nvidia's got game in Doom3 but how bout Half-Life2

[pr0digy]

I recently heard that when the developers of Half-Life 2 were requesting high-end video cards, nvidia refused to help out, so they turned to ATI. Because of this, nvidia cards suffer major performance hits on Half-Life 2, and performs exceptionally better on the ATI cards. Is there any fact to this rumor, or is it just that, a rumor. If it is true, which would be the best top end card, the 6800 Ultra or the x800 XT. I've seen the benchmarks where the nvidia card runs circles around ATI's best in Doom 3, but will nvidia's cards provide the same advantage in other graphically-intense games? Thanks in advance for your help. The reason I'm asking is because I'm close to building a new system, and I'm trying to determine which card I should go with.

 

[Guest]

Its true that ATI are Valve's partner for HL2 lauch.(rember back in the 9600XT/9800XT days they offered HL2 voucher when you boguht these cards but Hl got delayed)
So chances are it will run better on Ati hardware but its probly not because of nVidia not providing cards.

Now older bechmark showed ATI really outperforming Nvidia but I saw some more recent that had nVidia slightly ahead.
Overall we just have to wait and see!This is not the final code and not the final drivers so its almost impossible to tell.

I expect new gen cards from both compagny to perform really good with Ati slightly ahead....

Asus P4P800DX, P4C 2.6ghz@3.25ghz, 2X512 OCZ PC4000 3-4-4-8, Leadtek FX5900 w/ FX5950U bios@500/1000, 2X30gig Raid0

 

[addiarmadar]

ATI will reign over HL2, ATI and Vale have been butt-buddies on the HL2 project. Nvidia card are going to have major quality issues with that game.

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ATI Radeon 9800 Pro to XT(463/795)

 

[Willamette_sucks]

ATI has more tricks up their sleeve for the x800 series. There are features not yet being used, including features that will enhance performance in games like... DOOM 3.

ATI has a normal map compression scheme called 3Dc that conserves memory and memory bandwidth, that is not yet being used. They also can perform many (all?) of the functions that nVidia can with their more 'advanced' SM3.0 shader model, using the SM2.0b shader model. One important function (that is not yet being used by ATI) is called 'instancing'. <A HREF="http://www.hexus.co.uk/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD03OTY=" target="_new">Here</A> is a fairly lame explanation of instancing (I'm too lazy to find a better one). Basically... lets say theres 10 objects on screen that are all the same model (or same base model)... instead of rendering each one individually, instancing allows them to be rendered as a batch, in one run. Far Cry uses instancing on nVidia cards with the 1.2 patch and beyond, but not yet on ATI cards.

If you can wait a while this could be good for you, as you can see what happens with these cards in future games and when they start working at their full potential.

My recommendation is to BUY ATI BECAUSE ATI OWNZ AND NVIDIA SUX!!! IM HARDCORE ATI 4 LIFE B*TCHES AHAHAHAHHHA!!!!!!!!!!


*EDIT*
I pulled this out of a thread at Beyond3d:
"Instancing:
Lets look at the feature common to all ATI cards first. Geometry Instancing (/Vertex Instancing) allows for more detailed graphics. A specific example in Farcry is that distant vegetation is no longer rendered as sprites, the render changes to a more detailed animated vegetation. (Effectively the objects like grass or tree’s in the distance can now be animated like the vegetation near your character rather than be static 2d sprites). Overall performance will be lower by removing the usage of 2D sprites and increasing the geometry level. Geometry Instancing will make this higher detail option a better option for RADEON X800 users."

Me: are you saying I can't provide?
Me: cause I know I can provide.
Me: oh and I can provide money too
Rachel: why do we need money when we can just stay in our room and have sex all day?<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Willamette_Sucks on 08/11/04 07:40 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[priyajeet]

I am with U, nvidia SUCKS.

<i> <font color=blue>Futile is resistance,</font color=blue><font color=red> assimilate you we will.</font color=red> </i>
<b>Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.</b>

 

[Willamette_sucks]

I pulled this off of the same thread at beyond 3d. You can read the whole thread (it's interesting) <A HREF="http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?start=20&t=14294" target="_new">here</A>.

Here is the most important thing on the first page. It's kinda long, but read it, otherwise YOU'RE A FARGOT!!!

"Farcry 1.2 - the withdrawn patch
Posted on Friday, July 23, 2004
at 11:49 PM by Zardon - 31 Comments


Lets face it, Its been a hell of a rough month for Crytek, not only was their much vaunted 1.2 patch severely delayed, they finally released the patch only to withdraw it today. We had planned a look at this patch on ATI hardware with new beta drivers but unfortunately it seems rather pointless presenting an indepth article detailing frames per second differences at various resolutions when the patch has been removed from public consumption. Nonetheless we have seen this is a hot topic of conversation on our forums, so Stuart and myself feel we should post something detailing a little of the apparent mysteries involved with this patch and forthcoming ATI drivers.

This is the official statement today on the withdrawal of Patch 1.2, "Far Cry patch 1.2 has shown unexpected behaviour on specific hardware configurations. These matters are mainly due to incompatibilities with several optimisations brought lately to the code, with the intent to please a large number of users.
We're currently asking CRYTEK to work on delivering a new patch as soon as possible. Until then we have decided to remove the patch 1.2 from the official UbiSoft websites."

We will be very interested to see what will have changed when it reappears, remember the benchmark disappearing from Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness?

A few weeks ago we received an advance copy of FarCry 1.2 from Nvidia. This build of 1.2 was sent out as it added Shader Model 3.0 support to enhance performance (but not image quality at this time) on the 6800 series graphics cards and we detailed the performance impact of the changes in a previous article.

Lets have a look at the patch that "never quite was". To get the full benefits of the patch you would have required an X800\X600 or X300 class graphics card, DirectX9.0b, FarCry 1.2 and Catalyst build 8.041 or above. If you have these you’ll get the full feature set: SM 2.0b and Geometry Instancing

The 2nd option is to have a R3xx or above graphics card (9500,9600,9700,9800) DirectX 9.0b, FarCry 1.2 and Catalyst 8.041. With this setup Geometry Instancing support is possible.

Thats right people, the NV40/SM3.0 isnt the only card/Shader Model that can provide instancing, any of ATI’s DX9 hardware supports this feature, in the words of some ATI employees (off the record) "even using DirectX9.0b"

So what does this mean?

Instancing:
Lets look at the feature common to all ATI cards first. Geometry Instancing (/Vertex Instancing) allows for more detailed graphics. A specific example in Farcry is that distant vegetation is no longer rendered as sprites, the render changes to a more detailed animated vegetation. (Effectively the objects like grass or tree’s in the distance can now be animated like the vegetation near your character rather than be static 2d sprites). Overall performance will be lower by removing the usage of 2D sprites and increasing the geometry level. Geometry Instancing will make this higher detail option a better option for RADEON X800 users.

To see the real benefits of instancing, you can manipulate the amount of geometry on the screen with Far Cry’s e_vegetation_sprites_distance_ratio parameter. This engine setting controls the point at which truly rendered (using geometry) vegetation is replaced by 2D sprites (billboards). The default value is “1”. Substituting a higher value pushes the threshold at which this substitution occurs to a distance further from the viewpoint.

Type the following in the command console: \e_vegetation_sprites_distance_ratio 100

This will eliminate the usage of 2D sprites as vegetation, and draw full animated vegetation throughout the scene



Shader Model 2.0b path:
The main benefit of the Shader Model 2.0b path in FarCry is that you have much improved one pass lighting support. As this improves the performance of indoor areas (due to heavy use of lighting) the SM 2.0b path gives benefit in many levels within FarCry. Additionally the 2.0b path gives added support for other complex shaders throughout the game, again boosting performance.

It should also be noted that the support for the above features is not unique to FarCry, any game developer using DX9 will be able to use the above features on the ATI Radeon.

We have been playing with these new features today and its relatively simple to enable the above features.

Firstly open the Farcry Console using the ` key.
For SM2.0b path type (without quotes) “\r_sm2bpath 1” and hit return.
For Instancing support type (again without quotes) “\r_GeomInstancing 1”
Of course if your enabling Instancing you’re going to want to bump up the vegetation detail, to do this you need to change your Farcry settings from (e_vegetation_sprites_distance_ratio,1.000000) to (e_vegetation_sprites_distance_ratio,100.0000). This change removes spite vegetation and replaces it with animated vegetation throughout the scene.

So to recap:

The major performance increase is due to improvements in the lighting shader. The new patch enables the effect of three lights to be calculated in one pass (previously, each light required its own pass). It is possible, with a bit of extra work, for four lights to be calculated in a single pass on ATI hardware, but Crytek has not made the changes that would enable this. This is the major performance increase on both ATI and Nvidia hardware.

The second performance increase is through the use of instancing. Instancing is a technique by which large numbers of identical objects can be grouped together and processed as a batch, greatly reducing the load on the CPU. Uses in FarCry include trees and grass. In the original version of the game, only trees and clumps of grass close to the player were rendered as geometry (that is, as a collection of triangles with textures painted across them). Further from the viewer they were replaced by "billboards" - a flat image of a tree that always faces the viewer. This increases frame rates, but at some cost to realism. Instancing allows the distance at which geometry must be replaced by billboards to be increased significantly (to the extent that essentially nothing the viewer sees is a billboard) with only a very small hit to performance.

SM3.0 includes instancing, a feature nvidia have promoted heavily, saying that it proves the superiority of their hardware - while this is certainly a major talking and selling point, all X800 cards (and even 9500,9600,9700,9800) are capable of instancing. We have a beta driver in our possession which reflects this and associated performance gains, and it will be in the publicly posted CATALYST 4.8. We dont feel until a final patch is available from Crytek we should post our detailed findings as there is every possibility between now and the next release this could change.

We can give you rough indications of percentage increases - on the research map with Far Cry v1.2 \r_sm2bpath 1 and HLSL compiler profile 2.0b we saw increases of 13% at 1024x768, 21% at 1280x1024 and 25% at 1600x1200. Nothing to be sniffed at.

So what about the juicy gossip? Well to say today has been a dramatic day is an understatement, during our testing period for the last 12 hours or so we have spent alot of time on the phone and in email to many people in the industry, one such person in the industry even stated this:

"Nvidia encouraged Crytek to use partial precision in the shaders wherever possible. This means that many of the shaders will run in 16-bit precision, not the 32-bit precision (a requirement of SM3.0) that they are touting to the press. Ironically, while promoting the 32-bit precision of SM3.0 as a "must have", Nvidia is asking developers to use less precision than was available in SM1.0 - that is, all the way back in DirectX8! Even more ironically, ATI hardware will run most of the FarCry shaders more accurately (ATI hardware runs all shaders in 24-bit precision). Microsoft, the owner of DirectX, defines 24-bit and greater as "full precision" and 16-bit as "partial precision", Nvidia has claimed that ATI paid Crytek to delay the patch and include ATI features (the figure mentioned was $500k!)."

So there you have it, some of the facts, and some rumours.... nonetheless Crytek has committed to delivering 3Dc support in patch v1.3, which will provide higher detail images, or free up memory with better compression than traditional normal map compression options. FarCry is a great example of a next generation title that uses normal maps extensively. When the "final" patch arrives, we will be giving it a good going over and posting indepth results."

Me: are you saying I can't provide?
Me: cause I know I can provide.
Me: oh and I can provide money too
Rachel: why do we need money when we can just stay in our room and have sex all day?

 

[Clob]

Nice post Willamette. Explains a lot. You must have blown a brain fuse on that one.

"If youre paddling upstream in a canoe and a
wheel falls off, how many pancakes fit in a doghouse? None! Icecream doesn't have bones!!!"

 

[Terracide]

People seems to be forgetting that the benchmarks of HL2 that ATi won was the NV30 against the R300 core...
Things are different today, even if you are (as some peeps in this thread appears to be...) a fanATIc

Terracide - Brand is nothing, preformance is everything!

Don't pretend - BE!

 

[coylter]

Well ATM nvidia win in hl2...

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