no 6800ultra Extreme, still the same 6800ultra

Probably because there was no credible competition.

 

You continue to repeat the same old mistruths as fact. Everytime Nvidia introduced a new tech (PS2.0, large texture support, 32 bit colour, FSAA, T&L, etc) it reduced performance to such levels that even Nvidia was advising customers to turn off these features when they complained of the massive frame rate hits.

The new "features" were always first implemented by Nvidia as marketing checkboxes, not because of any usable functionality until the following generation.

 

Bear in mind that most of the time (up until GF2 at least) 3DFX were usually slightly faster than nVidia in performance.

If performance were truly more important than features & R&D to most buyers nVidia would be the defunct, bankrupt company, not 3dfx, but as we all know thats not how it turned out.

 

This is a somewhat unfortunate point of view. The reality is that developers and programmers typically need hardware support before they can begin experimenting with and testing new technology in their games. These new features are generally well-received by developers. There is also always a lag between when a feature is present in hardware vs when this feature will be utilized in software. It is somewhat slanted to imply that all these features are only good as a marketing checkbox. In the NV4x generation, SM 3.0 is already being embraced by developers as we speak, and there will be games that take advantage of this feature set in the near future.

 

ati.com...
SMARTSHADERâ„¢ HD
Direct X 9.0 Extended Pixel Shaders
Up to 1,536 instructions and 16textures per rendering pass
2nd generation F-buffer technology accelerates multi-pass pixel shader programs with unlimited instructions
32 temporary and constant registers
Facing register for two-sided lighting
128-bit, 64-bit & 32-bit per pixel floating point color formats
Multiple Render Target (MRT) support

I thought i'd address some minor misinformation.

Does the ps2b profile actually support it (or not yet?) or is it just a minor mistake in the comparison table in the x800 review here?

 

Hardware support or not, there is as yet no option in DX9 to support vFace on PS 2.x.

 

4000 posts of drivel.

 

If you're jealous you shouldn't have taken some time off and let him get ahead of you

 

nor is there yet an option to use SM 3.0

 

Um, SM3 has been in DX9 from the start.

 

That's why I can go load up Far Cry PS3.0 and play it on my 6800 Ultra, right? 8)

 

Well when ATI brought out the 9700 Pro SM2.0 could be done immediately too, its only real competition on release was the Ti4600 with its PS1.3 support. Were you pushing for an immediate SM2.0 takeup because the hardware was available?

Nvidia tried to get people to code games to run PS1.1 paths instead of PS2.0 in order to try and maintain performance parity. How is forcing a card with claimed support for PS2.0 to run PS1.1 better than limiting your cards featureset to one you know you can make run well and make a profit on? Getting developers to treat "SM2.0" cards as DX8.1 technology in order to compete sounds a lot more underhanded, than simply limiting the marketing checkboxes on your new hardware to the features it actually supports.

My whole issue is not that SM3.0 is unimportant, because it is a step forward. My problem is that people who said good SM2.0 support was less important than legacy game support, and that PS1.4 was just tacked on and can be ignored, are now jumping on the highest shader model bandwagon. Personally I can't see that much if anything qualitatively different between this jump and the previous ones. I see no reason that is not directly related to Nvidia Marketing and PR why SM3.0 needs an immediate takeup if SM2.0 didn't.

Why do the features in SM3.0 need immediate support when the ones in SM2.0 didn't? Parts with good SM2.0 performance were out well before DX9 (though not from Nvidia) so it wasn't a matter of there being no install base. Even after the 6800 series actually hits the market it's still going to take a while for the technology to trickle down to the mainstream, especially since the other parts haven't even been announced yet. The only reason I can see for pushing a very rapid SM3.0 takeup is blind faith in Nvidia.

The reason I see SM3.0 as being somewhat like PS1.4 is because both shader revisions were more about increasing performance than image quality. In both cases there are very few ingame results that couldn't be achieved with the previous level of shader, but the more advanced paths allow the effects to be generated with fewer passes. That's more a performance benefit than an IQ benefit.

 

Good grief where is the ignore feature? Why must people who know so little post so much?

-FUDie

 

Perhaps if nvidia had a p.s 1.4 capable card out at that time instead of charging 400$ for a p.s 1.3 capable card they would have been in a bettter positon to get p.s 1.4 support for the nv3x .


I look at it this way. Geforce sdr , ddr = To slow to run t&l games by the time they came out (remember giants ?) Geforce 2 , I have no problems with that card . Geforce 3 = to slow run p.s 1.1 games (and to slow to run doom3 which was shown at its launch (yawn) ) geforce 3 ti series. Nice but hey 3 months later the geforce 4 came out .

Geforce 4 = no p.s 1.4 support , why ?

Geforce fx = bad performance in dx 9 games that don't reduce it to a dx 8.1 card .


Now we will find out in a few months where the nv4x lands . I have a feeling it will be between the geforce fx type deal and a geforce 2 deal. Either its features will make it run to slow or it will be just a card that no one has problems with .

 

Yes, and at the time, it looked like nVidia was going to have an excellent low-end SM2 product. They still had a low-end SM2 product, before ATI, but, just like the rest of the NV3x line, it had problems with FP processing. And, by the way, I'm not talking about "immediate SM3 takeup" in software. I'm talking about it in hardware. I think it's ludicroius that ATI should release a new architcture that still only supports SM2.

Nvidia tried to get people to code games to run PS1.1 paths instead of PS2.0 in order to try and maintain performance parity. How is forcing a card with claimed support for PS2.0 to run PS1.1 better than limiting your cards featureset to one you know you can make run well and make a profit on? Getting developers to treat "SM2.0" cards as DX8.1 technology in order to compete sounds a lot more underhanded, than simply limiting the marketing checkboxes on your new hardware to the features it actually supports.

I never said that. There was a reason I never purchased a GeForce FX. But at least nVidia tried to put out a high-technology product with that generation. They didn't have enough integration between the hardware and software people to get it to work right, unfortunately, but that was a mistake. That mistake has been corrected with the NV40.

 

You make it sound like PS1.4 was some industry standard years before the GF4 was released. AFAIK, PS1.4 was just the name Microsoft gave to the set of operations supported by the R200, just like PS1.3 was the name Microsoft gave to the set of operations supported by the NV25.

 

Hey its in dx 8.1 I see no reason why it wasn't supported by nvidia . It was much better than 1.1-1.4 . hell its what the nv3x has to use .

 

Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I know little.

 

Uhm, can I find that just a tad hypocritical sounding considering that nVidia is just now giving SM 2.0 any form of realistic support this generation? :?

 

I don't think that ATI's not supporting SM3.0 on their new hardware is ludicrous at all. They felt it didn't make good business sense to do it, and so they are waiting for their next generation to include it.

The best parallel in the industry that I can see is one that comes from Nvidia. In many ways you can get a correspondence between the move from Gf3, to Gf3Ti500, to Gf4Ti and the one from 9700 Pro to 9800 Pro to X800 XT. It's not an exact match, but it's a fairly close parallel.

Just as the Ti4600 supported a lower shader version than the Radeon 8500, the X800 supports a lower shader version than the 6800. We know which of the two DX8 class cards was more successful, so now we'll have to wait and see which of the others is.

I don't think the R420 is that much different a strategy than Gf2 or Gf4 were. It's a great performance advance over the predecessor with basically similar technology.