There has been no time since the 3D accelerator came into being where there has been such a difference in abilities between actively selling cards. I'm not even talking about old cards or integrated chipsets. The difference between the GeForce4 MX and the Radeon 9500 is enormous. Even the difference between the GeForce4 MX and the Radeon 9000, both of which sell in the same price range, is huge.
I started seeing the reason for this in a new light because of the recent criticism about 3DMark03. The sentiment that it doesn't represent game performance coupled with the complaint that current games don't even use DX8 features much shows clearly the catch 22 situation hardware users put themselves into.
All the reviews on hardware sites compare how graphics cards run the latest games, or, in some cases, the not so latest games. The single way to judge how good a card is becomes speed. It may be speed with certain "quality features" enabled, but it's still pure speed. If the Radeon 9000 is slower than the GeForce4 MX, then the only conclusion is that it's a worse card, even if it's way more advanced than the GeForce4 MX.
This is only natural, of course. Gamers always want the fastest speed in their games. But it's a snowball, and one that causes developers to stay with a low end features set. Because only speed counts, NVIDIA can get away with releasing chips with few features. Because NVIDIA does so, and these chips are very popular, developers have to code DX7 level code if they want most people to be able to run their games.
This holds the games back. If you think that "DX7 compatibility" is easy, think again. It's not only a matter of writing another rendering path (which is annoying in itself), but the level of graphic features the game uses affects the way the artists must do their work. The same set of artwork won't work the same when rendered in different ways. So supporting several levels of graphic features is more work for both the programmers and artists. No wonder it's not used that much.
DOOM 3 is unique in that it tries to take advantage of all the latest graphic features. I don't think there has ever been a game like that (correct me if I'm wrong -- my memory isn't great). But few developers can afford to do that.
Unfortunately, I don't think this will change. I really wish we had slow DX9 compatible cards instead of fast DX7 ones. It would have made things so much better.
I started seeing the reason for this in a new light because of the recent criticism about 3DMark03. The sentiment that it doesn't represent game performance coupled with the complaint that current games don't even use DX8 features much shows clearly the catch 22 situation hardware users put themselves into.
All the reviews on hardware sites compare how graphics cards run the latest games, or, in some cases, the not so latest games. The single way to judge how good a card is becomes speed. It may be speed with certain "quality features" enabled, but it's still pure speed. If the Radeon 9000 is slower than the GeForce4 MX, then the only conclusion is that it's a worse card, even if it's way more advanced than the GeForce4 MX.
This is only natural, of course. Gamers always want the fastest speed in their games. But it's a snowball, and one that causes developers to stay with a low end features set. Because only speed counts, NVIDIA can get away with releasing chips with few features. Because NVIDIA does so, and these chips are very popular, developers have to code DX7 level code if they want most people to be able to run their games.
This holds the games back. If you think that "DX7 compatibility" is easy, think again. It's not only a matter of writing another rendering path (which is annoying in itself), but the level of graphic features the game uses affects the way the artists must do their work. The same set of artwork won't work the same when rendered in different ways. So supporting several levels of graphic features is more work for both the programmers and artists. No wonder it's not used that much.
DOOM 3 is unique in that it tries to take advantage of all the latest graphic features. I don't think there has ever been a game like that (correct me if I'm wrong -- my memory isn't great). But few developers can afford to do that.
Unfortunately, I don't think this will change. I really wish we had slow DX9 compatible cards instead of fast DX7 ones. It would have made things so much better.
