R200 & RV250 to kick NV25 in next years games ?

[David G.]

Curently the Radeon 8500 is around 20% slower than GF4 Ti 4600 .... sometimes even slower , sometimes faster ....

Next year's games will be DX9 based an will use PS 2.0 .
PS 2.0 has total PS 1.4 support , just what R200 needs .

Do you think it will make such a big difference ?

 

[Geeforcer]

Curently the Radeon 8500 is around 20% slower than GF4 Ti 4600 .... sometimes even slower , sometimes faster ....

Next year's games will be DX9 based an will use PS 2.0 .
PS 2.0 has total PS 1.4 support , just what R200 needs .

Do you think it will make such a big difference ?

First of all, I doubt that we see many (if any) games next year with comprehensive PS2.0 support. Second, I don't think that games written for PS2.0 will run on either R8500 or GF4 at all.

 

[Xmas]

PS 2.0 has total PS 1.4 support

Huh?

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I think he means backward compatible

 

[Geeforcer]

How can it be backwards-compatible (unless I am taking that comment more seriously then I should)? If game requires PS 2.0 hardware it... well, needs PS2.0. DX9 is not going to retroactively upgrade pixel shaders on existing cards.

 

[David G.]

Can't VooDoo3 play UT2003 ? Yes it can . Is UT2003 DX8 ?

A DX6 card playing a DX8 game is possible and therefore it could be possible that DX8.1 Radeons would play DX9 games better than GF4 . Right ?

 

[Geeforcer]

Can't VooDoo3 play UT2003 ? Yes it can . Is UT2003 DX8 ?

A DX6 card playing a DX8 game is possible and therefore it could be possible that DX8.1 Radeons would play DX9 games better than GF4 . Right ?

Everything is possible, but the game the requires PS 2.0 is not going to play on a card that doesn't support it.

 

[Pete]

The point is that it'll play, but not correctly, or in a way meaningfully comparable to fully compatabile cards.

You wanna play DX9 games as intended, you need a DX9 card.

 

[David G.]

Still , when a game is build on DX9 not necesarily being dependent on it . Like it would just be build suporting DX9 . So having DX9 support , a game will be perfectly backwards compatible with PS 1.4 .

 

[Dolemite]

DX9 shouldn't break the backwards compatibility of pixel and vertex shaders. No one (not even MS) can afford to ignore the installed base of GF3/4/R8500 users. It would be eminitely stupid to require PS2.0, since that level of compatibility will represent the smallest minority of the market for the next year or so. Relying on the backwards compatibility makes perfect sense, however. It was a smart idea so developers may as well take advantage of it and give everyone the best possible experience with their GPU by simply coding for the latest version of PS & VS.

 

[Doomtrooper]

I disagree, if you want to play Halo what do you have to do:

Buy a X-box

It should be no different in the PC industry, if you want to play Doom 3 that uses Pixel Shader 2.0 you need to buy a video card.
The installed user base doesn't upgrade because developers stay with that ancient way of thinking and hold technology back and part of my complaint of the "whats wrong with todays developers thread".
ID software alone must account for 60% of the hardware upgrades, speaking from personal opinion here:

Quake 1: I saw Gl quake and got a Canopus Pure 3D
Quake 2: Saw Quake 2 on a SLI setup and bought two Voodoo 2's
Quake 3: My Voodoo 3 wasn't cutting and got a GTS

When Quake 3 was released my good friend who is a Area Manager for Electronics Boutique could not keep Voodoo 5s and GTSs on the shelf all just for Quake 3.
I see no problem with a advanced game requiring advanced hardware and I hope the Rv250 will help get the 'installed userbase' to at least DX 8.1 standards.

 

[Dolemite]

Backwards compatibility ensures that hardware that natively supports a certain version of PS will be able to run all previous versions, and as I understand it future versions *should* be able to be reinterpreted at either the API (Direct3D anyway) or driver level. Since GF3 is PS1.1, I would guess that developers will stick with that for the forseeable future.

In the case of Doom3, it will have to access PS & VS through vendor-specific (and perhaps GPU-specific) OpenGL extensions, so there shouldn't be any PS2.0 requirements, and each chip could potentially be supported at its latest PS version.

 

[noko]

Well if you are a pc game developer who want to stay in business then you have to sell games. Making a game very restrictive without backwards compatibility is a sure way to end up losing some big money. Since very few games (like less then 1% of 1% of all games) even use GF3 level of pixel/vertex shaders, why would developers skip that generation and just go straight to 2.0 version. Frankly GF3's and Radeon8500 abilities will eventually be used somewhat, by then must of use will have a couple of generation of video cards under our belt. Now if Xbox games finally get ported over to the pc then that would be a big improvement for a few more titles that use pixel/vertex shaders.

 

[Username]

Yawn. PS 1.4 was dead on arrival. With DirectX 9 coming up very quickly, and OpenGL 2.0 coming out.. whenever, supporting PS 1.4 is largely a waste of time to cater to a very small portion of your target market.

Must be fun to be so naive to believe that games themselves drive the entire industry, rather than the most powerful driver.. Microsoft's products, namely the OSes. But then again, we all know how many 3D games are sitting on the top 10 selling PC games of all time list.

 

[Mummy]

I agree totally username, PS 1.3 and PS 1.4 are (unfortunately) dead meat, nobody (except Carmack maybe and other few developers) will use them..

The target will be PS 1.1 until 2.0 will be widely available IMO (3 years? more? ok) =)

 

[Doomtrooper]

DX9 Pixel Shader 2.0 is based of PS 1.4 people, yawn all you want PS 1.4 will be used as PS 2.0 is just a building block made from PS 1.4.
Ps 1.4 makes up approx 40% of the market, I would not call that chopped liver

PS 1.1 will fade away, as it should..its inferior and can't deliver the effects that 1.4 and 2.0 shaders can.

 

[Mummy]

Ps 1.4 makes up approx 40% of the market

hahahaha

man you are so funny when u want. =)

Ati might have 40% market share (guess more), but R8500 will be very very far from being the big part of this 40%.

Not a single card producer will ever have this HUGE share with a single card.

 

[MuFu]

PS 1.4 has and always will be just a stepping stone towards PS 2.0. It's not even a "stop-gap" solution; industry takeup has never been a big issue. Read ATi's presentations/whitepapers. I get the impression that they really want to have a headstart with PS 2.0 by creating a good working relationship with coders thinking in a "PS 2.0-type way" through PS 1.4. I'm sure they felt it was a necessary step to take and will most likely benefit them (and everybody else) in the future through "enlightened" DX9 programming.

MuFu.

 

[Doomtrooper]

Ps 1.4 makes up approx 40% of the market

hahahaha

man you are so funny when u want. =)

Ati might have 40% market share (guess more), but R8500 will be very very far from being the big part of this 40%.

Not a single card producer will ever have this HUGE share with a single card.

What do you think this thread is about Mummy, RV250 is a value priced card with DX8 feature set including PS 1.4 to bring the user base up to DX8 standards.
I look to move PC gaming forward and not to be held back by old standards and equipment.
I don't find anything funny what I posted....

 

[Dolemite]

I might say 40% of pixel shader-capable hardware is PS1.4, certainly not 40% of everything...

OTOH, the industry is adopting standards at the "average user" level pretty quickly these days. You can hardly buy a PC with anything less than a GF2MX (not that you'd want to), and a lot of people will never run anything more demanding than a web browser.

Depending on how well the RV250 is received by OEMs, the market penetration of PS1.4 could be fairly significant. Nvidia certainly helped to keep the general public back in the stone age with the shaderless GF4MX. If any version of the RV250 can compete at that price point, then the promise of DX8.1 for the masses should play out, making games themselves the only limiting factor.