X1800 lack of vertex texturing kills Pacific Fighters performance

[hans030390]

So I've heard a couple people say that the 7800's have failed some Sm3 tests? I've never heard anything about this...proof? I know they've failed some older WHQL tests, which ATI tried to make it sound significant, but in reality it isn't.

Still, the x1800 cards are missing this feature. If more games start using it, that sucks. If not, the cards are still good. I could see more games using it though...and so that's ATIs loss, BUT i'm sure they've figure out a way around it (which i've heard them mention).

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: munky

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: nts
VTF is currently just a checkmark on a features list, it is extremely limited and very slow on NVIDIA hardware. Thats why no one else is using it.

VTF has been on NVIDIA hardware for 2 years now. So I would not be suprised to see more games using it in the near future.

The only people who say that VTF is limited and slow on NVIDIA hardware are ATI fanboyz.

The only people who say that VTF is limited and slow on NVIDIA hardware are the ones who actually know anything about VTF. Limited because only one game uses it. Slow because it kills performance on the cards that do support it. Not to mention that it's an optional SM3 feature, so the card can still be SM3 compliant without it. If within the next year before the release of the r600/g80 a bunch of games come out the use VTF and the 7800's (forget about the 6800's) can run it at playable fps at 1024 or greater resolution then you can bash Ati for not including this important feature in their primitive cards. Otherwise you sound just like a Nv troll grasping at straws whether it's about the warranty or about a missing limited use feature to bash the other side.

Cool your jets Munky, it's just a piece of news I came across reading other boards tonight.
I'm sure someday ATI will get the VTF mojo working, and all will be well. Thought it was worth posting tonight because I was surprised at how big the performancegap was, nothing more.

Isn't this the sort of thing this forum is for? Point out high/low points of video hardware?

absolutely! . . .

here here

agreed

BUT, whenever the tables are reversed and someone points out a negative about nVidia - and there had been plenty lately - you get offended. 😛

i say no big deal . . . and i'd say no big deal if ati had the feature nVidia was lacking . . . it is SO minor as to be nitpicking. 😉

==================

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: Chesebert
people like Rollo are what make this and other similar forums a joke to read. you might as well pick up a magazine and read the Nvidia/ATI ads.

People like you are called "trolls".

If you have something to contribute to the thread, do so.

If not, STFU, nobody cares about your whining.

Why, Rollo . . . that's EXACTLY what you do in "my" threads.
:Q

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Pete

Originally posted by: Rollo
Your wife, out of gratitude.
:roll:

For someone who threatens to get the mods involved quite often, this is a pretty shocking post. Oh, wait--you're kidding, and everyone else is deadly serious.

A flip comment like this is "shocking" to you Pete? LOL- you must get really traumatized watching something racy like "Desparate Housewives". :laugh:
Take it to the mods, I laugh at the suggestion.
He asked who supplies my information, a backhanded reference to my supposed "bias". I told him his wife gives it to me out of gratitude, a backhanded reference to who knows what. Maybe she values my contribution to the forums!

BTW, this:

Definitely something to consider though- if this game uses vertex texturing, will others?

sounds an awful lot like FUD to me--coming from you as an uneducated guess, that is.

Hmmm. Sounds like a question to me, all I said is that they might and nVidia has a history of asking TWIMTBP devs to use nV exclusive features.

ATI's AoE3 performance would seem to be a bigger concern, as it doesn't seem to use any NV-exclusive features. Same with B&W2.

That would concern me as well if I were buying a video card now and wanted to play those games, but I really only wanted this thread to be a discussion of VTF, not a "Let's point at all the games ATI plays badly" thread. There always has and always will be games that work better on one brand, I thought the possibility the lack of VTF on this game being a detriment was worth noting. I think B&W will be corrected with a driver fix, time will tell, but I doubt ATI has all sorts of B&W media ads for a game they can't and won't play.

BTW, I'm not sure how optional VTF is. Seems to me that ATI got out of supporting it on a technicality. No need to make excuses for their transistor budget. As for their supporting VTF via R2VB, I'll believe it when I see them implement it in a game. Surely the positive PR would be worth the man-hours working with Maddox & co. to get that feature working in PF?

If Wreckage's signature is right, the R520 won't be around long enough for it to matter. At which point it will become collectable and I'll have to buy one. 😉

Peace out wise old Pete. My motives aren't as nefarious as you think.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Ackmed

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Those benchmarks that are linked look like pretty good performance to me

Except the benchmarks are running with VTF disabled.

Funny how people overlook this simple, yet important fact. First they claim that Pacific Fighters runs faster on NV hardware, because of VTF, then when it is brought up that it doesnt even use it, they ignore it.

Don't mistake ignoring the person for ignoring the issue Ackmed. I find BFG, although knowledgeable, to be argumentative and mean spirited at times so I opt not to respond to him.

As far as your question goes:
http://www.rage3d.com/reviews/video/atix1800xt/index.php?p=13

All the in game details were set to their maximum levels, including "Landscape Detail" which was set to "Perfect", enabling Pixel Shaded water. Video was set to the "NVIDIA GeForce 6800/6600/FX/4/3" profile for the 7800 GT and 7800 GTX,

It doesn't look to me like it's disabled here, if it needs to be enabled in the command line or config, someone please link me to reference?
If these "pixel shaded water" benches are indicative of the supposedly "bad" VTF performance, I don't see it?

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: RobertR1
Why the hell would you talk about VTF and then show benchmarks that are being done without the feature even enabled!?

That's like talking about HDR but then showing benchmarks with HDR disabled. I'm not sure if you're grasping since Ati news has been positive lately or simply being an idiot.

Where does it say in the article it's disabled on the nVidia cards, RobertR1? (and see the post above)

 

[John Reynolds]

Setting the in-game landscape option to perfect does not enable the feature in Pacific Fighters. You have to edit the game's ini file (water=3 if memory serves). I've tested this and putting landscape to perfect (only available in OpenGL mode and not D3D) does not set the water line in the ini file to 3.

 

[KeepItRed]

I can't wait for the R580. Surely it will put an end to these threads.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: John Reynolds
Setting the in-game landscape option to perfect does not enable the feature in Pacific Fighters. You have to edit the game's ini file (water=3 if memory serves). I've tested this and putting landscape to perfect (only available in OpenGL mode and not D3D) does not set the water line in the ini file to 3.

Sounds good John. I just ordered the game to test/end this madness, we'll talk on it's arrival.

 

[a4000tdh]

The only troll here is u Rollo go back and cry to ur mom that ATI is winning

 

[a4000tdh]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: Chesebert
people like Rollo are what make this and other similar forums a joke to read. you might as well pick up a magazine and read the Nvidia/ATI ads.

People like you are called "trolls".

If you have something to contribute to the thread, do so.

If not, STFU, nobody cares about your whining.

Telling ppl to STFU, boy ur really losing it, take ur medication before u start chainsawing all of ATI fans rollo 😀

 

[John Reynolds]

Originally posted by: KeepItRed
I can't wait for the R580. Surely it will put an end to these threads.

I wouldn't be surprised to see R580 lack vertex texturing too. Just doesn't seem to be a priority to ATI for whatever reason.

 

[nts]

Originally posted by: John Reynolds

Originally posted by: KeepItRed
I can't wait for the R580. Surely it will put an end to these threads.

I wouldn't be surprised to see R580 lack vertex texturing too. Just doesn't seem to be a priority to ATI for whatever reason.

I highly doubt it would be supported on the R580, just doesn't make sense todo so before the R600.

The R580 is after all just the R520 with 3 times the ALU power, upped clocks and new memory.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: a4000tdh
The only troll here is u Rollo go back and cry to ur mom that ATI is winning

LOL- what do I care if ATI "wins"? Just means I'd buy ATI? Not like they're competing against me, I'm just a customer who has almost certainly bought more of their products than you? (your next post was a lot funnier)

Anyway, what exactly is it they're "winning"?

Just looking at the top end:

All SLI pretty much stands unopposed till ATI works out teething pains and supply issues with Crossfire.

The 512GTX stands unopposed at the highest end.

The X1800XT wins at $500 over the 490/1300 GTXs, but it's heat/noise/game issues make it a bittersweet victory at best.

The $419 EVGA GTX at ClubIT right now stands unnopposed at that price point.

The X1800XL and 7800GT are a toss up.

Yeah, ATI is going nuts with victories all over the place.....errr, one?

Anyway, are you a smart enough guy to know what "On Topic" means? If you are, you should shut your yap about this "ATI is winning" BS?
This thread is about VTF in Pacific Fighters, and since I didn't see any VTF enabled benchmarks in a quick check, I ordered the game to answer the question once and for all.

I will consult ace flight sim reporter John Reynolds of SimHQ for testing methodology as he is more familiar with this game than I.

This is called being "helpful" and "on topic"- what you are doing is called "trolling"?

 

[TecHNooB]

Rollo, you should put "Hoping for the best for ATI" in your profile or something of that nature. Because after a while, it seems like you're just attacking ATI. Analyze all you want, but it just becomes a pain.

 

[KeepItRed]

Originally posted by: TecHNooB
Rollo, you should put "Hoping for the best for ATI" in your profile or something of that nature. Because after a while, it seems like you're just attacking ATI. Analyze all you want, but it just becomes a pain.

 

[a4000tdh]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: a4000tdh
The only troll here is u Rollo go back and cry to ur mom that ATI is winning

LOL- what do I care if ATI "wins"? Just means I'd buy ATI? Not like they're competing against me, I'm just a customer who has almost certainly bought more of their products than you? (your next post was a lot funnier)

Anyway, what exactly is it they're "winning"?

Just looking at the top end:

All SLI pretty much stands unopposed till ATI works out teething pains and supply issues with Crossfire.

The 512GTX stands unopposed at the highest end.

The X1800XT wins at $500 over the 490/1300 GTXs, but it's heat/noise/game issues make it a bittersweet victory at best.

The $419 EVGA GTX at ClubIT right now stands unnopposed at that price point.

The X1800XL and 7800GT are a toss up.

Yeah, ATI is going nuts with victories all over the place.....errr, one?

Anyway, are you a smart enough guy to know what "On Topic" means? If you are, you should shut your yap about this "ATI is winning" BS?
This thread is about VTF in Pacific Fighters, and since I didn't see any VTF enabled benchmarks in a quick check, I ordered the game to answer the question once and for all.

I will consult ace flight sim reporter John Reynolds of SimHQ for testing methodology as he is more familiar with this game than I.

This is called being "helpful" and "on topic"- what you are doing is called "trolling"?

Funny Rollo you missed out the part that a the XT a $490 dollar card can perform the same or faster than a the 512mb GTX a $750 card.

Also for 60~70 dollars more than the 256mb GTX you can get HDR+AA for all future games and at least 20~25% faster performance in in modern games this makes it a much better investment.

I thought we were here to compare performance, not prices.

 

[a4000tdh]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: a4000tdh
The only troll here is u Rollo go back and cry to ur mom that ATI is winning

LOL- what do I care if ATI "wins"? Just means I'd buy ATI? Not like they're competing against me, I'm just a customer who has almost certainly bought more of their products than you? (your next post was a lot funnier)

Anyway, what exactly is it they're "winning"?

Just looking at the top end:

All SLI pretty much stands unopposed till ATI works out teething pains and supply issues with Crossfire.

The 512GTX stands unopposed at the highest end.

The X1800XT wins at $500 over the 490/1300 GTXs, but it's heat/noise/game issues make it a bittersweet victory at best.

The $419 EVGA GTX at ClubIT right now stands unnopposed at that price point.

The X1800XL and 7800GT are a toss up.

Yeah, ATI is going nuts with victories all over the place.....errr, one?

Anyway, are you a smart enough guy to know what "On Topic" means? If you are, you should shut your yap about this "ATI is winning" BS?
This thread is about VTF in Pacific Fighters, and since I didn't see any VTF enabled benchmarks in a quick check, I ordered the game to answer the question once and for all.

I will consult ace flight sim reporter John Reynolds of SimHQ for testing methodology as he is more familiar with this game than I.

This is called being "helpful" and "on topic"- what you are doing is called "trolling"?

Apparently u are a Troll because ur pissing off alot of ATI fans and that is the ultimate prove that u are a TROLL on the forum.

If u didn't care ATI wins or not then why even start this topic to attack ATI in the first place then? :roll:

 

[dadach]

lol, these threads are good comedy indeed...besides the fact that the testing was done WITHOUT the main thing this whole thread is about, i especially liked that a caring person like trollo goes out of his way to make sure a person who considered buying ATI x1800 product and his favorite game pacific fighters would not be dissapointed...he even ordered a game to make sure 🙂...oh, btw pacific fighters comes in bundle with powercolor x1800xt...go figure 🙂

 

[linkgoron]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: a4000tdh
The only troll here is u Rollo go back and cry to ur mom that ATI is winning

LOL- what do I care if ATI "wins"? Just means I'd buy ATI? Not like they're competing against me, I'm just a customer who has almost certainly bought more of their products than you? (your next post was a lot funnier)

Anyway, what exactly is it they're "winning"?

Just looking at the top end:

All SLI pretty much stands unopposed till ATI works out teething pains and supply issues with Crossfire.

The 512GTX stands unopposed at the highest end.

Didnt you just say this

pains and supply issues

Maybe I missed something, but the 7800GTX 512 is in very good supply...

The X1800XT wins at $500 over the 490/1300 GTXs, but it's heat/noise/game issues make it a bittersweet victory at best.

It's 480$, and it's a great card, and it beats any single card in a 200$ radius. (except the unavailiable 7800GTX512)

Yeah, ATI is going nuts with victories all over the place.....errr, one?

one victory?
Don't get mad. nVidia is winning! :beer:

This is called being "helpful" and "on topic"- what you are doing is called "trolling"?

Well, yeah we've seen your helpful and on-topic posts. You always turn around your insults, when I made a joke-post about something, you said I needed help with my reading comprehension or something like that, which was clearly an insult, and then afterwards you said that you were acting nicely and "offering me help".
Same thing with that wife joke. I'm sure I can find more examples.

Found it:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...&STARTPAGE=5&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear
Maybe it was my fault, and maybe it wasn't clear enough that I was joking, but later on This was posted:

Originally posted by: crazydingo

Originally posted by: Rollo
Linkgoron is to be pitied. What else can you do when a person who can apparently write lacks the reading comprehension

Another personal attack coming from the guy who (supposedly) never resorts to it.

Hypocricy ... meh.

I don't usually respond to you Dingo, but it saddens me to see you mistake my compassion for another members apparent lack of understanding, and offer to help, as an attack of some sort. 🙁

The world would be a better place if some learned that the time they spend criticizing others would be better spent helping others. 🙂[/quote]

Oh, it was clear that you were trying to help.

Please Rollo, go cry to the mods. We are the trolls, not you. That's why people here think that you're an nVidia fanboy. Yeah, we also know that you don't care what we think.

 

[nRollo]

Please do not post in my thread if you have nothing to contribute about the topic, whether or not the ATI X1800s lack of vertex texturing is part of the reason it underperforms at Pacific Fighters.

Please respond if you have links to examinations of this game using vertex texturing.

I have ordered a copy tonight to look into this further myself.

I do not care if you don't like me, don't like this post, don't like any prior posts I've made, or think I never should have traded for that 5800Ultra.

All irrelevant. I will not respond to any other post in this thread that is off topic, I suggest you consider our generous hosts bandwidth costs before making selfish flame posts.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Rollo
Please do not post in my thread if you have nothing to contribute about the topic, whether or not the ATI X1800s lack of vertex texturing is part of the reason it underperforms at Pacific Fighters.

Please respond if you have links to examinations of this game using vertex texturing.

I have ordered a copy tonight to look into this further myself.

I do not care if you don't like me, don't like this post, don't like any prior posts I've made, or think I never should have traded for that 5800Ultra.

All irrelevant. I will not respond to any other post in this thread that is off topic, I suggest you consider our generous hosts bandwidth costs before making selfish flame posts.

Agreed . . . IF you will stop trolling my threads . . . you did it to me in two threads i originated yesterday . . . why is today different or do you not like your own tactic applied to your topics? .....................................

. . . now to the relevant parts . . you quote xbit labs:

Graphics processors from the RADEON X1000 series do not support vertex texturing, but flight sims from Maddox Games do use this feature.

From Oct

NVIDIA told a couple of people that ATI didn't implement all of the necessary features for Pixel Shader 3.0 specification. Sources close to Nvidia implied that ATI doesn't have Vertex texture fetch and ATI confirmed this to the foreign press.

ATI told developers that it doesn't need vertex texture fetch because it has vertex output. Developers were sceptical whether this is the right way to do it as it's not the "shortest way" of solving this problem. ATI has to emulate vertex texture and this might cost them some extra time and latency.

We checked many white papers and we see that Nvidia is referring to vertex texture fetch with displacement mapping but as far as we know ATI can do displacement mapping with its R520 hardware.

We've asked ATI and are waiting for the answer

ATI has work around VTF lack

ATI's Developer relations manager Richard "7 of 5" Huddy responded with what is really happening with ATI's Vertex texture fetch. . . .
the X1000 generation of R520 based cards and derived R530 and RV515 ca not directly support vertex texture fetch (VTF). ATI decided to do it as an optional feature of Shader model 3.0. . . .
ATI supports a feature called Renter to Vertex Buffer (R2VB) and it allows developers to do anything that they would want of VTF. "In its simplest form you can see that R2VB is capable of everything that VTF can do because you could trivially simply copy the vertex texture data into the vertex stream using R2VB." He added.

He believe that this is better than just doing vertex texture cache. Render to vertex buffer is built on the pixel Shader and therefore you will have all the Shader's texturing capabilities.

When Nvidia is doing Vertex texture fetch it is limited to only isotropically point samples of two different texture formats. If you use ATI's Render to Vertex Buffer you can anisotropically trilinear filter any texture format that ATI supports. ATI believes that Renter to vertex buffer is just more flexible and better way to solve the same problem and even more.

i quoted theInq 'cause - at least in this case it is accurate - and simplified. 😉

So ATi believes it has a fully functional workaround - technically xbit's quote is wrong. . . perhaps it is the way this Sim implements it . . . perhaps we shall see ATi address this in a future driver realease.

Thank-you for bringing this to our attention . . . and perhaps a follow-up after you get the game.

But it's [way] too early to say ATi is "lacking" or not or even if ati's implementation of VTF is responsible for the slower FPS.

 

[Munky]

I'd also be interested to see the benches of the game with vtf enabled.

 

[BFG10K]

Of more interest to me - does this impact IQ?,

According to the screenshots the water looks much better with vertex texturing enabled. However the comparison screens look like there's no water shader fallback without VT so the water looks like ass. Assuming it's not caused by nVidia propaganda using a DX7 image it's quite puzzling since we know the likes of Fear and Far Cry can generate beautiful water effects on SM 2.0 hardware like a X800 XL.

I thought ATI fixed their performance issues in OpenGL games.

No, what they did was optimize the memory controller for Doom 3 and Quake 4 style memory accesses. You can't "fix" OpenGL in one driver release, you'd need to a do an overhaul which could take months if not years.

So VTF is slow and only used in one game, while FP16HDR+AA is fast and works in how many games????????

Currently there are two that I know of (Far Cry and Serious Sam 2) but patches aren't available yet. I certainly agree that FP HDR is slow to begin with and adding AA to it is even slower. What I take issue with is nVidia trolls using double standards to downplay ATi hardware advantages while pimping nVidia's features.

It doesn't look to me like it's disabled here,

It's clearly off because AF is working and causing a performance hit. Vertex texturing currently can't run any kind of filtering other than point and while it may be psosible to implement some kind of AF on the vertex shader I sincerely doubt that is the case here. Even nVidia themselves warn developers to avoid excessive vertex memory accesses (something AF would need) because it's far slower than pixel shader memory buffers.

 

[Gstanfor]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Of more interest to me - does this impact IQ?,

According to the screenshots the water looks much better with vertex texturing enabled. However the comparison screens look like there's no water shader fallback without VT so the water looks like ass. Assuming it's not caused by nVidia propaganda using a DX7 image it's quite puzzling since we know the likes of Fear and Far Cry can generate beautiful water effects on SM 2.0 hardware like a X800 XL.

I thought ATI fixed their performance issues in OpenGL games.

No, what they did was optimize the memory controller for Doom 3 and Quake 4 style memory accesses. You can't "fix" OpenGL in one driver release, you'd need to a do an overhaul which could take months if not years.

So VTF is slow and only used in one game, while FP16HDR+AA is fast and works in how many games????????

Currently there are two that I know of (Far Cry and Serious Sam 2) but patches aren't available yet. I certainly agree that FP HDR is slow to begin with and adding AA to it is even slower. What I take issue with is nVidia trolls using double standards to downplay ATi hardware advantages while pimping nVidia's features.

It doesn't look to me like it's disabled here,

It's clearly off because AF is working and causing a performance hit. Vertex texturing currently can't run any kind of filtering other than point and while it may be psosible to implement some kind of AF on the vertex shader I sincerely doubt that is the case here. Even nVidia themselves warn developers to avoid excessive vertex memory accesses (something AF would need) because it's far slower than pixel shader memory buffers.

What in gods name are you raving on about now BFG10K??? Do you have the first clue about *anything* that you post?

Vertex texture filtering is entirely seperate from normal texturing on nVidia hardware. The presence (or absence) of AF does not mean a thing (it might for ATi's workaround where they allegedly use the pixel shader/ordinary texturing portion of their pipeline to impliment their workaround (allegedly, because we have never seen vertex texturing in action from ATi).

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

why haven't the mods banned Rollo yet? i've yet to see a more blatantly biased anti-ATI troll in the video card forums.