No AA in StarCraft II with ATI Cards

[SolMiester]

I dont understand all the angst for ATi, didnt they fail in this with Batman also, however everybody seemed fine to rip one out of Nvidia for not sharing their code.....why is this different? Thought everyone by now realised ATi are 2nd rate software developers?

 

[nitromullet]

I dont understand all the angst for ATi, didnt they fail in this with Batman also, however everybody seemed fine to rip one out of Nvidia for not sharing their code.....why is this different? Thought everyone by now realised ATi are 2nd rate software developers?

Difference here:

Batman AA - NVIDIA wrote code that was part of the actual game's code that allowed AA to be enabled on NVIDIA cards, but disabled it when an ATI card was detected.

SC2 - The game doesn't ship with AA functionality, NV has created a work around in their drivers to enable, ATI has not (yet).

 

[SolMiester]

Difference here:

Batman AA - NVIDIA wrote code that was part of the actual game's code that allowed AA to be enabled on NVIDIA cards, but disabled it when an ATI card was detected.

SC2 - The game doesn't ship with AA functionality, NV has created a work around in their drivers to enable, ATI has not (yet).

Oh, I thought the Nvidia code was additional to the game for there own cards?, didnt realise they wrote code for everyones GPU's?

 

[HendrixFan]

Oh, I thought the Nvidia code was additional to the game for there own cards?, didnt realise they wrote code for everyones GPU's?

Nvidia works with game publishers ($$$) to ensure that games are optimized for their cards, and not for ATI cards. This is well known in the industry and not up for debate.

 

[apathy_next2]

Nvidia works with game publishers ($$$) to ensure that games are optimized for their cards, and not for ATI cards. This is well known in the industry and not up for debate.

This is fact for pretty much every competitor based market.
Maybe Ati needs to start throwing money around and do the same?

 

[SolMiester]

Nvidia works with game publishers ($$$) to ensure that games are optimized for their cards, and not for ATI cards. This is well known in the industry and not up for debate.

I cant see anything wrong with that on the face of it, as long as the aren't doing anything to decrease the performance on the game on ATi cards.

Perhaps ATi card owners wouldnt be pissed right now, if they too had a bit of nous?

 

[HendrixFan]

This is fact for pretty much every competitor based market.
Maybe Ati needs to start throwing money around and do the same?

They had been running red for a long time, they don't have the deep pockets to outbid Nvidia in that regard.

Whether or not it is common, or fair (see Dell's recent settlement with the SEC), the point still remains that it is disingenuous to paint Nvidia as being a consumer advocate because they deliver optimizations for games. They are trying to squeeze out their only competition.

 

[zerocool84]

this is fact for pretty much every competitor based market.
Maybe ati needs to start throwing money around and do the same?

wwybywb

 

[Obsoleet]

For my money, I still wouldn't trade my 5870 for any current Nvidia card. All things considered the card is still unmatched overall.

 

[nitromullet]

Oh, I thought the Nvidia code was additional to the game for there own cards?, didnt realise they wrote code for everyones GPU's?

Well, that's the thing... They didn't. Code was in the game that would have made AA work on all cards, but they locked ATI cards from being able to use that code. That's what people were upset about, rightfully so.

In SC2 they are simply modifying their driver to make AA work on NV cards.This is the way per-game optimizations should be by the graphics card manufacturer IMO. I don't think either NV or ATI should be writing any game code that hampers the other in any way.

For my money, I still wouldn't trade my 5870 for any current Nvidia card. All things considered the card is still unmatched overall.

Good for you, but it's not really what the thread is about.

 

[golem]

Well, that's the thing... They didn't. Code was in the game that would have made AA work on all cards, but they locked ATI cards from being able to use that code. That's what people were upset about, rightfully so.

In SC2 they are simply modifying their driver to make AA work on NV cards.This is the way per-game optimizations should be by the graphics card manufacturer IMO. I don't think either NV or ATI should be writing any game code that hampers the other in any way.



Good for you, but it's not really what the thread is about.

I may be wrong, but my understanding of the situation was that Nvidia either came up with the code to enable AA or paid for the developer to come up with it in the first place. Since they were responsible for the code, they wanted it to only benefit Nvidia cards.

 

[Ancalagon44]

Doesnt matter to me, looks good anyway, but I think Blizzard is kinda stupid to not even have the option.

Unless the development time involved in allowing ingame AA if the computer can support DX10 would be too much?

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

I think it's a bit disappointing, though entirely expected, that the NVidia solution only works on NVidia cards. But at least they got an AA implementation working. Really, this is Blizzard's fault, AMD is (mostly) blameless in this regard. But good on nvidia for at least getting something working.

 

[ViRGE]

Side note: this is why AMD needs per-game profiles in there drivers like what NVIDIA does. I'm not expecting deep-level tweaking ala nHancer, but even a simple implementation would allow users to set AA/AF settings on a per-game basis rather than having to turn those settings on and off before and after using a game. ATI Tray Tools does this, but it's silly to have to rely on a 3rd party program to do this. More to the point it's not quite as refined since it's really just tweaking the global settings when a game launches as opposed to applying settings to just that instance of the game.

In short, having to turn on and off AA for SC2 every time you want to play it on and AMD card is going to get annoying fast.

 

[golem]

I think it's a bit disappointing, though entirely expected, that the NVidia solution only works on NVidia cards. But at least they got an AA implementation working. Really, this is Blizzard's fault, AMD is (mostly) blameless in this regard. But good on nvidia for at least getting something working.

AMD can't really be given a mulligan on this one. They know Blizzard didn't implement AA in SC2, they know SC2 will probably be one of the biggest games in years, they know Nvidia did a work around to allow AA with Nvidia cards.. and they do nothing?

Unless of course they implement their own workaround before or soon after launch.

 

[Scali]

It has been said before, but mostly ignored, so I'll reiterate it:
The game uses deferred rendering, which means that the z-buffer contents are determined first (along with other per-pixel data in other buffers), and shading is applied later, as a sort of post-processing stage, not directly geometry-based.
The problem with DX9 is that AA only works when rendering geometry directly. The AA is resolved implicitly. So if you want to do anything later, in a post-processing stage, the subsample information for AA is no longer available.
Forcing AA on in the control panel is not going to solve this, it will not produce correct results.

What nVidia has done, is to add extra code using driver extensions, which take advantage of their DX10+ hardware, which DOES allow you to access subsample information in later render passes.
So this is nVidia-specific code, which can not be done with vanilla DX9 code, nor with forcing AA in control panel.

If AMD wants to offer AA aswell, they also need to supply custom rendering code for the game, like nVidia did.

 

[nitromullet]

ATI's response btw...

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news...-options-starcraft-ii-atis-official-response/

I may be wrong, but my understanding of the situation was that Nvidia either came up with the code to enable AA or paid for the developer to come up with it in the first place. Since they were responsible for the code, they wanted it to only benefit Nvidia cards.

Yeah, NV wrote the code for the developer, the developer put NV's code into the game, and the developer said they wouldn't touch code they had received from NVIDIA through their TWIMTP relationship. I think NV were within their bounds to exclude ATI cards from running their code, I just disagree with it.

Now, the SC2 thing is fine. NV did the right thing by adding AA support, and ATI should have also.

 

[Scali]

I think NV were within their bounds to exclude ATI cards from running their code, I just disagree with it.

There is a slight catch there.
Multisample readback is a DX10.1 feature. nVidia however enabled it through driver extensions on their DX10.0 hardware (they support most DX10.1 features, just not all, and as such cannot use the DX10.1 API directly).
The code may be *similar* to regular DX10.1 code, in reality it is not exactly the same. AMD's drivers obviously don't support the nVidia driver extensions, so results may be undefined.

 

[zerocool84]

I've played 3 missions so far @ 1920 X 1080 and it doesn't really need much AA during gameplay. Only time it really needs it is during cutscenes as it uses the in-game engine but still wish I had the choice to use AA as my system would obviously be able to handle it as it's not a good looking game at all but hey it's Starcraft and really damn fun so far.

 

[dug777]

I dont understand all the angst for ATi, didnt they fail in this with Batman also, however everybody seemed fine to rip one out of Nvidia for not sharing their code.....why is this different? Thought everyone by now realised ATi are 2nd rate software developers?

How is SC2 working out for you on that 9600GT?

EDIT: poking fun at fanboys aside, I think it would be in AMD/ATi's interests to get a fix for this stat...Sure the fix may smash framerates but it already does that to nvidia cards (apparently particularly pre-GTX 4xx series ones from a quick glance at some of those links) so who cares?

 

[Scali]

I'm not a StarCraft player myself, but my impression is that this sort of game does not require a very high framerate anyway.
If I see even the slowest GTX460 getting 50 fps average with 1920x1200 4xAA, shouldn't that be plenty for an enjoyable gaming experience with this type of game?

 

[Genx87]

ATI's response btw...

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news...-options-starcraft-ii-atis-official-response/



Yeah, NV wrote the code for the developer, the developer put NV's code into the game, and the developer said they wouldn't touch code they had received from NVIDIA through their TWIMTP relationship. I think NV were within their bounds to exclude ATI cards from running their code, I just disagree with it.

Now, the SC2 thing is fine. NV did the right thing by adding AA support, and ATI should have also.

What a stupid response by AMD. Doesn all AA impact performance?!?!?!?!?!?!?

 

[Qbah]

ATI's response btw...

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news...-options-starcraft-ii-atis-official-response/

That is total rubbish. Seriously ATi? AA lowers performance? Are you kidding me? I would have never thought that. Jeeeeez.

A GTX470 gets 70FPS at 1920x1200 with AAx4. How is that bad performance? It gets 90-ish without AA. So the drop is not really noticeable! Especially if one runs v-sync. Also, it's not like they're forcing us to use AA. GIVE US THE POSSIBILITY TO CHOOSE GODDAMIT. This is soooo Apple-like, it makes my blood boil.

 

[BFG10K]

nVidia is well ahead of ATi in terms of games that allow AA to be used, and Starcraft 2 just adds to that list.

 

[zebrax2]

What a stupid response by AMD. Doesn all AA impact performance?!?!?!?!?!?!?

While I do agree with everyone that AMD should hurry up and implement their own AA implementation as soon as possible they have a point though. Looking at the benchmark we see a huge (50&#37 drop in performance and those numbers are from pretty good cards. Probably an excuse but still they have a point.

One thing i notice though is that the mini map looks too blurred with the AA