How much do features matter?

[Mendel]

Now, let's talk about how enthusiastic are you guys about features in graphics cards. Im quite a feature freak, I bought geforce 1 just to be able to put T&L on in 3dmark 2000, geforce 3 just to see 3dmark 2001's nature and radeon 9700 for 03.

How many of you people are feature junkies like me? Did you perhaps get rid of your geforce fx in favor of r3xx just to see shadermark in all its glory? Maybe you fear that you will need to change your x800 to something nv4x based to see some of the future benchmark effects?

I know I'm quite confused right now as to which card would be better in terms of features. Yes, geforce 6 has shader 3.0 but lacks 3dc and doesn't even run some of the current benchmarks any better than fx series (I heard they don't display all tests in some benchmarks) Also I'm a bit confuzzled about how much temporal AA matters.

Now, to get most features, which graphics card should feature junkies dream about?

please, no flame war.

edit: my point is, I do not want to see anything like "No hardware support - skipping test" ever again. how much do you fear of such messages?

 

[Diplo]

I think the most important thing to bare in mind is that hardware features are only useful if they are utilised by software...

 

[Mendel]

but they don't have to be useful to be fun
Ok I admit it's handy if there is at least one software (like some benchmark) readily available supporting the feature, so one can easily awe at the glorious graphical excellence of the effect.

edit: of course one can always do the code oneself... but at least the driver and support better be there, unlike the situation right now with sm 3

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I think the most important thing to bare in mind is that hardware features are only useful if they are utilised by software...

Agreed, and those features have to be usable at game-playing speed. It's no use having loads of features if you have to turn them off to get a playable game.

 

[Mendel]

Agreed, and those features have to be usable at game-playing speed.

I have this thing in single player games... I never turn the details down, even if it makes game so choppy it makes the playing harder... i will rather down the skill/difficulty level than graphics details.

In multiplayer its another story altogether. Even if I have great framerates in high detail, i tend to cut down to minimum and beyond... by editing cfg files to make textures as blurry as possible, take of any and all effect that might hinder my sight, try to make enemies a bit more visible from the ground... to ensure there is never a hitch in the framerate and that i get to react a bit better than anyone else... to ultimately reach the top of the scorelist.

Why? When in multiplayer, i tend to think my role is as a player of the game to achieve a high score. I always remember it is a "game", and I need to win.

In single player there is no "game"
There is "world". I need to "believe" i'm part of that world and so I need as much detail as possible. In single player I go sight seeing, in multiplayer I already know the sights so there is no point and no time for them

It's no use having loads of features if you have to turn them off to get a playable game.

But sometimes a certain feature is *required* to run the application/test at all...

edit: damn you guys for being such rational, sensible and logical beings. I see you as no fit to my irrational feature junkie club

 

[BRiT]

For me the features have to be nearly immediately beneficial. My focus over the past two years has been IQ (AA/AF) and speed. Sure I'd love to have newly programable features, but it does me, as a gamer, no good if I have to wait to long for those features to be used.

I'm waiting for the two upcoming biggest games to come out (Doom3 / HL2) to see how things fair on the latest cards. My 9800 nonPro is tiding me over for now.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I prefer to play my games with max IQ at 2fps.

That way I get to see the entire scenery.

 

[Mendel]

ok this may saund rediculous but i will go further and make a claim:

"Games generally look better when the framerate is bad"

to put it the other way, some visually stunning level in certain game doesn't look as good anymore when it finally runs well.

another claim:

"If you just glance at the screen while someone is playing, even older game may look stunningly brilliant for a while. But if you keep watching, it doesn't look so good anymore."

This happened to me for example with battlefield recently during a lan session while I was severely drunk... It was like i was walking from sauna to fridge to get a beer and others had started playing... i looked at my friends monitor casually while passing through... I was like WHOAH! WHOOTS DAT! ... oh, it just battlefield, never mind...

 

[ET]

edit: my point is, I do not want to see anything like "No hardware support - skipping test" ever again. how much do you fear of such messages?

I do like seeing all the latest demos. Having good cards at works helps, because then I don't need to have these features at home. I mean, is there really need to see a certain test of a benchmark more than once?

I like new features, reading about them, etc., but I don't feel like upgrading that often. It costs a lot and I don't game that much for it to make a difference. If people didn't insist on giving me new cards (thanks, Beyond3D!), I'd have probably still kept my GeForce3, or at most upgraded to a used GeForce4.

 

[Mendel]

I do like seeing all the latest demos. Having good cards at works helps, because then I don't need to have these features at home. I mean, is there really need to see a certain test of a benchmark more than once?

Mmm... what about showing it to your friends and bragging about it? 8)