John Carmack talked @ GDC

[karlotta]

the "dlls" have been out for a long long time. My old AMD Tbird had NO real improvement, but then why would it.... Now with my not so old amdXP(sse1)
I get no "real" game improvment. Its bac to the old "who cares about any FPS over 125 ? Well if ya bench the game i guess.
125 is way better than 300, if you play you will know what im talking about.

 

[anaqer]

karlotta,
125 FPS can be taken care of pretty easily wth com_maxfps ( not to mention that most current mods have frame rate independent physics ).
I'd rather like to find out who claimed first that 3DNow! is teh b0rk3d in Q3 and, more importantly, based on what evidence.

 

[Johnny Rotten]

karlotta,
125 FPS can be taken care of pretty easily wth com_maxfps ( not to mention that most current mods have frame rate independent physics ).
I'd rather like to find out who claimed first that 3DNow! is teh b0rk3d in Q3 and, more importantly, based on what evidence.

My understanding is that Q3 is cpu architecture agnostic. These dll's are basically enduser compilations of the virtual machine which have been compiled with different cpu flags depending on which platform the dll was compiled for. Q3 itself has no specialized SSE or 3dnow instructions. If someone could supply a link refuting this (ie proving that id put architecture specific logic into the core Q3 logic) I'd appreciate it.

As to some peoples confusion over how carmack could prefer nvidias drivers in light of all the scandal, their apparent(?) buginess in modelling software etc, I thought it was perfectly clear in his plan posting that he was speaking in the context of a game developer programming under the opengl api, not as an enduser using the drivers in day to day use. In his experience developing with nvidias gl drivers was smoother than with other ihv's gl drivers (he makes an api call, supplies his data, and gets back the expected results).

 

[Sxotty]

Thanks for actually doing some research too clear up the misinformation. It is great instead of hearing "Well some guy said some guy said that they were bad"

 

[T2k]

I'm here though I'm still fighting with one of our Symmetrix - so shortly:

1. If it would be sooo simply why it's never been done?

2. If it supposed to be true, why P4 gainesd nothing from those DLLs, huh? Even if they have been compiled for 3DNow, it's still DLL instead of your vm - so? Where is that claimed overhead? [Edit: I'm talkking about the original DLLs...)

PS: I'll be back sometimes @7PM EST...

OT: Is anybody here familiar with Symnmetrix 3930s and XP Pro w/ QLA2202F? That would be nice if someone could give me some hint why I'm freezing to death or can't see the LUNs when I'm activating the second channel...

 

[T2k]

the "dlls" have been out for a long long time. My old AMD Tbird had NO real improvement, but then why would it.... Now with my not so old amdXP(sse1)
I get no "real" game improvment. Its bac to the old "who cares about any FPS over 125 ? Well if ya bench the game i guess.
125 is way better than 300, if you play you will know what im talking about.

anager was right:

karlotta,
125 FPS can be taken care of pretty easily wth com_maxfps ( not to mention that most current mods have frame rate independent physics ).

FYI, karlotta: you messed up something or you already had them - just like anager. There's no way to not gain extra performance, my friend.

 

[anaqer]

1. If it would be sooo simple why it's never been done?

'cause pure servers ( = 99.999% of the running servers ) kick you for using DLLs.

2. If it's supposed to be true, why P4 gaines nothing from those DLLs, huh? Even if they have been compiled for 3DNow, it's still DLL instead of your vm - so? Where is that claimed overhead? [Edit: I'm talkking about the original DLLs...)

Here's a mirror for the original DLLs, anyone with a P4 care to bench 'em?
http://ond.vein.hu/~rasputin/download/q3/q3dll132.zip

Also, I believe karlotta was talking about "real" performance gain in the sense of "percievable advantage in gaming".

 

[Fred]

People on this board still have ATI blinders, its kinda amusing.

I own a R9800, and I love it, its a permanent addition to my rig.. However i'm the first to admit it doesn't run every modern game out there flawlessly relative to the competition. There are quite a few titles I play that an Nv3xx does considerably better with. See for instance Battlefield Vietnam.

The fact of the matter is, after the initial scathing reviews of the Nv3x, things improved. Over time and driver improvements, it got a lot better, and ended up being a perfectly valid choice for a gfx card.

 

[jpaana]

Here's a mirror for the original DLLs, anyone with a P4 care to bench 'em?
http://ond.vein.hu/~rasputin/download/q3/q3dll132.zip

Tested these on the same machine as yesterday (P4 2.66G, Radeon 8500LE) and got 215.6-217.7 fps, which is around the same as with my own standard compiled ones (the machine had different programs idling in the background than yesterday, no swapping in either case though), but still improvement compared to the 197.8-199.1 fps with the .vm files.

 

[T2k]

People on this board still have ATI blinders, its kinda amusing.

What is this guy smoking? WHat the hell is this ATI-NV thing regarding Q3 and 3DNow?

anager: karlotta said the "dlls" have been out for a long long time. My old AMD Tbird had NO real improvement, but then why would it.... Now with my not so old amdXP(sse1) - I was reflecting on this one...

PS: Symmetrix? Nobody?

PS2: let me go to work... I must... resist... to reply... again... I have to... work...

 

[anaqer]

... I was reflecting on this one...

Sorry, my bad.
No idea what Fred meant, probably he's multitasking a bit too much.

Good luck with that Symmetrix thingie, sadly that level of storage tech is way out of my league.

 

[karlotta]

to stray off topic just a bit more, the 125 IS a real sweet spot. It alows jumps with the rocket that NO other fps can , it is a physics issue. It is differant than Q1, where any increase in fps will increase your physics. Yes the Dlls are enduser, and they dont do squat. My understanding on the cpu issue is id used Intell worstations, like that matters? Does anybody get any "real " game benifit from 3Dnow? yeah thats what i thought, NONE. And we are talking about the Tbird/P3@600 time frame. Which brings this all back into perspective, 1998---- DX(not good) OGL(good) ATI(iffy) Nvidia(better) ect... why wouldnt JC/id work/build a engine around that....( Dollars to Dounuts Next engine is crossplatform).

 

[Pete]

I own a R9800, and I love it, its a permanent addition to my rig.. However i'm the first to admit it doesn't run every modern game out there flawlessly relative to the competition. There are quite a few titles I play that an Nv3xx does considerably better with. See for instance Battlefield Vietnam.

Really? That's curious, as--IIRC--NordicHardware usually shows ATi with the advantage in BF1942. THG's VGA Charts, too, though I think the difference was smaller b/c the setting was a lowly plain 10x7.

 

[karlotta]

"Pete"---as--IIRC--NordicHardware usually shows ATi with the advantage in BF1942. THG's VGA Charts, too, though I think the difference was smaller b/c the setting was a lowly plain 10x7."

BV is not Bat42. BV =morebugs=patches for the masses. Bat42 had a issue with ATI at launch also, and was fixed by a game patch.......