FiringSquad's new article

[nRollo]

Old Fart:

That is simply ridiculous. People who own last gen cards are interested to see how an upcoming game will perform on their system. There a TON more people out there running nV3x and R3xx card than the latest gen cards. Are you saying they dont want to know how a new game such as HL2 or other will run on their system? Of course they do. Please.

I didn't and wouldn't say that people with older cards don't want to know how they perform. Obviously more people own these cards.

It is perfectly reasonable to run the latest as well as last gen cards in such a review. I do agree that they should have either left out the GT, and do a separate review on current gen, or have all the current cards in the review.

We agree on this point, one of two I was trying to make.

You always speak so highly of Anandtech reviews. They also used last gen cards and even threw in a GF4 4400. Any complaints?

I like it better than FSs, because personally I'd rather see new cards than old, as I never have an old card. It's almost the opposite of FSs though, overbalanced to the new hardware side. Personally I think a good mix here is all new cards (6800/X800s) and the 9800Pro/5900U, 5700XT/9600XT, Ti4600/R8500.
Every class represented, most people covered.

 

[oldfart]

As I said earlier, my only guess is they tested with the cards they happen to have on hand. Having the GT in there without any other new card is odd. Throw out the GT and use the article to see how R3xx and nv3x cards will fare.

 

[gururu]

what are you guys talking about? FS did a complete review of the HL2 stress test and CS source with next gen cards last week.

 

[Tobyus]

.

I get about the same as you, on a slower CPU than what FS is using

What CPU are they using? I'm using an Athlon 64 3000+ at stock speeds.

 

[Creig]

Originally posted by: Rollo
personally I'd rather see new cards than old, as I never have an old card.

Well, I guess they made the comparison for the majority of users out there rather than the minority.


Go figure.

 

[Zephyr106]

Originally posted by: gururu
what are you guys talking about? FS did a complete review of the HL2 stress test and CS source with next gen cards last week.

Fan boy antics are more important than actually reading reviews....Stress Test of "Next Gen" Cards

Zephyr

 

[Acanthus]

Is it just me or does CS:S not have very good graphics... while the bump mapping is nice, its certainly not touting MANY of the features in the source engine.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Zephyr106

Originally posted by: gururu
what are you guys talking about? FS did a complete review of the HL2 stress test and CS source with next gen cards last week.

Fan boy antics are more important than actually reading reviews....Stress Test of "Next Gen" Cards

Zephyr

I didn't see that article, thanks. It's nice to see the older cards running HL2 so well, and as the owner of a 6800NU and 6800GT I was very happy with those numbers as well.

 

[MemberSince97]

It seems to me that these full feature dx9, good, advanced graphics and online play dont mix for some reason.

 

[Childs]

Originally posted by: Tobyus
.

I get about the same as you, on a slower CPU than what FS is using

What CPU are they using? I'm using an Athlon 64 3000+ at stock speeds.

A64 3200+ at stock speeds. Maybe at 1600x1200 4/8 the next gen cards are the bottleneck on the source engine. Otherwise, I would expect the review sites to produce higher numbers when they seem to use an FX53 or A64 3800+ class CPU.

 

[Pete]

Originally posted by: Rollo

The recent FX owner is better off with this game than the 9800XT owner is with Doom3. The FX owner can run DX 8.1 and double his performance.

There is one point here intellectually challenged people. I stated it's preferable to run HL2 with most of the IQ twice as fast, than to be stuck like the 9800 owners are with Doom 3.

The 9800 series is about as fast as the FX series in Doom 3, AFAIK (here, too), so the FX owners are "stuck" at the same speed as 9800 owners. Are you thinking of the X800 series? Otherwise, that comparison is misleading.

Originally posted by: ViRGE
The Humus tweak isn't mathematically equivilent to what the output should be, and hence JC didn't care for it since it did the opposite of what he intended for the game engine to do(perfectly replicate non-PS hardware's bias). JC snubbed it because it cost image quality, and that it something he won't compromise on Doom 3 more than nessisary.

I thought IQ was superior due to using math, rather than filtered texture lookups. As for not "compromising" D3's IQ, that sounds like more of an artist than a programmer issue.

I don't remember JC specifically denigrating Humus' patch b/c of lower or compromised IQ. His only comment on it, AFAIK, is in this B3D "interview," and it doesn't mention costing or compromising IQ.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: Pete

Originally posted by: Rollo

The recent FX owner is better off with this game than the 9800XT owner is with Doom3. The FX owner can run DX 8.1 and double his performance.

There is one point here intellectually challenged people. I stated it's preferable to run HL2 with most of the IQ twice as fast, than to be stuck like the 9800 owners are with Doom 3.

The 9800 series is about as fast as the FX series in Doom 3, AFAIK (here, too), so the FX owners are "stuck" at the same speed as 9800 owners. Are you thinking of the X800 series? Otherwise, that comparison is misleading.

Originally posted by: ViRGE
The Humus tweak isn't mathematically equivilent to what the output should be, and hence JC didn't care for it since it did the opposite of what he intended for the game engine to do(perfectly replicate non-PS hardware's bias). JC snubbed it because it cost image quality, and that it something he won't compromise on Doom 3 more than nessisary.

I thought IQ was superior due to using math, rather than filtered texture lookups. As for not "compromising" D3's IQ, that sounds like more of an artist than a programmer issue.

I don't remember JC specifically denigrating Humus' patch b/c of lower or compromised IQ. His only comment on it, AFAIK, is in this B3D "interview," and it doesn't mention costing or compromising IQ.

Note where he talks about all the artwork being done on non-fragment hardware; because Humus's tweak doesn't match the square/bias, it produces an image that deviates from the "reference" image, hence the comments I made about IQ. In a generic case, the IQ may be superior, but for Doom 3, this perfectly matches what id wants, and as Carmack notes, it's also useful for when you want a finite cutoff angle, which I'm assuming they're taking advantage of here.

 

[ronnn]

Originally posted by: MegaWorks
More blah! blah! blah! from Rollo.

Leave the poor guy alone to promote his company. Besides any mention of shader days makes him see green. Was a cruel night on the net for many a fanboy.

 

[Ackmed]

I see nemesismk2 is posting his opinion as fact, again.

:sigh:

 

[ronnn]

I believe him when he says he owns a gt. :beer: Besides here we are discussing performance in a game that may never be released the way things are going and a game that is pretty darn boring. Oh look a scary zombie jumped out of the stairs and it sure is dark. Sorry had to say that and have only played a couple of levels so will likely pick up.

 

[Ackmed]

It didnt for me. I had to force myself to finish it, just to do it. I didnt enjoy it very much overall. Same old, same old to me. Kill monster, search dark room, get key, kill monter.. etc. Sure there was some good parts, but overall it just wasnt that great, to me.

 

[Concillian]

I see a LOT of people missing the point entirely of the article.

FS ALREADY HAD AN ARTICLE COMPARING THE x800 CARDS TO THE 6800 CARDS.
Here for CS-Source:
http://www.firingsquad.com/har...ounter_strike_source/

and here for The video stress test:
<br>[url]http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/half-life2_vst/
[/url]

That was NOT the purpose of this article.
The article is a follow up to the realization that The GeForce FX series was forced into DX8 by Valve:
<br>[url]http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/half_life_2_fx/
[/url]

If you read the comments on the article you will see the author had this to say:

When I came up with the idea to do this article, the focus
was to be on GeForce FX/RADEON 9800 XT era cards. Then,
about halfway through I decided to add the 6800 GT for two
reasons:

1) To show it's a GeForce FX-related problem, and not a
problem for the GeForce 6 series

2) To provide a frame of reference of what today's high-end
cards will do in similar situations


Again, if you want X800 vs 6800 numbers, we have them. When
HL2 is released, we'll re-run them again with those cards.
You can count on that.

I can't believe this thread got four pages and nobody bothered to post the CONTEXT articles.

I never thought I'd see such a flaming argument between so many totally uninformed people on AT forums. Did everyone skip the introduction and go straight to the comparisons, not even caring what the comparisons were intended to show?

 

[gururu]

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: Pete
I thought IQ was superior due to using math, rather than filtered texture lookups. As for not "compromising" D3's IQ, that sounds like more of an artist than a programmer issue.

I don't remember JC specifically denigrating Humus' patch b/c of lower or compromised IQ. His only comment on it, AFAIK, is in this B3D "interview," and it doesn't mention costing or compromising IQ.

Note where he talks about all the artwork being done on non-fragment hardware; because Humus's tweak doesn't match the square/bias, it produces an image that deviates from the "reference" image, hence the comments I made about IQ. In a generic case, the IQ may be superior, but for Doom 3, this perfectly matches what id wants, and as Carmack notes, it's also useful for when you want a finite cutoff angle, which I'm assuming they're taking advantage of here.

I don't buy this preservation of 'reference' image stuff. JC admitted that they used a texture lookup table because it was faster than doing the math. He neglected to say that the lookup was faster only on Nvidia hardware. He admits that doing the math may actually be faster on certain hardware, but doesn't specify ATI or Humus or anything; the snub. It's a matter of what does the trick faster, the lookup or the math. Most sites agree as well that ATI's architecture DOES math a lot faster than Nvidia's, validating the gain in performance that the Humus tweak can offer (I got 20% increase with NO apparent artifacts). Lastly, no site has shown quality differences in either method.

In any regard, how could JC not know that the math would be faster on ATI. Of course he knew. For one reason or another, it seems he didn't just give a damn.

 

[Concillian]

Bah, my links are fooked, and I can't seem to go back and edit them.

2nd link:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/half-life2_vst/


3rd link:
<br>http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/half_life_2_fx/

 

[jrphoenix]

Originally posted by: jim1976

Originally posted by: jrphoenix
Pretty humbling to see the 9800 run just as fast give or take as my GT (especially since my rig is very similar to theirs, except I have an extra gig of ram) I am going to get an Ultra in October to replace my GT... but still one can only imagine how much faster the x800's will be? Of course maybe my 16 pipes will pull away from the last gen card at 1600 x 1200 (that is the native resolution on my LCD and what I game at).

Pretty interesting read!

Where did you see GT being near XT?
At cpu lim 8x6?

Cmon you MUST be jokin of course...

No GT is not near the XT... it only keeps pace with the 9800 (on the graphs they show)... this is what made me sad because I have a GT

 

[apoppin]

dp

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: ronnn
I believe him when he says he owns a gt. :beer: Besides here we are discussing performance in a game that may never be released the way things are going and a game that is pretty darn boring. Oh look a scary zombie jumped out of the stairs and it sure is dark. Sorry had to say that and have only played a couple of levels so will likely pick up.

it only gets worse . . .

Once you find a certain artifact it gets stupidly easy . . . this is the first FPS where i beat the End Boss in One Try.

Doom III sucks . . .

'better' on nVidia cards.


:roll:

 

[FluxCap]

Originally posted by: Tobyus

Originally posted by: acx
Wow, the 6800GT loses half (50fps) of it's performance going from 1024x768(105) to 1280x1024(51) in 4xAA/8xAF? Is that real?

I believe my 6800 GT gets 83 fps at 1280x960 with 4xAA/8xAF at max settings, I get 55 or so at 1600x1200 at 4xAA/8xAF at the same quality settings as well. I can't get to firingsquad.com from work, so I can't see what you all are talking about. I just wanted to let you know that if that is what they are showing as results for the stress test, then they have messed it up worse than DH did.

As you know, I get about identical fps as you. I am confused why our lesser systems beat FS's benchmarks and how in the heck do we beat FX-53s? The bottom line for me in regards to HL2 performance: 79.40fps with 1280x960, 4AA+8AF, all details on high with my video card = good enough for me.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: ronnn
I believe him when he says he owns a gt. :beer: Besides here we are discussing performance in a game that may never be released the way things are going and a game that is pretty darn boring. Oh look a scary zombie jumped out of the stairs and it sure is dark. Sorry had to say that and have only played a couple of levels so will likely pick up.

it only gets worse . . .

Once you find a certain artifact it gets stupidly easy . . . this is the first FPS where i beat the End Boss in One Try.

Doom III sucks . . .

'better' on nVidia cards.


:roll:

Everyone's tastes differ, especially at what makes a good game to them. I can't remember the last time I finished a FPS, and I will Doom3. I'm in the Recycling Center Level 2 now, and still loving it.

I didn't like HL at the time, the graphics were too primitive. To each their own.

Saying "Doom3 sucks" is like saying "The Beatles suck"- pretty meaningless as it's a subjective judgement. I don't like The Beatles, but millions of people found them enjoyable, and they were successful at a level far above anything I'll ever see.

 

[nRollo]

Pete:

The 9800 series is about as fast as the FX series in Doom 3, AFAIK (here, too), so the FX owners are "stuck" at the same speed as 9800 owners. Are you thinking of the X800 series? Otherwise, that comparison is misleading.

Wow. Nobody got what I was trying to say here at all.

I was trying to say HL2 accomodates a variety of hardware better than Doom3. No more, no less.

In HL2, you have the option of running your 5900Ultra at DX8.1 and getting image quality many have noted isn't a whole lot worse than the DX9. (at twice the speed your 5900Ultra runs DX9, close to the speed R9800Pro rus HL2 at DX9)

In Doom3, yes, both cards are the same, stuck at low framerates. However; in Doom3, you can't switch to a different mode and double your framerate with most of the IQ. (on either card)

So I was trying to say,"Although the 5900s are disadvantaged at HL2, they're better off than the 9800s at Doom3 because they can switch modes" .

I suppose it would have been clearer if I said "5900s are better off with HL2 than any last gen card is with Doom3".