Valve sucks

[CappyCobra]

For all you ppl screaming bloody murder about Valve being in Ati's Pocket, lest us not forget that deal EA & nVidia had a while back

"Graphics card maker nVidia yesterday signed an exclusive alliance with games firm Electronic Arts (EA) to optimise its games code for nVidia's range of GeForce graphics processors, making the hardware EA's "preferred platform"."

This is not a new practice. This is the way of business. Is it ETHICAL? No, not by a long shot. But the fact of the matter is, you don't like it, DON'T BUY THE GAME. Vote with your dollar, not by posting fruitless comments on a messageboard.

SOURCE:
http://www.crn.vnunet.com/news/1140130

 

[DropTech]

Did you see the pictures? The banding is something you can spot right away.. Yes it would have been nice if they added it. But they didn't. I dont care for the method that Crytex chose for HDR as my old 9700pro can handle many forums of HDR but the one they chose. would have been nice for them to code in a fall back but they didn't. Some times stuff like this happens. And we deal with it...or make a bunch of posts

Yes, I saw the screenshots. and I've played the game on an 5700 ultra on both DX8 and modified 9 paths.. and might I say, yes, the tiling with the flashlight is bad, but it is one thing that could have been fixed with mixed mode.

HDR is a completely different subject as it was hardware limited, were as the FX is not hardware limited.

 

[WuTangClam]

Please understand? Maybe you should? Valve doesn't call for either of those, it calls for full precision, which on ATi is 24, and nVidia is 32. The POINT of this thread is to point out that ON FX CARDS (regardless of your so called 'horsepower'), it would have been best to offer the mixed mode that they were going to do, but dropped.

Not once does the original poster mention a mixed mode. In fact, it seems to me that the original poster set out to prove that Valve purposefully crippled performance on the FX series cards by forcing FP32 when FP16 looked identical. We now know that FP32 is not identical to FP16.

It would have been nice for them to offer a mixed mode, but it's not like Valve was just sitting on their hands in the final days of development. Read the gamespot article if you don't believe me: http://www.gamespot.com/features/6112889/p-25.html. I also find it rather unlikely that the mixed mode is just tucked away in a closet somewhere, and they're holding onto it in an attempt to stifle the sales of a somewhat obsolete series. At this point, the 6600GT would be a far better choice than any FX series card. If Valve wanted to optimize in favor of one brand, then why not do it with the latest generation of cards? Furthermore, I don't think it would have been wise for them to delay the game in favor of a working on something that would have given maybe 10%-20% of their customers an increase in FPS. Ideally, they'd release the game sooner rather than later and then work on a patch that introduced this mixed mode. They may very well be working on this patch now, but the truth is, we don't know, and it would be silly to assume that such a patch will never come about.

So, essentially, this thread is pointless. The original poster based his argument on the assumption that FP16 looked identical to FP32/FP24. He assumed wrong. We should let this thread die and create a new one that constructively discussed a mixed mode.

 

[CestusGW]

Can anyone with Bloodlines and a FX5xxx series videocard try this out and post if it helps the games fps or does it cause graphical errors.

I would test this but I have an ATi 9800pro o/c past XT speeds, I did try this and maybe got a few fps outside.

Anyway the reason I'm asking is because at the White Wolf forums and some other forums for this game alot people could use a performance boost in this game.

If anyone has played the game... then you know how slow it can get in the hubs and other levels, like the Bishop Vic level(end quest for plague bearer mission).

Thanks in advance.

Me and my FX5600[ashamed] would love to help out with this, when we get the time. But if you think the Bishop Vic level was bad, wait till you see what happens when you get down into the sewers *shudder* I forced all textures to lowest mip-map just to make it through that segment. Yes, I played Vampire with walls that were all one colour ... and a player that was all one colour .... and enemies that were all one colour ..... and monochrome (unshaded) everything because the freaking non-turn-downable water made my poor rig choke like a ......... you've all got vivid imaginations, picture a person or thing that would choke performing a certain act. There yah go

 

[R1ckCa1n]

It also indicates that there is something wrong when as soon as you recognize the card as an ATi card, it fixes graphical glitches. That is still in speculation.

Actually this thread was created because of the performance gain be forcing HL2 to fp16 via a third party application and NOT what you are alledging. All the hoopla is bacause the FX line can't handle full percision fp32 as well as the ATI line. This is nothing new, but is obviously bothing come people.

I do think, however, Valve should release a patch that will allow the underpowered (FX owners) to fall back to mixing fp16 and fp32 to gain a few FPS. Maybe we will see it and maybe we won't. Only time will tell.

 

[starhawk]

We should let this thread die and create a new one that constructively discussed a mixed mode.

STRONGLY SECONDED

 

[DropTech]

Not once does the original poster mention a mixed mode. In fact, it seems to me that the original poster set out to prove that Valve purposefully crippled performance on the FX series cards by forcing FP32 when FP16 looked identical. We now know that FP32 is not identical to FP16.

It would have been nice for them to offer a mixed mode, but it's not like Valve was just sitting on their hands in the final days of development. Read the gamespot article if you don't believe me: http://www.gamespot.com/features/6112889/p-25.html. I also find it rather unlikely that the mixed mode is just tucked away in a closet somewhere, and they're holding onto it in an attempt to stifle the sales of a somewhat obsolete series. At this point, the 6600GT would be a far better choice than any FX series card. If Valve wanted to optimize in favor of one brand, then why not do it with the latest generation of cards? Furthermore, I don't think it would have been wise for them to delay the game in favor of a working on something that would have given maybe 10%-20% of their customers an increase in FPS. Ideally, they'd release the game sooner rather than later and then work on a patch that introduced this mixed mode. They may very well be working on this patch now, but the truth is, we don't know, and it would be silly to assume that such a patch will never come about.

So, essentially, this thread is pointless. The original poster based his argument on the assumption that FP16 looked identical to FP32/FP24. He assumed wrong. We should let this thread die and create a new one that constructively discussed a mixed mode.

I never once said it was raised by the original poster, I just said that the threads purpose (should have said as of now..but whatever) is that why didn't they add a mixed mode when they had already spent so much time on it apparently, and then just tossed it away. This also doesn't explain the running it as an ATi card fixes the graphic problems (I've seen it, it works..)

And your statment about why not do it on the latest generation of cards? Cause at the time the FX and the R300 series was the latest generation...

Other then that, yeah, pretty much, you're right.

[EDIT] on your comment about the thread, I agree.. Or we could get this thread renamed?

 

[tranCendenZ]

Did you see the pictures? The banding is something you can spot right away.. Yes it would have been nice if they added it. But they didn't. I dont care for the method that Crytex chose for HDR as my old 9700pro can handle many forums of HDR but the one they chose. would have been nice for them to code in a fall back but they didn't. Some times stuff like this happens. And we deal with it...or make a bunch of posts

The banding you speak of is with straight FP16. With a mixed mode, shaders that need FP32 get FP32 and shaders that don't get FP16, therefore there is no artifacting. Crytek proved that you can get the same quality with mixed mode as with full precision, and with better performance too.

 

[dderidex]

Not once does the original poster mention a mixed mode. In fact, it seems to me that the original poster set out to prove that Valve purposefully crippled performance on the FX series cards by forcing FP32 when FP16 looked identical. We now know that FP32 is not identical to FP16.

Indeed, the original few posts were definately less clear on this than I intended - I have just revised them again with a better statement of my position on this.

Hopefully, that clears things up some.

 

[TheRapture]

Well then yell at Crytek for slapping Nvidia logos all over their CDs and game and website.

Which is funny to me because an XT-PE wipes the 6800U on the floor in FarCry, at high res and high AA/AF....

 

[AlbeeC13]

Well, here's my take on the situation.

If nVidia's cards were incapable of running in the specified FP mode, what is Valve supposed to do:

a) Code for nVidia cards to use the lower-quality 16FP mode while ATI cards use the 24FP (or 32FP?) mode.

Why this wouldn't happen: This would make nVidia cards possibly run faster than ATI cards, but only because they are using less precision, thereby making direct comparisons impossible and showing nVidia in a better light to the average Joe reading reviews. With ATI largely funding Valve for the game, this would just be stupid, besides the fact that the game was made to run at a certain precision, and should be forced to run at that precision or BETTER, not worse, in order to portray the originally intended quality.

b) Force nVidia cards to use higher precision to make up for their shortcomings, in order to keep image quality at or above originally intended levels. This is what they did. I see nothing wrong with it.

Edit: And for the record, I don't necessarily agree with the whole practice of video card companies sponsoring game developers, but if they're going to do it, they should at least make the video card company look good. It's a business relationship, and the point of a business relationship is to help eachother, not make the competitor look good. As far as crippling the competitor's performance on purpose, I see that as unethical, but nVidia crippled their own cards in this situation. Tough luck.

 

[CrimandEvil]

Well, here's my take on the situation.

If nVidia's cards were incapable of running in the specified FP mode, what is Valve supposed to do:

a) Code for nVidia cards to use the lower-quality 16FP mode while ATI cards use the 24FP (or 32FP?) mode.

HL2 is coded to run at full percision which means 24p for ATI (since they can't do anything but) and 32 for the 6x00 series (since they have the needed horsepower to run it at that percision).

The problem is that it seems that most of the time HL2 doesn't need to use FP anyways but there are times when FP would be needed. Now if you read the first page you'd know that HL2 can be forced to use DX9 on FX cards but you get some artifacts and such but once you change the ID of your video card to an ATI card those artifacts go away. Weird huh?

Performance still sucks though on the FX when using DX9 since the card is using 32P the whole time. So you force 16p which seems fine for most of the time but 24p is still needed at times.

My problem is how weird changing your video card's ID fixes the image problems and that Valve had 18 extra months to work on HL2, why couldn't they have created a mix path like this since some of the game doesn't need to run in FP anyways?

For me this comes down to either Valve (or I should say Gabe) was lying about how close HL2 was last year or that Valve (for whatever reason) decided not to code a DX9 path for FX cards (for whatever reason). They had worked on a mix code path in the beginning (Gabe mentions that they spent 3 times as much on it) yet they discarded it, sounds like a total waste of time and mismanagment to me to devote so much time and effort just to throw it all away.

I might just skip HL2 based on all this poli-jaking around and get WoW instead.

 

[AlbeeC13]

HL2 is coded to run at full percision which means 24p for ATI (since they can't do anything but) and 32 for the 6x00 series (since they have the needed horsepower to run it at that percision).

The problem is that it seems that most of the time HL2 doesn't need to use FP anyways but there are times when FP would be needed. Now if you read the first page you'd know that HL2 can be forced to use DX9 on FX cards but you get some artifacts and such but once you change the ID of your video card to an ATI card those artifacts go away. Weird huh?

Performance still sucks though on the FX when using DX9 since the card is using 32P the whole time. So you force 16p which seems fine for most of the time but 24p is still needed at times.

My problem is how weird changing your video card's ID fixes the image problems and that Valve had 18 extra months to work on HL2, why couldn't they have created a mix path like this since some of the game doesn't need to run in FP anyways?

Ok, I have a couple comments to this. First, how do we know it's Valve's fault that there are artifacts when running the FX in DX9? Maybe it's a driver issue? Changing the card's ID might be changing other settings, making the card run properly, but not necesarily proving that Valve did some crafty coding. This needs to be looked into by Valve and/or nVidia before anyone can start crying foul. This isn't exactly the same as the quake/quack fiasco....

Secondly, I don't think floating point precision is something that is NEEDED at times and not NEEDED at other times. To the best of my knowledge, floating point precision was introduced with the newer versions of DirectX in order to allow video cards to store more accurate colors, alpha levels, and such when drawing scenes. This increased precision is clearly visible when comparing different floating point precision levels and integer (non-floating-point) computations. Valve decided that 24-bit Floating Point Precision was sufficient to give their game it's best look while maintaining performance levels. (It just so happens that ATI cards can do 24 Bit floating-point, which only goes to show what a sponsorship can get you, but that's beside the point. Had nVidia sponsored them, we'd be wondering why ATI cards don't look as good because they can't run 32-bit floating point precision, while nVidia can.)

As for mixed-path coding, I feel there should be no need for this. Isn't the point of DirectX and OpenGL to provide a standard graphics development kit that hardware developers build their video cards to support? If that's the case, the hardware should not be forcing software developers to code a certain way to best support their hardware. The drivers they write for their hardware should be translating the standard DirectX graphics code, not optimized for any specific hardware, to run in the best way possible for their cards. If they pay the developer, as ATI did in this case and nVidia does for EA, then they should have some say as far as optomizing the software graphics code, which again is a totally different topic. But, the developers should not be forced to code different paths so that every video card vendor's hardware will work at its best; this is the hardware makers problem (unless, of course, they're paying the game developer to do so.)

 

[FrgMstr]

Too bad Kyle didn't do that. Saying a ridiculous claim like "Half Life 2 Coded Against NVIDIA?" in a news post is much different than saying "Increase HL2 Performance on nv3x by Lowering Quality". All he has shown is that he doesn't understand the issue at all and made an assumption based on his lack of knowledge on the subject.

Actually I posed a sensationalistic question that would entice our news readers to come in here and find out more for themselves. Just an advertisement that got many folks wondering what is going on to get some good postage flowing, and it has done just that. In fact, I think this thread has been great. I can't wait to see results being posted from HL2 players.

 

[AlbeeC13]

I also have to add that saying "Half-Life 2 Coded Against nVidia?" is a LOT different than "Half-Life 2 Coded Against nVidia!". The difference is visually subtle, but grammatically obvious.

In addition, these are some of my first posts to the forum, so obviously it got the job done.

 

[CrimandEvil]

AlbeeC13, HL2 was coded using DX9 specs and ATI pretty much stuck to that. Nothing to do with the "sponsorship." But DX9 also says that when needed you can run in PP when you don't need FP, HL2 is running in FP all the time. Atleast read alittle of the thread before jumping the gun.

Welcome to the forums BTW.

how do we know it's Valve's fault that there are artifacts when running the FX in DX9?

Because every time some site or individuals try running it in DX9 you see artifacting, thats called a constant.

From what I know Valve didn't decide on any FPP number, HL2 runs at the full percision of the video card. ATI only does 24 so you get 24, NV's 6x00 uses 32 so it runs in 32.

Now wheres them benchmarks guys?!

 

[cjcox]

1. Take 1 'valve sucks' thread

2. Remove all posts from people that don't have HL2.

3. Remove all posts from poeple that can't stay on topic.

4. Save the 3 remaining posts!

 

[glynn]

Originally posted by ruined!

You claim Crytek is lying then? They are the ones who made the statement that they got SM3.0 up and running in two weeks.

http://www.techreport.com/etc/2004q...ek/index.x?pg=1

"Some of the changes Crytek made took only a few hours, while other elements of the retrofit took a week or two to complete. In fact, after the first two weeks of effort, Crytek had the initial version of the Shader Model 3.0 code path up and running."

I think if i remember correctly SM3 is alot more easy to code for than SM2 Hence why Crytek probably got it out the door quicker than Valve with SM2? Correct me if im Wrong as im not a programer
And as a side note man did this thread Grow lol.Lets keep the good discussions going fellas as this is pretty intresting reading

 

[AlbeeC13]

AlbeeC13, HL2 was coded using DX9 specs and ATI pretty much stuck to that. Nothing to do with the "sponsorship." But DX9 also says that when needed you can run in PP when you don't need FP, HL2 is running in FP all the time. Atleast read alittle of the thread before jumping the gun.

Well I read about 2-3 pages into it but it's like 30 pages so.... Anyway, from what I've been able to gather, DX9 supports 16 and 32 bit FP modes, so the ATI 24-bit is non-standard. So, nVidia just seems to be using the proper FP level while ATI is not, because they don't support it.

Welcome to the forums BTW.

Thanks

Because every time some site or individuals try running it in DX9 you see artifacting, thats called a constant.

Guess we have to wait and see what ATI and nVidia have to say about it!?

From what I know Valve didn't decide on any FPP number, HL2 runs at the full percision of the video card. ATI only does 24 so you get 24, NV's 6x00 uses 32 so it runs in 32.

I agree, so what is everyone arguing about again?

 

[kronchev]

HL2 runs awesome on my 9800Pro...what sucks is steam. A lot, in fact.

 

[trooper11]

Well I dont know how I did it, but i managed to read all 23 pages -_-. wading through 95% of flames and bashing was pretty tiring lol.

''HDR is a completely different subject as it was hardware limited, were as the FX is not hardware limited.''

Now wait a minute here, isnt this whole hoopla about a hardware limitation? Isnt the fact that you have to use 16fp instead of 24 or 32 a 'hardware limitation'? Thats what it seems like to me. What everyone wants is for another precision mode to be added becuase of a hardware limitation, plain and simple. Unless you want to say not having 24fp or enough power to handle it at 32fp as NOT a limitation.

Anyway, I do agree that what these game developers do someitmes to optimize for one card for antoher is pretty low, and its been done for ati and nvidia time and time again, unfortunately its all about the money sometimes. But again, we dont know why this happened and if this was intentional at all. i think the baseless flames and attacks to vavle are uncalled for in this discussion about a real issue for some users. I personly dont have an opinion since there is no info either way, just assumptions and heated emotions lol.

But one thing I think everyone is missing is that this doesnt effect the 6XXX series of nvidia cards in any supstantial way. Now if Valve was going to purposely 'sabotage' the game that would favor ati, wouldnt it be better to do so against Nvidia's Top of the line? This would assuredly help ati out more with thier new cards as well. Thats why I doubt this whole conspiracy about vavle trying to underpower fx cards only.

Now what I do think happened was that they simply decided, maybe in haste or just from looking at the market, that they would only need to cose around the full prescion mode to maximize the quality of the game, somehting alot of people were antisipating as being superb. They decided to keep it as close to top quality as the could, which means it would hurt older cards obviously, which turned out to hurt the fx cards more then the older ati cards. This doesnt mean the intetion was to favor the ati cards, it just happened that ati's older cards also supported 24bit precision. But lets nto forget, they implemented full precision, which means 32bit and 24bit, so it equally supported the current generation of cards from nvidia and ati, so no bias there that i can see.

Now I do hope they release a patch to fix this so that people can get longer life out of thier current fx cards and still enjoy half life 2, but we cant forget that the game is still very enjoyable evne without the patch, as others have reported when running it in directx 8.1 as per the standard. hopefully valve releases a patch to help give those enhancements though.

One thing I was sorry to hear was that some people would refuse to play the game just becuase of this, blaming vavle and hating them for it, thats just absurd. the game is great imo, ive enjoyed it as much as doom 3, and im glad i made the purchase. to simply discount hl2 becuase of this thread is a bit shameful, your missing out a good game over this discussion.

 

[CrimandEvil]

Well I read about 2-3 pages into it but it's like 30 pages so.... Anyway, from what I've been able to gather, DX9 supports 16 and 32 bit FP modes, so the ATI 24-bit is non-standard. So, nVidia just seems to be using the proper FP level while ATI is not, because they don't support it.

Other way around, DX standard is 24.

 

[Loto_Bak]

I'd like to reiterate a previous post I made....

Valve not including a proper mixed precision model hurts end users, but more importantly their reputation among DEVELOPERS as an engine that supports a wide variety of hardware. As a developer sitting on the side lines deciding between source and other engines, and I just learned that source performs badly on ~20% of the markets gfx cards and does not run in a dx9 path I would immeditatly drop it from my potential list of engines. If valve does not create a mixed mode path you can bet on more doom3/farcry titles than source titles.

In the end they are just shooting themselves in the foot.
Look at doom3, It has optimised paths for every generation of hardware available. A xbox port is in the works and you can bet you'll see it on xbox2 and ps3. Carmak knows that compatability makes a great engine, fancy effects second

 

[AlbeeC13]

Other way around, DX standard is 24.

Ehhh, from what I can find, there is no official standard. It's all about who can get their precision highest in hardware...

 

[CrimandEvil]

Doesn't Bloodlines run as DX9 with the FX cards? I think I saw something like that a couple pages back. If so that should tell you something.

 

[CrimandEvil]

Ehhh, from what I can find, there is no official standard. It's all about who can get their precision highest in hardware...

Feel glad, I had to venture into the thread for this link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...ixelShaders/Instructions/Modifiers_ps_2_0.asp

 

[AlbeeC13]

Interesting...but what the hell are we looking at here?

 

[Skanky]

But one thing I think everyone is missing is that this doesnt effect the 6XXX series of nvidia cards in any supstantial way. Now if Valve was going to purposely 'sabotage' the game that would favor ati, wouldnt it be better to do so against Nvidia's Top of the line? This would assuredly help ati out more with thier new cards as well. Thats why I doubt this whole conspiracy about vavle trying to underpower fx cards only.

but your missing a fundimental fact that the majority (75%) of PC owners have a mid range card so your assumtions does not hold water.... and atleast 70% + of that 75 is Nvidia owners...

just my .02

 

[CrimandEvil]

I'd say it's more like 60/40 (I'll let you decide who has more ). Alot of people bought 9600 cards since it had the HL2 offer, remember? Also there are a few people who still have 9700's and FX cards which had became the "mid range" level hardware.

 

[glynn]

Actually in my fixing of Computers in my area in Australia. The most common card i come across is the FX5600?I dont know if this is just something native to this part of australia.But if this Thread holds water then there will be more than a few unhappy customers lmao
So is there any shots to show if its even worth forcing the FX cards to run DX9 or is it just for cosmetic value?

 

[CHEATON9800XT]

cheaton faster than GF?

Oh, no,no.
CHEATON did Cheating for speed.
Remember.

Wow,
Anisotropic cheat,
PixelShader cheat(see 3DMARK05),
and,
Alpha-Blending cheat.(PostProcess)

it is REAL.

 

[toddw]

I wonder if they would have allowed "16" instead of the "24" or "32" if peeps would then be saying they "optimized" for Nvidia.

Yeah I think Valve sucks, but that's just because of Steam -- which completely and totally blows huge chunks and I don't have HL2 because of it. It equates to another company forcing you to install gamespy -- no one would put up with that for a single player game, period. No I'd rather not have another TSR running in my bottom right window, thanks for NOT ASKING though...

Anyways... ranting....

On this topic I think they had to stay even, otherwise peeps would be saying they optimized the other way.

 

[SnakEyez187]

cheaton faster than GF?

Oh, no,no.
CHEATON did Cheating for speed.
Remember.

Wow,
Anisotropic cheat,
PixelShader cheat(see 3DMARK05),
and,
Alpha-Blending cheat.(PostProcess)

it is REAL.

I can see you wll have a very long stay on this board..

 

[DropTech]

Now wait a minute here, isnt this whole hoopla about a hardware limitation? Isnt the fact that you have to use 16fp instead of 24 or 32 a 'hardware limitation'? Thats what it seems like to me. What everyone wants is for another precision mode to be added becuase of a hardware limitation, plain and simple. Unless you want to say not having 24fp or enough power to handle it at 32fp as NOT a limitation.

No because the FX can do FP32... Because FP Blending is needed for HDR, and the implementation that FarCry uses is 16bit, the other cards can't do it because they don't have 16bit FPB.

But one thing I think everyone is missing is that this doesnt effect the 6XXX series of nvidia cards in any supstantial way. Now if Valve was going to purposely 'sabotage' the game that would favor ati, wouldnt it be better to do so against Nvidia's Top of the line? This would assuredly help ati out more with thier new cards as well. Thats why I doubt this whole conspiracy about vavle trying to underpower fx cards only.

At the time of development with the first 4 years of the game, the FX was the card out by nVidia... and was the top competitor.

But lets nto forget, they implemented full precision, which means 32bit and 24bit, so it equally supported the current generation of cards from nvidia and ati, so no bias there that i can see.

It was known that the FX had poor full percision, and at the time of development, like the above part of your quote, it was what was available at the time. That's why valve was going to implement a mixed mode about a year ago... it just disappeared.

And again, this doesn't explain the part where switching the product ID gets rid of the graphical glitches.

Now I do hope they release a patch to fix this so that people can get longer life out of thier current fx cards and still enjoy half life 2, but we cant forget that the game is still very enjoyable evne without the patch, as others have reported when running it in directx 8.1 as per the standard. hopefully valve releases a patch to help give those enhancements though. One thing I was sorry to hear was that some people would refuse to play the game just becuase of this, blaming vavle and hating them for it, thats just absurd. the game is great imo, ive enjoyed it as much as doom 3, and im glad i made the purchase. to simply discount hl2 becuase of this thread is a bit shameful, your missing out a good game over this discussion.

Agreed.

 

[Jbirney]

The banding you speak of is with straight FP16. With a mixed mode, shaders that need FP32 get FP32 and shaders that don't get FP16, therefore there is no artifacting. Crytek proved that you can get the same quality with mixed mode as with full precision, and with better performance too.

Thats fine. However thats not what your doing right now. You have been on some holy quest to bash ATI/Vavlue for this on a number of boards. You use one test where all of the shaders get replace and you get a nice FPS gain. So whats the FPS when you only replace some? Do you know how much? Remember HL2 has 1100 shaders in the game, thats a lot of work to test each and every shader...

 

[Frosteh]

See, I don't think anyone can really conclude that. A statement like that can only be made by the people in charge at Valve, only they know what they did, not us.

It is very possible that they didn't have it in their minds to setup HL2 so that the GFFX would look miserable. Maybe they really did feel that DX8.1 was the better path for it, maybe they found some other problems trying to make DX9 work on it? We don't really know, and making statements like what is posted above which I am getting is the common thread in this thread is really nothing but a guess, which could be incorrect, so keep that in mind.

We simply do not know their reasons, without them, we cannot know the true answer.

Well our interpretation of the situation is only natural, people are loyal to brands wheter its stupid or not, whether you like it or not. This creates a problem for valve, if they decide to do something which is going to dump on even a smaller section of their fanbase in a large way, then they better have a damn good reason.

So far no one seems certain as to why they dropped this mixed mode, and the fact that no one really knows and they don't appear to have said anything to back themselfs up will just cause this such speculation. Valve need to stand up and give us the real reason. If we think its a crap reason and they just didn't put the effort in then we can go ahead and post valve sucks threads.

I'm certainly not going to rule out money being an influence though, this sort of thing happens in buisness all the time, its about money and reputation, at the end of the day if you think buying the rights to the HL2 brand name for marketing video cards and the game together, had no influence in any of the decisions with the engine or game then you're really living in the happy happy love fluf world where no one ever does anything bad and its not possible for such respectable companies to do these things.

One of the good things about sites like hardocp and the surrounding community is that quite often you guys pull apart even the best of things to find the really nitty gritty faults and everything else thats wrong or bad or whatever. Valve have some explaining to do, especially when it comes to DX9.0 looking fine when using this hack to trick the game into thinking you have an ATI card.

If they're going to keep quiet about it then Its their own fault, its a shame it takes threads like this causing them bad press to force them into a position where we'd get some answers in the first place.

 

[Frosteh]

After quickly reading more of this thread I think some people are missing the point...

1) No one is claiming 16bit precision is 100% error free, no one is claiming this so dont bother further trying to prove it.
2) Mixed mode could have been used and from what I understand a lot of people here are convinced it could have been done with relative ease, other games have been working with Nvidia to acomplish such things.
3) Performance increase or not, on whatever card for whatever reason, forcing everything to run in a higher precision is bad programing practice, full stop end of story, it makes them look sloppy in my view
4) The FX 50xx range ARE dx9 cards and so far i've used mine to play all my dx9 capable games with dx9 enabled, its my choice to sacrafice other features for this or as well as overclocking my cards, however its still a choice. Saying their not dx9 cards or they shouldn't be treated as such because their speeds aren't as fast as the competetors is a load of rubbish.

We dont say ATI cards aren't opengl capable because they run opengl games worse on average compared to the competition, despite how small that difference is.

A further note on this truth debate about us not knowing the truth and probably never will, my view is that if the only reasonable reasons for them possibly doing this are all bad and they all make the company look lame, in my view. So its irrelevent why they did it, the fact that they did it in the first place is warrent enough to look at them with a scornfull eye. If they come up with an explination which is reasonable and everyone can accept even the minorities i'd be very supprised, mind you i'd be supprised if they even responded to this issue in the first place, so there we go...

 

[starhawk]

i think we have beaten the crap out of this subject, and it's time to kill this thread off and start another.

we've established that full precision=fp24/fp32 and nvidia cards get weighed down by that.
we've established that hl2 runs full precision unless forced to run otherwise.
we've established that there is a fix: force hl2 to run fp16 when it can, and fp24/fp32 when it absolutely has to.

now what we need to do is trash this thread and make a new one dedicated to implementing the fix.

i do not believe that this can be said any more clearly.

 

[CHEATON9800XT]

HL2 needs Full-Precision(FP32)?

Clearly, NO.
because, "Why No Difference?"

if need this, ought to occur Massive difference.
in short, ALL HL2 Shaders are half-Precision(FP16) Shaders.

CHEATON did Fake24bit Processing,
substantially 16bit Processing.
(because, SourceCode is half-Precision. 16bitSource + add vain bits = Fake24bit)
THIS IS NOT REAL Full-Precision.

needless to say, half-Precision is so good thing. see MSDN-DX9 column.


say again, "Why No Difference?"

 

[da sponge]

Secondly, I don't think floating point precision is something that is NEEDED at times and not NEEDED at other times. To the best of my knowledge, floating point precision was introduced with the newer versions of DirectX in order to allow video cards to store more accurate colors, alpha levels, and such when drawing scenes. This increased precision is clearly visible when comparing different floating point precision levels and integer (non-floating-point) computations. Valve decided that 24-bit Floating Point Precision was sufficient to give their game it's best look while maintaining performance levels. (It just so happens that ATI cards can do 24 Bit floating-point, which only goes to show what a sponsorship can get you, but that's beside the point. Had nVidia sponsored them, we'd be wondering why ATI cards don't look as good because they can't run 32-bit floating point precision, while nVidia can.)

While I agree with your last point, I don't with the first sentence. The reason precision isn't needed at times is because some of the shaders don't appear complex enough that the extra precision provided at full precision doesn't make any difference in the output generated. The point here is that Valve should have coded it so that the card had the option to run these shaders at partial precision to improve performance if image quality wasn't effected. The shaders that DO require full precision (as seen in the comparison screenshots of the glass) would simply not have this option, forcing all cards to run at full precision. Valve bypassed this completely by forcing the most of the FX cards into dx8.1 mode when they seemingly could have provided the majority of those users with dx9 benefits without a huge difference from dx8.1 performance by adding partial precision hints where appropriate.

That's of course assuming we're not missing some big reason why not to use partial precision on the majority of the shaders. Many people are jumping to conclusions as to why Valve didn't do this and assume that partial precision would have been fine for the majority of the computations in the source engine. If there's some other factor that makes partial precision a moot point, then everyone getting riled up will seem pretty ridiculous, but if it is a viable, signification perfomance boost, Valve has some serious explaining to do.