sm3. where's the BEEF?

[CaiNaM]

prompted by rollo's comments in another thread:

At least with PS3, Far Cry has shown us some benefit, and actually runs well on the PS3 cards? Like I said, the next year will tell us a lot more about the necessity/utility of PS3, and whether TWIMTBP developers will retro code to give ATI users the same performance.

i decided to take another look. this time it IS running the sm3 path, as it says "beta sm3.0 path" on the screen i was disappointed to find however that it made little performance improvement over the gt's sm2 path:

farcry v1.2 4xaa/8xaf

---------x800p* --- 6800gt(sm2)** --- 6800gt(sm3)**

1024 56.89fps ------------ 52.40fps -------- 55.98fps
1280 55.58fps ------------ 48.89fps -------- 47.39fps
1600 44.02fps ------------ 34.69fps -------- 35.16fps

* v1.1
** factory overclock (370mhz gpu)

System Information

Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)
System Manufacturer: MICRO-STAR INC.
System Model: MS-6728
BIOS: Version 1.00
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 1024MB RAM
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

Display Devices

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce 6800 GT
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Display Memory: 256.0 MB
Current Mode: 1600 x 1200 (32 bit) (75Hz)
Driver Name: nv4_disp.dll

Card name: RADEON X800 PRO
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip type: RADEON X800 PRO AGP (0x4A49)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Display Memory: 256.0 MB
Driver Name: ati2dvag.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6451 (English)

 

[Dman877]

Old news. FS had a story up on this like a month ago. SM3 does bupkus in Far Cry. That doesn't mean it won't help in other games though... Don't buy a card because it has uber L33T SM3.0. That's like buying a cpu because it has SSE2 (Woohoo!). Buy it because it's faster...

EDIT: And shouldn't the title be Where's the Beef?

 

[klah]

Those must be from the Training Level benchmark. Look at the results from the Research Level.

SM3 does bupkus in Far Cry

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2102&p=7
FarCry v1.2 SM3.0 Path Analysis
6800Ultra (sm2/sm3)
16x12: 67.9 / 77.6
16x12 4xAA/8xAF: 36.4 / 44.7

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: Dman877
Old news. FS had a story up on this like a month ago. SM3 does bupkus in Far Cry. That doesn't mean it won't help in other games though... Don't buy a card because it has uber L33T SM3.0. That's like buying a cpu because it has SSE2 (Woohoo!). Buy it because it's faster...

EDIT: And shouldn't the title be Where's the Beef?

ahhahah.. good point. what was her name? claire? you must be an old guy like me

as for 'bupkus', it doesn't mean it will, either what brought me to run this was rollo's comment's in another thread, and a month ago i didn't have my hands on a gt!

Originally posted by: klah
Those must be from the Training Level benchmark. Look at the results from the Research Level.

SM3 does bupkus in Far Cry

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2102&p=7
FarCry v1.2 SM3.0 Path Analysis
6800Ultra (sm2/sm3)
16x12: 67.9 / 77.6
16x12 4xAA/8xAF: 36.4 / 44.7

it's the FORT demo. the outside scenes are far more damanding, and it seems to me renering all that grass and all those trees would be where features such as geometry instancing would offer the most benefit?

also, you have to keep in mind the demo you liked to is an "nvidia provided demo", which would obviously put nvidia in the best possible light, and not necessarily indicitive of the overall impact.

edit: as the review in that article states:

Even some of the benchmarks with which NVIDIA supplied us showed that the new rendering path in FarCry isn't a magic bullet that increases performance across the board through the entire game.

he does, however go on to state in an update, "CryTek has pointed out that the new lighting implimentation is essentially the same but uses branching in the pixel shader to accomplish what needed to be done in multiple shaders under the PS2.0 path. This indicates that the conditional rendering feature of SM3.0 is actually faster than using multiple shaders (which gives NVIDIA 6 series cards a performance advantage when multiple shaders would have been required).

 

[nitromullet]

I think it really depends on which level you benchmark. Also, Crytek pulled the patch so, you're not only testing with a beta path, but also with a known buggy patch. I know that they said tney pulled it because of issues with ATi cards, but anyone who has run the sm30beta path can clearly see that this is a bug laden bit of code.

Apparently, it's Clara Peller... Yeah, I'm an old guy too....
http://www.tvacres.com/admascots_clarapeller.htm

 

[lordtyranus]

I have a GT and personally I am not very happy with its Farcry performance, especially compared to both my old 9700 and my friends x800 XT.

Even using the beta patch it has a lot of slowdown at 1600x1200 8xaf all settings on high. Doom 3, otoh, runs perfectly at that setting.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
I think it really depends on which level you benchmark. Also, Crytek pulled the patch so, you're not only testing with a beta path, but also with a known buggy patch. I know that they said tney pulled it because of issues with ATi cards, but anyone who has run the sm30beta path can clearly see that this is a bug laden bit of code.

Apparently, it's Clara Peller... Yeah, I'm an old guy too....
http://www.tvacres.com/admascots_clarapeller.htm

lol.. thanks for that! brings back some memories

Originally posted by: lordtyranus
I have a GT and personally I am not very happy with its Farcry performance, especially compared to both my old 9700 and my friends x800 XT.

Even using the beta patch it has a lot of slowdown at 1600x1200 8xaf all settings on high. Doom 3, otoh, runs perfectly at that setting.

yea, which is why i was ranting about needing different video cards for different games awhile back (this was later expanded on and article on a website someone posted on these forums, but i forget where...)

 

[Genx87]

Are we going to have a troll a week from you? If you think the GT is such a bad card. Sell it and wait 3 months to get an X800XT-PE

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Are we going to have a troll a week from you? If you think the GT is such a bad card. Sell it and wait 3 months to get an X800XT-PE

? me?

where did i say anything was bad? have is stated anything here that's biased? if so, i'd certainly find that surprising...

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Are we going to have a troll a week from you? If you think the GT is such a bad card. Sell it and wait 3 months to get an X800XT-PE

CaiNaM already has both a 6800 GT and an X800 Pro... That's how he can benchmark both cards. He has said things against his X800 Pro as well, as a matter of fact he is one of the only ATi owners that I've seen say that they did notice the IQ effects of ATi "trylinear" optimizations.

 

[Marsumane]

I actually appreciate these types of threads. Not all of us play games in the linear order in which they are released. Also, its good to have other opinions on things rather then just the same old people's opinions.

To further comment on the topic of farcry and varied opinions, on an ATI 9800p i have found that the patch is not all that buggy upon a clean install. I have went 1/2 way through the game, and have had no crashes or bugs that I have noticed. The only thing i have noticed, is that when comparing the two patches, 1.2 offered me a 30% increase in some specific cases. Those cases were specifically ones that would severely drop my frames.

 

[jim1976]

ATI is the :evil: and you are a satanist Cainam who plays with with our innocent minds and confuse us deliberately to stay away from good Nvidia.
Plz go away before I cry....
ATI=EVIL NVIDIA=GOOD (I just have to remember that).....

 

[Drayvn]

From what i remember of the multiple SM3 and SM2b reviews and geometry instancing, the ATis got a bigger performance boost out of it, and that geometry instancing performed better on the ATis, i could be wrong, i havent check at all, as it was some time ago when i saw it. Tho i suppose cainam can answer that, u wiz kid u

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: Drayvn
From what i remember of the multiple SM3 and SM2b reviews and geometry instancing, the ATis got a bigger performance boost out of it, and that geometry instancing performed better on the ATis, i could be wrong, i havent check at all, as it was some time ago when i saw it. Tho i suppose cainam can answer that, u wiz kid u

yea, now that 4.8 supports instancing i'd like to test that, but i loaned the pro out so i'll have to wait...

 

[Pete]

The differences b/w the X800's gain with 2.b and the 6800's gain with 3.0 weren't that great, IIRC. The main point of Far Cry's SM2.b and SM3.0 numbers was that SM2.b wasn't as big of a limit as some thought (including me). Still, the SM3.0 path is rendering one more light per pass (4 vs. 3), and I'm not sure if that means SM3.0 offers greater quality, or just that SM2.b requires an extra pass in scenes with four lights (if they even exist in the first place in FC).

 

[BFG10K]

it's the FORT demo.

Try the other demos.

the outside scenes are far more damanding,

No, usually the outdoor scenes are relatively lightweight. The indoor scenes are more demanding and usually show the biggest gain, especially in areas with heavy lighting. Again, try some other demos.

 

[nRollo]

Hmmm. I'm just impresssed my comments are the catalyst for a thread and useful discussion of PS3.