NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 (G80): GPUs Re-architected for DirectX 10
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on November 8, 2006 6:01 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
AA Disabled Performance
Up to this point, most of our benchmarks have been run with 4xAA, as we feel most people considering something like the new 8800 GTX are going to be interested in image quality as well as performance. If you don't care about antialiasing, the need for such fast graphics cards trails off quickly, as you'll see here.
The 8800 GTX SLI still has issues with Battlefield 2, but more importantly you see the clustering of all of the high-end graphics configurations once antialiasing is disabled. Discounting the single ATI X1950 XTX and GeForce 7900 GTX cards, the spread among all the cards is about 20%-25%. Battlefield 2 is also clearly beginning to run into CPU limitations, with many of the cards showing very little in the way of performance drops when going from 1600x1200 to 1920x1440. When 8800 GTX SLI is fixed, we expect to see a more or less flat line throughout resolution scaling. Battlefield 2142 would once again be something nice to test, as frame rates are a bit lower with that title, but overall the Battlefield series has always been pretty demanding when it comes to CPU power (not to mention have enough memory).
With 4xAA, Episode One showed a bit more separation, and our particular demo seemed to be CPU limited to around 230 FPS. Disabling antialiasing shows that 230 FPS is indeed where our CPU tops out. The other cards move closer to this mark, but without dropping to a lower resolution none of them are yet able to reach it. With the minimum score coming in at 56 FPS, and even then only at 2560x1600, Half-Life 2: Episode One does not appear to really need anything faster in the GPU department just yet.
Disabling antialiasing in Prey improved performance in most of the tested configurations by about 20%, and the 8800 GTX SLI setup becomes a bit more CPU limited.. The relative positions of the cards don't really change much, although the GeForce 7 series cards appear to do slightly better without antialiasing compared to the ATI cards.
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dwalton - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
When using older cards sacrificing IQ for performance is typically acceptable. Who needs AA when running F.E.A.R on a 9700 Pro.However, on a just launched high-end card, why would anyone feel the need to sacrifice IQ for performance? Some may say resolution over AA, but I find it hard to believe that there is a lot of gaming enthusiasts with deep pockets, who play with insane resolutions yet no AA.
JarredWalton - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
If I look for jaggies, I see them. On most games, however, they don't bother me much at all. Running at native resolution on LCDs or at a really high resolution on CRTs, I'd take that over a lower res with 4xAA. If you have the power to enable 4xAA, great, but I'm certainly not one to suggest it's required. I'd rather be able to enable vsync without a massive performance hit (i.e. stay above 60 FPS) than worry about jaggies. Personal preference.munim - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
"With the latest 1.09 patch, F.E.A.R. has gained multi-core support,"Where is this?
JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
I wrote that, but it may be incorrect. I'm trying to get in contact with Gary to find out if I'm just being delusional about Quad Core support. Maybe it's NDA still? Hmmm.... nothing to see here!JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
Okay, it's the 1.08 patch, and that is what was tested. Since we didn't use a quad core CPU I don't know if it will actually help or not -- something to look at in the future.Nelsieus - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
I haven't even finished reading it yet, but so far, this is the most comprehensive, in-depth review I've seen on G80 and I just wanted to mention that beforehand.:)
GhandiInstinct - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
What upcoming games will be the first to be fully made on DX10 structure? And does the G80 have full support of DX10?timmiser - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
Microsoft Flight Simulator X will be DX10 compliant via a planned patch once Vista comes out.JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
All DX10 hardware will be full DX10 (see pages 2-4). As for games that will be DX10 ready, Halo 2 for Vista will be for sure. Beyond that... I don't know for sure. As we've explained a bit, DX10 will require Vista, so anything launching before Vista will likely not be DX10 compliant.shabby - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
They're re-doing a dx8 game in dx10? You gotta be kidding me, whats the point? You cant polish a turd.