Aliens Vs. Predator: DirectX 11 Game Performance Analyzed

Features
By
published

Image Quality: GeForce Vs. Radeon

Since we didn't have one of the new 400-series GeForce cards on hand in time for this review, we'll have to compare GeForce and Radeon results in DirectX 9 mode. We'll compare screenshots taken from a Radeon HD 5870 and a GeForce GTX 260 to see if there are any differences.

Surprisingly, we do find a number of unusual differences between GeForce and Radeon output. While we've often seen GeForce and Radeon rendering disparities in the past, the kind of differences we notice in Aliens vs. Predator are more pronounced.

In one scene, the texture maps applied to the wall actually seem to change their mapping coordinates between Radeon and GeForce cards, while in other scenes, the Radeon cards show a definite lighting difference, with darker shadows and brighter highlights. To further complicate matters, these differences seem to go away when the Radeon card is run in DirectX 11 mode. That's right, a GeForce card in DirectX 9 delivers similar texture mapping and lighting as a Radeon card in DirectX 11 mode does (minus the DirectX 11 effects, of course).

The good news is that none of these differences are show stoppers, and if I hadn't scrutinized the screenshots, I'd never have noticed.

Now let's see how the Radeon HD 5000-series cards can up the ante with DirectX 11 effects.

Don Woligroski
71 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Kelavarus
    The thing is, same with DirectX 10, you aren't going to see considerable difference unless it's coded specifically for that API. I have seen some absolutely amazing things done with DirectX 10, but only because the engine was purely for DirectX 10, and to my knowledge, no one has even attempted that with DirectX 11 yet anyway.

    To reach the broader audience, games are coded with DirectX 9 in mind then have DX10/11 tacked on with a few features.

    We're not going to see much of a jump until DX9 is dropped completely, and especially with consoles running around DX9-ish, it's not going to happen till they upgrade, probably. Just my 2c.
    Reply
  • Annisman
    I will say one thing, DX11 is a new api, and though the differences in screenshots is minute, it's great to see no performance loss going with DX11. I think it took a whole year or more to actually see performance increases with DX10 vs. DX 9.

    So that is one thing you can take out of this.
    Reply
  • haplo602
    "Rebellion Gets A Third Swing At AvP" I thing that should be second swing, as AvP 2 was done by Monolith. Or swing at the third installment :-)

    Anyway, the original AvP was the best single and multiplayer pure FPS I ever played. The Alien was the king there, incredibly fast and agile and if done right, one hit killing anything in the game except a marine with a smartgun and head on (or predator with plasma guns in the same situation) :-) ...

    The second AvP failed miserably in all aspects maybe except story telling ... I have to have a look at the current one still ... but from your description, I guess I won't like it. Marine with melee against Aliens ? W T H !!!!
    Reply
  • matt87_50
    KelavarusThe thing is, same with DirectX 10, you aren't going to see considerable difference unless it's coded specifically for that API. I have seen some absolutely amazing things done with DirectX 10, but only because the engine was purely for DirectX 10, and to my knowledge, no one has even attempted that with DirectX 11 yet anyway.To reach the broader audience, games are coded with DirectX 9 in mind then have DX10/11 tacked on with a few features. We're not going to see much of a jump until DX9 is dropped completely, and especially with consoles running around DX9-ish, it's not going to happen till they upgrade, probably. Just my 2c.
    good points, all true.

    the biggest thing with DX10 was that it was vista only, no XP. as people flock to win7 with dx11 built in, that won't be such a big problem. also, dx11 doesn't really add much, it just kinda improves on dx10 and adds a couple of really useful things that should actually make life easier for everyone (kinda like win7 compared to vista I suppose) it adds proper multi threading in the drivers and allows the rendering engines to be multi threaded now. this is just a software thing too, so its not really hardware dependant (you don't need dx11 hardware to benefit) the other really useful feature added is tessellation. which is something that devs already do manually, and painfully in dx9 games. if anything its probably better for developers production times than it is for the end user! no complex art pipelines or engines, automatic performance scaling (the card knows how fast it is and can dynamically allocate the right proportion of triangles to every object in order to reach an exact total frame poly budget). it also adds compute shader. all of these things don't really add anything new, we had tessellation on GPGPU before, but it was all third party and more convoluted, so its more about ease of development than new stuff. don't take that the wrong way though. ease of development should lead to much bigger leaps and bounds in graphics than new features that everyone was too scared to use anyway.
    Reply
  • neiroatopelcc
    Sounds like the new avp faces the same problem borderlands does - it's too easy! I compare borderlands with fallout 3 as they feel about the same. But in borderlands you've got this constant pointer to exactly where you're supposed to go - which makes you not even try to read the actually mission briefings - and when you've just downed a boss you stop and think 'what ? this easy?'
    Dumbing down's been seen in wow since burning crusade too. I suppose developers are just broadening their potential customer base by making the games so simple that any 10 year old can play them sufficiently well.
    Reply
  • XxOsurfer3xX
    Depends on how you play borderlands, if you go to misions over your level is not that easy..
    Reply
  • neiroatopelcc
    XxOsurfer3xXDepends on how you play borderlands, if you go to misions over your level is not that easy..Yes it is.
    Sure 3 levels over you, and you do next to no damage - but you don't die, you simply run out of ammo!
    I solved the difficulty level problem by running a lan game and have two other of my chars join. Now there's a feeling of difficulty in playthough 2, but given the directions you're still just following pointers and aren't really immersed in the plot at any rate. You don't have to think, just shoot. Could's well play cs or some other shooter
    Reply
  • Tridec
    I really can't understand why you didn't use the older ATI 48xx series cards in your review. It would seem logical to do so as there are a lot of your readers with previous gen cards that are thinking about upgrading. You guys did use the Nvidia 260 and even the older Nvidia 9800 GT, but not the "populair" Ati cards.
    Reply
  • Tomtompiper
    Third swipe, the first AvP was for the Atari Jaguar, by Rebellion and was a cracker.
    Reply
  • ssddx
    Don Woligroski, I must say that is a very nicely written article! I've only been seeing your name more recently; are you new to Toms?

    As for the games themselves: I would have to disagree on the second avp being a failure. The game packs everything you state the first one got right. I would also have to say that the multiplayer is(was) excellent. Theres nothing quite like dropping 150 feet as an alien onto some poor guys head (and the things he would say too!)

    Do people still play AVP2 online? If so I might have to get myself into a match for a quick fix.
    Reply