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 - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
#41, maybe you and your wife should start a website, you could benchmark ATI cards exclusively. That way ATI would always wind up on top. Admittedly, I'm an ATI junkie (I own a Radeon 8500 and plan to buy a 9600XT ASAP), but enough is enough. (By the way, what's up with the bread/butter analogy? You seem very fond of it.) Seriously, though, either of these cards are really fast and aside from IQ differences, you couldn't tell a difference. A little question for anyone who would know, though: How much does IQ drop going from PS2.0 to PS1.4? I have Halo and I'm wondering how much better it would look on a DX9 card instead of DX8.1.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
if you look at the gunmetal screenshots, that is my only beef with ATI, the scenes are not rendering completely or properly it has happened to me in a lot of games, black areas.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
The article does seem somewhat comprehensive that is true, but: a)other sites reviewing the software did not come to the same conclusions, mainly problems with trilinear and AF again.... b)I have yet to see a review that claims to be unbiased have this much opinion sprinkled all over, mainly pro nVidia which relies on IQ comparison which i refer to in a c)the drivers are beta and not whql so who knows what we'll get as consumers d)the hardware is not yet anounced formally by nVidia e)it seems the choice of what to show on graphs is very subjective,TRAOD shows percentage drops with PS 2.0 but what are the framerates?I do hope this review is correct because it means nvidia are back but due to the above stated qualms I have I can't trust this review.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
The article is extremely comprehensive, as one would expect from Anandtech. Some issues of note:1. It was pointed out that the 5900 and the 5950, in many areas, performed almost identically. This doesn't pose well for nVidia.
2. I'm bothered by the tremendous frame rate difference between ATi and nVidia in some of the titles. It leads me to believe there's something underlying going on, and it's not just a simple card/driver issue.
3. It's nice to see the IQ back to where it should be, as visual quality should never be compromised for performance, unless the user makes the adjustments to do so.
4. I will admit it sort of seems that there is some bias towards ATi, but it's not flamingly apparent. Again, it is just my perception, and doesn't necessarily mean that there is.
5. The most accurate remark made in this review is simply that we are not in the world of DX9 games...yet. To that end, DX9 performance is not nearly as important as it will be. When it is, I think things will step up a few notches.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
Nicely detailed article, and I appreciate the additional games for benchmarking. Any chance we could seee the use of a flight/combat sim program like IL-2 or Mechwarrior?Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
I don't know why everyone is believing the IQ results (or even trying to use Photoshop to check the differences). These pics are JPG's! They're already manipulated by the compression logic, and who's to say these pics are true?Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
Loooooong time reader, new poster.Excellent work Anand and Co. I found the article very informative, and although certain folks don't enjoy reading your "opinions" on some of the benchmarks, I thought they were very appropriate. It will be interesting to see how the official driver releases function under the latest and greatest DX9 and OpenGL games...
Thanks for all your hard work and effort!
Mike
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
#78The shots has not been taken in the same frame.
Gunmetal, contrary to Aquamark don't have such option....that's why so many screenshots are taken at the beginning of a scene or a dead spot.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
#67I seriously suggest that you upgrade everything else in your machine, reinstal drivers, game and defrag.
Mine runs perfectly at 1280*1024 with the max AF and displays between 40-60fps all the way using the cg_draw command and that's GAMEPLAY framerates .... with sound, AI and all the whistles. I see no need for AA at that resolution thou (not a nice IQ/performance trade there)....at 1024 it does wonders thou.
capodeloscapos - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
Why nobody said anything about IQ in GUN METAL???Only NvIdia 52.14 shows the fire in Mech's Gun.
What happened there???