Valve sucks

[DaveBaumann]

Lets not forget unless ATI have something really special up their sleeve they're going to be having to run 32bit precision soon to ensure future shader 3.0 capability, what are they going to do, run everything in 32bit, I don't think so, and so a similar dual precision abilty seems favourable.

Actually, yes. Fundamentally there is no reasons why one precision should be faster than the another if the internal datapaths are built for it. If you've ever read some of the comments on precisions from the ATI engineers about support for precisions some of them are fundamentally against the idea of (internal) multi-precision support. My expectation for R520 will that it will be FP32 only, internally.

 

[Lord of Shadows]

There would be no gain from ati cards or 6800 series nvidia cards (well possibly a little gain for 6800's). The fx series however does 32fp at roughly half the speed of 16fp, so there is a potential of twice the performance if they exclusively used 32fp. The gain will depend how many shaders are in the scene at 32fp.

 

[psikoticsilver]

REPEAT, VALVE DID NOT ACCEPT 8 MILLION DOLLARS FROM ATi TO OPTIMIZE THEIR GAME.

ATi was SOLD the rights to budle Half Life 2 in AN OPEN AUCTION in which the bidders were both ATi and NVidia. NVidia just baild when it reached 8 million.


Get with the program people. Bloody hell, get your facts straight.

 

[HeavenX]

REPEAT, VALVE DID NOT ACCEPT 8 MILLION DOLLARS FROM ATi TO OPTIMIZE THEIR GAME.

ATi was SOLD the rights to budle Half Life 2 in AN OPEN AUCTION in which the bidders were both ATi and NVidia. NVidia just opted out early.


Get with the program people. Bloody hell, get your facts straight.

YES, YOU ARE RIGHT, THEY DIDNT ACCEPT THAT MONEY TO OPTIMIZE THE GAME FOR ATI BUT THEY DID ACCEPT THAT MONEY TO OPTIMIZE THE GAME FOR NVIDIA...

 

[Frosteh]

So the general consensus so far is that Valve changed their mixed mode plans to make ATI look better, since they were recieving money from them.

I think this kinda tends towards what the whole thread is about, having a look at the facts i would have to say it hardly seems unlikly.

Anyone have any idea roughly how many instances of shaders in HL2 that require 24bit precision, percentage would be nice. If its low (i.e hardly any compared to those that can be run in 16bit) then it would appear valve did a really good job of screwing over the fx59xx users.

Maybe it was just that performance was good early in production for ATI, and valve not having completed the mixed mode made the fx line look bad. Then realised afterwards maybe they should dump mixed mode to stay in line with their origional benchmark figures which made ATI look better.

Who knows, either way valve look bad, at least from certain peoples point of view, whether ATI users can understand this I don't know, they seem happy to blame it on the hardware.

 

[STEvil]

And the 3dfx debate was 16-bit COLOR vs 32-bit COLOR - nothing to do with arithmetic precision.

Wow, how uninformed are you?

Oh, so the fact that 24bit was chosen over 32 due to savings in bandwidth and negligeble visual differences has parallelism to FP24 being able to look just as good as FP32 to save calculations while just like 16bit, FP16 looks like crap?

Take a longer look at something before you post, I was using the old argument that 24bit looks as good and is faster than 32bit to show you how maybe FP24 is better than FP32 for performance reasons.

Since nVidia decided to use FP16 and FP32 hoping that game manufacturers would use PP its their fault they have a speed decrease on their old cards which cannot do shaders very well anyways.

It only makes sense for a game manufacturer to use full precision under the given circumstances anyways. They could program for PP but then when there is a scene in the game that uses FP32 only the performance of the midrange cards which do FP16/FP32/PP only is going to suck since they will not be doing PP (welcome to what 3dfx was trying to with 24bit and "speed is king"), whereas if they use FP24/32 as their standard this allows them to set the midrange cards down a level or two to maintain playability while those of us with something faster can run full precision without worries of slowdowns or crappy looking shaders.

Also you should note that programming PP shaders is hugely more time consuming and therefore a waste of resources when you could run midrange hardware at a given level which will be playable (not 100fps at one point and then 15fps in a large FP32 only area), and allow the top end/better quality to do what its supposed to do: be top end.

 

[chrisf6969]

I'm glad everyone is coming to a concensus here. And realizing that Valve probably dropped the mixed mode, to make ATI look better. IE: if they hadn't Nvidia 6800 hardware would probably be almost perfectly even or faster than X800. And the 5x00 would be A LOT closer to the 9x00 hardware. (though probably still behind it)

 

[psikoticsilver]

YES, YOU ARE RIGHT, THEY DIDNT ACCEPT THAT MONEY TO OPTIMIZE THE GAME FOR ATI BUT THEY DID ACCEPT THAT MONEY TO OPTIMIZE THE GAME FOR NVIDIA...

Took big letters to get your attention, huh?

Anyway, the purpose of that comment was to tell these morons who think Valve accepted some sort of 'bribe' to optimize code that they're wrong. Of course, getting an 8 million dollar sale WOULD CONVINCE most people to optimize for a certain brand (or against), yes? IT's very posible Valve DID optimize and that this was influenced by this money--but THAT IS NOT THE POINT of my comment.

The point is, that there is a BIG difference between giving 8 million dollars and BUYING for 8 million dollars.

 

[Loto_Bak]

REPEAT, VALVE DID NOT ACCEPT 8 MILLION DOLLARS FROM ATi TO OPTIMIZE THEIR GAME.

ATi was SOLD the rights to budle Half Life 2 in AN OPEN AUCTION in which the bidders were both ATi and NVidia. NVidia just baild when it reached 8 million.


Get with the program people. Bloody hell, get your facts straight.

And your local tabaco company just donated to the local repulicans out of likeness for their stance on teh war

 

[Brent_Justice]

So the general consensus so far is that Valve changed their mixed mode plans to make ATI look better, since they were recieving money from them.

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.

 

[psikoticsilver]

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

Truth is subjective and for an 8 million dollar customer I'm sure you'd be quite subjective.

 

[HeavenX]

Took big letters to get your attention, huh?

Anyway, the purpose of that comment was to tell these morons who think Valve accepted some sort of 'bribe' to optimize code that they're wrong. Of course, getting an 8 million dollar sale WOULD CONVINCE most people to optimize for a certain brand (or against), yes? IT's very posible Valve DID optimize and that this was influenced by this money--but THAT IS NOT THE POINT of my comment.

The point is, that there is a BIG difference between giving 8 million dollars and BUYING for 8 million dollars.

Dont be ignorant, it was you that used them first, I just wanted to show you what you did and you just told us why...

 

[legcramp]

wow thread is way too big.. so have anyone tested the trick yet on teh FX series? and what were ur gains? o yeah HL@ DEATHMATCH!!!! WOOTWOOT heheh

 

[archevilangel]

Let me know if the screenshot method is not accurate enough, if you guys want it done again with other methods it will have to wait untill tomorrow im afraid.

According to compressonator, theres minor differences in the edge of the crowbar and a few stray pixels here and there, but the image is almost exactly the same.

Heres what I did, I split the jpg into 2 seperate losseless bmps, and then compared in compressonator. I would consider them the same image.

My conclusion is that theres more difference in image quality going from different types(ati/nvidia) of graphics cards than there is from going to fp16 prescision.

 

[starhawk]

Do you know how much gain in performance hl2 would have gained if Valve did code it with both 16 and 32? Just give it to me out of ur head, you dont have to be exact...

VERY stupid question... how hard would it be to insert the necessary code to make this happen?

 

[Brent_Justice]

Truth is subjective and for an 8 million dollar customer I'm sure you'd be quite subjective.

Truth is not subjective, there is one truth to why they chose to make DX8.1 the default path on GFFX cards.

The fact is we do not know this truth.

All you can do is guess what that truth is, and when you guess you are either wrong or right.

 

[gordon151]

I'm glad everyone is coming to a concensus here. And realizing that Valve probably dropped the mixed mode, to make ATI look better. IE: if they hadn't Nvidia 6800 hardware would probably be almost perfectly even or faster than X800. And the 5x00 would be A LOT closer to the 9x00 hardware. (though probably still behind it)

The mixed precision mode barely if at all would have helped the 6800 and the 5x00 is still being beat by the 9x00 hardware in DX8.1 mode, so why do you think it would be very close in mixed precision mode which is even more slower?

 

[HeavenX]

Truth is not subjective, there is one truth to why they chose to make DX8.1 the default path on GFFX cards.

The fact is we do not know this truth.

All you can do is guess what that truth is, and when you guess you are either wrong or right.

My guess is to sell new/high priced video cards. More profit for both sides.

 

[psikoticsilver]

Because he obviously lied about that. Maybe he spent 3 times more time sitting on his ass eating chicken legs while *thinking* about nV cards as he did CODING for ATI's.....?

Seriously:
* Running the FX cards by identifying them as ATI cards solves ALL the graphical glitches
* Running the FX cards in FP16 provides similar quality and performance to ATI's running in FP24

There is obviously NOTHING in the game specifically added for the FX users benefit right now.

Didn't you post on page 10 that you don't even own HL2? How would you know this, not to mention be able to start a forum post about it?

 

[CrimandEvil]

Okay from what I gather most of HL2's precision can easily be done in 16-bits but that Valve has coded it all in 24-bits. The problem is that NV's FX line then defaults to 32-bit precision (as well as the 6x00 line but they actually have the horsepower to run at 32-bit precision all the time) for 24-bit precision so you take a huge performance hit when trying to run HL2 on an FX in DX9 but you can they force 16-bit (as well as change your video card ID to an ATI card ).

So the question would be why would Valve unnecessarily use 24-bit precision when you could easily use 16-bit and 24-bit precision when needed to accomplish the eact same task?

Makes you wonder what Valve was doing with all that extra time.

 

[psikoticsilver]

Dont be ignorant, it was you that used them first, I just wanted to show you what you did and you just told us why...

I know it was me that used them first, that's what I was saying is that it takes mighty big letters to get through to people here.

Truth is not subjective, there is one truth to why they chose to make DX8.1 the default path on GFFX cards.

The fact is we do not know this truth.

All you can do is guess what that truth is, and when you guess you are either wrong or right.

Truth is EXTREMELY subjective, there IS NO right or wrong (Even this truth is subjective)--then again, I'm all into Nietzsche's perspectivism.

*edit*

So the question would be why would Valve unnecessarily use 24-bit precision when you could easily use 16-bit and 24-bit precision when needed to accomplish the eact same task?

Answer: we don't know if it does or does not adversly impact image quality/performance yet--hell I haven't even seen a picture of it aside from the one on the front page, nor have I seen a benchmark.

 

[starhawk]

Makes you wonder what Valve was doing with all that extra time.

playing doom 3

 

[STEvil]

Future truth is subjective, it hasnt happened yet.
Present truth is subjective, it is happening.
Past truth is not subjective, it has happened.

EDIT

Lots of pics have been linked already...

The halo 2 image of the master chief in the warthog on page 5 is a good example of FP16 vs. FP32.

The "banded" windows on page 15 (?) are another..
http://img62.exs.cx/img62/9071/GlassFP16.jpg
http://img62.exs.cx/img62/6974/GlassFP32.jpg

and more stuff: http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=193324

 

[Brent_Justice]

the truth about why valve used dx8.1 on gffx cards is not subjective

we just don't know their reasons

without knowing all we can do is guess, and when you guess you are either right or wrong

i feel like i'm repeating myself

 

[CrimandEvil]

Answer: we don't know if it does or does not adversly impact image quality/performance yet--hell I haven't even seen a picture of it aside from the one on the front page, nor have I seen a benchmark.

If you read the thread you'll see an answer to that (with some pics), there are points when 24-bit precision is needed but it doesn't look like it's needed most of the time.

 

[starhawk]

would someone please answer my question here: how hard is it to add the code that's needed to make hl2 run in fs16 when fs24 isn't needed?

 

[gordon151]

Okay from what I gather most of HL2's precision can easily be done in 16-bits but that Valve has coded it all in 24-bits. The problem is that NV's FX line then defaults to 32-bit precision (as well as the 6x00 line but they actually have the horsepower to run at 32-bit precision all the time) for 24-bit precision so you take a huge performance hit when trying to run HL2 on an FX in DX9 but you can they force 16-bit (as well as change your video card ID to an ATI card ).

So the question would be why would Valve unnecessarily use 24-bit precision when you could easily use 16-bit and 24-bit precision when needed to accomplish the eact same task?

Makes you wonder what Valve was doing with all that extra time.

Figures that would be what you would see in this entire discussion, but for the sake of saving other people the trouble of reading the entire thread and coming up with ridiculous presumptions I'll summarize what is being seen here. The whole issue is that HL2 has no mixed precision mode which means the entire game in DX9 mode is running in full precision. The game defaults to Dx8.1 for NV3x users, but if they force it and try to run in DX9 mode they incur a severe performance hit, practically cutting their FPS in half or even more. By forcing partial precision on the entire game using the 3D-Analyze tool while in DX9 mode, you get a performance boost of upwards to 45%. This however is still well below the performance of the default DX8.1 mode, but you get the added benefit of better IQ.

As far as the rather stupid "valve coded the game for 24-bit precision" comments, well there is only full and partial precision in DX9. From what some people are seeing, HL2 might actually need full precision in certain points which is why there might not be a straight partial precision DX9 path for the FX series. This was probably the point of the mixed mode for the NV3x that Valve had originally touted, but apparently decided to take out and instead force the nv3x's to run in a dx8.1 mode. Some presumptions are they took it out because of time constraints and its possible we might see it resurface in a future patch.

 

[ThreeDee]

the truth about why valve used dx8.1 on gffx cards is not subjective

we just don't know their reasons

without knowing all we can do is guess, and when you guess you are either right or wrong

i feel like i'm repeating myself

When 2 truths conflict with each other ..one of them has to be a lie ..assuming of course that one of those truths is truthful to begin with ...

 

[psikoticsilver]

If you read the thread you'll see an answer to that (with some pics), there are points when 24-bit precision is needed but it doesn't look like it's needed most of the time.

I stopped at the end of page 11, so I haven't found anything yet but if I do I'll eat my words (and the shoe that will thus be in my mouth).

 

[HeavenX]

Future truth is subjective, it hasnt happened yet.
Present truth is subjective, it is happening.
Past truth is not subjective, it has happened.

EDIT

Lots of pics have been linked already...

The halo 2 image of the master chief in the warthog on page 5 is a good example of FP16 vs. FP32.

The "banded" windows on page 15 (?) are another..
http://img62.exs.cx/img62/9071/GlassFP16.jpg
http://img62.exs.cx/img62/6974/GlassFP32.jpg

and more stuff: http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=193324

Why are them two pics not same resolution and position?

 

[Lord of Shadows]

would someone please answer my question here: how hard is it to add the code that's needed to make hl2 run in fs16 when fs24 isn't needed?

Easiest way would be to go through and make everything pp and then go back and remove it from things that are problems. Its nothing extremely difficult.

 

[CrimandEvil]

Why are those two pics not the same resolution and position?

Huh? It's the same size but slightly different positions realitve to distance.

 

[Impulse]

would someone please answer my question here: how hard is it to add the code that's needed to make hl2 run in fs16 when fs24 isn't needed?

Hard enough that a plausible excuse for not having it would be that they just didn't have time to code it in before release but not hard enough that they couldn't do so now (or for future Source engine uses)? Honestly, no one here could give you an answer more accurate than that for the same reasons that no one could tell you why they decided not to include it.

It's their engine, their code, they know it better than anyone else and it'll remain like that for a while at 'least ('till SDKs are out and other devs get to tinker with it). For the same reasons that we can't fully ascertain why it wasn't included we can't fully ascertain how hard would it be to implement, it's certainly not impossible though.

 

[CrimandEvil]

Figures that would be what you would see in this entire discussion, but for the sake of saving other...snip...

Uh? Thanks for saying the same thing I did but long winded.

 

[HeavenX]

Huh? It's the same size but slightly different positions realitve to distance.

Them pics are from steam site,rofl. I smell crap...

 

[pxc]

Them pics are from steam site,rofl. I smell crap...

It doesn't matter where it came from. Forcing FP16 in Halo probably breaks the shader replacements in the drivers. To see banding is one thing, for master chief to become a ghost and the ground disappear is totally something else.

 

[starhawk]

Easiest way would be to go through and make everything pp and then go back and remove it from things that are problems. Its nothing extremely difficult.

hmmm... so how long do you guys figure it'd take to decompile hl2 from assembly code to c++, make it pp, un-pp things that should be un-pp'd, and recompile it?

 

[CrimandEvil]

hmmm... so how long do you guys figure it'd take to decompile hl2 from assembly code to c++, make it pp, un-pp things that should be un-pp'd, and recompile it?

Time = Hahahaha

If you have that much time then you should get a girlfriend (or boyfriend).

 

[Lord of Shadows]

hmmm... so how long do you guys figure it'd take to decompile hl2 from assembly code to c++, make it pp, un-pp things that should be un-pp'd, and recompile it?

I would hope no one would have to go through reverse engineering the entire game just to change some shaders. I would also hope that the shaders are seperate from the gamecode and engine but I dont have the game and wouldnt do it if I did. (I dont mind a few color problems)

Hopefully valve will optimize and/or enable the forcing of fp16 without having to use a hook. If not im sure someone will do what you want, just keep your eyes peeled.

 

[yertnpixie]

http://www.ighosting.net/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=29&Itemid=

This site says that the findings that are being expressed here are simply not true. In fact they found no difference in running the game on the system. They even tried it on 2 systems with different specs.

*shrug*