ATI's Dirty Little Secret?

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oozish

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 27, 2003
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Is it stencil shadows/shadow work? How come noone is talking about this...Will Nvidia will clobber ATI in stencil shadows in games like DOOM 3, and maybe even games like far cry? If so, this bodes ill for performance with DOOM 3. Taken from HardOCP review of a x800PRO:

You can clearly see huge gains in performance with Shadows on Medium. In the second half of the graph starting at 81 seconds and on is when we are closest to and around trees in the forest in Fort. As you can see this is where we gained the most performance.
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What's the problem with shadows? Do Nvidia cards exhibit the same performance penalty? I think once we start seeing some DOOM benchies the Nvidia lineup will look alot better, since most people now are simply using PS2.0 based games to evaluate the two cards (in which both do about the same).
 
Over at the Guru3D forums there was a guy who ran the D3 beta at 1024x768 6xAA 16xAF at highest settings on his X800Pro. He averaged less than 15 frames. I'll simply leave it at that.
 
It´s hard to say. According to John Carmack Doom 3 run well on ATI at least.
 
Vagrant Zero said:
Over at the Guru3D forums there was a guy who ran the D3 beta at 1024x768 6xAA 16xAF at highest settings on his X800Pro. He averaged less than 15 frames. I'll simply leave it at that.
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yeah i saw that too, but you gotta remember that doom3 has changed it's path since then. so im betting ati cards will do alot better on doom3 since the beta heh.
 
ID Software would be absolutely stupid to make a game that isn't even playable on one of ATI's high end cards. I am sure John Carmack still wants more money to blow on rocket ships and race cars.
 
It´s betas and alphas guys what do you expect? My 9700 PRO never had a problem with the stencil buffer option in IL 2 and that is quite demanding too.
 
This is a really tough one to call. According to the specs, the NV40 can do 32 stencil operations without AA but only 16 with. However the R420 specs say it can do 16 stencil operations without AA and 32 when it is on. So it could be an interesting battle as you turn up the levels of AA.
 
peltman78 said:
This is a really tough one to call. According to the specs, the NV40 can do 32 stencil operations without AA but only 16 with. However the R420 specs say it can do 16 stencil operations without AA and 32 when it is on. So it could be an interesting battle as you turn up the levels of AA.
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The NV40 also does 32 z/stencil operations per clock when AA is enabled.
 
If so it´s really a non issue then. Wonder if that can mean that DOOM 3 runs slower without AA?? That doesn´t make sense to me at all.

Why would they only do 16 without aa and 32 with :confused:
 
oozish said:
What's the problem with shadows? Do Nvidia cards exhibit the same performance penalty?
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...errrr, as far as i know ATI already answered to that and the problem was that Krytech engine detects ATIs X800 as some nVidia card 4800 or something. source-code bug. so
a. no, nVidia might not have it,
b. not, it's not hardware-related
 
Bad_Boy said:
yeah i saw that too, but you gotta remember that doom3 has changed it's path since then. so im betting ati cards will do alot better on doom3 since the beta heh.
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Wasn't the NV path was cut from Doom? Now both ATi and Nvidia cards run in ABR2. If that's the case there shouldn't be a large difference shoudl there?
 
Vagrant Zero said:
Over at the Guru3D forums there was a guy who ran the D3 beta at 1024x768 6xAA 16xAF at highest settings on his X800Pro. He averaged less than 15 frames. I'll simply leave it at that.
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My laptop with a mobile Radeon 9000 ran the D3 beta decently.

That is all.
 
AcneBrain said:
My laptop with a mobile Radeon 9000 ran the D3 beta decently.

That is all.
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My 5600 runs Far Cry decently.
:rolleyes:

Apparently the fact that I bothered to list the res, settings, AA, AF, and gave the frame rate [I would also have given the screenshot of the settings panel but Activision got to the thread first and forced the mods to kill all the screenies] went completey over some people's heads. I put them there for my health after all, it's not like I wanted someone here with a X800Pro the run the Alpha with those exact same settings and report their framerate so I could better judge the situation. Nope, we certaintly wouldn't want that would we? But hell, we don't need to bother ourselves with such trvial matters, affter all D3 will run decently on a 9000...

...and ATi and Nvidia will announce a merger at the end of this month after the INQ reports that Dave and Jen are butt-buddies.
 
Vagrant Zero said:
My 5600 runs Far Cry decently.
:rolleyes:

Apparently the fact that I bothered to list the res, settings, AA, AF, and gave the frame rate [I would also have given the screenshot of the settings panel but Activision got to the thread first and forced the mods to kill all the screenies] went completey over some people's heads. I put them there for my health after all, it's not like I wanted someone here with a X800Pro the run the Alpha with those exact same settings and report their framerate so I could better judge the situation. Nope, we certaintly wouldn't want that would we? But hell, we don't need to bother ourselves with such trvial matters, affter all D3 will run decently on a 9000...

...and ATi and Nvidia will announce a merger at the end of this month after the INQ reports that Dave and Jen are butt-buddies.
Click to expand...

I hereby ordain you the Nvidia's "unofficial spokesman" title.

;)
 
Vagrant Zero said:
...and ATi and Nvidia will announce a merger at the end of this month after the INQ reports that Dave and Jen are butt-buddies.
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funny thing is, they sorta are. :p

HWZ : What's your relationship with NVIDIA's CEO (or is there any to begin with)?

Dave : The Executive VP of Marketing at NVIDIA and I used to work together at Silicon Graphics. Obviously we're fierce competitors. Outside of work, we're friends. Jen-Hsun's (NVIDIA's CEO) kids and my kids actually go to the same school and we live near each other. I enjoy spending time with him, [during] the few times I've had the chance to.
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http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=30&id=1163&pg=6
 
Well, my Athlon64 3400+ w/ Radeon 9700 Pro runs FarCry smooth as silk @ 1600x1200 w/ 4x FSAA and 16x AA (performance). Very, very nice. I don't think that ATI will be materially behind what NVidia has for next generation engines, including Doom 3.
 
ATI said its detecting the X800 cards as R300 based cards in FarCry.

Hopefully the next patch, 1.2, will help.

Also, do we know for sure that the shadows in FarCry are stencil shadows? We first need to find out exactly what kind of shadows the game uses.
 
It would be awful stupid to put out a game that runs poorly on either Nvidia or ATI cards. I would think that the high end gpus will handle what ever DOOM3 throws at them. DOOM3 sales wont be so hot if no one, or only the owners of one brand of video card can play it on higher settings. :) Not to mention there will be patches and drivers to think about.
 
UltraShadow II allows the game programmer to define a bounded portion of the scene (often called “depth bounds”), which limits the calculation of lighting source effects to objects within that specified area. By limiting calculations to the area most affected by a light source, the overall shadow generation process is highly accelerated. Stenciled shadow volumes do not require texturing or color so UltraShadow II hardware can double the rendering horsepower to generate stenciled shadow volumes at up to twice the standard pixel-processing rate. Did you know that allows the upcoming and highly shadow intensive Doom III to run 3 to 4 times faster in regards to shadow processing?! That's not made up stuff guys.
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There ya go...need I say more?
Nvidia will destroy ATI in DOOM3 benchies, my prediction.

Site REference:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/135/3/
 
...funny is that if the doom3 engine isn't released anytime soon we have stalker and farcry and heck, even HL2 and everybody will ask himself why the heck there was so much fuss about the damn game :D

back to topic, scotty: we'll see what happens once we have benchmarks. until then it's just as dumb a thread as all the vapor-ware discussions about r5000 vs nv4500 are. as for the shadow-issue in farcry - where all this came from - it's just a bug that detects r4xx as the wrong piece of hardware, as said before.
 
Arioch said:
ID Software would be absolutely stupid to make a game that isn't even playable on one of ATI's high end cards. I am sure John Carmack still wants more money to blow on rocket ships and race cars.
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Allow me to quote this brilliant poster's comments.
 
Vagrant Zero said:
Over at the Guru3D forums there was a guy who ran the D3 beta at 1024x768 6xAA 16xAF at highest settings on his X800Pro. He averaged less than 15 frames. I'll simply leave it at that.
Click to expand...

Oh come on. What are the texture sizes and do they all fit into the card's memory? It is a beta, so how optimized is the game? Has ATI gotten a chance to possibly optimize their drivers any? What cpu was it and did that cpu make the game cpu-bound?

Plus, pretty much NO cutting-edge game has EVER ran at acceptable framerates on even bleeding-edge new hardware with FULL detail in the game and FULL anizo/fsaa.

Nobody expected UT2k4 to run at 1024x768 6xAA 16xAF HIGHEST in-game settings on a 9800xt, much less far cry when the game came out. All these games are made with room to expand onto the next generation of cards, too.

sheesh.
 
Sharps97 said:
Well, my Athlon64 3400+ w/ Radeon 9700 Pro runs FarCry smooth as silk @ 1600x1200 w/ 4x FSAA and 16x AA (performance). Very, very nice. I don't think that ATI will be materially behind what NVidia has for next generation engines, including Doom 3.
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What in game settings is that and at what have you the the texture and mip map slider to. That sounds physically impossible!

My 9700 PRO couldn´t max everything out at 1024x768x32 with 2xaa and 8x aniso. Surely I only have a Barton at 2,3 gig but still...
 
accidentalsuccess said:
Oh come on. What are the texture sizes and do they all fit into the card's memory? It is a beta, so how optimized is the game? Has ATI gotten a chance to possibly optimize their drivers any? What cpu was it and did that cpu make the game cpu-bound?

Plus, pretty much NO cutting-edge game has EVER ran at acceptable framerates on even bleeding-edge new hardware with FULL detail in the game and FULL anizo/fsaa.

Nobody expected UT2k4 to run at 1024x768 6xAA 16xAF HIGHEST in-game settings on a 9800xt, much less far cry when the game came out. All these games are made with room to expand onto the next generation of cards, too.

sheesh.
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Doom 3 aren´t optimized for the NV50 or R500 it´s optimized against the 6800 ULTRA and X800XT at the absolute highest. I count on being able to play at 1600x1200x32 with 4xaa and 8x aniso at least and full in game settings.
 
Yeah highly anticipated dx 9 game and chernobyl can hardly be Doom 3 lol.

But I wouldn´t think Doom 3 would be more demanding really.
 
Arioch said:
That's the Stalker benchmark.
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Really? My bad.. Someone linked to that in another forum awhile back and said it was Doom. I never actually follwed the link in the original article to find out it wasn't.

Sorry everybody!
 
I still say Far Cry will turn out to be the most taxing title out this year due to advanced graphic features and coding not being as tweaked as Half Life 2 and Doom 3 will be.
 
oozish said:
Is it stencil shadows/shadow work? How come noone is talking about this...Will Nvidia will clobber ATI in stencil shadows in games like DOOM 3, and maybe even games like far cry? If so, this bodes ill for performance with DOOM 3. Taken from HardOCP review of a x800PRO:



What's the problem with shadows? Do Nvidia cards exhibit the same performance penalty? I think once we start seeing some DOOM benchies the Nvidia lineup will look alot better, since most people now are simply using PS2.0 based games to evaluate the two cards (in which both do about the same).
Click to expand...

..of course DOOM3 benchies will look good on nVidia; nVidia is actively working w/ them , designing the DOOM3 engine. You think they're not going to make it nVidia friendly, even at the cost of ATi friendly? These are the people who paid for points in the past; why won't they do it again?
 
They probably promised JC some free rocket fuel or something.

No big deal - I still expect to play the game well at a high resolution. To be honest the two games I am looking forward to more are Stalker and Half Life 2 and they are performing better in the benchmarks I have seen.
 
It will run in 100 fps on both nVidia and ATI that I am quite sure of I think HL 2 will be more taxing really and that is supposed to be fully playable on a mere 9600...
 
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