The NEXT LAST R600 Rumours & Speculation Thread

Did hear this same mind-set when the subject was alphas years ago.

 

And do you feel putzing around with alpha-tested textures and putzing around with per-material fragments is the same?Would you find it sexy that your overly long surface material that is a heavy hitter in terms of performance in its own right, would have to be rendered arbitrarly 4x times because there`s some shader aliasing somewhere and it`s the sexay to have a CP switch to deal with everything?I do not agree on this, sorry.

Geo, I agree. But I think devs are better equiped to handle the situation. They`re likely to employ shader-AA where it`s needed, and only there, instead of using a full-screen "sledgehammer".

What`s with the hardware going a helluva lot faster than SW and surpassing it to such a huge degree that every crude technique becomes feasible?Is that so?Why?Because the G80 rocks Oblivion?Shouldn`t we move past this mindset:every time a new gen is released, it rocks games available then and targeted at stuff that was available before. Will the G80 or R600 rock Crysis, for example, in the same manner?Doubtful. So we`re stuck with the old conundrum:use SSAA for older titles(which is cool), use something smarter for new ones where you don`t have performance to burn. Would you buy a card that has SSAA as the single method of approaching aliasing?

 

No, just limited past views about Alphas being tak'n care of by a sledgehammer approach instead of innovative adaptive views -- Kinda reminds me of what some are offering about Shaders now. Time-will-tell.

 

in 5 years i would be surprised if hardware wasnt leaps and bounds ahead of ANY videogame s/w.

 

IMO, I'd love to go into the control application of whatever graphics card and when I go to change driver controlled AA see the option for Performance (MSAA, TSAA, etc) or Quality (some for of SSAA, hopefully RGSSAA).

Assuming they also didn't skimp on AF, I would buy that card in a heartbeat even if it was slightly slower than the competition. Always assuming of course that while Quality might not be usable in games with bleeding edge graphics that it was useable in past or future titles without bleeding edge graphics.

So, while one part of me is hoping that R600 brings something new and unthought of to the table with the massive bandwith and memory sizes. Another part of me is hoping it's just something as simple as useable SSAA.

And I only have Nvidia to thank for making me wait for R600. With all the horror stories I hear from people I play with online about the 8800 GTX + Vista 64 drivers. I'd own an 8800 right now if not that for. Such a shame as it's the first video card Nvidia has gotten completely right since the GF4.

Granted, I don't play much OpenGL games right now (due to no new ones in quite a while), but if ATI can make their driver work in Vista 64 more stably than it runs in Windows XP. Why can't Nvidia do the same? Grrrr...

Regards,
SB

 

You do realize that there is a vast wealth of offline software renderer algorithms out there that hardware just can't handle in real-time? Don't confuse what's possible on GPU hardware with what's possible on general purpose CPU's. DX10 is just now opening up the possibility for some of these offline algorithms to be hardware accelerated.

Hardware advances will be playing catchup with offline methods for a very long time to come so you won't be seeing hardware overtaking software anytime soon.

 

videogame s/w dude!! not offline renderers.

 

You do know that videogame software and offline renderers are trying to accomplish the same task right? So when hardware gets fast enough to run algorithms previously unique to the offline space what do you think is going to happen?

 

NO NO NO, YOU NOT UNDERSTAND!Well,umm, neither do I

 

ummm no one is going to code a video game that advanced for the pc because most people have sucky pcs so its rather a moot point.

when crysis gets released, im willing to bet performance on g80 or r600 is much higher than any other past quantum leap video game was on hardware of its time. for example, if u look at ut2k3, when it was released, the fastest card was the 9800 pro. even at 1024 x 768 with 4/8 it wasnt an entirely smooth experience on many maps. its very likely that g80 will be able to play crysis at a higher res with aa/af.

 

Maybe that is why R600 is delay, so it may be well included on catalyst new driver_cd, the DX10.1 - for R600 release.

 

Little bet ago I made a poll vote about what is your expectations about R600.
http://snappoll.com/poll/177165.php

So far the result kinda balance in different approaches.
Total votes I see of as this minute 85 + 1.

And here what people think

What do you expect out of R600.
"overall" - *said* about as good as G80 38% 33

*other said* another R300 36% 31

*other* not much to expect 16% 14

*other* above my expectations 9% 8
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some of you think that not much to expect out of R600, could be because of the delay issues?
hmm, very interesting....

 

The fastest GPU when UT2k3 was released was the NV25, on which with a strong CPU the best you could get was 1024*768 with 2xAA/2AF (and that was right on the edge of playability too). Then the various filtering optimisations started to kick in and you could use a tad more AF even on NV25 (uhmm no wonder if you just filter on the first texturing stage LOL).

Then the 9700PRO made its appearance and not only was 4xAA possible even in higher resolutions than just 1024, but considering that similar to the above filtering optimisations came along by default, AF wasn't an issue either.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=1647&p=8

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=1647&p=13

(Those were pre-release performance comparisons but I'm fairly certain that the game shipped quite a bit before the 9700PRO).

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=1683&p=18

 

Actually UT2k3 shipped 2 months after the 9700 Pro launch.

 

yes im aware the benches make it look smooth, but i had the game from day 1 and when i upgraded to my 9800 pro i could not play smoothly on all maps at 1024 x 768 with 4x/8x. many maps had fps drops and mouse lag unless i turned off aa or lowered the res/texture detail.

 

Why would things be different now?You do realise that there`s a helluva lot of things that weren`t feasible before due to API and hardware limitations, that now become useable, yes?And that that impacts performance?So, why would Crysis, for example, a game thought from the ground up with DX9 hardware in mind, that is doing a lot of per-pixel work, moreso than any game before it I dare say, be uber playable at high-res with high AA high AF?

 

never claimed it would be playable at super high res with aa/af, just that it will likely play faster than previous landmark games have on current hardware due to the rate at which hardware is advancing

 

We`ll have to agree to disagree on this then. I simply don`t see HW progressing through an n! like function, whilst SW going through a log(n) one.

 

Images From The New Ruby Tech Demo!!!!!

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/?article_id=571567

AWESOME!