We live in the World that not many people want to share information, simply forget about Nick[FM].
Will 3DMark_Next support DirectX10.1 [Shader Model 4.1]
- Thread starter Shtal
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We live in the World that not many people want to share information, simply forget about Nick[FM].
I bought Ultimate for 189€ in Germany, where does it cost 300€?
Well, with the current OpenGL 2.1(or 3.0) status, I could agree.
The question is if 3dm2008 gonna be Vista and DX10 only. Or DX10.1 only ( so we need to thrash our GF8800s). Perhaps with Mount Evans(3.1) they could do nice next-gen effects without having to require Vistaand could open some portability possibilities...
It's not sure whether we will have to "trash" the GF8800, there were rumors that a driver update might give us DX10.1 - until it is out, nobody can say that for sure. Anyway, 3d Mark's point is to be future-proof, so I expect something similar to the SM3 feature test - which was optional.
What's the point behind porting 3D Mark to let's say Linux? If I want to find out how fast my machine is, it's no deal if I do it under Windows, especially as it is aimed to check how fast it is at games and 99% of the games run on Windows with DX. It's like to check how fast my car goes, I do a ride through the desert though I'll be driving on highways only? Plus, given the state of Linux drivers for 3D cards at the moment, I believe you'd be seriously disappointed with the 3D Slowmark Linux edition score compared to the score you'd get on Windows on the same machine.
Back on the original topic: We already know that 3D Mark 08 will be Vista exclusive (being DX10), so why shouldn't they support DX10.1 as well? If they appear after the SP1 (and I'm pretty sure they will), it should be a quick addition. It would make even sense business wise - first benchmark to support DX10.1 or something like that. Heck, I'd even bet that AMD is right now pleading them to release a DX10.1 3D Mark as fast as possible before nVidia announces DX10.1 support
santyhammer
Newcomer
Thats OEM or upgrade price. Retail cost more. The OEM license is more restrictive. For some people is more than enough, but for my case not(because I need to change motherboard, CPU and graphics card a lot to develop and test... and Vista requires you a new license each time you change the hardware severely).
Well, i'm not sure if NVIDIA is going to name as GeForce 9 the "D8" series, but I don't think the GF8800GTS/GTX/GT could support cube map arrays, improved precision or all the new MRT and AA things... We'll see but I have no hope.
What 3dm2008 can do is to use DX10.0 for some test and enable other tests using DX10.1 features... or to do the same tests using DX10.0 and DX10.1 so we can see the differences better.
Well, if they could port it to other OS without having to touch much code will be good. But only if the cost is amortized by the number of users, which requires a very cautious software and development tools selection. Unfortunally, OpenGL2.1 core does not expose the latest GPU features, although some are available using extensions... and OpenGL3.0 won't solve this because is just a new coding "model" and cleanage... so they should wait for Mount Evans(3.1?) version to use the latest Shader Model 4... but perhaps they couldn't wait so long.
On the other hand, using OGL could allow to port it more easy to other OSs. For example, see Quake Wars... I think John and the engine team made and excellent work using complex shaders and graphics techniques with OpenGL... and the game(and its tools) has excellent portability to other OSs. I really like the ID's software model... notice how OpenGL, OpenAL, GTK(for the editor) and other portable libraries are used... notice how exclusive OS-only propietary technologies are avoided if possible.
Ideally, I would make 3dmark in a way both DX and OGL could be used and ported to other OSs so we could also compare performance using different drivers and OSs... but perhaps the costs makes it a pain(I don't know how futuremark marketing works)... or perhaps they have some kind of agreement with Microsoft. I could understand the Vista-DX10-only by now(but fear the market share) due to the OGL3.1 delay... the question is what are they doing after that and how good gonna be the future OGL.
What makes me angry is how people associates SM4 to DX10 and Vista... Shader Model 4 is only linked to hardware. DX10 means SM4 but that's only partially true today because Khronos and the IHVs are working very hard to allow the users to use SM4 with OGL making it crossplatform and multivendor ( and opening the SM4 features to WinXP too ).
About the "slowmark" driver status on linux see this and you will be very surprised:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=897&num=3
About MacOSX they use a special multithreaded OpenGL implementation which, in theory, renders faster. I don't know Leopard's performance ( I have access to Tiger only by the moment )... but I hear it could use some patches.
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Wanted to send you a PM ... well, not in Germany, there are no restrictions with the OEM. You can sell it as you like, with or without a computer ... only difference is the support
Porting the graphics part is not everything, the input, network etc. is still different. Not to mention other platform specific quirks. Note that John Carmack said that choosing whether it'll be DX or OpenGL for Rage PC is just a small detail. It might very well end with Rage being DX on the PC. I believe the fact that it runs on Linux is just a side effect of porting the stuff to the PS3/XBox360/Mac - if it runs there, the step to add Linux is pretty small and it is a nice middle-ware checkbox feature (UE3 runs on Linux, too).
They are just extremely late. If you are a company, and you choose you target platform, OpenGL is basically not interesting right now and you won't risk to choose it today cause you don't know what it will look like. That's the main problem. With DX10, you have the hard- and software today to start developing, and, most important, there are already people out there who have experience with DX10. You have the docs and you can be fairly sure that in 1-2 years, it'll be still there as it is. With OpenGL, I wouldn't even bet that Khronos will be supporting it in 2 years if it doesn't get adopted really well.
nVidia's and ATI's driver are multi threaded as well, on Windows.
You have *got* to be kidding me... have you tried to use *anything* on 98/ME??!
Sure, you can pay Apple $100/year to have the latest OS, or you can pay Microsoft $125 once and get significant free updates and service packs for years. Sure the pricing model may be different where you live, but OSX is trivially more expensive than Vista here.
Anyways I refuse to continue a pragmatic argument about "open source" and "free software" because I just don't care enough. The reality is that PC gaming => windows and thus a gaming benchmark (3dmark) should run on windows, and all other OSes are pretty much irrelevant. If you want to change the industry, start making games for OSX or Linux; you're not going to make any difference by arguing that 3dmark should be cross-platform.
Haha. Well obviously any Open Source Linux or Mac software written in 2005 is guaranteed to work with the respective OS's from 7 years earlier. Microsoft is so lame they deal in backwards compatability but Linus and Steve were working on forwards compatability. After all, you can just grab the code and recompile everythingYou have *got* to be kidding me... have you tried to use *anything* on 98/ME??!santyhammer said:
Indeed there is, and it's very healthy as well! In fact, I really quite like that. Any company, give it whatever name you want, needs competition to stay healthy - there are sound reasons why a lot of governments don't allow (or heavily regulate) monopolies. I've been offered several jobs with Google but I won't touch them with a barge pole simple due to their unchallenged market position.santyhammer said:
As an aside, I suppose if MS is too expensive in the EU and everyone is leaving their platform that'd explain why I spent this morning discussing potential new roles for value-add solutions to MoD investment in a complete MS platform? Apparently someone saw some Solaris boxes in the office a while back...
Flamewar aside, this is so irrelevant to DX10(.1) and 3DMark. santyhammer I think you've done a fine, FINE job of completely derailing the discussion. Not that demanding an informal press release would've gotten anywhere...
Jack
santyhammer
Newcomer
We have lots of clients from modest countries using Windows 98/ME/2000. Perhaps where you live people is rich to buy OSs each years but, there, the people cannot buy a new OS each year... so to keep compatibility and to allow to program for old OSs is very important for us. Unfortunally, because Microsoft stopped support for these OSs, is very hard to get apps to develop apps for them.
About linux old compatibility, I'm not worried... and that's because I can just download the latest Ubuntu/ distro and updates for free without requiring big hardware requisites. Why do you think the OLPC works with linux?
Correct me if i'm wrong but you are a Microsoft MVP and work/worked for Microsoft. It is natural that if you ask a Microsoft person won't answer "Use linux. Use OpenGL. Use Apache. Google, Sun? I love those companies. Vista? I could tell you some terror histories about it". No, of course not, you aren't going to tell that.
For DX10.1 perhaps... but notice the thread title says "Shader Model 4.1" too. So I was suggesting to the 3dsmark team if would be possible to wait a few and use OpenGL Mount Evans (3.1) and other more portable libraries instead of Microsoft's exclusive/propietary technology in order to port 3dmark to WinXP, linux and mac. ... So, not as irrelevant as you think... With an OGL Mount Evans-based-3dmark you could be able to compare the graphics driver's quality and speed in other OSs and also to run 3dmark 2008 with WinXP ( which would be very nice ).
And... you had to start talking about the commercial viability of other OSs and the costs of free software... so I had to deviate myself to answer.
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santyhammer
Newcomer
Are you joking? If you can afford to buy usable DX10 hardware (and all of the supporting hardware!) you can easily afford to buy an OS that's newer than Windows 98/ME!! Even in Europe you can easily afford Vista for the price of a modern video card, let alone the other stuff in a modern PC. Your price argument simply does not make sense with respect to gaming.
Great! Like I said, our stuff runs well on windows, linux and mac... but that's totally irrelevant to the games market (unless I misinterpreted and you work at a game dev who writes linux games using Java, Apache and PostgreSQL).
santyhammer
Newcomer
I can buy an ATI 2400 (even AGP if ya need) for 40€. Vista does not cost 40€... here costs like 180€ the OEM/update(which, again, I cannot use) and 300€ the retail version.
I was in Romania some years and programmers were receiving less than those 300€ a month. 300€ is a pretty common "retirement salary" on some richer countries in the EU. Also I was in China where is very common to see computers running Win98. So, you can buy a cheap ATI 2400/Asrock MB/Celeron/512Mb RAM/10Gb HD ... but you have also to buy Vista in order to use DX10. With OGL3.1 and linux you could skip the "buy Vista" part or keep using your Win98/ME/2k/XP. On the other hand, I doubt Vista could run well on that machine... Btw, that's the machine that I use for ID's games on linux.
No no. Let me explain... We are in a company inside a Web domain. This is our current config for the company's games section:
- Web domain/disk sharing/network/mailing system using Ubuntu server + Apache.
- Web itself done in PHP.
- Internal database using postgreSQL ( clients, web, also for online gaming/itemization and book-keeping ).
- 2D artists using Ubuntu(desktop) and GIMP.
- Video edition using Ubuntu desktop + Diva ( which is written in Mono btw ) + VLC/gstreamer.
- 3D artists using Ubuntu(desktop) with Blender + lite versions of XSI/Maya for linux + some internal tools written in Java.
- Level designers using Ubuntu desktop + GTK-based editor(like gtkRadiant,etc). Some are using old MacOSX(that we had before the company remodelation) too. They use LUA and python for scripting.
- 80% programmers using Ubuntu desktop (with Eclipse/Netbeans/gcc/JBoss) with our OpenGL/OpenAL-based engine.
- 15% programmers using Windows/MacOSX/consoles programming specific platform things(Dx path,network and input).
- 5% programmers on mobile devices, mostly MIDP and Google's android(linux kernel+Java+OpenGL|ES).
- The entire team systems runs over the Ubuntu server + subversion.
- Testers using all the OSs and HW possible.
- Network and ITs mostly specialized on linux ( they complain a bit about about salary, is not very big ).
- 100% administrative people using Ubuntu desktop ( secretaries use OpenOffice/firefox/thunderbird, contability uses FreeConta, etc )
We cross-compile in a way the end user could use Win98/ME/linux/mac/consoles. That does not mean some part of the dev team could use, for example, Vista... BUT we need to do all in a way the end user could run our apps/games with an old OS like Win98. Notice how linux was beneficial for us on desktops and also on the servers. Is it more clear now?
And sorry for the offtopic, people keep asking
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I can answer the first part - yes, next 3DMark is Vista and DX10 only.
santyhammer
Newcomer
Thanks.. but DX10.0 or DX10.1 hehehe, trick
You might be surprised how many core government functions are still using NT4 then! A 10 year upgrade cycle wouldn't be too uncommon - we're looking at a Win2K3/Win2K8 upgrade now, which is a good 5+ year gap from their current platform...
MS provides a lot of support and service for Windows, especially for corporate partners with large install bases. They only have finite money and it's just standard business that things fall off the support list (which is available here). With the Linux/OSS model the support tends to be shifted to the community or the individual users - which from a purely business point of view is a HUGE risk. You're not going to gamble a £10m+ deployment on something you think will be supported by someone :smile:
But yes, I will concur that there are in theory more support mechanisms available under OSS and you are less reliant on companies.
You are correct that I'm an MVP but I should definitely clarify that I am not in any way, shape or form a Microsoft employee. Never have been and currently no intention to become one in the near future.
Yes, actually I will make those comments if I think they are appropriate. I'm a MS specialist and it's the ecosystem I have chosen, but I'm not a fanboy and have more than enough gripes about things that MS do, don't do or have done.
I was at their UK headquarters recently getting an overview of the server pipeline for '08 and beyond. We were very critical of the headless server offering - as far as the collected MVP's were concerned it has little value over a LAMP server, especially as you can't currently have the .NET framework on it (GUI related dependencies) which means you lose a lot of IIS and PowerShell advantages. Unless you want to use ASP-1.x then you might as well be going down the LAMP route for that situation.
Ok, fair point I suppose - but from the OpenGL guys I know (note, I'm not following it - I just base it on what they tell me) they're very warey about the OpenGL updates coming down the pipe. I get the feeling it's a lot of "we'll believe it when we see it" at the moment and that Khronos Group (?) needs to show some hard deliverables if they want to maintain their credibility and relevance. Compared with Vista/D3D10 where, like it or not, it's RTW and a well understood platform and ready to develop on right here, right now. Back to the business side again - which is a safer commercial bet?
My personal emphasis was more about the development and support costs than consumer costs that you've focussed on. But anyway...
Jack
That's why I said "usable DX10 hardware", which is really anything in the 8800/2900 class or above. There is not a single game right now that can reasonably use the DX10 path on the "mid/low-range" hardware from AMD/NVIDIA and I do not expect that to change. It's not that it isn't possible, it's just not a priority nor should it be. The best deal to be had right now is an 8800GT, which is still up in the high two hundreds range (and probably more in Europe!).
Right, and you know as well as I do that there's no way that any DX10 game is going to run on that hardware at a playable speed. The same goes for the equivalent stuff written in GL3.0. I don't think I'm stretching it to say that the "DX10[.1]" support on the lower-end cards is merely a marketing check-mark, and quite useless in reality since those cards will only run games that were written long before DX10 was available. Perhaps in the future - once everyone has DX10 hardware - we'll see casual games that use it, but people will certainly have higher-end cars then and also that's completely irrelevant to 3dmark
None of which support DX10...
So seriously don't get me wrong: I have no problem with writing cross-platform stuff and I do all the time. However it's important to keep some perspective on when it's just not worth the developments cost. Some cases are obviously worth it, others debatable, but right now games/game benchmarks are just not worth the additional time, testing and support.
I'm an overclocker. In our team we were very excited about Vista but the results weren't good. Not sure if were the drivers or what but we reverted our system to WinXP because the speed was really better.
Said that, we own all the 3dmark benchmarks in our OC team because is a basic and absolutely required app for us. If 3D Mark 2008 it's Vista and DX10-only I don't think you could get the success of the old ones. From my own experience, I can say neither my friends nor the company I work for use currently or have any intention to use Vista in a near future.
DX10.1 support perhaps would be fine but always like a patch or optional tests. If you join to the Dx10-Vista only problem the need of a Dx10.1 card you're going to reduce even more your potential client mass.
I would be very pleased to see it running over different platforms and operating systems. Linux and MacOSX support would be very nice, but what i'm worried really is about WinXP
Said that, we own all the 3dmark benchmarks in our OC team because is a basic and absolutely required app for us. If 3D Mark 2008 it's Vista and DX10-only I don't think you could get the success of the old ones. From my own experience, I can say neither my friends nor the company I work for use currently or have any intention to use Vista in a near future.
DX10.1 support perhaps would be fine but always like a patch or optional tests. If you join to the Dx10-Vista only problem the need of a Dx10.1 card you're going to reduce even more your potential client mass.
I would be very pleased to see it running over different platforms and operating systems. Linux and MacOSX support would be very nice, but what i'm worried really is about WinXP
I'm an overclocker. In our team we were very excited about Vista but the results weren't good. Not sure if were the drivers or what but we reverted our system to WinXP because the speed was really better.
Said that, we own all the 3dmark benchmarks in our OC team because is a basic and absolutely required app for us. If 3D Mark 2008 it's Vista and DX10-only I don't think you could get the success of the old ones. From my own experience, I can say neither my friends nor the company I work for use currently or have any intention to use Vista in a near future.
DX10.1 support perhaps would be fine but always like a patch or optional tests. If you join to the Dx10-Vista only problem the need of a Dx10.1 card you're going to reduce even more your potential client mass.
I would be very pleased to see it running over different platforms and operating systems. Linux and MacOSX support would be very nice, but what i'm worried really is about WinXP
They've already released 2 3DMarks for DX9, don't you think that's enough and it's time to move on?
well $300 is quite a lot when u can buy a new PC at walmart for $200but OS lasting for years and years costing $300 is something horrible
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