiny!
- A color screen, and midi ringtones!
- my new phone has a camera built-in! marvelous!
- you can play solitaire on your big windows phone.. so what?
- who wants this 3G crap?


gostriker said:
In my limited knowledge, 3 and 4 year old systems run most of new games not too badly (at low resolutions of course), where as 4 years ago (as I remember) 3 year old systems were basically antiques. Seems heat has slowed down the hot new hardware. Lots of Torque though in terms of playing higher resolutions.
Click to expand...

back in 2001-2002 you had games than ran well on a voodoo2 (max payne 1, Q3 powered games..). not too different than running quake 4 on a geforce 4 today. Pixel shader versions complicate the matter though, to play other recent games I'd have to sidegrade to a used 9600 pro, downgrade to a 6200 (people do that) or pay more for a real upgrade.
 
Farcry back in 04 was quite literally incredible to me then. I remember it was one of the key games i wanted an X800XTPE for.

However its also worth noting that DX9 has been around for quite awhile and may be getting bland. Current cards chew up just about any DX9 based games causing CPU bottlenecks to be more apparent where as back in the 9800 and Geforce FX era a game based heavily on DX9 was more prone to being GPU limited.

FEAR is a system hog but certainly runs well on todays hardware, Oblivion is really the only game that comes to mind as being seriously CPU intensive. So much so that performance can be terrible on any new hardware so in that respect i would call it unique.

Perhaps when DX10 gets up and running we'll be right back into a time of gawking at the latest games which will surely stress the best graphics hardware. Plus we'll have 2nd generation Conroe and hopefully a new AMD processor by then that should give a considerable boost at high settings and resolutions.
 
rwolf said:
So spend the extra horse power on physics.
Click to expand...
What extra horse power? :) Just kidding. You have a relevant point though I'm not sure if you are on the same wavelengh as me.

I think there are more things involved in games development than just getting great or even reasonable performance for great or even good graphics. You've brought up the topic of physics. There are just so many areas of focus for a developer. There are just as many areas of focus for gamers. These two don't usually satisfy each other. There are also many other aspects of game developments that the developers themselves have to live with (even be burdened with) but these are things that gamers don't really understand or even really care about. Things like time-to-market constraints; tools limitations; overaiming and failing to reach targets; heck, even plain old sloppyness (anyone care to name games using patently obvious sloppy engines?).

PC gaming is in pretty scary shape at the moment, with a declining percentage of consumer PCs able to run the latest shipping games decently. This pretty much sums up what the thread author complained about. If a developer spends a lot of resources (= time and money) on 3D graphics and less on other aspects of what makes a game, his game is labelled a "3D tech demo". Focus on aspects other than 3D graphics and gamers complain his game looks "just normal".

I will refrain from discussing about other considerations game developers need to contend with beyond "just great graphics" like the thread author seems to be focussing on. Things like the entire PC sub-system, for example.
 
Blazkowicz_ said:
back in 2001-2002 you had games than ran well on a voodoo2 (max payne 1, Q3 powered games..). not too different than running quake 4 on a geforce 4 today. Pixel shader versions complicate the matter though, to play other recent games I'd have to sidegrade to a used 9600 pro, downgrade to a 6200 (people do that) or pay more for a real upgrade.
Click to expand...

You downgraded from a 9600 Pro to a 6200? Why? No game requires SM3.0 right now and the 6200 is not nearly fast enough to enable any such features that get thrown into the SM3.0 area in options. The 9600 Pro is a SM2.0 card after all and that is the clear supported setup these days still.

I personally think we're seeing huge gains with each new generation of hardware. If anything we have to much power and not enough features, or rather, useful features.

Are current generation of video hardware at the $200 and up mark have always seemed very powerful. I dont know if any hardware above $200 of current generations that does not run the newest games out there very well at reasonable resolutions.

If anything, I feel we have ultra expensive high end, but we're getting mid range cards that are producing lots of power relative to the high end. I think its a good time in hardware as long as you dont feel the need to have the very BEST.
 
I think it's more of a case of reaching an "effort" limit rather than hardware limit. The amount and quality of graphical content required is IMMENSE. Quake 1's graphical content could probably have been done by one man.
 
I actually find the most frustrating part of graphics is not the pace of development in 3D images -- but with how 3D images move.

The still visuals look great, but I think we are at a point that even by adding great lighting/shadowing models we are not getting the proper mental feedback because the objects tend to be static and not dynamic (they don't move, break, interact with other objects) and people don't animate well in general. And it is even more noticable with ingame cut scenes where you see this character, which now has spot on lip sync and and gestures, and when you cut back into the game they have a listless face and move like a robot on caffine. Sports games are some of the worse. Even though they may have a couple thousand animations, in specific situations you only have 2 or 3. So everytime a tackle in a football game is from a specific angle you see the same 2 or 3 animations. And no need to comment on how static multi-object animation is where you have every other object unable to interact with the other characters (sometimes even static propers, like a tree, get caught up in such and it just looks horrible, completely breaks the immersion).

I think still graphic visuals are still moving forward at a good click. Crysis looks breathtaking. MGS4, Gears of War, Halo 3 all demo some really great technology. Oblivion and PGR3 are really above what we have seen. Lighting models and shadowing are beginning to really give a good sense of quality and solidness.

But animation has really taken a back seat and doesn't look to be getting better at an equal pace and I think it does hold back our perception of graphics.
 
PC gaming is in pretty scary shape at the moment, with a declining percentage of consumer PCs able to run the latest shipping games decently. This pretty much sums up what the thread author complained about.
Click to expand...

yep I'd say so ^^;; Devs are pushing for the next gen experience but the hardware isn't here, or well it is but it costs a fortune. In my post I was also getting at the fact (IMO anyways.. lol) that new games aren’t looking head and shoulders over what we had last gen. i.e serious sam 2 doesn't look that bad @ 16x12 with 4xAA. Same goes for ut2k3 (and any game based on the warfare engine for that matter). The advances we see in current games are requiring huge amount of system resources for minimal gains in graphical quality. It's not a good situation for the industry to be in. I haven't been truly wowed by a game since the ut2k3 beta leaked in 2002 -_- Things are totally different in the portable world though, any of the new psp games totally blow me away with what they've accomplished in such a small form factor. Even software 3d running on my SE k750 cell phone was impressive, can't say the same for PC games. The next gen consoles will defiantly push the envelope a bit but if this trend continues some serious changes will have to take place in the industry... Only so long the IHVs will be able to charge consumers hundreds of dollars for the minimal advances we're seeing today.
 
I think there are lots of areas to improved other that dont really have much to do with content. Such as draw distance (some games REALLY need to improved on this).

I think there are lots of things that still possible on our current hardware. If anything I think the software (or maybe its the art people?) people who are really behind. A card like the 7600GT or X1600XT still has lots of room to me, in current games they can provide good settings at 1024x768 with good performance.

You can not really judge if hardware is lacking in imporvements if current software isnt truely pushing it.
 
Every time you double the speed are you going to double the IQ no. So quite clearly diminishing returns it quite logical.
 
Freak'n Big Panda said:
yep I'd say so ^^;; Devs are pushing for the next gen experience but the hardware isn't here, or well it is but it costs a fortune. In my post I was also getting at the fact (IMO anyways.. lol) that new games aren’t looking head and shoulders over what we had last gen. i.e serious sam 2 doesn't look that bad @ 16x12 with 4xAA. Same goes for ut2k3 (and any game based on the warfare engine for that matter). The advances we see in current games are requiring huge amount of system resources for minimal gains in graphical quality. It's not a good situation for the industry to be in. I haven't been truly wowed by a game since the ut2k3 beta leaked in 2002 -_- Things are totally different in the portable world though, any of the new psp games totally blow me away with what they've accomplished in such a small form factor. Even software 3d running on my SE k750 cell phone was impressive, can't say the same for PC games. The next gen consoles will defiantly push the envelope a bit but if this trend continues some serious changes will have to take place in the industry... Only so long the IHVs will be able to charge consumers hundreds of dollars for the minimal advances we're seeing today.
Click to expand...


I'd like to see the GPU absorbe the north bridge and be integrated right on the motherboard. Memory required for the CPU and GPU would come through the GPU's memory interface. Eliminate the slots entirely. Have a southbridge connected to the GPU.

Everytime I upgrade I have to throw everything out and start from scratch anyways so why not create disposable PCs.

[ CPU ]
|
[ GPU ] - [ Memory ]
|
[ South Bridge ]​
 
Last edited by a moderator:
rwolf, that'd never work. Unlike you, the majority of people build a system and then upgrade it for a number of years. If the graphics processor was intergrated into the motherboard that'd create a hugly expensive, and often replaced hardware part. Not to many people, especially enthusiast would go for this.
 
Blazkowicz_ said:
back in 2001-2002 you had games than ran well on a voodoo2 (max payne 1, Q3 powered games..). not too different than running quake 4 on a geforce 4 today. Pixel shader versions complicate the matter though, to play other recent games I'd have to sidegrade to a used 9600 pro, downgrade to a 6200 (people do that) or pay more for a real upgrade.
Click to expand...
The 6200 doesn't support FP blending, though, so wouldn't be a good choice. The 7300's would be a better choice for a low-end product, as they support everything the higher-end 7x00 chips support.
 
Skrying said:
rwolf, that'd never work. Unlike you, the majority of people build a system and then upgrade it for a number of years. If the graphics processor was intergrated into the motherboard that'd create a hugly expensive, and often replaced hardware part. Not to many people, especially enthusiast would go for this.
Click to expand...

The majority buy canned systems from hp, dell, and other companies. Computers should be more like appliances.
 
Skrying said:
rwolf, that'd never work. Unlike you, the majority of people build a system and then upgrade it for a number of years. If the graphics processor was intergrated into the motherboard that'd create a hugly expensive, and often replaced hardware part. Not to many people, especially enthusiast would go for this.
Click to expand...
Dude, the graphics processor already is integrated into the motherboard for the majority of low-end systems. It's done for cost reasons.

There won't ever be any reason to integrate higher-end parts into the motherboard, again for cost reasons. It won't make sense to have the required high-speed GPU memory on the motherboard.
 
Chalnoth said:
Dude, the graphics processor already is integrated into the motherboard for the majority of low-end systems. It's done for cost reasons.
Click to expand...

But that's all just lame low-end GPU's. I know of no integrated high-end GPU anywhere nor do I expect to see any, since I also think it would make no sense).
 
Yeah, I didn't read rwolf's original post before replying. I really should have. Yes, integrated graphics will always be low-end, and will likely move even closer to the CPU (I wouldn't be surprised to see some GPU's on the same die before too long). But that model makes zero sense for anything but really low-end graphics.

Now, I did say a long time ago that eventually inter-chip communication may make SOC (System on a Chip) designs perform higher than today's more distributed designs, but I'm no longer certain that's the case. For it to work, it would require large amounts of memory integrated into the die or the packaging, and I'm just no longer sure we'll get process technologies small enough for that to be an improvement over just having more logic and external memory.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top