A major breakthrough for ATI Cat 5.11: Doom3's performances increase 35%

[DidlySquat]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: jasonja

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: ZobarStyl
This looks a lot more like a bandaid on Doom3 than a fix for their truly sad OpenGL performance. If your summation is correct, it really only effects AA performance, which doesn't change the fact that even base performance (no AA/AF) in OpenGL is pretty much crap on ATi cards. Whatever happened to the full OGL rewrite?

edit like dug: Up to 35% typically means they tried it at the most inanely high setting and went from 15 to 20 fps. Grain of salt.

It is quite possible that if ATI rewrites and increases their OpenGL performance considerably, they may well be sacrificing their Direct3d performance. Maybe this is the reason they are just refusing to do it.

How so? The OGL and D3D teams are completely seperate.

I don't see anyone installing separate OGL and D3D drivers. The "teams" you mentioned may be separate, but not completely. The end result is, you only install one driver that fits all. I don't disagree with you. Just have another perspective.

wow just wow, you're really on a role there buddy. Just because you click on one setup icon doesn't mean it's installing only one driver. Wondering how you come up with these 'educated" theories.

 

[lifeguard1999]

Guru3d testing

Summary: 4xAA shows improvements. 0xAA & 6xAA shows no improvements.

 

[lifeguard1999]

Eric Demeres from ATI says "we are determined to focus a lot more energy into OGL tuning in the coming year"

Yeah!!! It is about time!

 

[funks]

it's gonna be interesting what ATI will do in regards to OPENGL performance.. On VISTA, OpenGL is a second class API that is emulated ontop VISTA's native engine (AERO)

If you were developing drivers? Which area would you focus more on?

 

[jasonja]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
The fact that ATi are able to find 35% worth of improvement in a game as old as Doom3 speaks volumes about their (lack of) driver quality in general and OpenGL quality in particular. It's all the more ironic that one ATi engineer goes by the handle "OpenGLguy" in public forums (he also worked at S3 on the savage series)...

This improvement is only available on the new 5 series cards due to the new memory controller. Since this improvement is being released before most people will even own the cards, I fail to see how this says anything negative about their driver quality.

 

[Drayvn]

Originally posted by: jasonja

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
The fact that ATi are able to find 35% worth of improvement in a game as old as Doom3 speaks volumes about their (lack of) driver quality in general and OpenGL quality in particular. It's all the more ironic that one ATi engineer goes by the handle "OpenGLguy" in public forums (he also worked at S3 on the savage series)...

This improvement is only available on the new 5 series cards due to the new memory controller. Since this improvement is being released before most people will even own the cards, I fail to see how this says anything negative about their driver quality.

If you read the Guru3D stuff on it ATi says they may still be able to get improvements out of the X800 series of cards also.

 

[BlingBlingArsch]

For me the interesting part of the news is not the fps increase but that ATI goes "pro OGL". I mean microsoft has been trying to kill the OGL syndicate for years now and Windows Vista may be their final success. But wait...ATI - who had the worst OGL drivers ever - is standing up for OGL. Funny, somehow :/

 

[Paratus]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: Paratus
It's a moot point until they release the XT Rollo - as you well know.

But stock vs stock is a legitmate review. Plus ANY Ati card beating it's comparable nvidia card at Doom III is a big deal.

That being said I'm feeling more and more certain that as November rolls around we'll have plenty of XTs available for review.

That's sort of my point- the cards clocked at 490/1300 are at factory stock speed for their OEMs, and we never see them in X1800XT comparisons.

Basically I meant reference vs reference.

Once it comes out I have no problem with comparisons against various stock OC'd GTXs. I think that would be rather enlightening 😉

 

[nRollo]

They might as well do it now, it seems to me ATI cards aren't stock OCd much, and that 7800GTXs are as often as not.

 

[BFG10K]

I mean microsoft has been trying to kill the OGL syndicate for years now

They've been doing nothing of the sort as doing so would be murder. Think of all of the OpenGL games and professional applications that run on Windows. Any OS vendor knows the more applications that run on their platform the better.

and Windows Vista may be their final success

Vista improves OpenGL support compared to past Windows versions.

 

[Paratus]

Originally posted by: Rollo
They might as well do it now, it seems to me ATI cards aren't stock OCd much, and that 7800GTXs are as often as not.

You do have a point. Most ATI partners seem to ship at reference clocks but with tools to let you OC. My Asus 9600XT is suposedly still under warranty as long as I OC it using the included software (whopping ~5% core ~8% mem is the max available).

 

[BlingBlingArsch]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

I mean microsoft has been trying to kill the OGL syndicate for years now

They've been doing nothing of the sort as doing so would be murder. Think of all of the OpenGL games and professional applications that run on Windows. Any OS vendor knows the more applications that run on their platform the better.

and Windows Vista may be their final success

Vista improves OpenGL support compared to past Windows versions.

check the headline at http://www.opengl.org/
either those guys are paranoid...or you are wrong. :/

 

[rbV5]

On VISTA, OpenGL is a second class API that is emulated ontop VISTA's native engine (AERO)

Not if you use a vendor supplied ICD. I doubt aeroglass will be much of a loss when working full screen in an OpenGL application, or playing full screen in an OpenGL game. OpenGL applications won't work any different on Vista than they do now in XP.

 

[Steelski]

Originally posted by: ZobarStyl

Originally posted by: Pete
Rys knows his stuff. Don't discount him just because you don't know him or read his articles. And the second Hexus link--posted by Steelski--has numbers associated with the bars. Look at the Y-axis.

Fair enough: I never said it was a bad site; I just prefer Anand's benches and I consider him the most impartial of all reviewers I've seen. I saw the Y-axis, but since it was in 20's I couldn't discern his numbers to but within ~2-3 fps either way without breaking out a ruler. Either way, don't think that I'm against this gain, but rather my point is that always take "up to" numbers with a grain of salt, and furthermore I'm more anxious to see what their full OGL rewrite can do, rather than this fix which mostly benefits the x1K users. Trust me, I'm for any gain in performance for any card (barring sacrifices in IQ). Oh and Steelski; I really hate being the nitpick poster, but since you asked...your numbers are still wrong. A 35% gain from 42 fps only puts them at ~57 fps, still behind nV in Doom3, which a card as fast as the x1800XT should definitely not be.

so you dident read my post carefully then. yest that means that it would be aslower if they were benching in high quality like Anandtech did, but would be faster if they benched in ultra quality like hexus did.


Anyway, as many people are saying....this is great.......freee boosts for everyone that has an X1800XT. yaaaaaaay?????
so noone has one huh........🙁
i am expecting ATI's partners to be putting some oc'd cards on the market. turbo edition's amongst others. I expect there will be more XL's with standard overclocks though.

 

[Keysplayr]

Steelski. The X1800XT will be here soon enough and this "hack" will apply to it as it does the XL's. Even a 10% gain would be great as any improvement is, without any IQ loss.

 

[BFG10K]

either those guys are paranoid...or you are wrong.

Or (3) you don't understand the issue.

OpenGL applications won't work any different on Vista than they do now in XP.

Not to mention that Vista actually supports hardware accelerated OpenGL 1.4 natively (i.e. without a vendor ICD), a stark contrast to the software 1.0 version shipping on previous Windows version.

 

[Insomniak]

My position on this:

About time. Don't expect kudos from me to ATi on this, just like you won't get kudos from me to Nvidia when they finally make cards that scale well with AA. It's overdue, and arguably never should've happened in the first place.