Tesselation done properly..according to AMD

[flopper]

http://blogs.amd.com/play/2010/11/29/tessellation-for-all/

 

[Barfo]

*waits for angry Dutch to appear*

 

[VirtualLarry]

Sounds like sour grapes to me. AMD just has hardware limitations WRT Tessellation performance.

Reminds me of the GF FX series needing a special FP16 codepath.

 

[flopper]

I got the coke

 

[nemesismk2]

If your video card doesnt run games well because of tesselation then just switch it off. It doesn't get any easier than that?

 

[nemesismk2]

Sounds like sour grapes to me. AMD just has hardware limitations WRT Tessellation performance.

Reminds me of the GF FX series needing a special FP16 codepath.

I remember that Half Life 2 ran slow with DX9 so with GF FX it used DX8

 

[Troll Trolling]

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/1542/pixelsx.png

First is 16 pixels; second is 1; third is 4; the first of the second column is 6 and the giant one is 144 pixels (144/9=16)

Draw your own conclusion.

 

[zokudu]

AMD has been rambling about this for a while now that nVidias Tessellator is overpowered and its useless to use higher tessellation values. Not that it really matters Tessellation will not become a major game feature and become what nVidia wants it to be until a new console generation pushes it to the forefront.

By than I feel that AMD will have stronger Tessellation performance and we will not even care about the 6000 series.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

If your video card doesnt run games well because of tesselation then just switch it off. It doesn't get any easier than that?

Sounds a lot like if your video card doesn't run games well because of dx9 just use the dx8 code path. My memories a bit shaky, but I'm pretty sure a lot of people had issues with that.

 

[tviceman]

Hmmm....Regardless of whether they're right or wrong, it looks like AMD is trying to justify why their current and upcoming cards won't have as strong as tessellation performance as Nvidia's current cards. Either way, it's foreboding.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Hmmm....Regardless of whether they're right or wrong, it looks like AMD is trying to justify why their current and upcoming cards won't have as strong as tessellation performance as Nvidia's current cards. Either way, it's foreboding.

Yes its scary is it not. Tess. the holy grail of GPUs lol.

Its like going out and buying magna cores and than using it on single threaded apps .Real useful that is. But someday when desktop takes advantage of 12 threads per core. You will have been future proofed . LOL!

 

[Genx87]

AMD should spend as much time and effort making a tesselator that rivals Nvidia's as they do explaining why using tesselation in factors of 16 or less is "done right".

 

[Avalon]

I'm not really reading this the same way you guys seem to be?

 

[Skurge]

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/1542/pixelsx.png

First is 16 pixels; second is 1; third is 4; the first of the second column is 6 and the giant one is 144 pixels (144/9=16)

Draw your own conclusion.

Wow, They might have a point there.

 

[Arkadrel]

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/1542/pixelsx.png

First is 16 pixels; second is 1; third is 4; the first of the second column is 6 and the giant one is 144 pixels (144/9=16)

Draw your own conclusion.

[sarcasme /start]
The first Triangle at 16 pixels is TOOOOOO big... compaired to the 1 pixel one... Obviously its not enough to have 16 pixel size tessellation, I mean imagine how "fine" a surface you could make with 1 pixel tesselllation.... obviously we need tessellation that "fine".
[sarcasme /end]

I dont really see the idea of makeing 1 pixel triangles for tessellation.... I have a hard time imagineing people that make these models in games designing them on a 1 pixel level, where they "need" for every single pixel in a model to be adjustable for them to be able to express their artistic views.

Im sure if AMD was faster at 1 pixel level than nvidia, you would hear nvidia saying "we need 0 pixel tessellation because 1 pixel tessellation triangles are too big!".

 

[Skurge]

AMD should spend as much time and effort making a tesselator that rivals Nvidia's as they do explaining why using tesselation in factors of 16 or less is "done right".

They don't need to and it shows even without this blog. I don't see any games being unplayable with AMD's level of tessellation. When that does happen, other parts of games would make the equivalent nV cards unplayable too. ala Metro2033.

Civ5, HAWX2, LP2 all use High amounts of tessellation but are still playable. The ego engine, Metro2033 also use tessellation but that is not the main bottleneck on AMD cards.

I ran the Endless city demo on my 5770 a few days ago and It look like crap. Without tessellation it looked like a game from 1995 and ran at 12fps, with tessellation it still looked like crap as the textures were waaaay to low and it ran at 7fps. So as much as some people would have you believe you can make a game based entirely on tessellation.

 

[Skurge]

[sarcasme /start]
The first Triangle at 16 pixels is TOOOOOO big... compaired to the 1 pixel one... Obviously its not enough to have 16 pixel size tessellation, I mean imagine how "fine" a surface you could make with 1 pixel tesselllation.... obviously we need tessellation that "fine".
[sarcasme /end]

I dont really see the idea of makeing 1 pixel triangles for tessellation.... I have a hard time imagineing people that make these models in games designing them on a 1 pixel level, where they "need" for every single pixel in a model to be adjustable for them to be able to express their artistic views.

Im sure if AMD was faster at 1 pixel level than nvidia, you would hear nvidia saying "we need 0 pixel tessellation because 1 pixel tessellation triangles are too big!".

Do you know the tessellation level used for the endless city demo?

 

[formulav8]

I'm not sure why people consider Tesselation the be all, end all. Even the Hawx2 demo didn't impress with its overly strong tess. Tess is definitely not near the importance that dx8-dx9 was. So comparing it to the FX video card problems back in the day is not even close.

At least with me, I could care less about having a mostly useless tess feature over price/performance.

 

[zokudu]

I'm not sure why people consider Tesselation the be all, end all. Even the Hawx2 demo didn't impress with its overly strong tess. Tess is definitely not near the importance that dx8-dx9 was. So comparing it to the FX video card problems back in the day is not even close.

At least with me, I could care less about having a mostly useless tess feature over price/performance.

The only reason you say DX9 was so important is because current gen consoles are built on the technology so it has stuck around. Tessellation stands to revolutionize gaming in a serious way but the issue is no one is willing to put forth the time in highly tessellating a game that will sell less copies for pc. Tessellation will be revolutionary when the next gen consoles come out and people actually use the techology.

 

[Genx87]

I'm not sure why people consider Tesselation the be all, end all. Even the Hawx2 demo didn't impress with its overly strong tess. Tess is definitely not near the importance that dx8-dx9 was. So comparing it to the FX video card problems back in the day is not even close.

At least with me, I could care less about having a mostly useless tess feature over price/performance.

Tesselation allows for increased detail without requiring larger memory capacity and bandwidths. It is also one of the 3 major features of DX 11. I'd say right now what tesselation we are seeing is just baby steps compared to what we can ultimately expect down the road. Scali talked about Avatar using tesselation for its detail. Can we expect that level of detail? I suspect at some point we could. However to do it without tesselation would require memory densities and bandwdith that arent feasible, even in the future.

 

[formulav8]

Tesselation allows for increased detail without requiring larger memory capacity and bandwidths. It is also one of the 3 major features of DX 11. I'd say right now what tesselation we are seeing is just baby steps compared to what we can ultimately expect down the road. Scali talked about Avatar using tesselation for its detail. Can we expect that level of detail? I suspect at some point we could. However to do it without tesselation would require memory densities and bandwdith that arent feasible, even in the future.

Sure tessy will eventually be a major feature of games as it should be, adding the benefits you outlined. But right now with very few games making good use of tess its a feature that appears to be over-hyped at this time. Should people be buying a card mainly based on tess performance now? I just said I wouldn't. It will take console games to truly push tessy unfortunately anyways... :thumbsdown:

 

[Arkadrel]

by 2012-2013 next gen consoles will be out, by then so will games... which will come back to pc gameing.

By this time, AMD/ATI has to have its tessellation drastically bettered, and it probably will. I think the 7xxx series and 6xx series will have much improved tessellation compaired to the 6xxx seris and 5xx series from both companies.

 

[Stoneburner]

Well, why was AMD marketing their tessellator when it was not even used by games?

I am not sympathetic.

 

[Skurge]

Well, why was AMD marketing their tessellator when it was not even used by games?

I am not sympathetic.

They arent saying it isnt important, It should be used in the right way is what they are saying.

 

[VirtualLarry]

they arent saying it isnt important, it should be used with amd's specific hardware limitations in mind is what they are saying.

fixed.