Bit-tech tests Bioshock

[pairdice]

No, you did not address a thing, since the HD 2900 XT fails to perform, even with "just" 4xAA. Call of Juarez being the ONLY exception. Get your facts straight.



Do you have anything relevant to say here ? Or do you just want to start a flamewar ?

I wonder where all these fanboys come from...Maybe you're one of those that Marvelous mentioned. The ones that get payed to spread PR BS from a given company.

Cmon Guys lets show some respect at Kyle Bennets House, he doesnt go to your house and argue, please dont do it here....please?

 

[phide]

Actually, I'm sure Kyle loves a good, heated thread on his forums. Why? Ad impressions. Our charged, malicious arguments are actually a source of revenue. That is unless he's getting a bum deal on advertising, which I doubt.

Obviously, there's a point where "enough is enough", but so long as we don't break out of the pen, our arguments are practically encouraged.

 

[Silus]

Cmon Guys lets show some respect at Kyle Bennets House, he doesnt go to your house and argue, please dont do it here....please?

You're right. But as I've said earlier in this same thread, it gets tiresome to see this display of fanboyism. Dwight follows the footsteps of Eastcoast and resorts to offense. I can only take so much. I should've followed the gold old saying and let them say what they want:

"Never argue with a fool, or he/she'll drop you down to his/her level and beat you with experience."

There are some funny comments here though. I especially liked the "dumb" AA argument. Good laughs right there. Anyway, I'm off this thread. It certainly degenerated to something else, other than the topic and I was part of it and for that, I am sorry.

 

[Dwight]

So, you're saying that hardware resolve is "dumb", whereas shader resolve is "smart"?

Well first they are both hardware. Second yes there are serious advantages to highly flexible programmable AA. But the "dumb" I was refering to was AA that is just applied to everything, and selected from a few preset algorithms. Once apon a time AA was envisioned to be selectively applied and such. But it was released that the hardware just wasn't at a sophistication level that that could be effectively accellerated. Times are now changing.

In the future, yeah, we're going to see the majority of titles using mixed samples per scene and stuff like gamma-correct multisampling, stuff that really demands that resolve be done in shader logic, but that future isn't now.

It isn't prevalent this momement, no. But it is "now" as in DX10 is "now". As in games that are already in development and nearly release. As in before the lifetime of these new cards are up.

Call of Juarez is currently the only title that offers features what one might refer to as "smart" AA. UT3 may as well, but Tim Sweeney has been very vague about it so far. The so-called "dumb" AA is the current staple, so buying a card that excels at said "dumb" AA seems fairly "smart", if you ask me.

...and people would do well not to ask you then I guess? Since you can even give an example of a shipping program that is going that way.

As for why Irrational didn't allow for multisamping in BioShock, we don't exactly know they did that (unless you know something I don't),

It was a quote from someone at 2K. Later today I'm going to be at the computer I read it from so I'll see if I can dig it out of the history. It got dropped from the release because they couldn't get it to look good on the 8800 [in time for release without impacting the release or other features that they ranked above it]. *shrug* Yeah, he named the 8800 specifically. Why he didn't mention the 2900XT I'm not sure but it might be because at the time they dropped the feature from the release schedule they hadn't even really started tweaking for the 2900XT, given that that hardware came out quite late in their development cycle.

 

[Dwight]

....it gets tiresome to see this display of fanboyism.

...

Dwight follows the footsteps of Eastcoast and resorts to offense.

*smash* Whoa dude, lay off the rocks or you aren't going to have any windows left in your house. Dumbass.

 

[phide]

Well first they are both hardware.

Yes, though hardware resolve is performed via dedicated, fixed-function logic, whereas shader resolve is executed via programmable logic that used to be primarily geared for other functions. Replace "hardware resolve" with "dedicated hardware resolve", if you wish.

Second yes there are serious advantages to highly flexible programmable AA. But the "dumb" I was refering to was AA that is just applied to everything, and selected from a few preset algorithms.

I agree entirely -- programmable anti-aliasing is definitely the "wave of the future", but, again, that's the future. Until we start seeing titles that fully rely upon MSAA resolve in shader logic, I think it's kind of a non-issue. We're not even sure at this point what kind of performance hit we're looking at versus conventional MSAA.

It isn't this momement, no. But it is "now" as much as DX10 is "now". As in games that are already in development. As in before the lifetime of these new cards are up.

What games, specifically?

...and people would do well not to ask you then I guess?

Hitting a bit below the belt already, are we?

Do you have a list of current and upcoming titles that will completely negate dedicated hardware logic, and additionally, the performance hits associated with shader resolve on G80 and R600, if you also have that handy?

It seems like you're pulling information from a deeper pond than I am at this point, so it'd be great if we were on the same level in that respect before going any further.

 

[KENNYB]

I think Dwight is referring to Call of Juarez. That's the only game that is using shader-based MSAA, bypassing the 8800's dedicated AA logic.

 

[phide]

Yes, I mentioned that earlier. In addition, STALKER also leverages shader resolve.

 

[DaNotoriousDOM]

Any SLI test yet?

 

[Dwight]

Yes, though hardware resolve is performed via dedicated, fixed-function logic, whereas shader resolve is executed via programmable logic that used to be primarily geared for other functions. Replace "hardware resolve" with "dedicated hardware resolve", if you wish.

It is still programmed in micro-code (at least that's my understanding). And yes IMO when it is feasible otherwise having dedicated only hardware resolve is "dumb". But you are mixing up two things. Dedicated hardware and using the general pool of shaders for everything. You could have the flexibility microcode programmable AA but implemented in dedicated processing units on the backside.

The main downsides to using a generel pool for it all is 'people are stupid'. They don't realize the implications of the changes. That if they run up things to x24 AA that they are actually choosing to make a trade-off between picture alteration and performace....or they know this and are being malicious trying to sabotage the numbers and other people are stupid enough to be fooled by that. You can mitigate the downside somewhat by throtling the AA but that complicates the logic and can introduce it's own issues and in the end you'd likely just choose a different bottleneck when the issue was really the choice the user made.

The upside to a general pool is that they don't have dedicated circutry sitting dormant taking up die realestate if it isn't being used for a particular application. It also allows more leeway for evolving of standards. For example the 10.1 move from optional to dedicated 32-bit FP AA? Well when you are doing the calculations for AA on hardware that handles 128-bit FP calculations that doesn't seem so much an issue.

We are actually seeing the upside already. The 8800s are one hell of a rocket of a DX9 card. I personally would have bought one if they hadn't fumbled their Vista drivers so badly for so long.

But ATI has managed to match and beat it's performance on DX9 in many senarios with "less" GPU that ultimately doesn't have the same maximum processing if you add up everything on-die but has better flexibility in bringing it's processing to bear.

I agree entirely -- programmable anti-aliasing is definitely the "wave of the future", but, again, that's the future. Until we start seeing titles that fully rely upon MSAA resolve in shader logic, I think it's kind of a non-issue.

Huh? You aren't going to see titles come out until you have the hardware (with some natural lag). You statement is akin to the Wright bothers having said "until we have commercial airlines there isn't any use trying to create a heavier than air aircraft."

Hitting a bit below the belt already, are we?

That's why I included the smilely. It was a joke.

We're not even sure at this point what kind of performance hit we're looking at versus conventional MSAA.
......
What games, specifically?
......
Do you have a list of current and upcoming titles that will completely negate dedicated hardware logic, and additionally, the performance hits associated with shader resolve on G80 and R600, if you also have that handy?

Nobody has a complete list. Not for certain anyway. Because even the developers aren't certain what they can do and even if they did they aren't, as can be expected, devulging. They've still got to figure out what's really there and what they can do with it.....and how much payolla they can extract from Nvidia to stick to the capabilities of the 8800.

It seems like you're pulling information from a deeper pond than I am at this point, so it'd be great if we were on the same level in that respect before going any further.

The pool I'm drawing from is a basic understanding of how things proceed. You are expecting the market to be awash in software before the hardware to run it shows up?

 

[phide]

Huh? You aren't going to see titles come out until you have the hardware (with some natural lag). You statement is akin to the Wright bothers having said "until we have commercial airlines there isn't any use trying to create a heavier than air aircraft."

I'm not sure what you mean here. We already have the hardware -- both G8x and R6xx can handle shader resolve, but G8x also has fixed AA logic. CoJ completely bypasses G8x's dedicated AA logic, and MSAA works just dandily on both R6xx and G8x. If you're speaking of 10.1 capabilities specifically, and what it'll bring to the table, I don't think anyone's quite sure where that's headed. Even if both G80 and R600 won't be SM4.1-capable (I haven't actually seen confirmation on this, just Faud "reporting" -- from the outside, it looks like both G8x and R6xx can meet DX10.1 compliancy), is it really going to matter to us?

You brought up the issue of product lifetime, and I'm one to believe that SM4.1 titles will be beyond of the typical lifetime for both G80 and R600, so it seems very much like a non-issue. At this point, we only have, what, four SM4.0 titles, and they're all exceedingly rough around the edges (save for CoJ, which looks significantly better with the SM4.0 path).

They've [developers] still got to figure out what's really there and what they can do with it.....and how much payolla they can extract from Nvidia to stick to the capabilities of the 8800.

Again, I can't tell whether or not you're talking about SM4.1 specifically here, but it sounds like you're saying that G80 cannot perform AA resolve in the SPs, which is false.

You are expecting the market to be awash in software before the hardware to run it shows up?

No, I just don't expect the software will really start arriving, in any meaningful quantity, before the lifetime of the cards is essentially over. Granted, some folks keep their cards for much longer than what might be considered the norm (particularly true of the mid-range crowd), but they're likely to be in a situation where they simply don't have the performance to be able to enable AA at all. Any advantage in either architecture wouldn't really be realized.