512MB Cards?

p05esto · Jul 27, 2004

Did you all see the latest Doom III requirements? 512MB cards required for the best settign in the game. SO I guess even the Geforce 6800 Ultra won't do it for this one. But that's okay I guess....I like games that push the boundries a little. In no time at all faster cards will be out yet again and we'll be looking for games to take advantage of all that horsepower.

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Untruest · Jul 27, 2004

I am assuming 512mb on board vid: I've heird that in the near future, games will require at least 256mb on board because of the size and amount of the textures they will be putting in games. DOOM 3 is a first. I just forgot where i read this,could have sent u a link, sorry.

priyajeet · Jul 27, 2004

where does it say 512 MB cards ?
It must be 512MB System memory. But I can be wrong.
According to me even render-farms(the one at pixar) doesnt have that kinda cards.

Futile is resistance, assimilate you we will.

p05esto · Jul 27, 2004

Here's the link that says it will require 512MB on board memory!
http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20040727_052008.html

<A HREF="http://www.ericstoffers.com" target="_new">(My little web site)</A>

priyajeet · Jul 27, 2004

this is messed up. 256 MB cards are not that popular yet and they talk of 512MB.

All I can say, game renderning and algorithmic programming is not the best. ID should look more into their programming and spend less time in flying planes into space. Take the example of Half-life 1 when it firat came out and one could enjoy the graphics on not that high end card.

Futile is resistance, assimilate you we will.

p05esto · Jul 27, 2004

If it's a matter of sloppy programming I'd agree with you but if it's a game pushing the limits of technology then that's pretty cool. Games just keep getting more amazing looking and the cards that run them keep getting more powerful. I really don't want them to slow this process down at all.

I only have a Geforce 3 card and think I'm still paying that one off so it is a little sickning to be thinking about spending that kind of money again only a couple years later. But just like I can't go back and start playing NES games after playing XBOX I can't go back to 64MB required games after playing 512MB required games. I'm not as easily impressed these days and am probably completely spoiled. I'm a slave to new, better, bigger, faster, stronger, brighter.....

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priyajeet · Jul 27, 2004

Ok, i m not the best at the topic.

But being a computer sci + mathematics student, I am required to program algorithms with the best effciency rather than the ones that use max resources. This is what professors (Phds) recommend. This is what GOOGLE is about. FAST response time. This is why we use C rather than C++.

Futile is resistance, assimilate you we will.

p05esto · Jul 27, 2004

But doesn't the onboard memory basically hold all the texture information? Either the textures are compressed to fit into a smaller memory space or it isn't? If you can fit all the texture info into the available memory then you don't have to compress it and thus you get a better image quality???? That's pretty simply said and I have no idea if it's that accurate but sounds good

I'm sure sloppy programming eats up plenty of resources whether it's Windows programs, games or web sites....companies want things faster and faster and programmers are forced to take shortcuts in real life.

<A HREF="http://www.ericstoffers.com" target="_new">(My little web site)</A>

halem111 · Jul 27, 2004

your exactly right PO5ter when u use a 512 card the textures are uncompressed, making the image quality that much better. ID are referring this as ultra quality or summit like that. it cant be sloppy programming cus doom 3 will be able to run on low end cards. what it is, is id pushing the boundries and showing what can be done if you put your mind to it. i think that id are good to do this cus it means gaming is moving forward in terms of graphics, they didnt build doom 3 to run on low end cards good like half life cus they dont have to. They arent in it to solely make money but for the love of making a game that everyone will love. Means they are not really in it for the money, it means that past times like the spaceship thing can be done. Because if they release it this week or in half a years time its gonna be a big hit watever.

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priyajeet · Jul 27, 2004

I will look at one of my books and learn more abt this. I dont have a doctorate in this topic.

For now, all I can say, the mem is used for more than textures. And according to you if we should have large memories, we can fit anything and everything there improving speed n time. Thats wrong. Latencies play the role to and you can see that by chking memory benchmarks on the toms and the anandtechs. Also then we should have 512mb caches and not memories bcos it is the cache where the GPU gets info from for texturing. Hits and misses occur in the cache. If its a miss then get data from mem. If its a miss in mem then get it from the page. thats paging. and that needs to improve rather than increasing raw memory. A lot is programming oriented.

I remember when I had to design a CPU for a class i had to keep all this in mind.

more info in:

<A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1558604286/qid=1090952267/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl14/103-7426804-5189445?v=glance&s=books&n=507846" target="_new">this book</A>

Though this is more of for the main CPU, but then a graphic CPU -> GPU uses a lot of same principles.

Futile is resistance, assimilate you we will.

Guest · Jul 27, 2004

On a super high-end you might be able to use super-high settings even with a 256MEg vid card.
Not all the textures loaded in the vid card are being used at the same time. So swapping texture between RAM and Video ram is possible. Of course you gonna loose some performance but if your system can cope with it...Its all speculation but it makes sens.

Also it might be nice to do some apperture size benchmark with D3, some ppl mentionned it before. That setting might make a difference.

FInally PCIe might make a difference too thanks to the higher bandwith.

Cant wait to see all that stuff =)

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addiarmadar · Jul 28, 2004

I think bandwidth would be more value than space for Doom 3. Faster, the better.

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TheGreatGrapeApe · Jul 28, 2004

The thing is that the uncompressed texture start out large ~506mb IIRC, so having fast bandwidth doesn't help because you'd still have to chunk things up. Really it's not surprising, iD has always pushed the envelope, and have always been about scaling.

Theyy've had triple monitor support for surround gaming before most, multi-proc/threading support before most. So it's not surprising they have something that will strain even as yet unreleased hardware.

As for whether or not this is rumours, just read the [H] review guys, it's spelled out pretty clearly there, and if you look at the recent discussion with iD guys about this specifically you'll see that it is possible, but very SLOW to run Ultra-High on 256mb cards.

Anywhoo, can't wait to see the comprehensive benchies on all this testing different sized cards, different apperture sizes, different bus speeds, etc. And of course testing ATI's attempts to close the gap. :lol:

Should be an interesting August.

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eden · Jul 28, 2004

It is interesting to see that finally after so long, video card memory will actually play a role (if they are telling the truth about 256MB cards not running well with Ultra High quality and if the gap in performance between a 512MB card and a 256MB one is THAT big). Haven't seen those in a long while, especially when you compare the Ti200 128MB to the 64MB one, the 256MB 9800XT to the 128MB 9800PRO, the 256MB FX5600 to the 128MB FX5600 Ultra, etc.

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eden · Jul 28, 2004

I am pretty sure the whole story behind texture compression like DXT was all about getting higher performance in a time where cards were still growing. Think about it though, one detailed JPEG texture of 512*512 can easily eat up 200KB. Suppose you had about 50 different textures visually, that's already 100MB! Texture compression likely does the JPEG's job over BMP and blurs details so you get like 30MB tops.
I think nVidia came up with it, wasn't it?

Anyways, as we can see, just uncompressing and returning to what is supposed to be the REAL quality setting any game should have, that is, NORMAL graphical display, can create so much bottleneck on modern systems. Then again this is Doom III, not Final Fantasy XI. But still, I predict we will finally move on to crisp clear texture detail once 512MB cards are mainstream, or there is enough on-board memory to have uncompressed textures. Shame to have to lose your own created texture's quality in every game you make, just because there isn't enough memory on-board to support the load! It'd be like taking pics and the digicam automatically reduces quality and blurs areas while transfering on your cheap comp.

But at least soon we might have a time where no more compression is needed, and amazing quality will be there. That is, if texture compression was THAT bad at all! :tongue: (they state there isn't such a large difference between High and Ultra High in DOOM III)

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priyajeet · Jul 28, 2004

What do you think about this ->
2 cards with SLI with 256MB each
OR
1 card with 512MB

Do you think they'll have the same performance w.r.t. textures and not IQ.

Futile is resistance, assimilate you we will.

priyajeet · Jul 28, 2004

what I was trying to say is, that till they improve the processing power of the GPU and the architecture of course will 512MB on board be worth it.

Cant they do 256MB uncompresses texture -> page it to the RAM -> collect data for the next 256MB ->do the same.

Meanwhile the CPU will be handling the game IQ, physics, and the GPU will be handling T&L and feeding the CPU with required stuff.

We can only comment abt timing delays of such operations if we can see what architecture they use these days.

time to render 512MB on the card = time to render 256MB + flushing it to RAM + rendering the next 256 MB

Futile is resistance, assimilate you we will.

eden · Jul 28, 2004

What do you think about this ->
2 cards with SLI with 256MB each
OR
1 card with 512MB

Very interesting question. I can't answer it but I am sure iD will with DOOM III soon!

BTW what is w.r.t?
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NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNEdited by Eden on 07/28/04 00:38 AM.

eden · Jul 28, 2004

what I was trying to say is, that till they improve the processing power of the GPU and the architecture of course will 512MB on board be worth it.

Cant they do 256MB uncompresses texture -> page it to the RAM -> collect data for the next 256MB ->do the same.

Meanwhile the CPU will be handling the game IQ, physics, and the GPU will be handling T&L and feeding the CPU with required stuff.

We can only comment abt timing delays of such operations if we can see what architecture they use these days.

time to render 512MB on the card = time to render 256MB + flushing it to RAM + rendering the next 256 MB

That's the ideal man, it's the ideal. Alas with games being so large and Windows and its programs being more bloated, we are just not going to find such harmony unless we play it on a console.

I think what you're taught in class is often idealistic. Kinda like Economy class really.
It just ain't the same in reality.
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NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNEdited by Eden on 07/28/04 00:41 AM.

priyajeet · Aug 2, 2004

I came across this <A HREF="http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20040721163521.html" target="_new">article</A> and this <A HREF="http://www.teamradeon.com/rumourmill/" target="_new">article</A> which has made me wonder whether I should wait for the 512 MB cards or should go ahead with 256MB. And whether these cards will come on AGP or not.

Futile is resistance, assimilate you we will.

phial · Aug 2, 2004

All I can say, game renderning and algorithmic programming is not the best.

you make game engines? COOL!

you can make a game engine as efficient as possible, but the reason that D3 requires that much ram is simple: they are using super high resolution textures. unless you use compression (which is the purpose of the low/medium/high settings) which causes artifacting, i dont think there is ANY way to get around it.

btw: high resolution textures=good

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eden · Aug 2, 2004

BTW, old quote of yours:

All I can say, game renderning and algorithmic programming is not the best. ID should look more into their programming and spend less time in flying planes into space.

That is really absurd man. iD probably spent (heck, Carmack alone) more time into optimizing their game than Valve or any company ever will. This game can't get any more optimized, from the looks of it. Hell, they took the opportunity to force 8X Anisotropic filtering when you enable High Quality! If they feel so confident about their optimizations and end performance that they guarantee you 8X Anisotropic filtering to work just well by enabling it by themselves for you, then they have their done, AFAIAC.

There's a reason why Carmack is known as the industry's leading graphics programmer.

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eden · Aug 2, 2004

Yup, that explains the amount of RAM needed. I addressed the performance issue though, which shows that the memory requirement is due to what you explained, in major part, and the good end performance, is due to good programming/optimization in major part (if memory requirements are matched).

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NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNEdited by Eden on 08/01/04 11:18 PM.

eden · Aug 2, 2004

I came across this article and this article which has made me wonder whether I should wait for the 512 MB cards or should go ahead with 256MB. And whether these cards will come on AGP or not.

Interesting but not surprising. I was right when I said DOOM III will fuel again a flurry of industry advancements, or at least push them to go faster in releasing advancements like these. 512MB will not be needed for many games for the years to come, UNLESS it will allow companies to finally remove any compression needed in their texturing, thus allowing true sharp graphics quality in their games.

Hmm, if in October we should expect the new cards, maybe the X800XT will be relatively cheap by then! That would rock.

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priyajeet · Aug 2, 2004

Prices will drop, but by how much is the question. If these guys bring out the 512 in PCIE, then officially AGP will end its line with 256MB. In that case PCIE will drop supply of AGP for people like me who dont plan to shift to a diff platform anytime soon. And there will be a whole lot of us. Hence there is a chance that this X800XT shortage might continue till a new card comes out. So prices might not come all that down.

But then again if they plan to take 512MB out for AGP, then one can expect prices going down.

Will have to research more on the upcoming ATI chipsets. As for Nvidia I really dont care right now until they come up with an exceptional shipset that shows significant performance improvement over the readeons.

Have any of you guys heard abt the upcoming chipsets like RS480? and what platform will it be on. I have just heard and read a bit that it will be promising for AMD. Also intel delaying their 4GHz chips, looks like I should buy some AMD stocks.

Futile is resistance, assimilate you we will.

512MB Cards?

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