so May 3rd....... people with the PhysX get to test it out

[otispunkmeyer]

GRAW has gone gold on the PC and is supposed to be on the shelves, 3rd of May

this is the first title to use the Ageia PhysX PPU

so you lucky people who have them, can tell us if its worth the money

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/04/19/graw_goes_gold/

 

[DAPUNISHER]

No AA, WTF?

I don't have the PPU, but I'm stoked about the game.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

well i jus downloaded a video of the GRAW PC version and while it looks nicely hi-res..i can see why theres no AA allowed

first i think it'll be to do with Nvidia not being able to do AA and HDR anyway, and second, judging by the video, the FPS dont look all that high either. so id imagine applying AA would just bomb the game.

physics in it do look good though, very good. specially the explosions.

http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=8672

 

[Creig]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
No AA, WTF?

I'm confused as well. Isn't the whole point of purchasing a PPU is to decrease the load on the GPU and CPU so that they CAN do things like AA or HDR at high res?

 

[m21s]

Originally posted by: Creig

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
No AA, WTF?

I'm confused as well. Isn't the whole point of purchasing a PPU is to decrease the load on the GPU and CPU so that they CAN do things like AA or HDR at high res?

I thought the same thing

 

[Ryan Norton]

Who knows. It makes a helluva lot of sense to me, but on the other hand, I play Oblivion with HDR, no AA, and 8x Af, and the jaggies just don't seem that noticeable, like they would in HL2 or FEAR. Maybe game designers are learning tricks to avoid a screen full of jaggies without having insane AA enabled?

 

[BenSkywalker]

PPUs will make games more GPU limited then they have been for numerous different reasons. They are there to remove the CPU limitations and allow certain things to be done that can't reasonably be done on current CPUs at all.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: Creig

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
No AA, WTF?

I'm confused as well. Isn't the whole point of purchasing a PPU is to decrease the load on the GPU and CPU so that they CAN do things like AA or HDR at high res?

no the way i see it is this

better physics = more pieces in the game, more particles, more objects etc, they all move about too, so theres now more stuff the GPU has to render

the idea behind the PPU is too offload that type of calculation off the CPU, which also has to cope with running the game code, scripts, controll AI etc...

 

[Munky]

So, basically because of the extra physics effects there's no AA? That's just unacceptable. I'm not even sure it that's the real reason, but I was never a huge fan of giving up AA for HDR, and I'm sure as hell not gonna give up AA for more physics, especially given the relatively minor AA performance hit the x1900 cards get.

 

[DeathReborn]

Originally posted by: munky
So, basically because of the extra physics effects there's no AA? That's just unacceptable. I'm not even sure it that's the real reason, but I was never a huge fan of giving up AA for HDR, and I'm sure as hell not gonna give up AA for more physics, especially given the relatively minor AA performance hit the x1900 cards get.

Agreed on the giving up AA, i'd sooner have AA+AF than HDR+AF. I think there's more to it than "physics to blame" I mean just look at how big & complex an environment it's set in. It may well have something to do with nVidia but it could be just poor code making it perform poorly with HDR+AA on any card, we won't know until it's tested.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: Ryan Norton
Who knows. It makes a helluva lot of sense to me, but on the other hand, I play Oblivion with HDR, no AA, and 8x Af, and the jaggies just don't seem that noticeable, like they would in HL2 or FEAR. Maybe game designers are learning tricks to avoid a screen full of jaggies without having insane AA enabled?

Have you ever played it with HDR + AA though...? It's not so much a matter of what is acceptable or not acceptable, but once you go HDR + AA you don't want to go back.

As far as the Ghost Recon and HDR + AA goes, let's just wait and see what ATI's Chuck can do...
There are quite a few Tom Clancy and Ubisoft games on the TWIMTBP list, so there may be some politics going on here as well.

 

[shabby]

Originally posted by: munky
So, basically because of the extra physics effects there's no AA? That's just unacceptable. I'm not even sure it that's the real reason, but I was never a huge fan of giving up AA for HDR, and I'm sure as hell not gonna give up AA for more physics, especially given the relatively minor AA performance hit the x1900 cards get.

I would imagine the extra physics are disabled if you dont have a ppu.
As for the missing aa, its probably because the game will run poorly with it, but we'll see when it comes out.

 

[imported_JamesDax]

Originally posted by: munky
So, basically because of the extra physics effects there's no AA? That's just unacceptable. I'm not even sure it that's the real reason, but I was never a huge fan of giving up AA for HDR, and I'm sure as hell not gonna give up AA for more physics, especially given the relatively minor AA performance hit the x1900 cards get.

Boy thats a hell of a leap you just took there. Where do you get the idea that the lack of AA has anything at all to do with physics? Perhaps the game uses HDR and you can't do HDR + AA. Now dosn't that make more since?

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: m21s

Originally posted by: Creig

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
No AA, WTF?

I'm confused as well. Isn't the whole point of purchasing a PPU is to decrease the load on the GPU and CPU so that they CAN do things like AA or HDR at high res?

I thought the same thing

Wrong, physics right now enables a lot more complexity and enbales a level of particle effects and detail that you cant attain without the card.

If it was the exact same physics with and without, it would run faster, but that is not the case with most titles on the way out. It will look superior, but run the same if not slower due to more going on the screen.

 

[Drayvn]

maybe it doesnt hav AA is because its a nVidia "sponsored" game and so they have to use nVidia hardware so that HDR and AA cant be enabled and the devs thought that they would rather show off their HDR than AA as HDR is newer and sexier looking and definitly more noticeable.

And also from what i read GRAW actually uses 2 physics engines at the same time. One for the ragdoll effects and one for vehicles and objects. The PPU would take a lot of advantage of that.

It would be good if a review site came up with a comparison and would be able to show us any difference in either performance, realism or sheer number of physics processes going on (as in is there a lot more, lets say, objects that get affected when theres an explosion or something).

 

[Dethfrumbelo]

Ridiculous. Any game should be able to do 2xAA with very little hit to performance, and 2xAA looks waaaaay better than no AA at all. After 4xAA you hit a point of rapidly diminishing returns, but 2xAA is necessary for something decent.

 

[imported_JamesDax]

Originally posted by: Dethfrumbelo
Ridiculous. Any game should be able to do 2xAA with very little hit to performance, and 2xAA looks waaaaay better than no AA at all. After 4xAA you hit a point of rapidly diminishing returns, but 2xAA is necessary for something decent.

Not if that game uses HDR. Atleast on Nvidia cards anyway for now. And 2xAA dosn't look waaaaaay better then no AA with HDR.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: JamesDax

Originally posted by: Dethfrumbelo
Ridiculous. Any game should be able to do 2xAA with very little hit to performance, and 2xAA looks waaaaay better than no AA at all. After 4xAA you hit a point of rapidly diminishing returns, but 2xAA is necessary for something decent.

Not if that game uses HDR. Atleast on Nvidia cards anyway for now. And 2xAA dosn't look waaaaaay better then no AA with HDR.

Well, I'm one of the people who can't stand jaggies so I MUST use AA. Not to mention that I refuse to use anything other than 16x HQ AF.

Something that comes to mind is: If there's a huge explosion with millions of tiny bits flying around, won't using AA that take a huge toll on the GPU? I smell something fishy... we'll have to see if the physics deal is well implemented.

lol it would be funny if one of the minus when reviewed is that using advanved physics in games means no AA.

 

[Dainas]

What I don't get (with Ageia) is why they didnt just jump straight to PCIe. Good ol PCI slots are becomming more and more restricted territory (2 on mine) and most high end systems have already put all of them to use.... while the PCIe 1x slots are still almost always all vacant.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: munky
So, basically because of the extra physics effects there's no AA? That's just unacceptable. I'm not even sure it that's the real reason, but I was never a huge fan of giving up AA for HDR, and I'm sure as hell not gonna give up AA for more physics, especially given the relatively minor AA performance hit the x1900 cards get.

well i downloaded a video (file shack i think) which is the pc version trailer for graw...and tbh it doesnt look as good as the 360 in some parts, and the FPS doesnt look too smooth either, and if thats with out AA then applying AA is gonna bomb the game

my bets is though, that its probably possible, with ati hardware, that chuck guy better get his programming fingers warmed up....hes got another game to hack

 

[450R]

How do you guys come up with some of your assumptions?

Pretty silly to suggest it's an nVidia-sponsored game when the developer was recommending a CrossFire setup for best performance on another forum. Not everything is a conspiracy, get over it.

Secondly, IIRC the machines running some of the videos weren't exactly high-end according to the developer. Actually, there was an event called I-27 (or something similar) where Ubi had low-end rigs setup just so people could see that the game was playable on an average PC, though at a much lower quality level.

 

[dunno99]

Originally posted by: m21s

Originally posted by: Creig

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
No AA, WTF?

I'm confused as well. Isn't the whole point of purchasing a PPU is to decrease the load on the GPU and CPU so that they CAN do things like AA or HDR at high res?

I thought the same thing

HUH? For today's games where physics take place only on the CPU, the GPU only does graphics related stuff. So, unless your rig is CPU constrained, you shouldn't need a PPU at all. The point of the PPU today is that it frees up the CPU to do other things, like AI, state management, physical mesh deformations, etc..., not to do AA and HDR. AA and HDR are both done only on the GPU (minus the setup and instructions to perform them on the CPU, which is minimal...of course, this is considering if the devs are smart and don't decide to do them on the CPU by reading back from the off-screen framebuffer).

 

[BenSkywalker]

GRAW is XB360 native, ported to the PC. Not being able to enable HDR and AA seems to be an ongoing theme for such titles. Xenos does have a bit of an edge when it comes to handling both at once over any part available for the PC right now.

As mentioned above, it does look like they had to scale back the PC version of the game in some ways. Not sure if this will be another case like Oblivion where people figure out how to get it up to console levels(between drivers and game tweaks) or not but it is looking a bit off right now.

 

[Amplifier]

Originally posted by: Dainas
What I don't get (with Ageia) is why they didnt just jump straight to PCIe. Good ol PCI slots are becomming more and more restricted territory (2 on mine) and most high end systems have already put all of them to use.... while the PCIe 1x slots are still almost always all vacant.

Because the PCI-E x1 slots are inbetween the two x16 slots. Meaning anyone who uses two video cards does not have access to them (wtf I know). The market Ageia is targeting is the same market which buys two graphics cards By going x1 they'd be isolating a lot of enthusiests.

 

[coolpurplefan]

Originally posted by: Dainas
What I don't get (with Ageia) is why they didnt just jump straight to PCIe. Good ol PCI slots are becomming more and more restricted territory (2 on mine) and most high end systems have already put all of them to use.... while the PCIe 1x slots are still almost always all vacant.

Are you kidding? I got a new mobo (Asus K8N4-E Deluxe) and can`t believe this. You mean it won`t be for PCIe 1X?