Looking for good old HL2 partial precision vs full precision shader comparison

[Kaotik]

Figured this would be the most suitable of the forums here to put this on - I'm looking for a comparison of partial precision (FP16) vs full precision (FP24/32) shaders in HL2 - I remember reading a review of it after the "hack" to force FP16 for the FX series came out, and that it did in some degree degrade the image quality, but can't find it no matter how I search for it.

So, anyone got a link to such review, or example pics?

 

[Tim Murray]

Figured this would be the most suitable of the forums here to put this on - I'm looking for a comparison of partial precision (FP16) vs full precision (FP24/32) shaders in HL2 - I remember reading a review of it after the "hack" to force FP16 for the FX series came out, and that it did in some degree degrade the image quality, but can't find it no matter how I search for it.

So, anyone got a link to such review, or example pics?

I remember that the big comparison (at least that I saw) was from (shockingly enough) the Hard forums. I'd start there if I were you.

 

[Kaotik]

I think I found the thread, uh oh, that's quite a many pages to crawl through.... buut only 2 nights without sleep behind me so no worries, still pushing through!

Thanks

 

[AcceleratorX]

Just apply the fix and see for yourself (if you have an NV card that is). The glass shader looks very ugly in FP16 precision, and many of the bumpmaps that simulate the effect of light falling on the ground are not looking good (very blocky).

However, it may not necessarily be due to precision only because there was a user-made installable patch for HL2 which claimed to have reordered the shaders and placed partial precision hints all over the place so as to fit the GeForce FX series (GF6 owners also get around 5% increase in performance). Using this user-made patch, anyone with a 5700 or above was able to play HL2 in DX9 mode smoothly. A bad point is that you will need to reinstall the FP16 patch whenever HL2 is updated through Steam.

 

[Reputator]

Just apply the fix and see for yourself (if you have an NV card that is). The glass shader looks very ugly in FP16 precision, and many of the bumpmaps that simulate the effect of light falling on the ground are not looking good (very blocky).

However, it may not necessarily be due to precision only because there was a user-made installable patch for HL2 which claimed to have reordered the shaders and placed partial precision hints all over the place so as to fit the GeForce FX series (GF6 owners also get around 5% increase in performance). Using this user-made patch, anyone with a 5700 or above was able to play HL2 in DX9 mode smoothly. A bad point is that you will need to reinstall the FP16 patch whenever HL2 is updated through Steam.

I remember that patch. I also remember it didn't have an affect on GF6 hardware.

 

[zed]

spotted this today
http://download.developer.nvidia.co...les/DEMOS/OpenGL/normalization_heuristics.zip

use 'f' to toggle between 16 + 32bit shaders ( u wont see much if any difference, for the majority of materials higher precision doesnt really buy u much )
IIRC from my testing a standard shader ( normalmaped diffuse + specular )
visually theres no difference
gffx 16bit is ~20% quicker than 32bit
gf6 16bit is ~2% quicker

 

[Razor1]

zed I think you are right, it wasn't fp 16 that was causing the artifacts. If we look at FarCry's patch for the gf6's soon after the launch of the gf6's, the nV cards still used fp16 and they didn't have any of the banding artifacts like before. There is just no way fp 16 can cause that kind of artifacts for the shaders being used. nV stated it was a compiler bug, but I don't think that is the case either. There was a speed drop for this fix though, although minute around 3-5 fps for the fx line, the gf 6's I don't remember if there was a performance hit, pretty sure there wasn't.

 

[AcceleratorX]

zed I think you are right, it wasn't fp 16 that was causing the artifacts. If we look at FarCry's patch for the gf6's soon after the launch of the gf6's, the nV cards still used fp16 and they didn't have any of the banding artifacts like before. There is just no way fp 16 can cause that kind of artifacts for the shaders being used. nV stated it was a compiler bug, but I don't think that is the case either. There was a speed drop for this fix though, although minute around 3-5 fps for the fx line, the gf 6's I don't remember if there was a performance hit, pretty sure there wasn't.

The banding artifacts were the result of using integer precision shaders and normalisation cubemaps instead of mathematical normalisation. The FX line did have a performance drop from the 1.3 patch but mostly CryTek managed to compensate it by using Pixel Shader 2.0a wherever possible. GeForce 6 series is actually faster in mathematical normalisation than cubemaps (or so it seems from using 3mood for Doom 3), and hence it didn't lose any speed (precision didn't matter at all in terms of speed).

 

[AcceleratorX]

I remember that patch. I also remember it didn't have an affect on GF6 hardware.

I remember that some people reported minute (2-3 fps) performance gains on 6600GTs and 6800NU cards.

That patch was a gift from God to me when I was still using an FX 5900; it had absolutely no quality drop due to FP16 precision. It was speculated that forcing FP16 using 3Danalyze caused artifacts because the Source engine was encountering an incompatibility. What the problem was, I'll never know; but the patch sure did fix it.

 

[Reputator]

I need to correct myself, I believe what I'm remembering is using 3DAnalyze to force FP16, not a patch. I'm not sure if that method worked right or not, but I don't recall a change in IQ or performance. I can't speak for the patch.

 

[AcceleratorX]

I need to correct myself, I believe what I'm remembering is using 3DAnalyze to force FP16, not a patch. I'm not sure if that method worked right or not, but I don't recall a change in IQ or performance. I can't speak for the patch.

Well, a member named "knyz" on the DriverHeaven forums released two patches for Half-Life 2 with reordered FP16 shaders to provide improved performance on the FX series with no IQ loss. He made two patches, the first one was simply the reordering of shaders and the FP16 precision hints, and the second one claimed to have added "HDR", though I never noticed any such thing. Regardless, I got what I wanted = the ability to play HL2 with DX9 graphics at smooth frame rates (no longer an issue since I have a GeForce 6800 GT now).

Anyway, the thread about his second patch is here:

http://www.driverheaven.net/showthread.php?t=63330

The first patch replaced the stdshaderdx9.dll file in the HL2 directory while the second patch relies on ShaderDLL commands in the dxsupport.cfg file to link the game to custom DLL files.

I have both the patches with me but I do not know where I should upload them (and I am not very keen on making a RapidShare account). The websites I got these from no longer seem to be active. Maybe someone can help me upload this so that people can look at it if they wish?

 

[Rootax]

Size of patchs ?

I can upload them if you want. The only problem is, I don't have them, so, if you're ok, you can upload them to me. Do you use Msn, irc, or something ?

(Sorry for my bad english)

 

[AcceleratorX]

Size of patchs ?

I can upload them if you want. The only problem is, I don't have them, so, if you're ok, you can upload them to me. Do you use Msn, irc, or something ?

(Sorry for my bad english)

I'm sorry for being late in my reply. I do have the patches now, both of them together are ~less than 1MB. I do use MSN messenger if that is what you were asking. Let me know by PM how exactly I should send the files to you.

AX

 

[AcceleratorX]

To everyone,

The Half Life 2 partial precision patches are now available for download. I would like to thank Rootax for uploading the files to his server so that it is now available for download. I would also like to thank knyz of DriverHeaven forums for making these two patches that make the game much more playable in DX9 mode for owners of GeForce FX graphics cards.

Click the below link to get the files (again, thanks a lot Rootax)

http://stokage02.free.fr/HL2partialprecisionpatch/


There are two patches available for download, and the details I do know about both of them are:

1)patch hl2 knyz.exe

- Activation of HDR for all DX9 graphics cards (I never saw anything of the sort though)
- Performance increases for GeForce FX and GeForce 6 series (tested on FX 5900, made a noticeable performance increase. Doesn't seem to affect performance on my current 6800GT though)
- Better management of shaders for FX series
- Made DX9 the default mode in HL2 for GeForce FX 5700, 5800, 5900
- Support ATI's HDR (no idea about this)
- New management of water (no visual differences though)
- Activation of parallax mapping (didn't make much of a difference on my 5900 back then)
- Improved stuttering problem on HL2
- Optimizations for various processors and Pentium 4
- White lines problem eliminated (I never had this problem to begin with)

2)patch v2 nvidia.exe

This patch basically reorders the shaders for GeForce FX and 6 series cards and makes optimizations for Intel Pentium 4 processors along with some other CPU optimizations (or so it claims). Possibly the new water management is also included, but I have lost the list of changes for this patch.

Installation:
========

Both patches come with installers. The method is pretty straightforward and I do believe an uninstaller is also included and can be used from Add/Remove programs. I do suggest backing up your dxconfig.cfg and stdshaderdx9.dll files from your HL2 folder.

Please note that updating HL2 will reverse the effects of this patch. So you must reinstall the patch after you update HL2.

Both the patches made a noticeable increase in performance when I was still using an FX 5900. Feel free to use it if you wish.

Regards,
AcceleratorX

http://stokage02.free.fr/HL2partialprecisionpatch/