UT 2003 GPU Shootout Part II at Anandtech

[Tessier]

The leaked game (build 927) only use compressed textures if DXT1, DXT3 and DXT5 are all supported. Since the Kyro chips only support DXT1, the game uses uncompressed textures that don't fit in 64 mbytes if you set texture detail anything beyond low. Adding 'DXTExposeCaps=1' fixes this issue on most levels (but not on all). In newer versions this is probably fixed.

America's Army demo also uses build 927, so I think there will be improvements in that game too.

 

[Ty]

Ah I thought so, I'd expect pretty bad framerates with a Kyro 1 board, Kyro II is about 55% faster then Kyro 1. Although it also depends what sort of CPU you have, I suppose you need a decent CPU to get good performance. With a fast CPU you may get a half decent framerate with a Kyro 1 at lower res (640x480, and even maybe 800x600 in low detail).

As for your problems with artifacts ect, obviously Anand isn't having those problems with the Kyro so perhaps your using old drivers? Although you do have the worst made Kyro board around (Evil Kyro from Powercolor) so maybe its that. Often the Powercolor Evil Kyro would get bad artifacts in some games at defualt clock speed, dropping the GPU/ram speed to 160mhz (or perhaps it was 165, I can't remember) was reported to fix that problem.

Kyro I GPU runs at 115Mhz though the RAM does/can run higher.

 

[Nagorak]

A lot of people will be playing UT2003 at 800x600 anyway, if they wish to sustain fps above 40-50 I would guess.

I'm sorry, but no one is going to run at 800*600 if they don't have to. No one with a GF3/R8500 or newer graphics card is going to. Yes, I'm sure a lot of people are going to be running in 800*600, but these are the same people who won't own a GF3+ card for another 6 months to a years time. Casual gamers do exist, but they aren't the people reading this site or Anandtech.

The numbers at 800*600 were essentially meaningless. As someone pointed out above, it would have made more sense to run a comparison at 640*480 (least possible graphics strain) and also at 1024*768 (more realistic resolution to run in). The majority of people still run things at 1024, although that's slowly edging higher. Checking performance in 800*600 made sense back in the era of say...the Voodoo2????

 

[Teasy]

I'm using the newest drivers, on a Tbird 1.3 ghz. *shrug* I don't know, maybe it's just that the compatibility in this leaked build is poor. I don't have problems in any other games with the Kyro

The newest IMGTEC drivers? If so then you could just try to downclock to 105mhz just to see if it works. I realise its not really important to you, but it would be interesting to find out if this will fix the problem with the powercolor boards. The problem wouldn't have to occur in all games to be fixed by downclocking, after all some games are allot more overclocker unfriendly then others, and in effect the powercolor Kyro boards are sort of overclocked (I think Powercolor used poor voltage regulators or something and the chip isn't getting enough voltage)

I could care less

Can I just say, without wanting to cause any offence at all, the correct phrase is "I couldn't care less". I'm not one for correcting other people's sentences its just that I see this everytime I watch a U.S based TV show and on every U.S or international message board I go to and it just grinds on me I mean if someone could care less then obviously they care to begin with. Again no offence meant at all, I just couldn't keep quiet on this any longer

Kyro I GPU runs at 115Mhz though the RAM does/can run higher.

Yeah, I wasn't concentrating there and confused the Kyro I with Kyro II. I just remembered that a 10mhz downclock of the PowerColor Evil Kyro was supposed to fix some artifacts that those cards occasionally had. Obviously though this is the Kyro not the Kyro II so downlocking by 10mhz would mean 105mhz.

The leaked game (build 927) only use compressed textures if DXT1, DXT3 and DXT5 are all supported. Since the Kyro chips only support DXT1, the game uses uncompressed textures that don't fit in 64 mbytes if you set texture detail anything beyond low. Adding 'DXTExposeCaps=1' fixes this issue on most levels (but not on all). In newer versions this is probably fixed.

Another option would be to force texture compression, which you can do on the Kyro settings tab.

 

[Randell]

I could care less

Can I just say, without wanting to cause any offence at all, the correct phrase is "I couldn't care less". I'm not one for correcting other people's sentences its just that I see this everytime I watch a U.S based TV show and on every U.S or international message board I go to and it just grinds on me I mean if someone could care less then obviously they care to begin with. Again no offence meant at all, I just couldn't keep quiet on this any longer

oohh I agree totally, been meaning to 'rant over this one for a while

 

[Seiko]

You could argue that it invalidates all results and the final version will be umpteen times better and quicker for all. Personally I don't believe that will be the case. Sure. many code optimisations will be finalised but as the demo already lacks karma physics alot of the optimisations will simply ensure that the same level of performance is maintained even running the karma modules.

I think performance will increase a large amount.

I get around 30fps on the 927 build. Anand on a (presumably) newer build gets at least 140fps for an equivilent system.

I hope your right but personally I think Anands tests are not reflective of gameplay. A flyby demo is one thing, a session with 4-16 bots is another. It's pointless going into a debate as it's all speculative but to expect a 110 frame increase from one build toanther is a little hopeful in my opinion.

I just don't see sub Athlon/XP/P4 rigs cutting it when trying to play any area with many bots. This is one occasion that I hope in a few weeks I have to eat my words as I've always enjoyed Unreal and UT. Both took my breath away so I hope the Sweeny gang can really deliver. At this time I believe they've missed the boat. Too many high res textures/verts in the normal scene and not enough level interaction. The sacrifice is just too high.

Again, all in my humble opinion.

 

[Ozymandis]

I'm using the newest drivers, on a Tbird 1.3 ghz. *shrug* I don't know, maybe it's just that the compatibility in this leaked build is poor. I don't have problems in any other games with the Kyro

The newest IMGTEC drivers? If so then you could just try to downclock to 105mhz just to see if it works. I realise its not really important to you, but it would be interesting to find out if this will fix the problem with the powercolor boards. The problem wouldn't have to occur in all games to be fixed by downclocking, after all some games are allot more overclocker unfriendly then others, and in effect the powercolor Kyro boards are sort of overclocked (I think Powercolor used poor voltage regulators or something and the chip isn't getting enough voltage)

I could care less

Can I just say, without wanting to cause any offence at all, the correct phrase is "I couldn't care less". I'm not one for correcting other people's sentences its just that I see this everytime I watch a U.S based TV show and on every U.S or international message board I go to and it just grinds on me I mean if someone could care less then obviously they care to begin with. Again no offence meant at all, I just couldn't keep quiet on this any longer

Actually, I believe we've taken the phrase and "Americanized it". After we get ahold of it and change it, it's actually the new standard


Anyways, the clock speed isn't the problem, I'm sure of that. It runs ALL other games just fine... although before I put my Blue Orb on it it had artifacting even at default speed

Probably it's the texture compression bug. That's what I'm guessing. I'm sure the Epic guys will make sure the shipping game is Kyro-compatible.

 

[Teasy]

Actually, I believe we've taken the phrase and "Americanized it". After we get ahold of it and change it, it's actually the new standard

I take it that Americanizing means to take a phrase and make it into nonsense then? I mean saying "I could care less" when you mean "I couldn't care less" is as bad as saying "I do care" when you mean to say "I don't care". Its silly and makes no sense, please stop it

In fact stop raping our language entirely, if you can't leave it as it is, or at least keep it sensible, then get your own language I'm sure Microsoft can come up with a language for you guys

 

[Basic]

Teasy:
Here, here!

 

[Mariner]

Basic:

It's actually "Hear, hear".

However, as I don't know a word of Swedish (apart from smorgasbord), I don't think I'm in a position to criticise! (our American cousins will notice that criticise is spelt with an 'S').

The oddest thing I find about the English vs American English divide is that Americans appear to have made up words when perfectly good words already exist e.g. normalcy. Whatever is wrong with normality?

As with all things American, we'll find this word working its way over here, I suppose. I was surprised to hear something described as "naturalistic" on a BBC TV programme (2 'm's!) the other day - surely that should be natural!

 

[Basic]

Oops, so I'm one of those destroying the English language. I wasn't sure so I did look it up in a dictonary, and it said (in swedish) "as exclamation: yes", so I thought that was it. I didn't look at "hear" then, if I had I would have noticed that it was more fitting.

But it's not only English that is getting destroyed, the spell and grammar checking in Swedish MSWord doesn't follow Swedish grammar rules. This has the effect that lots of Swedes use some English grammar when writing in "Swedish", making it horribly difficult to read.

And now to get even about the correction. It's actually "smörgåsbord". Those letters are distinctly different from the closest typographical match. ('ö' ~= 'i' in bird, 'å' ~= 'o' in for)

Sorry, this OT got a lot longer than intended.

 

[Mariner]

Pah! As an Englishman, I've no use for various accents/umlauts or whatever they are called.

I'll stick to just 26 letters in the alphabet, thanks very much! My sister lives in Helsinki and speaks Finnish, however, so not all my family are linguistic ignoramuses such as myself!

 

[Bjorn]

And now to get even about the correction. It's actually "smörgåsbord". Those letters are distinctly different from the closest typographical match. ('ö' ~= 'i' in bird, 'å' ~= 'o' in for)

But you have to admit that it would have sounded pretty weird if Elvis had pronounced it correct

 

[pascal]

It looks like the Amdhal´s law work well from 800x600 up to 1600x1200, but doesnt work well with 640x480

It is like there is a barrier around +- 240fps. See this benchmarks: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1647&p=11

My guess it is not the CPU, and probably it is not the GPU (different GPUs and drivers). Could it be the game code?

 

[Randell]

why not the CPU? If not why not the AGP bus?

 

[pascal]

My guess not the CPU because this so early barrier doesnt look good compared with the nice scalle at larger resolution.

The AGP I really dont know.

 

[OpenGL guy]

My guess not the CPU because this so early barrier doesnt look good compared with the nice scalle at larger resolution.

The AGP I really dont know.

Huh? It sure looks CPU limited to me.

When you see every card scoring within a few points from each other, that implies CPU/AGP bottleneck. You could be CPU limited for a number of reasons. One is that the application takes a lot of CPU power. Another is where the driver has to do a lot of work and causes you to be CPU bounded.

Looking at Anand's results, at 640x480, nearly all of the cards are CPU limited at medium detail settings. At the high detail settings, some cards fall off but the GeForce 4 boards still look CPU limited.

When you go to 800x600, things really only change on the high detail settings. On the medium detail settings, most cards are still CPU limited. A similar trend follows at 1024x768 as well. It sure looks like medium detail isn't very stressful on the video card.

 

[pascal]

My guess not the CPU because this so early barrier doesnt look good compared with the nice scalle at larger resolution.

The AGP I really dont know.

Huh? It sure looks CPU limited to me.

When you see every card scoring within a few points from each other, that implies CPU/AGP bottleneck. You could be CPU limited for a number of reasons. One is that the application takes a lot of CPU power. Another is where the driver has to do a lot of work and causes you to be CPU bounded.

...

I understand what you are saying, but GF4 curves from 800x600 to 1600x1200 scalle very well with Amdhal with small error margin (3%). At 640x480 I calculated 260fps and the measured is 237fps, or 9% error

I doesnt fit with some normalized information I have from other curves from both articles. Maybe it is the AGP, the only really fixed thing in all curves. Probably I will never know.

Anyway, I have to play this game
Anyone know when the demo will be available?

 

[nggalai]

Anyone know when the demo will be available?

Good old WID. Latest demo-rumour says 2 weeks' time, mind.

Epic have final approval rights for both demo and game release. Don't ask me how they got Infogrames to agree to THAT . . .

ta,
.rb

 

[Teasy]

Basic, don't worry about it. Unlike North American's English isn't supposed to be your first language Besides it was an extremely small mistake, a mistake I'd expect most people, including myself, to make occasionally.

However the widespread misuse of the phrase "I couldn't care less", in the U.S, isn't a small mistake and it happens anything but occasionally. Every time I see a U.S based TV show and they say "I could care less" it just drives me up the wall and I find myself shouting at the TV

Anyway I've droned on about this for long enough now so I'll shut up.