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Unreal Engine 3 using 1024MB Vid Cards?

F

FanATIc

Gawd
Joined
Apr 29, 2005
Messages
718
BU: UT2004 required 5.5 gigs of hard drive space to install. This has got to be a strain a lot of people's systems. So you're talking 2048 x 2048 texture sets, what kind of system and memory is this next game going to take?

TS: Well, we are aiming at the kind of PC that we think will be mainstream in 2006. We will also be able to scale it down. Basically DirectX 9 cards will be minimum spec, so any DirectX 9 shipping today will be capable of running our game, but probably at reduced detail. If you only have a 256 meg video card you will be running the game one step down, whereas if you have a video card with a gig of memory then you'll be able to see the game at full detail.


BU: You are talking about dropping detail levels, what about a 3.2 or something similar?

TS: That will kind of be a low end system for our game if you look what's going to happen two years out. The technology is very scalable and will run a factor of twenty more detail on the highest end PCs currently available. It will be like running Unreal Tournament 2004 on a 1 GHz PC. It runs okay, but not nearly as good as a 3.2.
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Source: http://www.beyondunreal.com/content/articles/95_1.php

Now, does anyone else, besides me, think this is a developer hype (or idiocy) same as Doom 3 using 512? Tests on Doom 3 at ultra with 512 barely show any performance gain or really any visual benefits over a 256 so whats the deal. 512s have literally just started leaking out and show dismal performance benefit in all of todays games, not because of core speed, but because of the lack of physical need for the card to store that much. Same as if you crammed more then 1 gig system memory into alot of FPS games today your gains would be very limited.

Im kind of interested in everyone elses thoughts on this. Will 1gig cards be out by early 2006 when the first game using this engine hits shelves? When they are wont they be catering to the super elitist gamers that actually spend that much. Does this make any marketing sence what so ever? Easily going to be talking about 800+ MSRP (before reseller price hike) per card since memory is the most expensive thing on a card.

Personally, i think the guy has no idea what hes talking about or he wasnt paying attention to what he was saying. 256mb cards were rarely getting used until games such as farcry yet their existence extends back to 2003. I highly doubt to see 512s get addressed widely until the better half of 2006 or later let alone 1gig cards. Thoughts?
 
Fact is a game developer could easily fill up 1GB of video card memory or more now with current game technology.

All that's holding them back is the hardware, and memory aint cheap.

And Tim Sweeney very much indeed knows what he is talking about. It is his engine afterall, he's just telling you what it's capable of doing.

I find this part of your post offensive towards him:

FanATIc said:
Personally, i think the guy has no idea what hes talking about or he wasnt paying attention to what he was saying.
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He knows way more about game development than you or I. You don't become one of the founders of Epic Games and create the Unreal Engine without knowing what you are taking about.
 
Brent_Justice said:
Fact is a game developer could easily fill up 1GB of video card memory or more now with current game technology.

All that's holding them back is the hardware, and memory aint cheap.

And Tim Sweeney very much indeed knows what he is talking about. It is his engine afterall, he's just telling you what it's capable of doing.

I find this part of your post offensive towards him:
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somtimes i wonder if they arent out to market a bit though. Offensive or not. Carmack said 512 for Doom3, as far as i'v seen its completely useless. I simply expect more of the same. Unreal games are exceptionally popular, however when this game is released, no gamer with a budget is going to pay that money to get the graphics, not for 1 game. If it was 2 years up, sure, but i disagree with alot of what he mentioned, 3.2s being 'low", for example when today their still considered pretty high end. I do not see this technology gap as to what the general hardware people own is being closed in a year.

Lets face it, 1gig cards of any type no matter how old, are going to take far longer to drop to a general acceptance purchase price then this engine will last. Effect of memory amount on cards costs sucks, but its very high and unless someone can find a better way to create more of it cheaper, its not going to drop any time fast.
 
FanATIc said:
somtimes i wonder if they arent out to market a bit though. Offensive or not. Carmack said 512 for Doom3, as far as i'v seen its completely useless. I simply expect more of the same. Unreal games are exceptionally popular, however when this game is released, no gamer with a budget is going to pay that money to get the graphics, not for 1 game. If it was 2 years up, sure, but i disagree with alot of what he mentioned, 3.2s being 'low", for example when today their still considered pretty high end. I do not see this technology gap as to what the general hardware people own is being closed in a year.
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Ultra mode has hitching at doors and such with 256MB cards. With 512MB ram, supposedly no hitching.

no hitching = best gaming experience = Carmack knows what he is talking about
 
kcthebrewer said:
Ultra mode has hitching at doors and such with 256MB cards. With 512MB ram, supposedly no hitching.

no hitching = best gaming experience = Carmack knows what he is talking about
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paying 200dollars more over an MSRP for no hitching at doors is why 512s were recommended for ultra mode? Anyone notice any difference in visual quality as well? Have to get some sleep, i know im a tad heated, hopefully this can stay rather subtle if anyone else cares to comment.
 
why do textures need to get bigger, when polygons are getting smaller?


i dont understand how a gig of memory on a video card could be used, until there are higher resolutions capable of displaying all those visable objects with.

does he mean he will use a massive chunk of ram as sort of a scratch pad/drawing board for what the textures will look like while all the dynamic shaders are applied to them?

or is it just a way of cutting down on load times?
 
Looking at the detail of the textures in the limited amount of screenshots we've seen of the UT3 engine, it is certainly conceivable that they could require a 1GB memory gfx card, but if the current trend to inflate the price of the top end cards rather than bringing it in at the same point as the previous high end, we'll end up paying £550-600 for a new gfx card ($1000-1100 US). They will effectively price their customers out of the market and games like UT will have to wait a year or so for the prices of the hardware to fall.

I love the series of UT games and will definitely be buying UT2k7 (could've come up with an original name) but investing that much in a single gfx card.. no way. 2 Ultras just cost me $1600 for 2x256mb ones and the 512's are £75 more!

Not good.
 
@ fanatic: It's called progress. Get used to it. I'm happy the main GPU players are pushing so hard with cutting edge technology. This helps keep technology current and move the baseline forward. Software programmers can bring any GPU to their knees. So more power to the GPU makers to give us better technology with each generation.

A simple example of what happens when companies take ages to update their hardware: Creative. The audio market is stuck for years, due to their monopoly and virtually no innovation/breaktrough in their hardware. That's what happens. So, would you rather have that, or would you rather be upgrading just about every year? I know I would choose the latter. The choice is yours...

Either way, this topic has been beaten to death already, 10x over, so I don't know where it's heading...
 
Has anyone noticed the date of that article? It's about a year old. Tim Sweeney just overestimated the advances in home PC technology. For an example look at the Prescott 4GHz: Was announced a "long" time ago, but never happened.
 
1c3d0g said:
@ fanatic: It's called progress. Get used to it. I'm happy the main GPU players are pushing so hard with cutting edge technology. This helps keep technology current and move the baseline forward. Software programmers can bring any GPU to their knees. So more power to the GPU makers to give us better technology with each generation.

A simple example of what happens when companies take ages to update their hardware: Creative. The audio market is stuck for years, due to their monopoly and virtually no innovation/breaktrough in their hardware. That's what happens. So, would you rather have that, or would you rather be upgrading just about every year? I know I would choose the latter. The choice is yours...

Either way, this topic has been beaten to death already, 10x over, so I don't know where it's heading...
Click to expand...

This has nothing to do with GPU makers and what they're doing. Personally i think their pace is fine. If you read the post my gripe is with a software company even considering pushing 1 gig cards for support. Plus its an Unreal engine so you know that 6 months later 5 other games using it will be far along. As noted, by myself and another, the article(if you can call it that) is almost 2 years old. However i assume the hardware support list still stands. While the R520 is slated to have support for 1gig memory support, and im sure Nvidia will push their own, i dont see it a reality any time soon. Infact i dont know of ANY game that can actively utilize a full 512mb card out or coming out let alone 1gig. So assuming 1gig cards will be out this time next year, i find that wishful thinking. Perhaps, in a workstation card, but i dont think in terms of what their production cost will be that either company will actively persue them, especially with the advent of SLI and MVP. If you'll notice what SLI does to games, that is without added memory but it does in effect combine core speed. So that proves to be plenty sufficient for increasing game performance to me. Keep making faster GPUs, scale memory as needed, but not for elitists.

Brent, if you happen to read this, question. Couldnt implimentation of faster GDDR4 offset the need increase dedicated video memory? For example a card with 256 or 512GDDR4 pacing with a 512/1 gig card of GDDR3? Imbeded ram should also make an appearance by 2006 as well dont you think. Wont these technologies slow down the need to pack more ram into a card for any game?

yes the engine looks amazing. But saying you need to triple the average high end card today to support it, rediculous.
 
He didn't say anything about "support"

I don't see the word support anywhere in his quote:

If you only have a 256 meg video card you will be running the game one step down, whereas if you have a video card with a gig of memory then you'll be able to see the game at full detail.
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Let's wait till the game is released, who knows what the hardware scene will look like by 2007. Things change quickly, that's for sure.
 
Tim Sweeny is a brilliant man, but he has a history of overestimating hardware progress. There are a few quotes of his from a couple of years back where he thought that CPUs would become so powerful that 3D rendering in games would be software based. If anything, we're farther from that than ever.
I like this quote:

Nowadays, we are building characters with several hunread bones
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I wonder how many bones you would need to model... there's only 206 in the human body. Maybe they use "bones" for facial expressions and such.
 
FanATIc said:
Brent, if you happen to read this, question. Couldnt implimentation of faster GDDR4 offset the need increase dedicated video memory? For example a card with 256 or 512GDDR4 pacing with a 512/1 gig card of GDDR3? Imbeded ram should also make an appearance by 2006 as well dont you think. Wont these technologies slow down the need to pack more ram into a card for any game?
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Not at all. Fast memory cant make up lack of memory. You could have a video card with 5000GB of memory bandwidth, but once you run out video meory, your out of video memory, and no amount off bandwidth can change that.
 
Its not that 512mb or 1 gig is useless, its veru usefell, its just that few devs are active enough to make high res textures, even if it was an option for people with more memory on there cards, it would be nice
 
Well since Unreal Engine 3 will be debuting sometime in 2006, I would expect the current trend of GPU releases to be at 1GB at the time UE3 comes about. Prices should remain the same as when the x8xx series/6 series came out. That's just my speculation, and its debateable at this point without some numbers.
 
i think you should move to console if you think 1gig cards our out of the question.

people like you hold things back. its called progression. back in the days wen automobiles are were first introduced people though your face would rip off at 65mph.
now we have cars capable of 250+mph.
 
I really don't think 1024MB cards will be out by then. It took about 2-3 years to go from 128 to 256 :/.
 
Unreal 3 itself won't be out till 2007.

UT2007 sounds like it will be out towards the end of 2006.
 
TS: Well, we are aiming at the kind of PC that we think will be mainstream in 2006. We will also be able to scale it down. Basically DirectX 9 cards will be minimum spec, so any DirectX 9 shipping today will be capable of running our game, but probably at reduced detail. If you only have a 256 meg video card you will be running the game one step down, whereas if you have a video card with a gig of memory then you'll be able to see the game at full detail.
Click to expand...

Key phrase there. All the Unreal engine games of the past (IMO) have scaled very well to older hardware. Until I got my 6600GT and donated the 9600se to my sons system, he was playing UT2k4 with more than acceptable performance on my old 1ghz T-bird and GF2. Carmack (as you mentioned) stated that for best performance in Ultra mode you would want a 512mb card. I got pretty damn good performance at High settings with a 128mb 6600GT. Do I think playing on Ultra would have made the game better? Not really.

Boils down to this, people that absolutely demand top of the line performance (whether it actually enhances gameplay/enjoyment at all) will happily shell out $1000 for a 1 gig of mem video card. And, just like this last round of cards and games, not everyone had to go out and buy a 6800Ultra or X850xtpe to enjoy Doom3 and Halflife 2.

They will not produce a game that can ONLY be played on card of this scale, unless they are the community standard.

edit: you may also note, that he says "any DirectX 9 shipping today will be capable of running our game". And as was previously stated, this interview is over a year old.

u_95244
 
Ocean said:
why do textures need to get bigger, when polygons are getting smaller?
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Textures aren't getting bigger (in terms of screen space), just higher resolution. Small polygons allow for more detailed models but higher res textures allow for more detailed "detail" if that makes sense :) And even current resolutions like 1600x1200, for example, can demonstrate the benefit of higher resolution textures than are common in today's games.
 
Hate_Bot said:
Its not that 512mb or 1 gig is useless, its veru usefell, its just that few devs are active enough to make high res textures, even if it was an option for people with more memory on there cards, it would be nice
Click to expand...

Aren't all textures downsampled from a very high-res image in the first place. I don't think there's much extra work required to provide higher-res textures.
 
Brent_Justice said:
Unreal 3 itself won't be out till 2007.

UT2007 sounds like it will be out towards the end of 2006.
Click to expand...

not sure what this matters. It will be esentially the same engine. Unless you know something i dont?

While Xbox owners got a fresh injection of Unreal action last month with the release of Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict, PC owners will have to wait a little longer for their fix. Midway Games today took the wraps off Unreal Tournament 2007, the successor to the highly praised Unreal Tournament 2004. Like all previous Unreal games, UT2007 is being developed by North Carolina-based Epic Games. It will be based on the developer's much-ballyhooed Unreal 3 engine and will be released for the PC in 2006.

"UT2007 will be a major evolution for the Unreal series. Fans will be blown away by the next-generation gameplay, modifiability and visuals that Epic's Unreal Engine 3 technology will bring to the franchise," said Steve Allison, Midway's chief marketing officer. The game will be viewable by the public at Midway's booth at E3 next week.

As outlined in GameSpot's exclusive preview, Unreal Tournament 2007 will once again feature the sci-fi action that has made the series popular. According to Epic president Mike Capps (a video with whom is available below), UT 2007 will "be a mix of UT 2004 and the original [Unreal Tournament from 1999]." Though it will likely not feature UT 2004's less-than-popular domination mode, the game will sport deathmatch, team deathmatch, onslaught, assault, capture the flag, and one-on-one duels. The game will also sport an all-new mode, conquest, which will feature a new style of gameplay, according to Epic.
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Also consider the engine is built for the road ahead, it's built to last, to scale with future generation video cards. And consider Unreal 3 itself won't be out till 2007, at least two generations of video cards from now.

I don't think it's any stretch to believe that 2 or 3 generations from now we'll start to see inklings of 1GB cards, just like we are seeing inklings of 512MB cards now.
 
FanATIc said:
not sure what this matters. It will be esentially the same engine. Unless you know something i dont?
Click to expand...

Same engine, different games. You know as well as I even with the same engine a game can perform and act differently.

Note Tim is talking about the ENGINE in that interview.
 
Brent_Justice said:
Also consider the engine is built for the road ahead, it's built to last, to scale with future generation video cards. And consider Unreal 3 itself won't be out till 2007, at least two generations of video cards from now.

I don't think it's any stretch to believe that 2 or 3 generations from now we'll start to see inklings of 1GB cards, just like we are seeing inklings of 512MB cards now.
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Brent, the unreal engine 3 is going to debut in 2006 with UT2007. I dont understand when the release of Unreal3 matters since modders and UT2007 itself will have access to the same engine and its SDK, i assume. Perhaps im missing a point?
 
I'm as gung ho about new technology and improved visuals as the next [h]ard core gamer, but I do have a problem with pushing specs higher with no corresponding improvement in game play. The games may look better (Doom3) but not play better. Are we all suckers for spending hundreds (thousands) of dollars for eye candy when the game play is virtually the same? Is it not possible to make a game with reduced visuals but vastly improved game play? I would buy it, but maybe no one else would. Lets see, Doom was a fun game on a Pentium 66, but now they can not make a fun game now without a 4 gig processor and 1 gig of video memory? The way I see it, either we are f'd up or the game developers are f'd up. I think its us.
 
FanATIc said:
Brent, the unreal engine 3 is going to debut in 2006 with UT2007. I dont understand when the release of Unreal3 matters since modders and UT2007 itself will have access to the same engine and its SDK, i assume. Perhaps im missing a point?
Click to expand...

Tim didn't say anything about UT2007 performance or hardware requirements in that interview.

He is talking about the game engine overall.

Maybe 1GB cards would benefit in UT2007, hell if I know.

Let's wait till the end of 2006 when UT2007 is out and we know everything about it, it's way to early to be freaking out about it now :)
 
Brent_Justice said:
Same engine, different games. You know as well as I even with the same engine a game can perform and act differently.

Note Tim is talking about the ENGINE in that interview.
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Considering the mod tools that usually get released with any UT games i honostly expect to see quite a bit of what the engine is capable of before Unreal is released. Each developer is aiming at making a game as impressive as possible, and you know the player base will go wild with their own custome things.
 
Now, would looking into compression techniques such as supplied with 3Dc be beneficial? Or would that be the whole "one step down" factor like doom 3 high compared to ultra (specular compression).
 
I haven't read any of the links so take it easy on me... but didn't he voice support for that Ageia physics processor and dual core processors?
 
trinibwoy said:
Aren't all textures downsampled from a very high-res image in the first place. I don't think there's much extra work required to provide higher-res textures.
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You loose alot of the detail and fine imagery. Most games noawadays use something like 512x512res (and thats pretty hgihg res) for most textures, while something like 2000x2000 res can be used by 256mb cards, as long as the card is good, with 1 gig cards higher res textures will be more mainstream, its just with higher res textures, you need to create more detail, but with lower res ones, you can get away with less detail.

Most of the 3d movies you see, have textures for things in them that can be 6000x6000+ resolution
 
you know what, this really pisses me off being that I just got a new comp... so im gonna just say FU to the people making unreal 3 and good day :p
 
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