is there a way to disable the P.S. 1.4 support of NV3X?

[DOOM III]

now we've already had P.S. 1.4 disabling tool, is there a similar approach to do the same thing on NV3X?

 

[OpenGL guy]

Re: is there a way to disable the P.S. 1.4 support of NV3X

now we've already had P.S. 1.4 disabling tool, is there a similar approach to do the same thing on NV3X?

Only way is to report PS 1.3 or lower.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Nv3x line of cards support PS 1.4? Since when did this occur?

 

[Ichneumon]

Nv3x line of cards support PS 1.4? Since when did this occur?

If a card reports it is PS 2.0 supporting, that means it supports PS 1.4. all PS versions are backwards compatible... so if a card supports PS 2.0, it has to be able to execute PS 1.4 shaders.

 

[martrox]

Nv3x line of cards support PS 1.4? Since when did this occur?

If a card reports it is PS 2.0 supporting, that means it supports PS 1.4. all PS versions are backwards compatible... so if a card supports PS 2.0, it has to be able to execute PS 1.4 shaders.

But not nessasarily with any speed..........

 

[Grall]

Oh come on, Martrox. Why would anyone intentionally make a slow ps1.4 shading unit? It would just mean crappy performance on any software using ps1.4 shaders, so people who bought the card would get angry and the company would look bad.


*G*

 

[Ante P]

It would just mean crappy performance on any software using ps1.4 shaders, so people who bought the card would get angry and the company would look bad.

Sorta like the current FX situation.
just couldn't resist

 

[martrox]

Well..... remember...... Speed kills.........

 

[KimB]

Oh come on, Martrox. Why would anyone intentionally make a slow ps1.4 shading unit? It would just mean crappy performance on any software using ps1.4 shaders, so people who bought the card would get angry and the company would look bad.

Well, I believe for PS 1.4 to work properly, it needs higher than 12-bit integer precision (I think the R200 actually uses 16-bit integer?). This means that when running PS 1.4, the GeForce FX must use nothing but floating-point calculations (since the integer calcs are too low-precision), leaving the FX at approximately only 1/3 of its execution units running. The possible speed boost available from dropping to 1.1-1.3 should be obvious.

 

[Ichneumon]

But not nessasarily with any speed..........

Notice that I only said execute 1.4 shaders... nothing about executing them fast.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Thanks guys. That NV30 supports PS 1.4 argument is old but I never got a conclusion out of it.

People were saying it emualtes PS 1.4 others say that it didn't even work etc...

 

[OpenGL guy]

Well, I believe for PS 1.4 to work properly, it needs higher than 12-bit integer precision (I think the R200 actually uses 16-bit integer?). This means that when running PS 1.4, the GeForce FX must use nothing but floating-point calculations (since the integer calcs are too low-precision), leaving the FX at approximately only 1/3 of its execution units running. The possible speed boost available from dropping to 1.1-1.3 should be obvious.

Except that PS1.1-1.3 can't do everything PS 1.4 can do... If a shader is PS 1.4, it's 1.4 for a reason.

 

[Tagrineth]

Except that PS1.1-1.3 can't do everything PS 1.4 can do... If a shader is PS 1.4, it's 1.4 for a reason.

IIRC, in terms of gaming, the only thing PS1.4 offers is speed improvements (in Radeon series, anyway) due to being able to do a lot more in a single pass.

 

[Testiculus Giganticus]

With PS 1.4 you can do dependant texture operations, something the other shaders aren`t able to offer.Also, PS 1.4 is closer to PS 2.0 from many points of view, and thus it is more future-proof, in a way.And as far as i can remember, it doesn`t specifically require 16-bit integer precision-I may be wrong.

 

[OpenGL guy]

Except that PS1.1-1.3 can't do everything PS 1.4 can do... If a shader is PS 1.4, it's 1.4 for a reason.

IIRC, in terms of gaming, the only thing PS1.4 offers is speed improvements (in Radeon series, anyway) due to being able to do a lot more in a single pass.

Like I said, PS 1.1-1.3 can't do everything that PS 1.4 can do...

 

[Hyp-X]

With PS 1.4 you can do dependant texture operations, something the other shaders aren`t able to offer.

You can do dependant texture operations in PS 1.1 too...

 

[Humus]

Only direct routing from one texture to another through some predefined operations.

 

[KimB]

Like I said, PS 1.1-1.3 can't do everything that PS 1.4 can do...

Every gaming situation I've yet seen states otherwise. The only improvements in using PS 1.4 that I've yet heard about in games have been from the improved dynamic range of PS 1.4, not from the added features.

Even the 3DMark01 "Advanced Pixel Shader" test had a fallback that looked exactly like the PS 1.4 solution.

 

[OpenGL guy]

Like I said, PS 1.1-1.3 can't do everything that PS 1.4 can do...

Every gaming situation I've yet seen states otherwise. The only improvements in using PS 1.4 that I've yet heard about in games have been from the improved dynamic range of PS 1.4, not from the added features.

Even the 3DMark01 "Advanced Pixel Shader" test had a fallback that looked exactly like the PS 1.4 solution.

Are you deliberately trying to be obtuse? Please give me a PS 1.1-1.3 shader that has 6 textures and 16 ALU ops. Give up?

If you want to talk multipass, that's a different story. However, for you to claim that multipass doesn't have a performance impact (as your original post about PS 1.1-1.3 being faster seemed to imply) is ridiculous. If there's no performance impact, please explain why the GeForce 4 series is so slow at GT2 and GT3 in 3D Mark 2003?

Also, why should we even do complex shaders at all when we can just multipass things?

Let's say that nvidia does find a way to use PS 1.1-1.3 instead of PS 1.4 on GT2 and GT3. Is this a good thing? No. Why? Because it's an application specific optimization. Any other application that uses PS 1.4 (and PS 2.0 for that matter) will be slow, unless nvidia releases another "optimized" driver. See where this is going? I can just picture a GeForce FX driver-of-the-week whenever some new game comes out that needs to be "optimized". Of course, I'm sure ISV's will tell nvidia in advance about performance problems so nvidia will have time to get the "optimizations" into the driver before the game comes out. Sure, the gamer is happy, except maybe about having to update the video driver all the time, but anyone doing development will wonder at the poor performance of his GeForce FX card when using PS 1.4 or PS 2.0 shaders that nvidia hasn't hand optimized.

Is this your idea of a "next-gen" architecture?

 

[Tagrineth]

OGL Guy:

IIRC, in terms of gaming, the only thing PS1.4 offers is speed improvements (in Radeon series, anyway) due to being able to do a lot more in a single pass.

As I said, speed improvements due to doing more per pass.