Valve sucks

[R1ckCa1n]

I already know all that.. by but switching the name, it doesn't switch the physical features of the card (Driver level orientation) thus the game regardless of the name will recognize that the card physically can do 32 bit percision, and because it calls for full percision, it will run 32 bit percision. So the percision thing I don't buy as a viable answer.

Psstt:
A little factoid for you. Back in the early days with Farcry there was a simular issue with banding on FX cards. One fix for that was to change the Device ID to an ATI card. Since Farcry is on the NV TWIMTBP programs me doubts that the device id is doing anything "evil" for NV in HL2.

 

[tranCendenZ]

If you want to flame them, try the easy targets. Steam Sucks and/or Why Securom 5 with CD-checks for the retail edition when a Steam download version is essentially the same thing without a CD?

don't forget the sound stuttering and random memory crash bugs

seems like HL2 could have used some more time in the oven.

and btw, for those saying Nvidia should have went with FP24 instead of FP32 with the GeForce FX series, and that FX series makes up a very small percentage of the population... replace Nvidia with ATI, FP24 with SM3.0, FP32 with SM2.0B, and GeForce FX with X800, and you may have the very same situation next year with devs that decide not to code for and test the sm2.0b path, instead only going for SM2.0 and SM3.0 as the x800 is the only card series to ever use sm2.0b... When that happens, and your card essentially gets demoted because its in the minority, not because of its capabilities, you will probably understand why many GeForce FX users are pissed here.

Either HL2 was released half baked stripped of features, which shouldn't have happened, or Valve discarded the PP path they complained so much about making last year, which also shouldn't have happened. Either way, it should be fixed in a future path, adding a mixed precision path... And maybe some sm3.0 and 16-bit hdr while they are at it to bring it up to the level of farcry in terms of technology

 

[da sponge]

"Here you go, a quick analysis of the Steam stats indicate that there are about 245,000 FX boards in total, which represents about 18.9% of their total userbase, however the number of boards that they stated they would not treat as DX8 for the FX series is 33,047 or 2.55% of their userbase. Conversly, the number of DX9 ATI boards is 386,956 or 29.85% of their userbase - and these will recieve no benefit from extra effort in coding and supporting different precisions.

Forget IHV favoritism or who paid who, if you were running a company that has to do cost benefits analysis, what would these stats tell you? "

So even if they coded a partial precision DX9 path for the FX series they would only use it for that 2.55%? I'm sorry, I must have missed the statement or link earlier showing that valve would only treat 13% of the FX cards their userbase is using (2.55% = ~13% of 18.9%) as DX9 capable regardless of performance. If partial precision hints will allow the whole FX line, or even the majority of it to run the game at acceptable performance levels with DX9, there'd be no reason not to treat the cards as DX9 capable.

 

[CleanSlate]

Psstt:
A little factoid for you. Back in the early days with Farcry there was a simular issue with banding on FX cards. One fix for that was to change the Device ID to an ATI card. Since Farcry is on the NV TWIMTBP programs me doubts that the device id is doing anything "evil" for NV in HL2.

Ding ding ding ding, we have a winner and second hand proof that Valve didn't code HL2 any differently for NV's cards.

~Adam

 

[^eMpTy^]

So even if they coded a partial precision DX9 path for the FX series they would only use it for that 2.55%? I'm sorry, I must have missed the statement or link earlier showing that valve would only treat 13% of the FX cards their userbase is using (2.55% = ~13% of 18.9%) as DX9 capable regardless of performance. If partial precision hints will allow the whole FX line, or even the majority of it to run the game at acceptable performance levels with DX9, there'd be no reason not to treat the cards as DX9 capable.

Here's a thought...since everything is going to FP16/FP32 vice FP24...wouldn't it be prudent of valve to include pp hints for maximum performance on future hardware? can't the 6800 class cards still get a performance boost from FP16?

 

[AlbeeC13]

This could be totally off, but here's an idea.

If I'm reading things correctly, forcing DX9 usage on an nVidia 5X00 FX card for HL2 works, but with a considerable performance hit and some graphical glitches. It is well known that the shader implementation on the FX series results in pretty poor frame rates for shader-intensive graphics, which seems to be proven by forcing the cards to use DX9 rendering. In addition, FP32 seems to be forced as well when running the FX cards with DX9 rendering.

Now, changing the ID to act like an ATI 9800 card supposedly increases performance greatly for the FX line of cards when using DX9 rendering. The ATI cards use 24-bit FP precision, which is not available on the FX line, with the FX cards having 16 or 32 bit FP precision available. MAYBE, just MAYBE the ATI ID is causing the game to attempt to use 24-bit FP precision on the FX cards, which is not a precision they can use, so they are defaulting BACK to 16-bit FP precision, explaining the large increase in performance when using the ATI ID instead of the default FX ID, as opposed to Valve coding for purposeful performance decreases on the FX line.

 

[Impulse]

Maybe you should've read the thread more thoroughly... That is what's happening, we know it, the argument is that Valve could've included a path (mixed-mode) that makes use of fp16 under most circumstances and fp32 only when needed... Like many other games do, thus granting generally much improved performance to the many poor GF FX owners.

 

[thrawn42]

Loud noises!

 

[Duckzilla]

Maybe you should've read the thread more thoroughly... That is what's happening, we know it, the argument is that Valve could've included a path (mixed-mode) that makes use of fp16 under most circumstances and fp32 only when needed... Like many other games do, thus granting generally much improved performance to the many poor GF FX owners.

That's the way it seems. Valve could have made many nVidia owners have a much better experience with HL2, but they sold out to ATI. No biggie, just as long as everyone knows.

 

[R1ckCa1n]

Here's a thought...since everything is going to FP16/FP32 vice FP24...wouldn't it be prudent of valve to include pp hints for maximum performance on future hardware? can't the 6800 class cards still get a performance boost from FP16?

My 6800 doesn't need pp hints to be nice and fast in HL2. I was very pleased with it's performance throughout the entire game.

Why is this dicussion about why Valve didn't waste their time or delay the release AGAIN on 2.55 percent of their userbase instead of why did NV release such a POS card in the FX? Why can't people get this through their head?

 

[w00t69]

hehe, that nice performance boost to below dx9 spec, and you're still a few frames slower than my measly poor overclocking 9800 pro. Jeez.

 

[Duckzilla]

My 6800 doesn't need pp hints to be nice and fast. Why is this dicussion about why Valve didn't waste their time on 2.55 percent of their userbase instead of why did NV release such a POS card in the FX?

That's not the point, Valve could have implemeted code to make the HL2 much better on those cards if they chose to. The big issue here is that a major game developer literally sold out to a specific hardware manufacturer and could have optimized its code for the consumer in general, but instead took the money.

 

[CHEATON9800XT]

some CHEATON fffaaannn bbboooyyys which has misunderstanding may be,
let's reviews again DX9. see and read DirectX9 specifications!
only 3 Points now is

1."FP16" "FP32" are Register-Precision. NOT Calculate-Precision.

2.Everybody called "FP16-HDR", it is "64bit-HDR", Wrong "FP16". because, A16B16G16R16F is a "64bit"Format buffer.
it Can't(or, so difficult) processing 16bitPrecision Shader.
(if use A32B32G32R32F format will term "FP32-HDR" maybe but it's wrong. 128bitFormat)

3.DirectX9 Supports "FP16" and "FP32"
*NO* statement, *NO* Announcement "ALL shaders Should be using FP32"

by the way,
*Anisotropic Filtering CHEAT
*Skip PixelShader CHEAT
*Vertex CHEAT (see 3DMARK05 batch test)
*Skip AlphaBlending or Skip PostProcess CHEAT (Skip rendering Low alpha-value pixel)

those NOTHING in the DirectX specifications.

 

[Duckzilla]

some CHEATON fffaaannn bbboooyyys which has misunderstanding may be,
let's reviews again DX9. see and read DirectX9 specifications!
only 3 Points now is

1."FP16" "FP32" are Register-Precision. NOT Calculate-Precision.

2.Everybody called "FP16-HDR", it is "64bit-HDR", Wrong "FP16". because, A16B16G16R16F is a "64bit"Format buffer.
it Can't(or, so difficult) processing 16bitPrecision Shader.
(if use A32B32G32R32F format will term "FP32-HDR" maybe but it's wrong. 128bitFormat)

3.DirectX9 Supports "FP16" and "FP32"
*NO* statement, *NO* Announcement "ALL shaders Should be using FP32"

by the way,
*Anisotropic Filtering CHEAT
*Skip PixelShader CHEAT
*Vertex CHEAT (see 3DMARK05 batch test)
*Skip AlphaBlending or Skip PostProcess CHEAT (Skip rendering Low alpha-value pixel)

those NOTHING in the DirectX specifications.

Can you please explain this post so morons like me can make sense of it relative to the issue?

Thankee

 

[CHEATON9800XT]

Can you please explain this post so morons like me can make sense of it relative to the issue?

Thankee

It is a mere memorandum.
But it is having to memorize.

 

[CleanSlate]

some CHEATON fffaaannn bbboooyyys which has misunderstanding may be,
let's reviews again DX9. see and read DirectX9 specifications!
only 3 Points now is

1."FP16" "FP32" are Register-Precision. NOT Calculate-Precision.

2.Everybody called "FP16-HDR", it is "64bit-HDR", Wrong "FP16". because, A16B16G16R16F is a "64bit"Format buffer.
it Can't(or, so difficult) processing 16bitPrecision Shader.
(if use A32B32G32R32F format will term "FP32-HDR" maybe but it's wrong. 128bitFormat)

3.DirectX9 Supports "FP16" and "FP32"
*NO* statement, *NO* Announcement "ALL shaders Should be using FP32"

by the way,
*Anisotropic Filtering CHEAT
*Skip PixelShader CHEAT
*Vertex CHEAT (see 3DMARK05 batch test)
*Skip AlphaBlending or Skip PostProcess CHEAT (Skip rendering Low alpha-value pixel)

those NOTHING in the DirectX specifications.

This is so incoherent even those who know of the things he speaks can't understand, don't feel bad.

Now if you'd please complete your sentences and post it again, I'd appreciate it.

~Adam

 

[Ocean]

eh so someone hacked an fx card to play half life 2 better.

how do these hacks affect other dx9 games by other manufacturers. and how do they affect ati cards?

if they help those games too, i dont think it will be valve's fault.

i knew not to buy an fx card when they came out. dx9 performance pretty much sucked across the board. my next card will likely be a 6800 ultra though.

 

[Duckzilla]

eh so someone hacked an fx card to play half life 2 better.

how do these hacks affect other dx9 games by other manufacturers. and how do they affect ati cards?

if they help those games too, i dont think it will be valve's fault.

i knew not to buy an fx card when they came out. dx9 performance pretty much sucked across the board. my next card will likely be a 6800 ultra though.

How does this post justify Valve not optimizing HL2 to run on an FX card? It seems a simple matter to make those users that bought these cards have as good a time as possible with HL2 except for the fact the ATI bought them out.

 

[Scali]

As far as I can see, the biggest problem is with the water effect, which does per-pixel reflection and refraction. I fully understand Valve's choice for not using 16 bit precision for this, since such vector-math requires a lot of precision. It will probably look quite grainy and blocky in 16 bit under certain angles.

In that case, Valve had 2 choices: run the water in 32 bit on gefx, or replace it with a simpler, but faster alternative. I suppose they thought that the DX8.1-path gave a better quality/performance ratio than using a DX9-path, either 16 or 32 bit.

Other than that, I am indeed wondering why NV doesn't handle this in their drivers. They did shader replacement for gefx in Doom3 aswell, and I believe we can all agree that Doom3 was not exactly designed to make NV-cards perform poorly.
I suppose that either NV tried it and figured they couldn't get away with the quality loss, or they haven't yet released the HL2 'wonder drivers' yet, which will give a significant performance boost (as both NV and ATi usually do, when a new high-profile game or benchmark arrives).

 

[Jbirney]

Psstt:
A little factoid for you. Back in the early days with Farcry there was a simular issue with banding on FX cards. One fix for that was to change the Device ID to an ATI card. Since Farcry is on the NV TWIMTBP programs me doubts that the device id is doing anything "evil" for NV in HL2.

Hey I wrote that at B3D (the user name Jb was either taken here or too short)

So even if they coded a partial precision DX9 path for the FX series they would only use it for that 2.55%? I'm sorry, I must have missed the statement or link earlier showing that valve would only treat 13% of the FX cards their userbase is using (2.55% = ~13% of 18.9%) as DX9 capable regardless of performance. If partial precision hints will allow the whole FX line, or even the majority of it to run the game at acceptable performance levels with DX9, there'd be no reason not to treat the cards as DX9 capable.

Most of the FX users (10% of the total number of users on steam) have the 5200 fx serries card. We both know there is no way that will ever run a DX9 mixed more or not. A user here tried it and even with the 16bit trick reported low double digit FPS scores oh his 5200. The next biggest group of FX users are the 5600. They are about 4% of the over all total. These probably wont be able to run at any playable frame rate. I agree its a subjective statement but the 5600 was just as bad as the 5200 in the shader department. That leaves the 5700/5800/5900 class of cards. These actually could run the game well enough to have playable experince in mixed mod. However as Fallguy pointed out its less than 3% of the total market. The 6800 users that have tried this have show at most a few FPS gain. Then factor in that the DX8.1 path does not look that bad and runs still x2 faster than the DX9 path in mixed mode. Valve had made a choice. They gave the FX users the best prefroming case for the their cards with reasonable IQ.


Are we forgetting that JohnC had a NV30 path in developement for over a year on Doom3. But he dropped it from the final game as nv drivers (in this case shader replacement) finally brought the speed up where he did not feel it was worth the keeping the NV30 path. Where is the 27 page thread about that as its a simular (not the same) case?

 

[6800GTOwned]

...read the first 3 pages or so, skimmed the rest, so if my question has already been asked/answered.... oops.

Anyway would switching to partial fp (fp16 default and only going to 32 when needed) give performance boosts on 6800 cards too? My softmodded GTO has rocked it pretty well so far (which is awesome cause this game is the main reason I upgraded ) , but there are still some occasional slow downs and minor stuttering that I wouldn't mind getting rid of.

 

[pxc]

Anyway would switching to partial fp (fp16 default and only going to 32 when needed) give performance boosts on 6800 cards too?

Not much, the boost is very minimal. Most things look fine with FP16, but a couple of effects like glass look not good.

When I finally cleaned out all the replaced DLLs, FP16 gave me 3-4fps over default at 1600x1200. I'm CPU limited at 1024x768 so that resolution made no difference.

 

[Badger_sly]

.....
That leaves the 5700/5800/5900 class of cards. These actually could run the game well enough to have playable experince in mixed mod. However as Fallguy pointed out its less than 3% of the total market. .........

It's a lot more than 3% of the market with 5700 or 5900 series cards worldwide.

Are we forgetting that JohnC had a NV30 path in developement for over a year on Doom3. But he dropped it from the final game as nv drivers (in this case shader replacement) finally brought the speed up where he did not feel it was worth the keeping the NV30 path. Where is the 27 page thread about that as its a simular (not the same) case?

Carmack didn't crap on ATI cards for D3. ATI crapped on ATI cards (OGL) for D3. So, that he had an NV30 path made , but then decided it wasn't needed, is related to Valve maiming the FX series, how?

 

[Optimus]

Whew.................... 25 pages and going.

28 and it now takes hours to read because of 20 pages of ATI vs NVidia flames.

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!

And they'd all be mine.

Should I cut off my balls because my wife doesn't want another baby?

When your wife says jump, the only acceptable response is how high?
(Besides if you don't do it. It'll be more painful when she does it w/o anethstesia.)

Inside Gabes head: Shall we release the game now and start making money or go back and code for 2.55 percent of our userbase? We all know the answer to this.

Let me clue you in here. Assuming, and I can agree with this assumption, that no FX5200 can perform playably at dx9.0 in HL2, that still leaves 9.98% of Steam's user base on dx9 playable GeForce FX hardware according to http://steampowered.com/status/survey.html, and that doesn't even include any that may have been listed as Unknown or Other due to manufacturer specific drivers. This accounts for 1 out of every 10 players on Steam. That is not a small portion of the userbase for a gaming engine which intends to make money by selling the engine to other companies.

-----------------------------------------------
On the ATI ID issue:

A previous post of mine was missed apparently due to being in the midst of the flame war. Here it is in it's entirety:

I went to http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?threadid=115614
and followed the directions and saw no speed improvement either way with my NVidia GeForce FX 5950 Ultra (Flashed 5900). However I have localized the water fix. On my card water would never show in dx9.

Deleting the line labeled "NoUserClipPlanes" fixed this water problem nicely.

I have not tried limiting to fp16 shader performance yet, but, otherwise, I see no speed benefit to straight up dx9 in HL2 on an FX series video card.

While I was working on this it became relatively apparent how HL2 recognizes your video card. It does so by Vendor ID and Device ID. (Proof: I ran into a problem with this while attempting the fix. There are two listings for the NVidia GeForce FX 5950 Ultra. The first is Device ID 0x310 and the second is 0x333. Mine is the latter but I started with the former. When I changed the settings in the former nothing would happen, but when I changed them in the latter it started working.)

When you follow the instructions specified by http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?threadid=115614, you are not rebadging your video card. In fact, as far as HL2 is concerned, you are deleting it from the list, forcing HL2 to go with the default settings at the very bottom of the file. The settings at the very bottom of the file are generic and thus do not incorporate any specific settings such as "NoUserClipPlanes." This tells HL2 to treat your video card as a standard, dx9 compliant, Nvidia branded video card. It is basically assuming that you have an Nvidia card from the future... as stupid as that sounds.

So the fact of the matter is that Valve did not cripple NVidia video cards. They optimized them for dx8.1, thus crippling them in dx9.0.

It was nothing more than an oversight on their part. It is a forgivable mistake.
--------------------------------------
This sucks.... there's no smiley for taking a bow.
--------------------------------------

As far as partial precision is concerned, it would be nice to see them release a patch to enable it for FX cards, but now that we've made HardOCP Headlines with this thread, I think NVidia will beat them to it.

 

[CleanSlate]

This goes back to my theory that Valve didn't do anything wrong here, they knew that perhaps with the right optimisations the fx line could run dx9 just fine. Yet they also knew that they didn't want to spend the extra time and thus the extra money in order to optimise a graphics card series. They saw that dx8.1 would run just fine without extraneous optimisations and/or time and money so they ran with it. An obvious and objective point of view.

I worked in an engineering consultant firm where I coded programs to quicken production of sheets (sheets are an engineer's product). I made multiple decisions such as this, many times over during my coding processes. I trust that Valve, though partnered with ATI wouldn't do this on purpose simply to hurt performance/IQ for NV's cards. If they did do it on purpose it is by far a dispicable act and they should be shunned from the industry as if they were Enron because the scandal is close to Enron's capacity however in the video card industry.

However, the decision is logical and it's not too hard to understand that it could have been done to save time and money. Since makign dx9 run on fx cards would have taken more coding, and obviously coding is their product at valve software, inc.

Other/most software companies decided to run the fx line in dx8.1 only thus it's even more logical that what valve did was due to time and money.

Stop bashing Valve because the allegations are nothing but flame baiting from a sore man who bought an inferior product, unknowingly, and expects it to run exactly as he wishes it to. He's so stuck on the idea that he'll create a scandal simply to coerce people into making his card run the way it would have been running if Nvidia hadn't been selling an inferior product in the first place.

~Adam

 

[Optimus]

There is one other thing that many seem to be neglecting. How much time did Valve spend on coding for HL? Last I checked, they didn't claim to stop coding for HL until Steam came around. And even then, they released another update shortly after Steam went "official." Let's see now... that's roughly 2 years ago... 2002... minus the release date... that's a total of nearly 5 years of post release patches, fixes, optimizations, and general upgrades. In one month, they have already released a new (albeit expected at release) gametype.

The point:
Valve will give us a fix for this error in judgement; just not on our clocks. They can't avoid fixing this error as they intend on profiting on the sale of this game engine. They just want to give ATI their due for outbidding NVidia. It won't be more than a year, probably, before the ATI insignia will suddenly disappear from the Vivendi Edition of HL2. Watch, GOTY Edition won't have a single bit of ATI propaganda on it except for the "ATI Hardware Recommended" in the requirements section on the side of the box.

And don't misunderstand me: I'm an NVidiot whole-heartedly. I've never bought an ATI product except for on my eMachines 6811 as the AMD64 is only available on laptops with ATI for a video card that's worth the money. In fact, my first PC had a Voodoo2 right next to an STB Velocity 4MB which, if I'm not mistaken, was an NVidia 2D card.

But I freely admit that ATI makes some very good cards, sometimes even better than NVidia's... *gasp* ...just not usually, IMHO.

 

[Bad_Karmal]

everyone needs to quit their damn whining. some of you seem so suprised that corporations like valve, nvidia, and ati use tweaks to get the upper hand. oh man, big companies aren't honest to me all the time! what is this? i'm not saying people shouldn't point this out to protect the customers but fuckin a. quit being such niave little bitches all the time.

 

[^eMpTy^]

This goes back to my theory that Valve didn't do anything wrong here, they knew that perhaps with the right optimisations the fx line could run dx9 just fine. Yet they also knew that they didn't want to spend the extra time and thus the extra money in order to optimise a graphics card series. They saw that dx8.1 would run just fine without extraneous optimisations and/or time and money so they ran with it. An obvious and objective point of view.

I'm with you on this, except for when Valve went out of their way several times to point out that the FX series simply couldn't run dx9. If they had said "hey we don't have time so you guys will just have to live with dx8.1", that would be all well and good because we'd all rather just have the game sooner...but instead they're pocketing 6 million of ati's dollars and going around saying the FX series simply isn't capable of dx9...

While I understand the decision, I do think that Valve's behavior has been the most biased we've seen thus far. It's not a direction I like to see game developers taking, the whole D3/nvidia thing was a little too close for comfort...this HL2/ATi deal is just plain disgusting...

 

[Optimus]

While I don't like whining any more than the next man/person/thing, I find the need to restate something I have said in other forums:

I agree whole-heartedly with your sentiment, but there are two ways to get service with foreign companies in the US:
-Be extremely polite and ask nicely (tried that on the phone and through email), or
-Without being rude, be the biggest pest you can possibly be until you've worn them down and they cave in to your requests.

Granted the latter doesn't work as often as the former, but when the former doesn't work and you're the average Joe Blow consumer, the latter is all that's left to you.

With US companies, the only difference here is that you have the option to sue the company. But who in their right mind would see that as being worth it (besides a lawyer)?

 

[mohammedtaha]

With US companies, the only difference here is that you have the option to sue the company. But who in their right mind would see that as being worth it (besides a lawyer)?

Someone who's dead broke

 

[tsuehpsyde]

The sad part is, I've watched this thread from what it had no replies, and is now on it's way to almost dominating the two stickies at the top of the forum for views and replies...wow that's just sad.

 

[R1ckCa1n]

The sad part is, I've watched this thread from what it had no replies, and is now on it's way to almost dominating the two stickies at the top of the forum for views and replies...wow that's just sad.

What is sadder is all the hoopla about 2.55 percent of the Steam users are affected by this. Then again, wasn't NV who sad the FX was a mistake?

 

[Optimus]

Let me repeat myself... for those whose brains are clamped tighter than a nerd's !!! in prison:

Let me clue you in here. Assuming, and I can agree with this assumption, that no FX5200 can perform playably at dx9.0 in HL2, that still leaves 9.98% of Steam's user base on dx9 playable GeForce FX hardware according to http://steampowered.com/status/survey.html, and that doesn't even include any that may have been listed as Unknown or Other due to manufacturer specific drivers. This accounts for 1 out of every 10 players on Steam. That is not a small portion of the userbase for a gaming engine which intends to make money by selling the engine to other companies.

 

[da sponge]

What is sadder is all the hoopla about 2.55 percent of the Steam users are affected by this. Then again, wasn't NV who sad the FX was a mistake?

Do you just not read? All the people who spout this "only 2.55%" nonsense are starting to piss me off.

Let me clue you in here. Assuming, and I can agree with this assumption, that no FX5200 can perform playably at dx9.0 in HL2, that still leaves 9.98% of Steam's user base on dx9 playable GeForce FX hardware according to http://steampowered.com/status/survey.html, and that doesn't even include any that may have been listed as Unknown or Other due to manufacturer specific drivers. This accounts for 1 out of every 10 players on Steam. That is not a small portion of the userbase for a gaming engine which intends to make money by selling the engine to other companies.

 

[rcolbert]

Given the nature of the problem in general, and given all the anecdotal evidence describing in great detail the tradeoffs and shortcomings of the older FX cards, I'm surprised that people keep insisting the solution lies in software.

I would guess that anyone who cares enough about the nuances of HL2 performance and the quality differences between the DX8.1 path versus the DX9 path is a pretty serious gamer. I'll SWAG that you folks spend at least 500 hours per year gaming. You also probably spend at least $1000 a year in games, hardware, subscriptions of various sorts related to gaming. For that level of investment, I simply don't understand the stubborn refusal to consider spending $300-400 to *BUY A GRAPHICS CARD THAT DOESN'T SUCK BALLS*. (Balls being objects such as tennis balls, baseballs, basketballs, etc.)

I realize that not everyone can afford to do this. However, PC gaming at present is what it is. A top of the line gaming system is a very expensive proposition. It is perfectly unreasonable to think that a two year old mid-range system will provide the same experience as an up-to-date top-end system. Instead of appreciating developers who design software that can take advantage of the cutting edge technology, folks are openly condemning them for not making compromises to satisfy some lower common denominator. People are missing the point that both the software and hardware MUST advance in order to provide the most compelling experiences.

If you still strongly object to the aggressive upgrade cycles of PC gaming, then I suggest that console gaming is something to consider.

However, if you do take my advice and replace your aging and technologically hampered FX card, my guess is that as an Nvidia supporter you will most likely end up with a new Nvidia card. So the question again is, how exactly is Valve hurting NVidia in all of this?

 

[CleanSlate]

Nvidia hurt nvida. Valve did nothing but their jobs.

Valve just pointed out the fact that the fx series sucks nuts.

~Adam

 

[mohammedtaha]

Nvidia hurt nvida. Valve did nothing but their jobs.

Valve just pointed out the fact that the fx series sucks nuts.

~Adam

Instead of appreciating developers who design software that can take advantage of the cutting edge technology, folks are openly condemning them for not making compromises to satisfy some lower common denominator. People are missing the point that both the software and hardware MUST advance in order to provide the most compelling experiences.

U both said it like it is !!

 

[Optimus]

Given the nature of the problem in general, and given all the anecdotal evidence describing in great detail the tradeoffs and shortcomings of the older FX cards, I'm surprised that people keep insisting the solution lies in software.

There is a small word wrong in this statement which negates the rest. It is the word "the" which should be an "a" to be correct. A solution lies in software. For many, including myself, the only presently available solution.

I realize that not everyone can afford to do this.

As I said, for many, including myself, it is the only solution. Just because you are rich and can purchase a new PC eveytime a new game comes out, doesn't mean 99.9999% of the rest of the world can. I apologize if that statement offends you, I just don't like it when people lord it over others just because they are better off, regardless of whether they earned or deserve it.

It is perfectly unreasonable to think that a two year old mid-range system will provide the same experience as an up-to-date top-end system.

On this I agree, but I don't understand how it applies. A majority of the FX line is barely a year old. Mine, in fact just hit the year old mark 2 or 3 months ago and the 5600, 5700, and 5950 didn't come out until afterward.

Instead of appreciating developers who design software that can take advantage of the cutting edge technology, folks are openly condemning them for not making compromises to satisfy some lower common denominator.

A majority of us have expressed no lack of appreciation for HL2. I love the game. I only played Doom3 through once. But, I plan to go back and play HL2 again.

No one has asked for compromises. No one has asked them to go back and disable anything. What we want is for them to enable fp16 processing for shaders that are not showing rounding errors in fp16. This appears to be a majority of the shaders, else they would not run so well in dx8.1, which unless I'm mistaken, only supports fp16 shaders. We are also not asking that all shaders allow fp16, only those that show no evidence of rounding errors. The ATI cards and the 6xxx series will continue to run as if nothing has changed, while the FX line will suddenly work exactly as designed (i.e. with true dx9 in mind).

People are missing the point that both the software and hardware MUST advance in order to provide the most compelling experiences.

No one's missing your point. That, however, is not the point of this thread. The thread topic was intended to get recognition, at which it succeeded, but the point of the thread is to give compelling evidence that a future patch is needed to allow partial precision for at least the FX line of cards, since no others seem to benefit greatly.

If you have constructive counter-evidence, then please stay and submit it.

However, if all you're going to do is bash some poor folks' decisions on hardware purchases, and thereby contribute nothing constructive or helpful, then leave. This includes those who keep saying that Valve or ATI sucks, because that gets us no where pleasant.

If you still strongly object to the aggressive upgrade cycles of PC gaming, then I suggest that console gaming is something to consider.

Seriously, no need to get insulting...

So the question again is, how exactly is Valve hurting NVidia in all of this?

Actually, no. The question is will Valve submit to the will of 10% of their Steam userbase and add partial precision capability to their shader logic? The supposition that Valve was intentially jabbing at NVidia was an unwarranted, unfounded (albeit believable), reactionary statement. I'm sure most of them will wish they could take it back when the patch is released.

Until then, we let Alien Conspiracy theorists and Government Conspiracy theorists continue to talk and we just say they're crazy and ignore them, so I request:

Please, call us crazy and ignore us. That way we can move on and get this problem fixed.

 

[Impulse]

Actually, no. The question is will Valve submit to the will of 10% of their Steam userbase and add partial precision capability to their shader logic? The supposition that Valve was intentially jabbing at NVidia was unwarranted, unfounded (albeit believable), reactionary statement. I'm sure most of them will wish they could take it back when the patch is released.

I agree that regardless of the reasons why there's no partial precision capabilities right now, Valve should add them into Source in the future for it's own sake (me personally I don't need it at all, not even for LAN gaming on the secondary rigs, but the more gamers that can experience HL2 the better)...

That being said, I doubt there's a wide-spread cry for this being added. Amongst that 10% of users most are probably not knowledgeable enough to realize this or care either way, they bought a GF FX after all, heh.

 

[Optimus]

The funniest thing about this is that the reason I chose the 5900 was that I liked the NV3x design. With the exception of the fact that the actual shader path implementation was a little off (alternating arithmetic and texel operations in order to achieve optimum performance), I thought the idea of having 4 32bit floating point pipelines that can be split into 8 16bit floating point pipelines was an ingenious method of taking full advantage of current technology while providing for future upgradability at a time when their competitors had only just begun to consider dx9... Unfortunately, it took them so long to get the thing out, because of GDDR3 problems, that the 5800 was no longer top tech when it was finally released. Still, just because I can afford to buy a new card right now is no reason to give up on this issue and penalize those with this line that can't, whether or not they realize that they aren't getting all they can get.

I'm like Windows XP:
I have a positive exterior with a stable core.
I have a tendency to do more than is asked, and often more than is desired.

(Can't take credit for that one:
)

And when I find the Holy Grail, I'll share it with the entire world... for $29.99 a sip...