Hope you all are ready for a long read. Here it comes!
I spent several hours yesterday playing with HSR options, and quite frankly, it is the biggest performance increase I've ever seen or heard of. First, let's see the bad news:
- At your highest resolutions such as 1600 x 1200, the higher HSR settings cause graphical problems that I can't get rid of. In some cases (I.E. 1600 x 1200 with HSR 4) the problems are so bad it is unplayable. Sure, your FPS go through the roof and then some, but that obviously doesn't mean squat if you can't play the game.
- Direct 3D games get nothing from HSR.
- These beta drivers are "nVidia-esque" in the sense that sometimes they're difficult to set up for people who aren't familiar with a bit of technical jargon. Either a registry hack or a hand-made batch file is needed to work with HSR.
Keep in mind these *are BETA* drivers, so certainly some of these problems are to be expected.
Damn...with all this bad stuff, the results better be pretty friggin? good, right? On to the benchmarks.
My system:
P3 700 (O/Ced to 815)
128 MB PC 100 SDRAM
ASUS P3V4X mobo (VIA 133a Chipset, latest BIOS and 4 in 1 drivers)
Voodoo 5500 (not O/Ced)
Just a quick note...when you see the markings (1) and (2) in my results, this is what I mean:
1 - Graphical glitches were very apparent at first, but disappeared when I enabled V-Sync and set 32 bit Depth Precision to "fast".
2 - Graphical glitches were very apparent at first, but disappeared when I enabled V-Sync, set 32 bit Depth Precision to "fast", and hard-capped the frame rate at about 15% below the fps average I was getting from the demo.
Here's what I got from Quake 3 Arena using timedemo 1, demo 001 across several different resolutions, FSAA settings, and HSR settings.
HQ - 800 x 600 ? 2x FSAA ? No HSR ? 59.2 ? Ran Perfect
HQ - 800 x 600 ? 2x FSAA ? HSR 2 ? 80.3 ? Ran Perfect
HQ - 800 x 600 ? 2x FSAA ? HSR 3 ? 87.1 ? Ran Perfect
An extra 28 FPS here at no cost to any image quality at all.
HQ - 800 x 600 ? 4x FSAA ? No HSR ? 27.8 ? Somewhat Playable (poor FPS)
HQ ? 800 x 600 ? 4x FSAA ? HSR 1 ? 36.2 ? Very Playable (so-so FPS)
HQ - 800 x 600 ? 4x FSAA ? HSR 2 ? 52.9 ? Ran Perfect(1)
HQ - 800 x 600 - 4x FSAA - HSR 3 - 71.8 - Ran Perfect(1)
HQ - 800 x 600 - 4x FSAA - HSR 4 - 78.2 - Unplayable (glitchy)
Averaging 71.8 fps with absolutely ZERO graphical errors in 4x FSAA mode here.
High Quality - 1024 x 768 - No FSAA - No HSR ? 68.9 ? Ran Perfect
High Quality - 1024 x 768 - No FSAA - HSR 1 - 75.5 ? Ran Perfect
High Quality - 1024 x 768 - No FSAA - HSR 2 - 71.3 ? Ran Perfect
High Quality - 1024 x 768 - No FSAA - HSR 3 - 67.7 ? Ran Perfect
High Quality - 1024 x 768 - No FSAA - HSR 4 - 67.9 ? Ran Perfect (1)
My system ain?t the best in the world, but it?s pretty good. With PC 100 memory and a VIA chipset, I?m CPU limited in this case, hence, HSR doesn?t amount to a hill of beans for me except for HSR 1 giving me 7 extra FPS. This isn?t true with other folks who aren?t CPU bound at this level.
HQ - 1024 x 768 - 2x FSAA - No HSR ? 36.7 ? Ran Perfect
HQ - 1024 x 768 - 2x FSAA - HSR 1 - 45.6 ? Ran Perfect (1)
HQ - 1024 x 768 - 2x FSAA - HSR 2 - 63.2 - Ran Perfect (1)
HQ - 1024 x 768 - 2x FSAA - HSR 3 - 80.6 - Ran Perfect (1)
HQ - 1024 x 768 - 2x FSAA - HSR 4 - 86.9 - unplayable (glitchy)
Check that out, guys...1024 x 768, 2x FSAA, High Quality running at 80 FPS average. That is *unreal*.
HQ - 1024 x 768 - 4x FSAA - No HSR ? 15.2 - unplayable(low fps)
HQ - 1024 x 768 - 4x FSAA - HSR 1 - 20.7 - unplayable (low fps)
HQ - 1024 x 768 - 4x FSAA - HSR 2 - 32.9 - unplayable (glitchy)
HQ - 1024 x 768 - 4x FSAA - HSR 3 - 48.3 - unplayable (glitchy)
HQ - 1024 x 768 - 4x FSAA - HSR 4 - 61.6 - unplayable (glitchy)
HSR doesn't like 4x FSAA at all in this resolution
HQ ? 1280 x 1024 ? No FSAA - No HSR ? 42.4 ? Ran Perfect
HQ ? 1280 x 1024 ? No FSAA ? HSR 3 ? 80.4 ? Ran Perfect
Yes, that's right, HSR 3 doubled my frames per second and I did not see a glitch in the 5 minutes I played at that resolution. No need to tweak anything.
HQ ? 1280 x 1024 ? 2x FSAA - No HSR ? 20.5 ? unplayable
HQ ? 1280 x 1024 ? 2x FSAA ? HSR 3 ? 80.4 ? unplayable
I didn't have time to test the other 1280 x 1024 settings, but I will soon enough. It appears that FSAA at this resolution is tough to deliver with HSR, but, like I said, I haven't tested all the combinations yet.
So, overall, here?s what I gained with my system:
- Went from 59 to 87 fps in 800 x 600 / 2x FSAA
- Went from 28 to 71.8 fps in 800 x 600 / 4x FSAA
- Minor gains in 1024 x 768 with no FSAA
- Went from 36 to 80.1 fps in 1024 x 768 / 2x FSAA
- Went from 42.4 to 80.4 fps in 1280 x 1024
I've read several articles saying "HSR is too glitchy, it's unusable, it's worthless, etc..." and I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that they're full of it. All I can do is SWEAR that the above is accurate based on my system. On all of the ones that I marked "Ran Perfect" I mean that I saw absolutely zero graphical anomolies while running the demo and then playing the game for several minutes.
Here's a quick comparison that should shake the foundations of the hard-core gaming world:
Quake 3, High Quality, 1280 x 1024, No FSAA
Voodoo 5500 on my P3 815: 80.4
Leadtek GF2 GTS O/Ced on similar system: 46
ELSA Gladiac GF2 ULTRA O/Ced on 1.1 GHz Athlon: 89.5
I think we'll agree when we say that Quake 3 is the "crown jewel" for GF2 benchmarking. It's one of the few games currently supporting T&L and it is Open GL, the realm where GF2 has pretty much ruled. I'm shocked!
In one word, WOW. This is as good as getting a brand new video card in some cases! nVidia will certainly try to respond, but I wonder how successful they will be. Their FSAA response proved to be a bit inferior to 3DFX's FSAA (subjective). I wonder if HSR will tell the same story should nVidia develop their own version.
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