Originally posted by: Matthias99
Originally posted by: Edge3D
No, my spindoctoring friend. I never said PS3 increased IQ. Vertex Shader 3.0 compliance DOES.
VS3.0 compliance *could*. Displacement mapping and other complex vertex shader programs might also tank performance on the NV40; I haven't seen any numbers.
Right. But that isnt what I said.
My whole point of my existence here has been to tell some of you that VS3.0 DOES have HUGE IQ gains when used.
That is all. Its nice to see at least you agree with the facts of the matter... /phew!
Maybe Ackmed will listen to you, now that you agree.
Whats with the defensive nature over SM3.0? I dont get it. Its not about ATI vs. NV. Its about the consumer.
Just seems like a political argument around these parts, not a technical one.
Note- Expect D3 engine based games, which will likely be as relevant the Q3A has been for as long as it has been, to run MUCH better on the NV40 hardware. "Crushing?" I dunno. But certainly, noticably better. Looking at that game and merely uttering the word, "ultrashadow" is enough to come to that educated conclusion.
Based on... what? The 9800Pro and R420 can do stencil shadows, too, ya know. And I have yet to hear of a major game that will be based on the D3 engine, whereas several companies have licensed Valve's Source engine already. Of course, NEITHER GAME IS OUT YET.
UltraShadow2 is not "just" stencil shadows. Play Splinter Cell on a NV3X and then a R3XX and you'll see the difference.
Doom 3 is the only game engine with full per pixel dynamic shadowing and lighting. Even the much touted HL2 still uses light and shadow maps. For everyones' information... that was the technology used in Quake 2!
Its not really comparable.
Different lighting models are not necessarily better. HL2 uses a very different rendering system, with lots of little shaders to handle its dynamic lighting needs.
Hehe. "different" lighting models?? Interesting way of putting it.
Thats like saying SM2 is merely "different" than SM3.. not inferior as it is in reality.
/sigh
And you are incorrect, they have dropped the mixed-mode precision. They are now running all cards on standard ARB2 paths. Do you guys read the "news"?
Link
NV has improved their drivers to the point where its now just as fast in ARB2 as NV30 mixed mode specific path.
No, I hadn't heard that. You'd think that NVIDIA would have maybe mentioned this and/or made a big deal out of it? This was also FOUR DAYS AGO; it's not exactly old news.
In any case, here are more specific comments from Carmack in the discussion thread linked to off of Beyond3D:
discussion
There are two things nvidia drivers have done:
a) take advantage of the ARB_precision_hint_fastest hint in the fragment programs. IIRC until the 50 series drivers this was ignored and and the nv3x computed everything at full 32bit precission. Now they take advantage of this hint and run as fast as possible.
b) Added a compiler directly into their drivers to extract better parallelism from fragment programs.
You can verify those changes yourself. These have eleminated the need for writing a specific nv3x path manually specifing low precission for speed. You can now use a standard shader and make it fastest if you want speed, or nicest if you want full 32bit image quality. Those with old drivers will of course suffer when using the ARB path when they wouldn't with the nv3x path, but that's what you get for not using modern drivers
nvidia has two parts to their compiler. First is a generic optimizing compiler that takes any shader and makes it run as well as possible on the nv3x or nv4x. This is very important, the r3x0, nv3x, r4x0, and nv4x all have different optimizations just as code can be optimized for a PentiumIV, Athlon, or PentiumIII. Writing code that performs well on four different architectures (plus S3, XGI, Intel, etc) is going to be a trade off.
The 2nd part is a bit dirty. They can detect a specific set of instructions and replace it with another set. This is so if a benchmark company threatens to write a shader that is really difficult for them to optimize in a generic way unless nvidia pays big $ to join their beta program they can just replace with a more sensible set of instructions that presumably produces the same result.
IE, they didn't really improve their speed, they just made it so it runs at lower precision automatically, instead of Carmack having to tell them to do it explicitly via a different codepath. No big changes here; it's still running mixed-mode FP16/FP32, just doing it in the driver instead of in the game code itself.
There's actually quite a bit of good discussion in that thread about how Doom3's shading works, and how it compares to HL2. Perhaps you should take a look.
I was already aware of all this stuff. It IS good that it is in the driver though. Believe me, I am no NV3X fan.. I was just stating the facts.
It sucks seeing OGL compared to DX versions.
Then what the xxxx *should* I compare it to? It uses shader code that has features comparable to the ones found in SM1.4 and SM2.0. Sorry if I've offended you by mentioning DirectX in the same sentence as OpenGL.[/quote]
Well. I was just being a biyatch about it. I prefer OGL. I'm not a programmer.. but I like its interoperability. Who in their right mind wouldnt?
*cough*fanboys*cough*
Or a programmer with a LEGITIMATE reason, that only a graphics programmer could provide personally.
Even then, that person, whoever it may be.. PALES in comparison to JCs abilities.
So I guess I'm branded a "advanced technology fanboy" ie. SM3.0.
It's starting to look that way.[/quote]
Thank you.
1. If Vertex and Pixel shader 3.0 is so useless and 2.0 is fine and dandy.. then WHY is ATI planning to implement it into future R420 revisions if there is no need? Please, I'm all ears.
It *won't* be useless in the future, when a) there are actually games that have meaningful support for it, and b) the cards are fast enough to actually use its nifty new features (super-long shaders with dynamic branching, hardware displacement mapping, etc.). For now (until proven otherwise), it's a paper feature, much like the SM2.0 support in the FX5200.[/quote]
Thank you again. My point is well illustrated now by someone else other than me. I wouldnt disagree with what you said but you are intelligent enough to see what it is at LEAST capable of.
I give you that its worth remains to be proven.
But, it cannot be denied that those NV cards have comparable performance across the board and offer a feature that could bring HUGE performance and drastic increases in IQ.
I dont think any other "single" feature released with the new generation of cards can say the same from the data I've analyzed.
Plus, it might actually shut up all the people going "Ooh, look, NVIDIA has SM3.0 and ATI only has 2.0! ATI sucks!"
What does it have to do with ATI sucks? No one said that at all.
Its the defensive nature that leads peope who are genuinely excited about the best technology to appear against ATI.. because people who seem too partial to ye olde Canadian ATI than they should be take it like a slam against "their" product.
My god, if its not the product to have, dont lock yourself into some fanboy mode and buy it anyway. Whats the point? In five years is ATI going to cut you a check for being loyal? No they are likely to burn you sooner rather than later, by making you into their sheep and selling you a inferior product over their competition. Like its clear the NV30 was, or this x800Pro it has little reason for purchase as well. It cant even be modded to more pipes like previous cards (9500).
Or on some forum are you going to brag about how many ATI cards you've ran? Or is it going to help ATI?
Very doubtful. The market is based on the lower end to midrange. Which honestly goes off performance nearly last for sales. Checkbox features DO help there.
The enthusiast market is supposed to jump on the BEST, most advanced, as well as fast hardware.. which is fine if you think ATI is the ticket in those departments.. but downplaying Shader Model 3.0 seems VERY odd indeed. Thats all I'm after stamping out. Ridiculous honestly. Its not like even as you said in your own words, that ATI is moving to it as well!
And in all honesty, NV has had pretty much "DX9C" class hardware since the NV30.. not totally but MANY of its features were in the NV30 core... yes that 5800 leafblower. Reason I say this? They have much, much, much, much more experience with "SM3" class hardware.. you say that you wonder about NV's future SM3.0 performance.
I will say this right now- NV is exponentially likely to have GREAT performance in SM3 based games. This is, essentially,
3rd generation SM3.0 hardware (NV30 was missing some crucial features like displacement mapping, it is like the new ATI part "SM2+").
While ATI with the R420 could be said to be on their 1st revision of anything much more than bare SM2.0 requirements and taken at least a step towards full SM3 compliance.
They dont even have FP32 precision yet. Thats huge in DX9C and SM3.0. NV had that in the NV30.. expect the performance and IQ delta to widen considerably with DX9Cs release and supporting games.
And dont expect ATI to catch up fast, or at all... they are actually
behind on tech.
Because logically they have to-
a) Engineer the tech
b) Add it to their existing design
c) Produce it, test it, tweak it.. then repeat A->C until its right
then
d) They have 1st gen compliant SM3.0 hardware.
NV has done steps A->D already. Many times. And on top of that, tweaked their FP32 performance.
FP24 (ATI) is partial precision. FP32 is full precision. Truth of the matter is and moral of the story, ATI got stuck with their pants down somehow by deciding to not take the time or money to develop SM3 class hardware sooner, rather than later.
Because I predict it will pain them, sooner.. rather than later. It would be MUCH better if that at LEAST had
1st gen SM3.0 compliant hardware. But they are still on DX9"+" like the age-old NV30.
Its not as easy as people think, they cant just throw on 32bit FP precision... the rest of the SM3.0 requirements and run to the bank with the performance crown. It wont happen.
And until at LEAST 2006, with Longhorn and the successor to DX9C you wont see anything changin.
32bit FP precision is considered across the industry as "full precision", has been for 20+ years.
The rest of the market has to catchup to NV before moving on. And the rest of the market is not even at 32bit FP, they are very likely to not have but half of the performance when they do either.
Also, the NV40 core DOES have the power to perform displacement mapping, and all the nifty features of SM3.0.. dont believe me? Well, I could elaborate. But I'm tired of sending info to this forum and not recieving anything but cries of "fanboy". Lame.
Or could just point to the simple known fact that SM3.0 is as much about speed increases as IQ. Case in point.
To sum it up once again, NV has most of the performance of every single ATI card but sometimes the x800XT runs away.. but its absolutely absurd IMO to spend $500 and short yourself something like a overall, very longtime developed, mature SM3.0 architechure from Nvidia.. RIGHT at the time when SM3.0 IS going to be relevant in the market place.
I agreed with your POV, and the rest of this forums when the NV30 was released. DX9+ was silly, and it was poor performing at that.
But things, and times, have changed.
They have done a total design. Its now VERY fast in DX9 and has something else as well, DX9C support.
Whatever. I'm just trying to toss in a bit of educated opinion on the subject. I hope I help you be a bit more open armed to NV in the future.. they DO make great product as does ATI. They've both had their merits, past and present.
I am going to be taking some time off from the forums, to much of your relief. I have RL obligations. But I'll be back!