Crysis 2 Tessellation Article

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WMD

Senior member
Apr 13, 2011
476
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Didn't say it was Nvidia's fault (though the 100% reproducible crashes in newer drivers don't help). It's BioWare and EA's fault, for rushing the game and not giving it proper quality assurance testing. I'm sure AMD did nothing to help performance on Nvidia cards (why should they?), but there's no evidence of "features" in DAII that specifically play to AMD's strengths and Nvidia's weaknessess while providing no IQ improvement (like most tessellation in Crysis 2).

Because there is nothing on Nvidia hardware that is much weaker than AMD. except maybe Direct Compute. We don't know if Nvidia's poor performance is a result of AMD involvement. There is no way to know. But isnt it a coincidence those Nvidia problems only happens when AMD implement DX11 features are turned on? Similar coincidence that Nvidia implemented DX11 performs better on Nvidia hardware. See the problem here? Programs like TWIMTBP have already shown to hurt consumers more it helped. What makes you think AMD GE is any different.
 

Red Hawk

Diamond Member
Jan 1, 2011
3,266
169
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Your argument is shaky because Dragon Age II isn't even officially a GE game in the first place.
 
Feb 19, 2009
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So AMD could have add extra useless direct compute stuff into DA2 to deliberately perform worse on NV hardware but they didn't.. that's a win for everyone.

Everything else, go to the DA2 thread. It's huge, beating a dead horse. Crysis 2 is a screw up from crytek and NV. Move along. Let's resume this again when the next AMD Evolve or TWIMTBP title gets released. Battlefield 3 is it?
 

Blitzvogel

Platinum Member
Oct 17, 2010
2,012
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All I want to see is the intelligent deployment of tessellation. It's pretty silly that the tessellation we've seen pretty much kills off even medium end GPUs, even from the sponsoring vendor in the process. Perhaps tessellation needs to be a feature with either optional settings (high/medium/low) or it needs to be tied to another setting like general surface geometry. Either way, DX11 maxed out + high resolution texture pack Crysis 2 with tessellation @ 1280 x 720 but no AA should've been doable on lets say, a GTS 450 1 GB with good framerate. I honestly don't know how the GTS 450 performs at said settings, but my general assumption is that it is going to struggle once you turn on the tessellation.

Big thing is that there are too many medium or low end DX11 GPUs out there that are not getting the love they should, though they should be quite reasonable at 720p. I understand 80/160 SP Radeons and 16/32 Core Geforces are long in the tooth, and should be seen as such, it seems to me that both vendors have forgotten about that sweet spot filled with the "medium-low" end GPUs like the 400/480 SP Radeons and 48-96 Core Geforces across the past few generations. This level of performance is available in many notebooks, is cheaply available in dedicated desktop cards, AMD Llano APUs, and I think there is too much focus on the top end as far as game optimization and performance goes. I don't mind the idea of selling alot of top end GPUs, but there are so many more medium end GPUs out there, and in more products that consumers actually see as reasonably priced.
 
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SirPauly

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2009
5,187
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So AMD could have add extra useless direct compute stuff into DA2 to deliberately perform worse on NV hardware but they didn't.. that's a win for everyone.

Everything else, go to the DA2 thread. It's huge, beating a dead horse. Crysis 2 is a screw up from crytek and NV. Move along. Let's resume this again when the next AMD Evolve or TWIMTBP title gets released. Battlefield 3 is it?

Imho,

You desire to compare and beat the drum how wonderful AMD evolve is but to me, they're both needed very much to help promote PC gaming over the console -- not necessarily over each other( AMD vs nVidia).

Most of the resources for developers or the bread and butter are derived from console development and without the resources spent by nVidia and AMD to help promote PC gaming for their customers, there would be a heck of a lot more ports without any goodies. That is the enemy of PC gaming, just ports.

Every year there are usually grey territories that enter the forum arena -- questionable tessellation or just native 3d stereo for HD3d, but it's all good because the titles are improved over their DirectX 9 counterparts or ports.

Personally never allow idealism to be the enemy of good.
 

amenx

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
4,312
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AMD usually make a big stink about such things (as they did with HAWX 2). Have they said anything about this?
 

WMD

Senior member
Apr 13, 2011
476
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AMD usually make a big stink about such things (as they did with HAWX 2). Have they said anything about this?

They most probably don't want to draw to attention to their shortcomings. AMD kept quiet about alot of things. They did not make noise about anti aliasing in Batman Arkam Asylum for a good reason as well.
 
Feb 19, 2009
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I just like to add, i've read the .fr article but not techreports.. and i finally got around to it: http://techreport.com/articles.x/21404/5 (a bit late in this discussion)

And holy shit, that's some blatantly bad usage of tessellation. Is it NV's doing? There's no proof of it because frankly, anyone would be hard pressed to dig out email exchanges of NV engineers/marketing to devs. So i'm going to blame Crytek for being absolute slobs and doing a shoddy rush job.

Funny enough i tried playing Crysis 2, set the tessellation slider down in catalyst control and can enjoy dx11 benefits for a tiny drop in FPS. I think it's time NV implemented a similar function in their drivers.. let those with NV cards decide if they should take a huge performance hit or not, in case future dx11 TWIMTBP titles have a similar over-zealous usage of tessellation.
 

SirPauly

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2009
5,187
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Not me. It's a slippery slope when one goes behind the back of a developer for performance, no matter how subtle the image quality may be. Agree with nVidia 100 percent on that. Thankfully, there isn't really a need to have a slider with nVidia products.
 

PingviN

Golden Member
Nov 3, 2009
1,848
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I just like to add, i've read the .fr article but not techreports.. and i finally got around to it: http://techreport.com/articles.x/21404/5 (a bit late in this discussion)

And holy shit, that's some blatantly bad usage of tessellation. Is it NV's doing? There's no proof of it because frankly, anyone would be hard pressed to dig out email exchanges of NV engineers/marketing to devs. So i'm going to blame Crytek for being absolute slobs and doing a shoddy rush job.

It's obvious the game was not made with tessellation in mind, so an educated guess would be someone else motivated Crytek's developers to implement it.
 

Pantalaimon

Senior member
Feb 6, 2006
341
40
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They most probably don't want to draw to attention to their shortcomings. AMD kept quiet about alot of things. They did not make noise about anti aliasing in Batman Arkam Asylum for a good reason as well.

I don't know where you were, but there were a lot of noise made by AMD about the AA in Batman Arkham Asylum.

EDIT: here's the link to the old thread http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=327549
 
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Red Hawk

Diamond Member
Jan 1, 2011
3,266
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Um...I can enable AA in-game in Arkham Asylum on my 5770. Was the game eventually patched to fix the shady card ID check?
 

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
12,957
1
0
Um...I can enable AA in-game in Arkham Asylum on my 5770. Was the game eventually patched to fix the shady card ID check?
GOTY version came with native ability to use AA for ATI cards. I assume the regular version was patched for that also.
 

NoQuarter

Golden Member
Jan 1, 2001
1,006
0
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Not me. It's a slippery slope when one goes behind the back of a developer for performance, no matter how subtle the image quality may be. Agree with nVidia 100 percent on that. Thankfully, there isn't really a need to have a slider with nVidia products.

Not only do you already have a ton of check boxes and sliders in driver settings for both that 'go behind the back' and alter graphics for performance, but the different architectures already render slightly differently (such as anisotropic filtering technique) so you are inherently getting something that isn't exactly what the developer intended.

And just because nVidia doesn't take as big a hit from tessellation doesn't mean there isn't a need for a slider, the current tessellation in Crysis 2 is mostly useless polygons and that still has a hit on frame rate even with their superior tessellation method.
 
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SirPauly

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2009
5,187
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I don't like filtering optimizations either and turn them all off. Was never pleased about them from the start. Hey, let's go optimize some more stuff like tessellation and surface formats. Where does it end?
 
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NoQuarter

Golden Member
Jan 1, 2001
1,006
0
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I don't like filtering optimizations either and turn them all off. Was never pleased about them from the start. Hey, let's go optimize some more stuff like tessellation and surface formats. Where does it end?

I think it ends when you get playable frame rates and stop checkmarking optimizations..
 

SirPauly

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2009
5,187
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Just glad there is choice and the two companies have different visions on things.
 

cusideabelincoln

Diamond Member
Aug 3, 2008
3,275
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Not me. It's a slippery slope when one goes behind the back of a developer for performance, no matter how subtle the image quality may be. Agree with nVidia 100 percent on that. Thankfully, there isn't really a need to have a slider with nVidia products.

Those with midrange cards will disagree.

I don't like filtering optimizations either and turn them all off. Was never pleased about them from the start. Hey, let's go optimize some more stuff like tessellation and surface formats. Where does it end?

As long as we have the option to use them to our liking, I don't see why there needs to be an end, per se. I'm glad there are filtering options. It's nice being able to force 32QSAA in older games like Jedi Academy, which don't have that option natively.

Let's also not forget Nvidia also has an Ambient Occlusion option in their drivers as well. AO wasn't intended for every game, now was it? But it's nice to have it there (even though I really don't like AO and don't use it). So they should include a tessellation slider. It would be beneficial to their mid range cards - to those who want to run with extra eye candy but can't run with the eye candy forced by a game.

GOTY version came with native ability to use AA for ATI cards. I assume the regular version was patched for that also.

Don't think the original patched. At least the Steam version was never patched to allow AA on ATI cards, and Steam usually uses the most up to date version. Of course they don't sell the original version anymore, just the GOTY.
 
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