No FP support in new drivers??? (44.03)

[galperi1]

I had a little chat with Anton Nilsson from Nordichardware in regards to the 44.03 Detonator XP drivers.
Anton sent in a comparison chart of both versions. The topic of our discussion was differences between the two. Apparently there are none, except for WHQL certification and additional inf file which matches that in the beta version.

Here is a screenshot and a little print out

WHQL on the left, pre-release on the right.

Anton also mentions that the 44.03 drivers do not support floating point textures, floating point cubemaps nor floating point volumetric textures

taken from Nvnews front page

Does this mean Nvidia is once again using FX12 rather than FP16 and FP32???

 

[KimB]

No, it means floating-point data storage formats are not currently supported.

FP32 is necessary for proper texture operation (FP16 and FX12 do not have enough precision).

This lack of support means little currently, but it will be extremely bad if nVidia has trouble getting this support to work before too much time passes (say, two months).

 

[OpenGL guy]

This lack of support means little currently, but it will be extremely bad if nVidia has trouble getting this support to work before too much time passes (say, two months).

The 5800 has been shipping since March, right? DX9 was released in Dec., right? How much more time does nvidia need?

ATi's R300 drivers supported float texture formats (and multiple render targets) with the first DX9 driver.

 

[T2k]

No, it means floating-point data storage formats are not currently supported.

Tell me, it's a jokee... if not, it's preposterous.

This lack of support means little currently, but it will be extremely bad if nVidia has trouble getting this support to work before too much time passes (say, two months).

Wouldn't you say two weeks?

 

[Kristof]

This lack of support means little currently, but it will be extremely bad if nVidia has trouble getting this support to work before too much time passes (say, two months).

IMHO 2 months is rediculous for something as basic as a texture format. The hardware either supports it or does not, it writes bytes and it reads bytes. All the driver needs to do is send the data up there in the correct format. How much time has NVIDIA had to put support into their drivers for this ? I mean they must have been debugging this hardware for how long (given delay, after delay, after delay) ? You don't wait for (final) silicon to start writing drivers... or at least I hope they don't wait... I wouldn't mind if in the first sets they occasionally got the strides wrong (which is understandable)...

What about registers are they now exposing the correct numbers as they have claimed in all their marketing docs ? Or are they still reserving some of their temp registers in both vertex and pixel shaders for what one can only assume to be driver level work-a-rounds ?

K-

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Guys, Chalnoth was using 2 months as an example. Stop belting him over it.

 

[Tahir2]

It was a bad example so he got belted over it.

When it rains, it pours - the GFFX is going to change NVIDIA for the better hopefully (for all the wrong reasons).

 

[Kristof]

Update from DirectX Dev Mailing List :

I spoke to one of the NVIDIA engineers at GDC and he told me that their floating point surface support was problematic. There's apparently a requirement that drivers should be able to auto-mipmap surfaces of this type - and the hardware simply can't do it.

He could be wrong, so treat this as only barely more credible than rumour.
But it may be that the float surface support will be a long time in coming on the FX5800.

I have no idea whether they've addressed this (or will address this) in future hardware or with driver work-arounds.

Talk to them to find out...

Thanks,


Richard "7 of 5" Huddy
European Developer Relations Manager, ATI

Hmmm, interesting ...

 

[JohnH]

Hmm, I find that an odd statement given that Dx9 doesn't actually require any kind of filtering to be supported on the float formats, why would you need to add auto mip map generation for something that can't use it. Might go back and read the spec again...

Didn't think they exposed auto mipmapping either currently, so...

 

[volt]

Forgot to add that MRT is not supported either.

 

[LeStoffer]

Hmm, I find that an odd statement given that Dx9 doesn't actually require any kind of filtering to be supported on the float formats, why would you need to add auto mip map generation for something that can't use it. Might go back and read the spec again...

I remember it the same way (no requirements for filtering).

Kristof, thanks for the Richard Huddy info. I guess he just couldn't resist!

 

[Kristof]

I must say I found his statement odd as well given that something as basic as filtering is not required for float formats but somethings as advanced as automipmap would... so Richard might be wrong on this one or he was incorrectly informed.

K-

 

[Luminescent]

What about the information in this thread here? It states there is support for more than one fp texture format in hardware.

 

[jb]

This lack of support means little currently, but it will be extremely bad if nVidia has trouble getting this support to work before too much time passes (say, two months).

2 months = Beacuse they have spent all of their time "optimizing" for 3dmark sorry just trying to have a bit of fun

 

[PiNkY]

While I understand the technical nature of this forum, I guess that until some DX9 appilcations depending on that feature are actually released (besides competitor demos/screensavers) issues like these are probably not too relevant to the average customer and should, imho, not be overrated.

 

[MuFu]

Yes, but it is crucial for nV that they get these things functional (in the dev drivers, at least), otherwise even more ISVs are going to look to ATi products as their primary DX9 development platform.

MuFu.

 

[Hellbinder]

Yes, but it is crucial for nV that they get these things functional (in the dev drivers, at least), otherwise even more ISVs are going to look to ATi products as their primary DX9 development platform.

MuFu.

They should *already* have turned to and be using ATi as their primary DX9 platform. ATi has had their product out and working for almost a YEAR. While Nvidia still has not even ONE fully functional DX9 card for sale.

IMHO, Nvidia has done nothing in a long time to deserve this almost Religeous Developer Loyallty.

 

[PiNkY]

IMHO, Nvidia has done nothing in a long time to deserve this almost Religeous Developer Loyallty

Well they still are in most gamers' machines, so you simply cannot ignore them as a developer. Also people like Carmac and others still seem to hold them in very high regard in terms of driver developement and I guess there is a reason for this. Also with DX8 content finally coming out, it would be hard to argue, imo, that everything is primarilly geared towards gf3.

 

[Moose]

]

IMHO, Nvidia has done nothing in a long time to deserve this almost Religeous Developer Loyallty.

cha'ching!
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

[MuFu]

Way to make an entrance, Moose.

MuFu.