no AA with HDR... but why?

[texuspete00]

Which is probably why very, very, very few people are spending money on it.

If anyone wants to know of personal experiences with Crossfire, fire away.

I've prefered Nvidia for quite awhile. Hell, I know SLI is more mature. It would have been far easier for me to plop in a second Nv. But the truth of the matter is I don't even like to run HQ AF off anymore. Then there is those three games with HDR+AA that are listed. I have playd Farcry and I play the other 2 as we speak. This means I have one game without AA and HDR, and that's GRAW. It is more than annoying. I don't want anymore. Only 3 games is trivializing it. You'd figure Nv will have at least as many HDR+AA modes available next gen no doubt. I hope they respond to angle independent AF by doing it too.

Maybe a bit OT, some of it's more why I went with crossfire. Though I'm sure most would think SLI is "better." Sorry, to me it's more mature only. Not trying to start an argument there. I mean it's obvious I feel that way or I wouldn't have bought it.

 

[Brent_Justice]

FYI no AA in GRAW is global to ATI and NV, there is a rendering method they are using called deferred lighting that is incompatible with AA. It sucks, believe me I know.

 

[fallguy]

Just dont pay any attention to the paid NV supporter. Forums are much better that way, trust me. The contant flip-flopping is funny, but not worth it. When NV has the only cards able to do HDR, that was great. Even with a beta, and then a recalled patch, it was still good. But now that ATi can do HDR and AA at the same time, suddenly its "unsupported", and not enough titles to matter. Funny how that works.

I can vouch for the default super tiling mode not providing any impact on performance. Age of Empires III and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (which is brand new so no profile in the drivers yet) seem to be running in tiling mode on an X1900 XTX CrossFire setup. However, I'm not experiencing any performance improvements with CrossFire. I'm running the games at 1920x1200 with all in-game settings maxed out so it is GPU limited for sure. I've informed ATI. Maybe Cat 6.5 will show improvements. Note I haven't tested SLI yet in these games.

Just rename the .exe, and get a great boost in frames. I did, and got over twice (somehow, I dont know) the frames. SLI users have reported the same thing. Here is a post with some screen shots.

Maybe a bit OT, some of it's more why I went with crossfire. Though I'm sure most would think SLI is "better." Sorry, to me it's more mature only. Not trying to start an argument there. I mean it's obvious I feel that way or I wouldn't have bought it.

I agree, there are things I liked better about my SLI setup, than my CF setup I have now. But then there are things I like about my CF setup, than I did with my SLI setup. I like my X1900 CF setup better, than my old 7800GTX SLI setup. My A8R32 is a better board to me than my A8N32. More AA options in CF, and much, much better performance are two key advantages for me. Not to mention the better IQ, with HQ AF, and less shimmering. I liked the profiles you could make better in SLI, and overclocking both cards was easyer, after I finally found out how to do it, and not screw up my SLI rendering modes. But as you said, its the users choice. Contantly trying to show CF's "problems" only, and not its advantages over SLI is bias (or SLI's disadvantages), and just plain misinforming. Being part of a paid advertisment, misinformation and damage control program, has no place in forums to me. And which is why Ive ignored anyone in such a program.

 

[texuspete00]

FYI no AA in GRAW is global to ATI and NV, there is a rendering method they are using called deferred lighting that is incompatible with AA. It sucks, believe me I know.

Yep, which begs the question why the hell didn't they go with something else. I don't see whats so special they had to use that over alternatives. Is it because of defferred lightings buttery smooth performance, or perhaps so your mates will look like they swam in a bit of gravy?

Oh, and there's a good crossfire tip for anyone out there. I dunno if 6.4 added support. It seems if you rename GRAW to "AFR-FriendlyD3D.exe", your expensive toys can tame this clunky engine nice. Fallguy mentioned that the day I got the demo in a thread. Support crysis averted.

 

[fallguy]

Yes, you can do that with most any title Ive found out. As easy as making a profile in SLI for a game thats not in there yet.

 

[fromage]

Just dont pay any attention to the paid NV supporter. Forums are much better that way, trust me. The contant flip-flopping is funny, but not worth it. When NV has the only cards able to do HDR, that was great. Even with a beta, and then a recalled patch, it was still good. But now that ATi can do HDR and AA at the same time, suddenly its "unsupported", and not enough titles to matter. Funny how that works.

The nVidia propaganda machine

 

[Rollo]

Just dont pay any attention to the paid NV supporter. Forums are much better that way, trust me.

It would be a lot easier than trying to refute the truth I post, wouldn't it Fallguy/Ackmed/Emilee/others? Anyone who knows how to use Google can search these three names, and your others if you'll give them out, and see that you post a LOT more pro ATI stuff all over the web, all day long, than this supposedly "paid" nV supporter?
Funny how that works.

My offer stands- anything I post that is not 100% accurate, I'll retract.

Just rename the .exe, and get a great boost in frames. I did, and got over twice (somehow, I dont know) the frames. SLI users have reported the same thing.

LOL- do you honestly expect anyone to believe you're rendering accurately and getting over double the performance with a multicard solution by re-naming .exes? Uh huh. If only the nVidia and ATI driver teams were aware of this miracle, a new era of gaming would be born.

I agree, there are things I liked better about my SLI setup, than my CF setup I have now. But then there are things I like about my CF setup, than I did with my SLI setup. I like my X1900 CF setup better, than my old 7800GTX SLI setup. My A8R32 is a better board to me than my A8N32. More AA options in CF, and much, much better performance are two key advantages for me. Not to mention the better IQ, with HQ AF, and less shimmering. I liked the profiles you could make better in SLI, and overclocking both cards was easyer, after I finally found out how to do it, and not screw up my SLI rendering modes. But as you said, its the users choice. Contantly trying to show CF's "problems" only, and not its advantages over SLI is bias (or SLI's disadvantages), and just plain misinforming. Being part of a paid advertisment, misinformation and damage control program, has no place in forums to me. And which is why Ive ignored anyone in such a program.

1. I noted CFs advantages.
2. My being a beta tester for nVidia has no bearing on the accuracy of my posts. (i.e. I'm not posting anything that is not true, and if I am shown to be, I will immediately retract)

 

[Spank]

LOL- do you honestly expect anyone to believe you're rendering accurately and getting over double the performance with a multicard solution by re-naming .exes? Uh huh. If only the nVidia and ATI driver teams were aware of this miracle, a new era of gaming would be born.

Graw defaults to tiling, you dont think that there could be a little chance that tiling actually makes CF go slower then on single card, There could also be other CF tweaks put into the "AFR-FriendlyD3D.exe" profile.

ohh almost forgot:

 

[Cypher19]

Yep, which begs the question why the hell didn't they go with something else. I don't see whats so special they had to use that over alternatives. Is it because of defferred lightings buttery smooth performance, or perhaps so your mates will look like they swam in a bit of gravy?

Deferred shading actually has fairly nice performance compared to typical 'forward rendering', as adding more lights to a scene doesn't add that big of a performance hit compared to forward rendering. It's a bit popular in the graphics industry, but the lack of AA makes it a bit of a showstopper for a lot of programmers, and the solutions out there (e.g. blurring the edges a bit, deferred AA [something Imade myself, which basically allows hardware AA to be used as a post-process for things like deferred shading and HDR. Yes, that even means HDR+AA on even non-X1000 cards], and supersampling) either suck in terms of image quality, or in terms of performance/memory cost. Unless something has changed recently, the only other game that uses deferred shading is STALKER.

 

[Jon855]

LMFAO, wtf is this. My system runs Obby at the highest, HDR + 6xaa + 16af just FINE at 1680 X 1050. It's mostly at 45++ FPS outside, 100+ indoors. That's bullshit, rofl. I should know cuz I play it on my computer and my friend with a similar rig with a 3800+ runs it so smoothly. Where'd they get 27 FPS? GEEEEE, UMM.... K

Umm, you don;t know this yet as you do not have this rig just yet in your hands... Take it easy and let the others speak beforehand...

 

[Mr. Stryker]

Guys, sorry about what I said on my first post here. I had a complete misunderstanding and got the wrong idea.

 

[R1ckCa1n]

I would agree SLI and Crossfire offer much better performance at Oblivion, but won't get into current Crossfire problems.

What problems? Mine is working just perfect.....

Is this a topic in your Nvidia User group, Rollo?

 

[phide]

I don't believe it's fair to deny that CrossFire has issues simply because you haven't experienced any. Rollo's Rollo, and he'll never change, but he isn't wrong simply due to the fact that he is, in fact, Rollo.

The HDR/AA topics seem to get quite a bit of attention, don't they?

 

[R1ckCa1n]

I don't believe it's fair to deny that CrossFire has issues simply because you haven't experienced any. Rollo's Rollo, and he'll never change, but he isn't wrong simply due to the fact that he is, in fact, Rollo.

The HDR/AA topics seem to get quite a bit of attention, don't they?

Honestly setting up Crossfire was as hard as one mouse click. What else can go wrong besides waiting for driver updates?

Maybe Rollo is concerned that he will lose his position within the focus group is the reason he seems to be losing it?

Yes, HDR/AA is a hot topic as more games will support it leaving all the 7800/7900 buyers pissed off they listen to the PR machine.

 

[phide]

Things can go wrong regardless of how simple the process is. To paint CrossFire with such a complementary stroke is a little naive, but if it works great for you, that's, well, great. Others have not been so fortunate, and that applies to both sides of the fence. Multi-card rendering seems to be a tricky proposition for any engineer to swallow.

It doesn't seem like developers are interested in working with the limitations of current hardware at all. There are viable solutions that are highly functional and fast on a wide range of cards, such an integer HDR, but most developers don't seem interested in doing multiple render paths at all. I think it's a little lazy to take the "off the shelf" FP16 approach when others (like Valve) are interested in wide compatibility.

 

[DandyBear]

I wasn't aware "objectivity" is in the Terms of Service? In America, we're allowed to have preferences and opinions.

Rollo, your opinion doesn't matter because its dictated to you.

 

[Coolmanluke]

I wasn't aware "objectivity" is in the Terms of Service? In America, we're allowed to have preferences and opinions.

Rollo, your opinion doesn't matter because your opinion is dictated to you.

 

[Netrat33]

LOL- do you honestly expect anyone to believe you're rendering accurately and getting over double the performance with a multicard solution by re-naming .exes? Uh huh. If only the nVidia and ATI driver teams were aware of this miracle, a new era of gaming would be born.

I may be wrong but I was always understand this happens do to optimizations not being seen in Cat's AI. So disabling Cat AI would do the same too.

 

[leSLIe]

bottom line is, im sticking to 8X AA 16X AF and NO HDR!!!. We´ll have to wait ´till the next generation vid cards, that i hope will come with GOOD HDR+AA support.

 

[John Reynolds]

This thread is a shining example of why I'm not fond of programs like the AEG one. Just how many unnecesary flame wars have been created by people with vested interests in always defending one particular company's parts.

And, yes, if ATI has a similar program I won't be a fan of it either.

 

[FrgMstr]

Could not agree more. I think enough has been said on all of this.

I have banned Rollo. I am tired of cleaning up the messes associated with his affiliations.