Nvidia Against 3D Mark 2003

The RISC approach of PS 1.4 by itself distinguishes it as being much closer to PS 2.0 than anything else. Granted, PS 1.4 is otherwise not much more than a PS 1.3 x2. Anyway, it was more of a step in the right direction than PS 1.3. . .

To Demalion: PS 1.3 offers 2 other arithmetic instructions and 4 other texture addressing instructions over PS 1.1. That's the only difference. This could result in one or two less instructions being used per pass, but the number of passes required would remain unchanged.

 

Well theres been quite a bit of discontent with 3dmark over the years, and with every release theres some controversy and a few big sites condemn it. Now cutting Kyle a bit of slack he was probably already discontented with 3dmark, then top that with perhaps a phonecall from a slickster at Nvidia detailing some 'biases' and the result isnt surprising.
Funny thing is though that 3dmark has a life of its own, anyone who doesnt use 3dmark will inevitably get barraged with emails asking for it that they all cave sooner or later and include it.
Those 3dmark guys amaze me in how strongly they engage the community, they're talented programmers.

 

Hey, I'm not making Hellbinder's statements, remember that when you reply to me...but your reply gives me the opportunity to ask some questions that came to mind:

Would you agree that ps 1.4 functionality is a significant subset of ps 2.0 functionality? I'd think it would be more applicable to consider the basic functionality rather than draw a parallel to a high level language, wouldn't it?

I get the impression that this has a significant impact on the functionality it offers, though...

But, with two phases...I though the second phase allowed some of the benefits of intermixing? If so, wouldn't this place it rather closer to ps 2.0? If this isn't so, what is the significance of the two phase?

Hmm, I do think implementing ps 1.4 functionality does lay the ground work for implementing ps 2.0 from a design standpoint...I'm sure you'll correct me if you think otherwise.

Which is more significant, the changes necessary to go from ps 1.1 -> ps 1.4, or from ps 1.4 -> ps 2.0? What constitutes "really big changes" when discussing this, and on what are you basing your evaluation?

 

To be pedantic: C is not a clean subset of C++ these days, especially with regards to conversions of pointer types from void * (always allowed in C, requires a cast in C++) and the complex number types introduced in C99.

As for PS1.4 vs PS2.0: AFAIK, for every possible PS1.4 program it is possible to generate a functionally equivalent PS2.0 program, although obviously not vice versa. This would imply that PS2.0 functionality is a proper superset of PS1.4 functionality - make of that what you want...

 

But by that argument, any PS1.0, or DirectX1.0 "shader" has a functionally equivalent 2.0 program. It's not really relevent. We know that many shaders can be expressed in a 1.1, 1.4, or 2.0 pipeline, with or without, multipass too.

All 1.4 did was allow two shader programs to effectively be concatenated together via a phase marker so that you could perform one layer of dependent texturing. The other thing was add an instruction to separate texture address manipulation from loading. Before 1.4, it was "implicit" in the instructions. 1.4 still feels as "hackish" and constrained as the 1.1 pipeline, with its arbitrary limitations on things. Much like programming 80x86 vs 68000.


Now look at 2.0: no phase marker hacks. Completely general intermixing of texturing and color operations in any order (except a limitation that dependencies may only be 3rd order or below). 2.0 separates texture coordinate registers from texture sampler registers so that a register containing a texture address is not "implicitly bound" to a particular texture to be sampled.

Yes, de-coupling those tex* instructions into separate load and copy instructions was an improvement over 1.1, but I think it is very disingenous to say that this is the "basis" for 2.0. 2.0 removes what was one of the most irritating things about 1.0-1.4: the severe limitations on the order of operations in the shader, and it also decouples registers from samplers, while extending the pipeline to floating point.

 

Dont kow if this was already posted and i mised it.. here is Nvidias detailed response...

 

I wouldn't mind seeing pictures of the new and old nvidia drivers with the fx and compare both of them to the 9700 pro to see if there are any big diffrences in quality. Oh i forgot who said that the geforce 4 ti was a refresh of the geforce 3. It was not , the geforce 3 ti was the refresh . The geforce 4 adding hardware for better fsaa and was clocked even higher than the geforce 3 tis. While adding in the fsaa hardware they could have update the pixel pipe lines .

 

You make this benefit of 1.4 shaders sound like it is of little consequence, even though it saves you from needing an extra rendering pass and processing twice as many polygons. Given the simplicity of the pixel shaders that most games are probably going to use in the near future for performance reasons (a couple of dozen instructions at most, I'd guess), this should have a major impact on relative performance vs. 1.1 shaders. In fact, this is exactly what the 3DMark03 tests seem to be showing so far.

Sure 2.0 shaders give you a lot more flexibility when it comes to more complex techniques, but given what a 100+ instruction shader will do to the fill rate of any existing card, I can't see many game developers taking advantage of that flexibility until much faster graphics chips arrive on the market.

 

What depth_test appears to be saying is that PS 1.4 was nothing revolutionary in capabilities over previous versions -- epecially when compared to the difference between PS 2.0 and 1.4. I have to agree. The ability to do a dependant texture read is really quite limited as compared to PS 2.0, where you can have several levels of dependancy spread throughout the shader program. Also, in order to utilize the maximum number of instructions in a PS 1.4 program, the second phase -must- be used, even if one doesn't need a dependant texture read. Each phase is really just like a single pixel shader program from a previous version.

 

From my talks with NVIDIA recently, I was told they didn't feel they should have to pay to be a BETA partner, nor anybody else. After all, ATI, NVIDIA, Matrox, S3, etc. are Futuremark's bread and butter when it comes to the 3DMark benchmarks. So by not paying, Futuremark possibly decided to go ahead without NVIDIA's input/advice.

I'll refrain from commenting on 3DMark 03 personally til I get some more details and figure out what's up with the benchmark. So far, I don't like that it doesn't even use a real game engine like the previous one did. :?

 

Noone's going to discount FutureMark03 just because Nvidia decides to "poo-poo" it.

But we "must" pay attention to the game benchies that matter, ie the ones where Nvidia gets its way with developers.

Perhaps they should spend more time on developing good products on time and less time whinging about software that doesn't bother with PS/VS 2.0+.

Oh but that's being ignored just like PS1.4 isn't it?

 

I dont see how you can possibly disagree and still hope to maintain any shred of objectivity.

One example point from NVIDIA's original quote on this thread-
----"Nvidia contends that the first test is an unrealistically simple scene that's primarily single-textured"---

This is a good point. A benchmark that is single textured may obviously showcase a 6x1 or similar architecture, whereas a competing 4x2 or similar product would excel at multitextured tests- IF AND ONLY IF- texturing has some form of major influence on the overall benchmark results.

I think if you took all the hundreds of games released in the past year.. along with possibly the plethora of games due to be released in the future, the games with single-texturing you can probably count on one hand.

As a synthetic, single-textured DX7 test, this is all fine and good... but if the benchmark is being touted as some form of indicator of true "game" performance, then this goal is obviously not very well suited.

---"the stencil shadows in the second and third tests are rendered using an inefficient method that's extremely bottlenecked at the vertex engine"---

This has to be taken on the "honor" system that they indeed have a case with this one. It's unknown unless the sourcecode is released. NVIDIA is stating they feel the method used for rendering stencil shadows varies greatly from the methods used by any current or future games, and in such a way to create bottlenecks that wouldn't present otherwise in the normal game coding process. Can't make a determination here, but the performance numbers will definately be hashed out in the weeks to come to help see if this is a valid claim or not.

On the more detailed information from NVIDIA now posted on this thread- yeah, some of them are utter nonsense. A flight-sim benchmark is a completely valid "game" test from the standpoint that ILK-2, FS2002, Combat Flight Sim 3 and dozens of other flight sim games are available. From the standpoint of "genre" they are making an empty claim. It is foolish if NVIDIA wishes to dictate that owners of 3D cards shouldnt pick a particular genre of videogames in order to be "appropriate" for their hardware purchase. Other more detailed claims are similarly foolish/PR laiden.. but their original query was fairly well formed, albeit very late for them to finally go into such discussion.. especially since the focus of their points have been the case since 3dmark99.

 

I would have to agree with them on this point. I got to thinking about this the other day after reading worm's interview that was linked to on these forums. Reading that interview was the first time I realized you have to pay a "membership fee" to be in the beta program. Sounds quite a bit like extortion to me. So if brand x video card company doesn't want to pay the membership fee, they are basically left out in the cold. Sounds like a very bad idea.

As for the rest of Nvidia's complaints, I feel they are crying over nothing. They certainly weren't complaining when they had the only video card that could run the Nature test on 3dmark2001. Didn't here any complaints of "no games are using this yet".

 

that first test problem is nvidia's fault...

had they not released the Geforce 4 MX and it's nice directX7 capabilities the situation might not be as bad.

Imagine this... if not for the Geforce 4 MX, I bet the DX7 test would have been dropped. Imagine all the non-educated computer users trying to run 3dmark03 to find out that a Geforce 3 runs it better.

It might have even been 2 DX 8.1 and 2 DX9 tests rather than the current set up.

And if you look at Nvidia's current roadmap, they will continue selling DX7 Geforce 4MX 8X's throughout 2003.

They are holding back the train the ATi has taken control of

 

Thanks Ostsol, you put it better than I could. I'm not saying 1.4 isn't useful. I'm quibbling with the idea that 1.4 and 2.0 share the same architecture: they don't. 2.0 is no more "based on" 1.4 than it is on 1.1. The most significant change is to remove most of the restrictions on operation order, to increase the length of shaders to respectable limits, and addition of floating point precision. These are orthogonal, general purpose, architectural changes. Where as 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 merely "tacked on" new instructions piecemeal, each with their own bizarre restrictions on use and order.


There appears to be some attempt equate 1.4 "on par" with 2.0, as if 1.4 was a huge advancement over 1.1 and served as the foundation for 2.0. This makes 1.4 capable DX8 cards sound like they have very advanced shader hardware compared to their 1.1 cousins, and that 2.0 is merely a subtle evolution of 1.4. In reality, 1.4 is a subtle evolution of 1.1, and 2.0 is a significant general purpose extension to 1.x shaders.

The only big limitation in 2.0, besides program length, is 4th order lookup. GFFX doesn't have this limitation, but in practice, it's irrelevant, since there are very few cases were you need more than 4-chained indirect lookups.

 

Here are a coupple more. Especially notice the second one. I anxiously await what you'all have top say about that..

Oh another thing from the last version. How many games have you seen with a woman ridding a dragon and torching a bunch of little guys??? Or how many games have you seen with a Truck driving through a wasteland getting shot by a giant robot with missles???

This is complete Two faced Hypocracy worse than ANY company i have EVER seen before.

Um, I thought the whole point of future games and proposed by ATi and Nvidia, and the DX9 spec and just about everyone here was Single-textured games with lots and lots of shaders used...

Further, 3dmark 2001 did not have every aspect support Dx8.1 either. The limited vertex tests uses 1.1 and thats it. Nearly the whole of 3dmark03 benchmark is solid vertex and pixel shaders. THE EXACT direction game development is going. no one is going to use all dx9 shaders over the next 2 years. ITs going to be mixed EXACTLY liek you are seeing in the new 3dmark.

Complete utter Deception and Hypocracy...

 

No what there seems to be from people like you, is to OVERSTATE the importance and impact of PS1.3, and UNDERSTATE the importance of PS 1.4 There is a Sizable night and day difference between what each does for you. Stop trying to Spin this into a case of equals. They are not equals. There are no comparrisons that can be made AT ALL between the results in your program each one generates.

To deny the fact that ps 1.4 was a stepping stone towards ps 2.0 is nothing but utter denail. Starting multi paragraph disections of minute terms to change the nature of the argument will not change the facts of the end result.

PS 1.4 IS A HUGE STEP OVER 1.1, and they ARE more advanced than their Ps 1.1 cousins.

Otherwise You and your coworkers at Nvidia would not be bitching their asses off. You cant have it both ways. Either it matters or it doesn't. You people at Nvidia can not have it both ways.

 

That would be the best way to do it, but...:

... exactly. We will have this 'problem' until we are talking DX9 and up.

Anyway: I obviously don't have the insight into the workings of the engine that nVidia have, so I can't comment on whether it is based on un-realistic game engine programming or not.

But I not quite get why nVidia focus so much on the PS 1.4 vs PS 1.1. A GF4 is still faster or on par with ATI's 8500/9000, so they should not loose marketshare because of that.

The major point is that both ATI and nVidias DX8-level cards will look a bit pale with this benchmark, while their DX9-evel can show of their advantage. And isn't is the goal for both companies to convince consumers to upgrade, upgrade, upgrade?

I reall didn't expect this move from nVidia.

 

Maybe i'm a bit late here but anyway, i don't see any reason at all to include a DX7 game test. Sure, there will be some DX7 type of games hanging around but, which new and upcoming graphics card do you think will have any problems running them ?

DX7 is old news and all new and upcoming graphics cards will have no problems at all running those type of games so i would say, remove that test and add another pure DX9 test. I also agree with some people here that they should use HLSL instead.