inefficient
Veteran
jb said:
Seriously? You really think adding another 600MB justifies proving that one card is faster than another at 3dc?
This is just one feature! One feature that nearly no-one is even using.
Futuremark: 3DMark06
- Thread starter trinibwoy
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Seriously? You really think adding another 600MB justifies proving that one card is faster than another at 3dc?
This is just one feature! One feature that nearly no-one is even using.
Errr, this is just compression of normals - how many normal maps are there? It would add the size of the compressed normal map(s), or the normals could be compressed on install.
inefficient said:Seriously? You really think adding another 600MB justifies proving that one card is faster than another at 3dc?
This is just one feature! One feature that nearly no-one is even using.
It was more of a counter point. And I really doubt its 600mb mroe in file size unless you have data to back that up
Not including 3dc because its not used that much is a much better reason that it makes the size to big....The latter would require uncompressed normal maps to be in the package though; either solution is going to result in a bigger download package. As to how many normal maps there are in 06, it's anyone's guess but I do know that GT2 in 3DMark03 required 140MB of uncompressed normal maps. One could make some speculative guesses as to how much more one of the tests in 06 requires.Dave Baumann said:
Eh? Uncompressed normals are presumably already there, so compressing on install would result in the same download size now (save for a small conversion routine).Neeyik said:
3dmark06 thus uses green/alpha channel of DXT5 textures for normal maps? In this case 3Dc wouldn't improve performance probably, as it has same bandwidth requirements / memory footprint (though IIRC such dxt5 normal maps need one instruction more in the pixel shader than 3Dc would, so a small performance improvement might be there). Though the quality of the normal maps would be better...Neeyik said:
It still would not necessarily mean you'd need two times the space, for the download package normal maps could be stored in 3Dc only with the same size as the current dxt5 textures (*). Then you can create the DXT5 version of it upon installation, half the values you can put in the dxt5 alpha channel without any recompression, the other half needs to be decompressed/recompressed to the green channel. There should be no loss in quality there, or maybe a very very slight loss compared to when you'd generated it from the uncompressed maps. Obviously, the other way around (3Dc created from DXT5) would be pointless as far as quality is concerned.
(*) not quite true for zipped packages. Since the red/blue components are unused and thus presumably always 0, those DXT5 textures should probably compress somewhat better. Though this only affects 10 bits out of 128, so the potential gain isn't that big.
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I find the griping over the lack of parallax mapping to be really pathetic. Hey, they aren't testing physics on the GPU either (where ATI will presumably win big if you read the GPGPU papers), it's all a conspiracy! I don't see people crying that they should have spherical harmonics/prt or other "future/uncommon today" effects, because those won't show an ATI advantage. Likewise, 3Dc isn't going to improve ATI's performance in 3dMark06, only it's IQ, since it already uses DXT5.
This is the same situation as the vertex heavy shadow volume arguments of past benchmarks. Those favored ATI and nVidia fans were griping the tests were unrealistic. Now ATI f*nb*ys are upset over the results. If '06 showed nVidia soundly losing, none of these red herrings would even be swimming around.
This is the same situation as the vertex heavy shadow volume arguments of past benchmarks. Those favored ATI and nVidia fans were griping the tests were unrealistic. Now ATI f*nb*ys are upset over the results. If '06 showed nVidia soundly losing, none of these red herrings would even be swimming around.
Yeah, I find it pretty funny how similar the tone here is now to that when NV30 was showing so poorly in '03. Right down to the unshaking belief that with future games their favored architecture is going to show it's "real" performance.
I'm not comparing the technology of NV30 to R520, because R520 is a much stronger design then NV30 was. But it sure feels like I've gone into the way-back machine back to the 3DMark 2003 days.
Now WRT the complaints about Nvidia's parts getting no score when AA is enabled; what's wrong with just comparing the SM2.0 scores and including the SM3.0 results with either a 0 for the Nvidia cards or just not even including them in the results becasue they don't support it. I mean, the overall 3DMark score in '06 is a pretty poor way to compare different cards anyway IMO. With the CPU score included it has become more of a platform result and any difference between 2 cards while using the same CPU is going to actually be lessened in the overall 3DMark score because you are getting the exact same score for the CPU.
Basically you are complaining about the inability to do something that it is unadvisable to do in the first place.
I'm not comparing the technology of NV30 to R520, because R520 is a much stronger design then NV30 was. But it sure feels like I've gone into the way-back machine back to the 3DMark 2003 days.
Now WRT the complaints about Nvidia's parts getting no score when AA is enabled; what's wrong with just comparing the SM2.0 scores and including the SM3.0 results with either a 0 for the Nvidia cards or just not even including them in the results becasue they don't support it. I mean, the overall 3DMark score in '06 is a pretty poor way to compare different cards anyway IMO. With the CPU score included it has become more of a platform result and any difference between 2 cards while using the same CPU is going to actually be lessened in the overall 3DMark score because you are getting the exact same score for the CPU.
Basically you are complaining about the inability to do something that it is unadvisable to do in the first place.
Hubert said:
"This totally nullifies Ati's effort put in optimising bandwith usage"
and
"Because few people will bother doing separate game tests (mostly reviewers) most people will just run it, got their score and an idea about their systems capabilities."
For your second point
I can asure you that most people, presumably gamers, when assessing their systems capabilities will run the standard test and see 25fps and then not decide to apply AA/AF on top of that just to decrease their fps further. This is a theoretical test, not a practical one.
On your first point
No, because the SM3 tests where AA cannot be applied for nvidia are heavily gpu biased and not bandwidth limited at all I think. The SM2 tests might be but then the capability of each card can be measured in turn.
Well, it makes no sense to report a complete score with AA on an NV4x, because part will be run with AA, and part either won't be run with AA, or not at all.
It may make some sense, however, to compare the SM2 with AA scores between the NV4x and ATI hardware. I believe this score is reported when 3DMark06 is run with AA enabled.
It may make some sense, however, to compare the SM2 with AA scores between the NV4x and ATI hardware. I believe this score is reported when 3DMark06 is run with AA enabled.
Joe DeFuria
Legend
Chalnoth said:
Using that logic, it makes no sense to report a complete score for certain SM 3.0 NV parts that do not support floating point blending because part of the tests won't run.
And yet, a complete score is in fact given.
This is the problem that I have...it's not consistent.
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros. said:
Then why, when 3dmark03 did a mainly single textured game for GT1 (when most of the current games did multitexturing and future games did shading) did nobody on this forum create a big stink and a 30 page thread to defend nvidia when nvidia got so upset they left the futuremark program ?
And why, also, has a a writer from another web site ever had to defend a negative review of nvidia? Never is my answer ! It constantly happens when it is Ati who is having the negative review or loses in some benchmark.
Although Daves reviews are so neutral it is a marvel ( even though I guess I know he has a leaning to) people on the forum just cannot do likewise.
Hence why I wear my green hat, just to try and balance things up.
It's a lonely cause, but being lonely means I do not have to shower
Well, there's a lot of cards that won't run the SM3 tests. I think that Futuremark's logic was simply that it made sense to sacrifice the comparability of the benchmark a bit in order to get it to run on more hardware.Joe DeFuria said:
There wasn't much of any reason to make such a compromise on the AA situation, as it's a non-default setting.
Joe DeFuria
Legend
Chalnoth said:
Right. So treat them all the same.
I submit that one "small" reason to make the same comprimise with AA is that practically everyone who cares about this benchmark runs these cards with AA enabled at some level...
Look at it this way: FM had a decision to handle the AA scores one way or the other...if it's kind of a toss-up as to which way they should do it...why chose the way that is NOT CONSISTENT with the non AA approach?
Right, so either the NV4x will produce a score that is artificially high or low, depending upon how the comparison is done.Joe DeFuria said:
Much better, if you ask me, to just compare the SM2 AA scores and be done with it. The only thing not reporting a full score does is it doesn't allow you do search for projects on the ORB. It doesn't prevent benchmark sites from reporting scores.
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