Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup - Part 2: High End Shootout
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 7, 2003 5:30 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Back to the game...
Since NVIDIA can't do floating point textures, PS2.0 shadows were left off, and we didn't use the NVIDIA shadow (depth sprites) for our cards as ATI doesn't support that. We have decided that since the glow effect uses PS 2.0 (and we are using this as a DX9 stress test rather than an actual game) this needs to be enabled. The 'goodness' of the glow effect has been questioned, but we aren't here to critique the quality of the implimentation. We simply want to test the raw power each card has to push TRAOD PS2.0 code. Personally, I think the effect glow had on the wall lights in the Paris demo was one of the only "pretty" things in the game.
Depth of Feild (DoF) is also on. After watching this demo hundreds of times, it really seems to me that using PS2.0 for DoF in TRAOD was overkill for what they ended up with. It just seems like they could have gotten similar results (with better frame rates) using lower detail (frequency) mipmaps and dynamic reduction of geometry. Of course, I could be way off base, but it just seems like there were better things that could have been done with PS 2.0 in this game.
We note that there have been issues with the accuracy of the Depth of Field post processing, but we think that the new 50 series of Detonators (along with the Cg compiler) will alleviate this issue. Of course, there are still some IQ issues in ATI's 3.7 cats.
As games and hardware move forward, post effects like DoF and rendered textures are going to be getting more and more complex, and the way hardware handles these things will be slightly different. It's less important to look at pixel level "sameness" between two solutions, but rather at overall image quality, and the impact of the effect. The user experience is what matters in this arena, and some things are going to be subjective. Pixel shader effects are much more intricate than geometry or T&L, and differences in architecture, precision, and drivers will all contribute to slight differences where no solution can clearly be labeled as more correct than another. Of course, that makes our job harder, but it will definitely be an interesting ride.
Anyway, in order to try to understand exactly how DX9 PS2.0 is affecting each graphics card, we are doing two tests at each resolution (with and without AA). The first test, everything we don't need to see something and have PS2.0 functionality is disabled. For the second test the only thing we do is turn off PS2.0 and run the benchmark again. The scores we will be giving you are in the form of percent decrease in performance when PS2.0 is enabled. This should give us some idea of how this implementation of PS2.0 scales on each card, and give us a good solid glimpse into the implications of DX9 in TRAOD (as this is the only game that will ever use this engine).
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Anonymous User - Saturday, October 11, 2003 - link
Great job with the review. I'm so happy to finally see benchmarks in more than just FPS's. I'm always curious to see what kind of benefits can be had by upping my video card in RTS games for example. Take a rest, your brain must be fried from all that benching.One question. I have an LCD monitor and I can't get Generals:Zero Hour to run at 1280x1024. How did you manage to get that resolution for your benches since it is not offered in the game menu?
Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Anadtech is a total liar. The 52.14 quality of picture sucks and so does my 5900 card sucks. Its garbage like it was before and the 52.14 drivers for sure are not helping it become better. As for the pictures i dont know how he dares even to say there is no difference in quality it for sure is a big problem the quality with all the games and programs i tried out.Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
The TRYTH about the det. 52.14 driver:A) OpenGL filtering appears to be just fine.
B) D3D filtering suffers from the following "optimizations"
Application Mode:
1) True trilinear is never utilized at all...on any texture stages. It's now all "pseudotrilinear"
Control Panel Mode
1) Same pseudotrilear as above
2) Proper Aniso level selection is only applied to texture stage 0. No matter what the aniso level selected (2x-8x), only 2x is applied to stages 1-7.
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 9, 2003 - link
I'd like to know what happened to all the CPU scaling analysis? I hope there's a part 3 which includes these same cards.Anonymous User - Thursday, October 9, 2003 - link
Good to see you are reworking the Flight Sim 9 BM. Your achieved FR in part 1 were so much higher than what real simmers are getting. Many people would be happy to get a reliable 25 FPS out of the game. Once there we can worry about IQ. So you need to push the texture sliders etc to put a real load on the system in this game. A continuing argument with this game is the importance of CPU/memory relative to graphics card in achieving acceptable frame rates. Anything in your testing that could shed light on this would be invaluable.scott s.
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Pete - Thursday, October 9, 2003 - link
As long as I'm bothering you, I'd like to request Halo numbers with AF for your next review/roundup. AF really spruces up IQ, IMO, and it's a shame (almost pointless) to buy $500 cards and not run at the highest IQ possible. I'd also appreciate comparison pics with AF, as well. Thanks!Pete - Thursday, October 9, 2003 - link
Whoops, that was the URL of the inline pic, which works. This is the (broken) link to the large pic: http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/roundups...Pete - Thursday, October 9, 2003 - link
Derek, the Halo Det45.23 large pic link doesn't work: http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/roundups...Anonymous User - Thursday, October 9, 2003 - link
Might I suggest you remove the Tech part of yourSitename ? there's not much tech anymore
Anyway this is not about Nv vs Ati, it is Nv vs DX9, It still states on NVidia's site, the FX series are DX9 card which they are not!!
Inform the people as it should & not as your Nv-Paymaster is telling you!!
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 9, 2003 - link
"We still urge our readers not to buy a card until the game they want to play shows up on the street."What if we want to play DNF? Should I just wait till it's done?
Sounds like you're in nVidia's pocket more like it. Most people like games, not just one... so upgrading has immediate effects for most.