Chaos Theory: SM2.0 vs SM3.0

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: Rollo
I've always respected John's opinion. Why don't you ask him to come over and post why he chose to say the image rendered by SM2 and SM3 is different about four times in his article if he really meant to say "it's exactly the same" like you are?

I already explained why in the bulk of my last post which you have blatantly chose to ignore. The difference is that John only used a Radeon to test the SM2, where as if he had used a Geforce he would have found that both paths give the same result. I'm pretty sure you are cappable of grasping this fact on your own so I haven't bothered John with it yet, but if you really need his help to wrap your head around the facts then I suppose I can see if he will stop by and explain things to you.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman

Originally posted by: Rollo
I've always respected John's opinion. Why don't you ask him to come over and post why he chose to say the image rendered by SM2 and SM3 is different about four times in his article if he really meant to say "it's exactly the same" like you are?

I already explained why in the bulk of my last post which you have blatantly chose to ignore. The difference is that John only used a Radeon to test the SM2, where as if he had used a Geforce he would have found that both paths give the same result. I'm pretty sure you are cappable of grasping this fact on your own so I haven't bothered John with it yet, but if you really need his help to wrap your head around the facts then I suppose I can see if he will stop by and explain things to you.

Ah. I think I misunderstood your argument. You're not saying the Radeon is rendering the same image, you're saying that SM2 and SM3 on an SM3 card would render the same image quality?

If so, my apologies.

 

[kylebisme]

Basicly, eah. I am saying that the SM2 path and SM3 path provide the same image quality on a Geforce. I am also saying that the difference in image quality noted in John's article is due simply to the floating point blending ablities of the Geforce 6600 and up, and has nothing to do with SM3.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
Basicly, eah. I am saying that the SM2 path and SM3 path provide the same image quality on a Geforce. I am also saying that the difference in image quality noted in John's article is due simply to the floating point blending ablities of the Geforce 6600 and up, and has nothing to do with SM3.

Fair enough, and agreed.

What I'm disagreeing with you guys on (and maybe just Bouzouki) is his assertion that "HDR is HDR" when it's not.
Why nVidia HDR is not the same as whatever form of HDR this patch uses

NVIDIA uses a compromise variant, the 16-bit OpenEXR format developed by Industrial Light and Magic to describe the physical values. The 16-bit OpenEXR description devotes one bit for the sign of the exponent, five bits to store the value of the exponent and ten bits to store the mantissas of the chromatic color coordinates (u, v), five bits per coordinate. The dynamic representation range thus stretches to 9 orders of magnitude: from 6.14*10-5 to 6.41*104.

The process of constructing and outputting a HDR image with the NV40 graphics processor is divided into three steps:

Light Transport: rendering a scene with a high lighting dynamic range and saving the information about the light characteristics of each pixel in a buffer that uses the OpenEXR floating-point data format. NVIDIA stresses the fact that the NV40 supports floating-point data representation on each step of creation of a HDR scene, ensuring the minimum quality loss:
floating-point calculations in shaders;
floating-point texture filtering;
operations with buffers that use a floating-point data format.
Tone Mapping ? translation of the image with a high dynamic range into a LDRI format (RGBA or sRGB).
Color and Gamma Correction ? translation of the image into the color space of the display device (CRT or an LCD monitor or anything else).

As the nV4X> is the only SM3 hardware in the world, and it supports FP16 blending, it's fair to say you need SM3 hardware to get the most IQ out of this game.

In any case, it's nice they added the offset texture mapping for ATI.

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
Basicly, eah. I am saying that the SM2 path and SM3 path provide the same image quality on a Geforce. I am also saying that the difference in image quality noted in John's article is due simply to the floating point blending ablities of the Geforce 6600 and up, and has nothing to do with SM3.

Fair enough, and agreed.

What I'm disagreeing with you guys on (and maybe just Bouzouki) is his assertion that "HDR is HDR" when it's not.
Why nVidia HDR is not the same as whatever form of HDR this patch uses

I said that HDR is HDR in this game, and I'm pretty sure that is what Bouzouki meant as well.

Originally posted by: RolloAs the nV4X> is the only SM3 hardware in the world, and it supports FP16 blending, it's fair to say you need SM3 hardware to get the most IQ out of this game.

Acually, the 6200s don't support floating point blending, so you can have SM3 hardware and still have to go without tone mapping in this game.

Originally posted by: RolloIn any case, it's nice they added the offset texture mapping for ATI.

Soft shadows and HDR are nice additions as well, but the best part is no more putting up with the awful blocky lighting effects that are in the 1.1path.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Perhaps i misread the article but... didn't they say although the option to use HDR is there it cannot be used properly as the ATI cards do not support FP Blending?

Additionally, HDR is not HDR. THere are different ways of implementing it for one.

Perhaps what Bou Zouki is getting at is the implementation is the same. However, the execution is different as Nvidia is using full FP16 Blending while ATI is reduced to 12.

People are arguing this like it is the end of the world. You should sit back and read through this thread. It is ridiculous. Some of you are aruing a moot point. You are trying to say that SM3 has no advantages over 2 and that the ATI cards are just as good as the Nvidia cards, which is false. How is a later generation of Shaders going to be worse?? Stop arguing it. Yes, SM2 is doing an excellent job of keeping up and you retain a lot of the visual quality, but saying that it is just as good as its successor is pure negligence.

As for AA not beign enabled with HDR. Well as far as i know that is only with the OpenEXR implementation. Im sure there are other types out there which should work just fine. However, for the sake of staying with this game. True, you cannot use AA. Ok, so make a choice, do you want AA or do you want HDR. You can hardly fault Nvidia because you can only choose 1 of 2 features.

FInally, i have NEVER heard of AF not being enabled with Soft Shadows.

-Kevin

 

[Drayvn]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
Perhaps i misread the article but... didn't they say although the option to use HDR is there it cannot be used properly as the ATI cards do not support FP Blending?

Additionally, HDR is not HDR. THere are different ways of implementing it for one.

Perhaps what Bou Zouki is getting at is the implementation is the same. However, the execution is different as Nvidia is using full FP16 Blending while ATI is reduced to 12.

People are arguing this like it is the end of the world. You should sit back and read through this thread. It is ridiculous. Some of you are aruing a moot point. You are trying to say that SM3 has no advantages over 2 and that the ATI cards are just as good as the Nvidia cards, which is false. How is a later generation of Shaders going to be worse?? Stop arguing it. Yes, SM2 is doing an excellent job of keeping up and you retain a lot of the visual quality, but saying that it is just as good as its successor is pure negligence.

As for AA not beign enabled with HDR. Well as far as i know that is only with the OpenEXR implementation. Im sure there are other types out there which should work just fine. However, for the sake of staying with this game. True, you cannot use AA. Ok, so make a choice, do you want AA or do you want HDR. You can hardly fault Nvidia because you can only choose 1 of 2 features.

FInally, i have NEVER heard of AF not being enabled with Soft Shadows.

-Kevin

Thats what im wierded out by, some ppl are saying Soft Shadows disables AF... I never thought it did?

 

[Todd33]

Originally posted by: Rollo
Sigh, best to read the article more carefully. :roll:

Rollo, lay off the rolling eyes thing, you have it in every reply..

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Todd33

Originally posted by: Rollo
Sigh, best to read the article more carefully. :roll:

Rollo, lay off the rolling eyes thing, you have it in every reply..

Todd, if I put the happy face in every reply you'd flame me.
:roll:

:shocked:

 

[Todd33]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: Todd33

Originally posted by: Rollo
Sigh, best to read the article more carefully. :roll:

Rollo, lay off the rolling eyes thing, you have it in every reply..

Todd, if I put the happy face in every reply you'd flame me.
:roll:

:shocked:

Only because you post like a 12 year old girl who just discovered the internet.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
Like I have said twice now, it works the same on both:

Geforce
Radeon

So for this game, HDR is HDR either way.

Why don't you link to the pics in the article, instead of some other source? The ones you linked to are identical, the ones from the article are clearly different.

sm2.0 HDR
sm3.0 HDR

 

[xtknight]

A bit off topic here: can the GeForce 7800 do HDR and AA simultaneously?

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
Why don't you link to the pics in the article, instead of some other source?

Did you not read the rest of my posts in this thread? I explained the why there is a difference between the articles shots and mine quite a few times already.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Todd33

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: Todd33

Originally posted by: Rollo
Sigh, best to read the article more carefully. :roll:

Rollo, lay off the rolling eyes thing, you have it in every reply..

Todd, if I put the happy face in every reply you'd flame me.
:roll:

:shocked:

Only because you post like a 12 year old girl who just discovered the internet.

I'd note calling people names and following them around flaming them is not exactly the model of maturity either?
:roll:

 

[hans030390]

Hm, that is interesting. I dont understand completely why HDR does worse with SM3 enabled.

Perhaps they should have gotten Sm2 benchies for the 6800gt just to compare between sm2 and 3?

But still, assuming you dont run HDR (which isn't needed to make the game look good) the Sm3 looks better than sm1.1 and runs faster too.

Bah, SC:CT never were the best games to benchmark stuff on. They tend to run kinda slow.

Glad they did put in SM2 though good for the ati owners.

 

[Todd33]

Originally posted by: Rollo

I'd note calling people names and following them around flaming them is not exactly the model of maturity either?
:roll:

It's called an analogy and don't flatter yourself.

Edit: Now Rollo is sending me PMs with just emoticons or whatever they are called. I'm glad he can lecture on maturity.

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: hans030390
Hm, that is interesting. I dont understand completely why HDR does worse with SM3 enabled.

It is not that SM3 is slower, just that the Radeons still come out faster in the benches he did.

Originally posted by: hans030390Perhaps they should have gotten Sm2 benchies for the 6800gt just to compare between sm2 and 3?

That would have been nice to see in the comparson as well. I know from testing that my 6800gt is faster in the game with SM3 when compared to SM2.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman

Originally posted by: nitromullet
Why don't you link to the pics in the article, instead of some other source?

Did you not read the rest of my posts in this thread? I explained the why there is a difference between the articles shots and mine quite a few times already.

Sorry, missed a bit of that... That happens when people quote and re-quote lengthy posts.

 

[kylebisme]

I'm sorry, I try to keep things as concise as possible.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: xtknight
A bit off topic here: can the GeForce 7800 do HDR and AA simultaneously?

No, not if you are using OpenEXR (The only thing that is really used right now). Like i said that problem does not lie in the card, but in the implementation.

-Kevin

 

[kylebisme]

If by "implementation" you mean no games support software AA, then yeah I guess that is one way to lay blame. However the cards simply can't do hardware MSAA and floating point blending at the same time, simple as that. Future hardware may well be able to do MSAA with HDR in game like Splinter Cell and Far Cry.

 

[Gamingphreek]

However the cards simply can't do hardware MSAA and floating point blending at the same time, simple as that.

I always thought it was merely how that method of HDR was implemented (ie The Code will not allow the two to run simultaneously). Are you sure it has something to do with H/W. If it did, dont you think Nvidia would have fixed the 7800 series to allow this?

-Kevin

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek

However the cards simply can't do hardware MSAA and floating point blending at the same time, simple as that.

I always thought it was merely how that method of HDR was implemented (ie The Code will not allow the two to run simultaneously). Are you sure it has something to do with H/W. If it did, dont you think Nvidia would have fixed the 7800 series to allow this?

-Kevin

Nah, I was also under the impression that the HW can't do AA and HDR simultaneously. I think I read about that somewhere, but I can't remember now...

 

[kylebisme]

It is mentioned in the 6800u review at B3D

Although most of the pipeline operations work under the OpenEXR format, at present the FSAA multisampling scheme does not.

And pointed out in there 7800 preview as well

The FSAA mechanism also stays the same as NV40 with a maximum of 4 multi-samples (2 per clock), and rotated grid sampling; multisampling still doesn't operate on floating point blending targets though.

It would have been great if Nvidia did update the AA to work with floating point blending, but from what I understand it would have cost a lot of transistors to do so.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Well if Multi-Sampling doesn't work, would Super Sampling... im definitely thinking no; but wishful thinking?

What would they need to have done to update the AA scheme? In other words, what would all those transistors be used for?

-Kevin