RAGE: That's actually what you do when trying to get the PC version to work

Sxotty, WRT nvidia driver it is true, there's plenty of people on the Steam forums complaining. They're a lot less than ATI of course but they exist. There's also a persistent report of sound stutter followed by CTDs. NVidia also shipped a new driver especially for Rage after the fact which was my point: didn't the IHVs know Rage's release date or what?

homerdog: id does have some blame, they shouldn't have removed the graphical options from the menu which would have prevented a lot of reports which are due simply to the auto-balancing heuristics throwing a fit AND if specific driver versions are required they should have followed BF3's lead and prevent the game from launching if the driver version was lower than the minimum they tested with. Considering the only (?) ATI driver that works was released after the game, did they (Bethesda handles this too) even test with ATI cards? Did they use beta drivers in their tests?

Nvidia had to post an article that dealt with editing config files to get proper hardware utilization. That boggles my mind.

Btw, keep posting screenies, and don't forget about Eternal Thread of Screenshots of Ridunkulous Quality and Size. It's clear Rage has some beautiful set pieces, in fact, because of unique texturing everything is a set piece now.
 
fellix said:
I wonder what was the reason for id to give up OpenCL transcode implementation. The one think I can suggest is an eventual bottleneck in the PCI-E throughput under OCL. I remember that AMD GPUs would perform particularly poor in this regard -- about twice slower than any comparable NV counterpart.
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I think it's pretty clear the quote refers to the nvidia opencl implementation (which we know is subpar) compared to the the cuda one.
Also we don't know the hardware requirements for the transcoder, ie if it will work on anything but dx11 hardware (maybe just for amd), and the coupled with the lack of speedup on mainstream cards (and probably even more when coupled with quad+ cores) may make the target audience pretty small in the end.
 
I said something stupid about cards, but maybe it was dice. I bought some gambling item in well spring.


@ richard I dont want to ruin the game by showing all the cool stuff. If you see tons of pictures the set pieces lose their punch some IMO.
 
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Richard said:
They should have followed BF3's lead and prevent the game from launching if the driver version was lower than the minimum they tested with.
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Thats a recipe for future heartache, remember some opengl games did this to make sure your opengl version was greater than 1.2. Worked great until opengl reached version 2.0
 
Psycho said:
I think it's pretty clear the quote refers to the nvidia opencl implementation (which we know is subpar) compared to the the cuda one.
Also we don't know the hardware requirements for the transcoder, ie if it will work on anything but dx11 hardware (maybe just for amd), and the coupled with the lack of speedup on mainstream cards (and probably even more when coupled with quad+ cores) may make the target audience pretty small in the end.
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The transcoder can be enabled with my 8800GT which is DX10 (CUDA 1.0/1.1). But the game doesn't use it because it's not fast enough. I was going to try it forced today....
 
fellix said:
The only Rage specific release from NV was an automatic profile update to the driver.
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Actually on this page they specifically suggest those BF3 drivers for Rage.
http://www.geforce.com/News/articles/nvidia-geforce-r285-beta-driver-for-bf3-released

If you don't run these I think transcode is unavailable.
http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=26824104#item_26824104
* How do I make it work?
First, upgrade your drivers to the latest (285 Beta drivers). Then, in Rage, locate the option "GPU Transcode" and set to on. The option will not be available if you do not have the latest drivers.
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AMD Catalyst™ 11.10 Version 2 Preview Driver
AMD Catalyst™ 11.10 Preview Driver Features:

  • Improves performance in Battlefield 3 Open Beta release for both non-Anti-Aliasing and application enabled Anti-Aliasing cases on the AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 and AMD Radeon HD 5000 series for single GPU configurations.
  • Improves performance in Battlefield 3 Open Beta release for both non-Anti-Aliasing and application enabled Anti-Aliasing cases on AMD CrossFire™ configurations using the AMD Radeon HD 6000 and AMD Radeon HD 5000 series of products.
  • Improves performance in Rage on single GPU and AMD CrossFire configurations using the AMD Radeon HD 6000, AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series and AMD Radeon HD 4000 series of products.
  • Resolves intermittent crashing seen loading levels in Rage
  • Resolves flickering of NPCs in Rage
  • Enables automatic Vsync for Rage
  • Enables support for AMD Eyefinity 5x1 display (portrait and landscape) configurations using the AMD Radeon HD 6000 and AMD Radeon HD 5000 series of products.
  • AMD Vision Engine Control Center: User Interface enhancements have been implemented for the AMD CrossfireX™, GPU AMD Overdrive™ and Information Center pages.
Click to expand...

http://twitter.com/#!/CatalystCreator/status/122395105335320577
The V2 11.10 driver doesn't include any new performance gains for BF3 or Rage - it's now unified and resolves some Rage issues plus Xp/Vista
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I've seen a couple questions and misconceptions, that I thought people might like cleared up.

First, on the OpenCL port issue, the post at Shacknews was a little mistaken. GPU transcoding in Rage was implemented in CUDA, because OpenCL didn't have the necessary features at the time the work began. (the spec wasn't finished) OpenCL was considered later, but the code relied on a feature that only CUDA had at the time to improve performance by 20+%.

As for supported GPUs, it is everything newer than an 8800 GTX which is supported (8800 GTX lacks one necessary feature). The amount it helps depends on how fast the GPU is and how high your resolution is. The 8800 GT mentioned above can actually help somewhat if the rendering resolution is modest, like 1280x720. At the end of the day, it is a decision of how to allocate GPU power. FWIW, an 8800 GT can reliably accelerate vt_maxPPF 16 (a recommended setting for a Core2Duo) on my Core2Duo at 720p and still reliably get 60 FPS. Putting something new and middle of the road like GTX 560 or even a GTX 550 can typically provide more transcode HP than a Core2 can keep up with. (unless the resolution is really high)

In case people are interested, there was actually a presentation describing some of this work and the associated challenges at GTC in 2010:

http://nvidia.fullviewmedia.com/gtc2010/0921-a1-2152.html

I might answer a couple other questions to help clear things up, but please don't be offended if I don't. Also, I'm not here to get into any favorite IHV arguments. I just wanted to help you understand some (IMHO) interesting tech.

Not speaking for my employer, or any partners, yada, yada.
 
Thanks for the post, Mr. Hart. That does clear up some things. I am going to listen to that presentation.

One question I have is what is why is the game's vsync forced off in the NV control panel and why does the game display corruption when vsync in the NV control panel is set to "3d application default".

Psycho said:
I think it's pretty clear the quote refers to the nvidia opencl implementation (which we know is subpar) compared to the the cuda one.
Also we don't know the hardware requirements for the transcoder, ie if it will work on anything but dx11 hardware (maybe just for amd), and the coupled with the lack of speedup on mainstream cards (and probably even more when coupled with quad+ cores) may make the target audience pretty small in the end.
Click to expand...
Ok I tried 8800GT with forced transcode. You create the rageconfig.cfg and use "vt_useCudaTranscode 2". Then in the game the transcode "enable" always transcodes and "disable" is fully disabled.

On my Phenom II X2 box with the 8800GT at 1680x1050, with CPU transcoding the frame rate is 60 fps at the family gas station town. It's very smooth. The texture swap speed is similar to my 6950 (not quite as fast as GTX 560 w/ transcode). However with the 8800GT forced to transcode, the game runs 30-60fps at the gas station. Textures come in faster but the stuttering is a clear compromise. Letting the game automatically choose when to use transcode is surely the way to go instead of forcing it.
 
Good to see AMD has a new driver out. I will have to check that out. I want to try that 16k texture setting on my 2GB 6950. ;)
 
the new driver seems to be exactly the same thing as the earlier Rage performance driver,
the difference now is that it's available for XP to, and includes the BF3 improvements....

I tested it and... it's the same thing, a lot of freezes, unplayable... 10s frozen, 2s gameplay.
forcing AI off solve this, but then it creates some texture problems, and the awful pop in is still there, with some extra commands this can also be improved, but the texture problems caused by the AI off can't...
 
I just tried the new drivers and they fixed the NPC flickering texture problems for me, making the game all officially playable. :)

Phenom II X4 965 BE, Gigabyte MA790FXT-UDP5, 2x2GB Corsair XMS3, ATi Radeon HD 5970 running win 7 64 running a highly tweaked config file:

Code: 
seta com_videoRam "1024" //sets the Video Card memory Set this to the amount you have in MB
seta com_maxfps "60" //limits the frames to 60 can be changed to what you desire
seta image_anisotropy "8" //Using the highest setting here but you can set as 2, 4 or 8
seta image_usecompression 0 
seta image_filter "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR" //filtering for light maps
seta image_preload "1" //Use preload images when ever possible
seta image_lodbias "-1" //LoD settings
seta image_ignoreHighQuality "0" //Sets up for using HQ gfx
seta image_ignoreLowQuality "1" //ignores the low textures
seta image_useCache "1" //Enabled Cache to allow the textures to load properly without popping
seta image_cacheMegs "125" //Cache size in Megabytes
seta image_cacheMinK "50" //Cache minimum size in kilobytes
seta r_aspectRatio "2"  // 0=4:3, 1=16:9, 2=16:10, 3=5:4 TFT, -1 custom
seta r_fullscreen "1"
//seta r_customAspectRatioV "10"
//seta r_customAspectRatioH "16"
seta r_swapInterval 1 //VSYNC 1 enabled, 0 diabled
seta r_useHighQualityPostProcess "1" //Fore High Quality post proccessing
seta r_shadowsHighQuality "1" //Fore High Quality shadows 
seta r_displayRefresh "0" //keep it so the engine doesn't double render a frame
seta r_renderer "best" //highest rendering options
seta r_multiSamples "32" //Set this to 16 or 8 if you're having low-fps as 32 is the Max Multi-sampling
seta r_useHBAO "1" //Ambient occlusion
seta r_useRenderThread "0" // 0 Disable or 1 Enable threaded rendering  useful for newer cards to increase performance.
seta r_visDistMult "1"
seta r_useMotionBlur "0" //use blur
seta r_skipBump "0" 
seta r_skipSpecular "0"
seta r_skipNewAmbient "0"
seta r_shadows "1"
seta r_cgFragmentProfile "best"
seta r_cgVertexProfile "best"
seta vt_lodBias "-1" //LoD settings
seta pm_nobob "1"
seta vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly2 "8192"
seta vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly "8192"
seta vt_pageimagesizeunique "8192"
seta vt_pageimagesizevmtr "8192"

Plays smooth, some texture pop in the corners of the images but it seems to get better once the textures are loaded. The game looks gorgeous and the combat is truly awesome. The story/NPCs could use some serious work, but they got an awful lot righter this time around. :)
 
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