[H]'s new 9800XT vs. 5950U review

what is this "paint in colour" feature you speak of? I've never heard of it or see it in the driver control panel

the fact is I can clearly see the difference between ps 1.1 and ps 2.0 in farcry between the cards, its so obvious

 

nvidia stated it was only a performance bug in ut2004

it will be interesting to see if this new driver fixes the iq

 

http://www.ixbt.com/video2/images/fw5656/moredirect3d.png
There are option to show on-screen some stats (number of polygons per frame, used video/agp memory) and "NULL" FF/PS1.1/PS2.0 - the result of the latter being bypassing selected effects - and pixels which are processed become pure white
info from: http://www.ixbt.com/video2/fw5656.shtml , driver versions 56.55 - 56.57
By the words of my friend - forcing PS1.1 gives artefacts in the water if refraction is ON , forcing PS2.0 gives almost "pure white" on whole screen, when forcing PS1.1 - there is no white areas (NULL PS2.0 is ON)
he also claims that setting d3d9_nv30_ps20 = 1 , enables ps2.x, and setting it to 0 enables ps2.0
And lastly - all these claims can be checked easily (and faster0 with tool as 3DAnalyzer... - which he claimed he did. After he said he did used 3danalyzer and it had written ps2.0 shaders, I stopped arguing with him... and wrote here
I just hope someone will clear the mess with Farcry & NV3x

 

Is the lack of detail in the 9800XT CTF Citadel rock image due to the DetailTexMipBias being set at the default of 0.50000 rather than anywhere up from 0.40000 in UT2003.ini file?

Always found it odd that neither ATI or Epic fixed this problem yet the same problem arises in U2 and is likely to in UT2004 aswell. It only applies to the [D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice] and not to [OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice] or [PixoDrv.PixoRenderDevice] as both have DetailTexMipBias set at 0.00000

 

Very nice review, enjoyed reading it. The graphs are awesome. Thanks!

 

Can hope so. I loaded UT2004 and was absolutely apalled by what I saw on my FX 5900 in that game.

 

For those of us who ain't got an FX, what exactly is the bug with UT2k4? What does it look like? (BTW-Hi Chris! Welcome to B3D! )

 

The IQ gets worse for FX with every driver release (AA, AF, precision) -- so I'm not sure how did those "bugs" come around in the first place. Not like UT2004 uses a different engine.

 

Given my (limited) knowledge of how SmartShader works, I don't think this is possible. I believe SmartShader takes effect at buffer swap time, and you have no idea what was used to render the pixels at that time.

 

And to kick in with my limited knowledge of SmartShader, I believe it's only possible for enthusiasts to write shaders for openGL stuff right now...isn't FarCry directX?

 

In the INI file we use I have DetailTexMipBias and DefaultTexMipBias both set at 0.0 under D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice

 

I liked the review too. nice find
the review shows both ati and nvidia has driver problems , but nvidia's were worse in majority of game tests.
but nvidia owners never complain about how bad the drivers are when they have those problems , instead they blame something else other than nvidia.
if both ati and nvidia's has the same problems in the same games , they blame everything on ati drivers,
but they don't blame the game developers or nvidia.

 

Brent, you might want to set DefaultTexMipBias back to default which I believe is -0.50000 (or was it -0.40000, been awhile since I altered it). Besides the sharper still image it greatly improves the 3D effect when wandering around a map.


I forgot to mention that I thought the review was very well put together - aiming for the best "playable" mode is far more useful than worrying about reaching 200fps etc!

It will be interesting to find out whether the Farcry log is logging PS 2.0 driver manipulation or it's the game itself performing this task. If it's the drivers then it's most likely all PS2.0 requests are lowered to PS 1.1 automatically. If so then NV have been quite clever at finding a solution to their PS 2.0 performance problem - even if a bit devious.

 

Yes Far Cry defaults under Direct X 9, but can be run under Open GL. Easiest way: Rename the "XRenderOGL.dll" to "XRenderD3D9.dll" (remember to make a backup of your XRenderD3D9.dll ). In the first demo this worked fine for me, I just hat some weird errors with the water (it was turning dark red depending on the viewpoint). Haven't tried it with the second demo yet.