R200 & RV250 to kick NV25 in next years games ?

[Nagorak]

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.

The problem is PC developers want to make money!

They won't do that by requiring the latest and greatest. You might think everyone has an up to date computer, but the fact is they don't. I do, but some people I know cannot afford to upgrade or just can't justify the cost of upgrading, etc. Frankly, I think you're whole post is basically ridiculous. Maybe that's how it'd be in an ideal world, where everyone has the money for this stuff. Personally, I'd rather have games that more people can play.

I'll take it one step further by saying that 60% of computer users probably have never played a game by id software, or even heard of their company.

 

[Doomtrooper]

Did Quake 1, Quake 2, Quake 3, Unreal, Unreal Tournament and all the games that spawned off these engines make money ??
I understand developers thinking that people will not play the game if they don't have the hardware, and this is where their thinking is wrong.
When I had my Gaming PC company it was during the Quake 2 and Unreal days and daily a stream of people would come in and say, "Hey I have a Pentium 133 and I want to play Quake 2, what do I need "

If you build it, they will upgrade

 

[Doomtrooper]

The problem is PC developers want to make money!

They won't do that by requiring the latest and greatest. You might think everyone has an up to date computer, but the fact is they don't. I do, but some people I know cannot afford to upgrade or just can't justify the cost of upgrading, etc. Frankly, I think you're whole post is basically ridiculous. Maybe that's how it'd be in an ideal world, where everyone has the money for this stuff. Personally, I'd rather have games that more people can play.

I'll take it one step further by saying that 60% of computer users probably have never played a game by id software, or even heard of their company.

Hogwash...If you want to play a console game you buy a console, if you want to play a high end PC game you need to buy a video card...OMG I have to buy a video card

 

[Dolemite]

I'm with Nagorak on this...

Nobody has the balls or the [lack of] business sense to require PS2.0 until its ubiquitous...and I don't think you'll see a rush to upgrade even when games start supporting it, at least beyond the enthusiast level.

Right now, we're at a point where there's a fairly dominant installed base of T&L-capable cards with fillrates in excess of 700Mtexels/sec. Plenty more can be done with these systems than the average developer is currently taking advantage of. Taking that as a baseline and adding in pixel and vertex shader effects for cards that can handle it and you've got a lot to work with. Its not like the days of GLQuake and Quake2, when many people didn't even have 3d acceleration.

Requiring PS2.0 is a little rediculous for the forseeable future. We've only got a handful of games that even support the current PS versions.

 

[Doomtrooper]

So you are saying even though value cards are entering the market that will support these features you want to wait two + years anyways to see these effects ?? I'm sorry I have no clue why....

If the Rv250 is $150 US dollar card there is NO EXCUSE for the general DX7 userbase not to upgrade, its not expensive and its readily available.

 

[Dolemite]

So you are saying even though value cards are entering the market that will support these features you want to wait two + years anyways to see these effects ?? I'm sorry I have no clue why....

If the Rv250 is $150 US dollar card there is NO EXCUSE for the general DX7 userbase not to upgrade, its not expensive and its readily available.

No, I don't want to wait, but I expect to.

Call me a realist, but I've seen what the industry has done thus far, so I have no reason to expect much abberation.

R8500 or GF3 are almost as capable as the RV250 will be, and both are readily available under $100, yet how many games take full advantage of their more advanced features after over a year for the GF3 and 10 months for the 8500? How many non-enthusiasts do you know who have such capable hardware?

Is PS2.0 somehow going to magically break this trend of user adoption vs. game support?

If so, I'd love to know how...

 

[Doomtrooper]

Well for starters UT 2003 will force the upgrade path even though its still a lame A$$ DX7 game, then of course Doom 3. There is many other games coming down the pipe that will push the edge...
PC sales are down, I can see why...the PC used to be more advanced than a console, now for a measly 500 bucks I can get better graphics on my 43" TV than my PC with DSL multiplayer capability..which is pathetic.

 

[Doomtrooper]

The other question here what is the point for pushing technology forward if no one supports it, I remember the last 6 months of 3DFX critics everywere were claiming 3DFX old technology, no 32-bit, no T&L..BLEH

Now the hardware vendors are releasing great hardware yet graphics are flat, some odd exceptions that still run very poor considering the hardware its running on.

 

[mboeller]

So you are saying even though value cards are entering the market that will support these features you want to wait two + years anyways to see these effects ?? I'm sorry I have no clue why....

If the Rv250 is $150 US dollar card there is NO EXCUSE for the general DX7 userbase not to upgrade, its not expensive and its readily available.

Does not help at all. An good video-card alone does not make an gaming-pc. Their are a lot of pc's out there with lowend CPU's too. So you need to upgrade the CPU, mainboard, RAM, video-card etc.. to get an decent gaming-pc. This high cost is the reason for the slow adoption of DX8.1 not to speak of DX9.

 

[Dolemite]

Well for starters UT 2003 will force the upgrade path even though its still a lame A$$ DX7 game, then of course Doom 3.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1647&p=7

50+ FPS at medium detail on a GF2MX at 800x600. Very playable on high detail at the same resolution or medium detail up to 1280x1024 on an indoor map.

How exactly is that forcing the upgrade path?

 

[Randell]

50+ FPS at medium detail on a GF2MX at 800x600. Very playable on high detail at the same resolution or medium detail up to 1280x1024 on an indoor map.

How exactly is that forcing the upgrade path?

Well I dont call ~23fps on high deatil playable for an 'ONLINE' game.

I see UT2003 forcing upgrades as people arent used to turning down detail settings and resolutions to such low settings as Anand describes as 'medium'. Now that they will have to get playable framerates online and can see from screenshots or even friends computers what higher detail settings look like then people with Gf2MX's and less will upgrade.

 

[Ailuros]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but didn't "medium detail" also mean 16bpp colour rendering depth?

I could eventually live with lower details and resolutions in a worst case scenario, but not banding......

 

[Randell]

You're right Ail, from Anands article;

'We also chose a medium detail setting, which turned off detailed textures, turned on 16-bit color, lowered the texture detail and turned off deco layers'

In fact if the medium settings with 32 bit colour were shown, you would see an even bigger differntial on the Gf4mx cards upwards over the Gf2 class downwards (except the 7500/Kyro right? There was never much performance improvement for 16 bit on those cards, yes?).

What are Deco layers? In the options settings I've seen you have Decals, Corona's and Detail Textures as additional settings over Texture detail.

 

[sir doris]

The thing is so many new PC's selling for as much as £1000 still have GeForce2/4 MX's. My Boss loves UT (plays on Sofware Render on a P3 733 - don't think he's ever seen it run on anything else) and was getting all excited about UT2003, but he hasn't a clue about what video cards you need to run these games well.

He was sure a GeForce 4 MX 420 (that was in the system he had decided on would be fine for years to come, cause it had a 2GHz CPU). It was only when i showed him Anandtech's UT2003 Shootout that he had quite a shock. I tried to incourage him to get a system with a Ti4200 or 8500. However speaking to him this morning he went out and got a system with an XP2200+ and a Ti4600! So i think if ppl knew that the hardware they have sucks they would upgrade. It's just a matter of educating them ;P

 

[RussSchultz]

So you are saying even though value cards are entering the market that will support these features you want to wait two + years anyways to see these effects ?? I'm sorry I have no clue why....

If the Rv250 is $150 US dollar card there is NO EXCUSE for the general DX7 userbase not to upgrade, its not expensive and its readily available.

None of us WANT to wait, but I agree that it will be 1-2 years before every game supports these features.

In contrast to your views, most installed users wouldn't see a $150 RV250 as Christ's second coming and flock out to upgrade. Matter of fact, they wouldn't even see a $150 RV250. Most of them don't care. If they do care enough to upgrade, it will be $99 or less (probably much less). Most likely, they'll deal with whatever performance their computer gives them until they can't take it any more any then go buy a new one and get whatever low end card comes with that one.

The only way the installed user base for DX8 products will grow and supplant DX5 class cards will be by having them be cheap enough that Dell, Compaq, and HP will include them in the low end systems they sell for no upcharge. It'll take a lot cheaper card than $150 for that to happen.

 

[pascal]

...
The only way the installed user base for DX8 products will grow and supplant DX5 class cards will be by having them be cheap enough that Dell, Compaq, and HP will include them in the low end systems they sell for no upcharge. It'll take a lot cheaper card than $150 for that to happen.

This is tue. And think about the global market. Just for the record a simple GF2MX cost around US$120 (street price) here in Brazil (heavy tax, high cost of distribution, high profit margin). I bought my Asus GF3Ti200 for US$400 about 5 months ago.
edited: minor time correction

 

[Randell]

The only way the installed user base for DX8 products will grow and supplant DX5 class cards will be by having them be cheap enough that Dell, Compaq, and HP will include them in the low end systems they sell for no upcharge. It'll take a lot cheaper card than $150 for that to happen.

so the SiS Xabre does have a use then?

 

[jb]

What are Deco layers?

One example would be trees or grass drawn over the top of the terrain. You can litterly paint on the ammount or size on your terrain. A lot of them then it could really slow down your system. Allan Ward at Epic showed us how the wrong use of Deco can kill frame rate. However it should be easy for a mapper to do some amazing stuff with Deco Layers so long as they keep a few design guides in mind.

DT,

why do you call it a lame a$$ game? I thought a die hard UT fan like you would be looking forward to it.

 

[Randell]

Thnask jb, so in UT2003 terms, what do you turn off to affect these?

 

[jb]

Randell


I can not say as I dont have all of the tools yet. I just had a chance to look and see what the edditor can do. And thats just one way deco layers are used.

Also you can set the order of rendering on these deco layers But again this is the mapper that can do all of this.