Tiger Woods Out...Until August!
 |
| | (Post a comment) » 3D Performance with FarCry: Part 3 Shader Model 3.0Ever since NVIDIA first announced the GeForce 6800 series, the gaming world has been waiting for an application to take advantage of its Shader Model 3.0 (SM 3.0) capabilities. Now that first title has appeared: Far Cry. See how the NVIDIA cards look and perform with the addition of SM 3.0 in this article! |  Previous news article | Back to main news | Next news article  |
| You are viewing the comments as Guest and are limited to 10 messages per page. [Login] Not an FS Member? Register here, it's FREE! You will see more posts per page and you can filter out the Anonymous comments as well as enable the profanity filter. |
|
#26
|
Author:
|
Trogdor at 10:16pm 07/8/2004
|
|
Response to #24:
 Reply to This
|
Wow! Good stuff, Brandon. Looks like I might have to stop
recommending the 9800 Pro 128 for people that like Far Cry.
Interesting how the Volcano and Regulator levels in particular
benefited tremendously from the added RAM. I didn't recall the
Regulator level as being particularly detailed when I played it,
though - it was just dark most of the time. Of course, it can be
argued that turning the detail down to High from Very High doesn't
make a noticeable difference in look and would likely bring the 128
and 256 MB cards much closer together. The difference between
1024x1024 and 2048x2048 textures just isn't that great when you're
running at resolutions that are usually much lower than 2048x2048.
|
| |
|
|
#25
|
Author:
|
deimos47 at 11:51am 07/7/2004
|
|
Response to #24:
Reply to This
|
Thanks a lot Brandon,
good to know that all that memory isn't just sitting there ;)
I suspect the advantage of the extra memory would shrink if you
turned down the quality settings. Perhaps we will see similar jumps
in performance (9800pro 128MB -> 9800pro 256MB), when the next
refresh of 512MB cards comes...
|
| |
|
#24
|
Author:
|
GX-Brandon at 10:33pm 07/8/2004
|
|
Comment:
Reply to This
|
The numbers are in!:
RADEON 9800 PRO 256MB Research 8x6-96.8 10x7-66.2 12x10-42.3 16x12-
30.2
9800 PRO 256MB Training 8x6-96.7 10x7-76.4 12x10-50.8 16x12-35.9
9800 PRO 256MB Regulator 8x6-87.4 10x7-61.8 12x10-42.7 16x12-30.6
9800 PRO 256MB Volcano 8x6-100.5 10x7-69.5 12x10-45.1 16x12-31.3
This is all without AA/AF. As you can see, even at these settings
the extra 128MB of memory makes a big difference in Far Cry.
|
| |
|
|
#23
|
Author:
|
GX-Brandon at 10:55pm 07/6/2004
|
|
Response to #22:
Reply to This
|
When I get some free time on that testbed later tonight I'll throw
the 9800 PRO 256MB on there and post the results in here. I'm
curious myself, but to be honest there's a bigger ATI release on tap
for later this week that I'd like to cover with an article so I'm
running those numbers right now. I'm certain that some of that does
come from the extra memory, even with monkeybay, which wasn't a very
stressful demo you could see the benefits of the extra memory. And
yes, all tests were run in very high quality mode.
|
| |
|
|
#22
|
Author:
|
Trogdor at 07:47pm 07/6/2004
|
|
Comment:
Reply to This
|
Hey Brandon... is there anything wrong with the benchmarks on the
9800 Pro? It seems to be scoring a lot lower than the 9800 XT than
it should, particularly in non-AA, non-AF scenarios. I suppose that
Far Cry on Very High details might actually use more than 128 MB of
video RAM, which could explain the results, but I didn't recall
seeing this much difference in performance between the 9800 Pro and
9800 XT in earlier benchmarks.
In these tests, there are numerous cases of the 9800 XT ending up 30
to 50% faster than the 9800 Pro. Considering that it only has a
moderate 8.4% clockspeed advantage and 7.4% bandwidth advantage, the
difference in performance seems rather large. I'm assuming that
you're using the 9800 Pro 128 for these benchmarks... any chance of
getting a 256 MB 9800 Pro in for comparison? If Far Cry is actually
getting a 20% to 33% performance boost on 256 MB graphics cards,
that would be very useful to know!
|
| |
|
|
#21
|
Author:
|
Trogdor at 07:30pm 07/6/2004
|
|
Response to #20:
Reply to This
|
What kind of person spends $550 on a graphics card and then
purchases a $220 CPU to run it on? I think it would be nice to see
several "realistic" systems compared, but otherwise, you
would want the fastest CPU possible when running the fastest GPUs
that are available. In real life, most people will probably have an
Athlon 64 3000+ or 3200+ with a Radeon X800 Pro or 6800 GT. People
that buy the 3400+ and faster CPUs are much more likely to buy the
X800 XT PE or 6800 Ultra Extreme. Besides, today's uber-expensive
A64 3800+ and X800 XT/6800 Ultra are going to be tomorrow's
mid-range parts - well, maybe in a year as opposed to
"tomorrow", but the point still stands.
|
| |
|
|
#20
|
Author:
|
Anonymous at 05:11am 07/5/2004
|
|
Response to #1:
Reply to This
|
One thing that is miss leading about graphics performance is the
@!#@ cpu they use its £550 cpu no way would i think of getting
that they should test on a basic amd 64 3000+ or 3200. Even though
im on a cheap arse athlon xp 2600 thats a cheaper alternative option
to test it on more pl willl have a 3000 then a 3800+ so performance
would show really how good the gpus are not cpus. there would be
easily 15-25 fps up from using the top end cpu.
|
| |
|
#19
|
Author:
|
Ricky Williams at 09:46am 07/4/2004
|
|
Response to #18:
Reply to This
|
Actually ATI's offical MSRP for the X800 Pro, X800 XT, and X800 XT
PE are $399, $449, $499. As you mention availability of the either
the X800s or the 6800s is very scarce so vendors are charging crazy
prices right now. I think I will wait for fall refresh cards when
prices settle down.
|
| |
|
|
#17
|
Author:
|
Trogdor at 08:02pm 07/2/2004
|
|
Comment:
Reply to This
|
Interesting update on the Anandtech article:
"UPDATE: It has recently come to our attention that our
4xAA/8xAF benchmark numbers for NVIDIA 6800 series cards were
incorrect when this article was first published. The control panel
was used to set the antialiasing level, which doesn't work with
FarCry unless set specifically in the FarCry profile (which was not
done here). We appologize for the error, and have updated our graphs
and analysis accordingly.
"For a more positive update, after a discussion with CryTek
about the new rendering path, we have learned that the lighting
model implimented in the SM3.0 Path is exactly the same as was used
in the SM2.0 Path. The only exception is that they used the
conditional rendering (branching in the pixel shader) to emulate
multipass lighting in a single pixel shader. The performance gains
we see actually indicate that PS3.0 branching does not have as
significant a performance hit as previously thought (and proves to
be more efficient than using multiple pixel shaders in a
scene)."
Does this affect Firingsquad's results at all? Just wondering.
|
| |
|
|
#16
|
Author:
|
Trogdor at 08:01pm 07/2/2004
|
|
Comment:
Reply to This
|
Just a couple comments.
First, notice how the X800 cards benefit tremendously when you turn
on 8xAF compared to the 6800 cards? Often, the 6800 GT goes from
dominating the X800 Pro in 4xAA to being about the same as the X800
Pro with 4xAA and 8xAF (sometimes faster, sometimes the same,
sometimes slower = about the same). I'm wondering if they disabled
the AF optimizations on the 6800 cards. (X800 has pretty much the
same optimizations, but they can't be disabled.) If not, then we're
basically seeing that ATI's AF optimizations are better than
Nvidia's. (Which could be improved with driver changes, I would
assume.) Hopefully, they just left the graphics optimizations
enabled, as I'm figuring both companies "cheat" about the
same amount. (More screen shots would have been nice!)
Second, some people are forgetting that the choice of cards is not
really a direct matchup at the high end. Based on PRICE ALONE (and
assuming that availability will eventually stop being a concern),
the matchup is roughly as follows:
6800 Ultra Extreme = X800 XT Platinum Edition ($550+)
6800 Ultra = X800 XT (~$500)
6800 GT = X800 Pro (~$450 now, but should drop to ~$400 when
availability increases)
6800 = X800 SE? (~$300, when X800 SE is available?)
Strangely, the results from this review don't seem to match up all
that well with the results from Anandtech's review of the same
thing. ATI seemed to do a lot better in the Anandtech article
relative to FS's results. ("A lot" being something like
10%, which really isn't that much in real world gaming.)
|
| |
  ATI Radeon 5970 Performance Preview
 After a 10-month hiatus, ATI's once again got the world's fastest graphics card. The Radeon 5970 fuses two RV870 chips onto one board for max performa... [+] (Comments) |  Left 4 Dead 2 PC Review
 Valve says Left 4 Dead 2 contains so much new content, it's worthy of a sequel rather than DLC. Is this true or false? Judge for yourself in today's r... [+] (Comments) |
Sapphire Radeon 5870 Vapor-X 1GB Review
 With its custom vapor chamber cooling+heatpipes and factory OC'ing, Sapphire's 5870 Vapor-X is targeted towards gamers looking for a 5870 card with a ... [+] (Comments) | Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 PC Review
 With no dedicated servers, no lean, and 18-player cap for multi, does Modern Warfare 2 for PC live up to its predecessors? Most of the reviews online ... [+] (Comments) |
Phenom II Gets A New Revision: 125W AMD Phenom II X4 965 Performance Preview
 Promising lower power consumption, lower temps, and most importantly for enthusiasts, more OC'ing, AMD is back with a new CPU revision for the Phenom ... [+] (Comments) | Dragon Age Origins Review
 |
AMD Athlon II X3 435/Athlon II X2 240e Performance Preview
 Today AMD is introducing 8 new Athlon II CPUs intended to service different segments of the budget CPU market. For HTPC users, new 45W dual, triple, a... [+] (Comments) | Shattered Horizon Review
 FutureMark, well known for their popular 3DMark benchmarks, is venturing into new territory with Shattered Horizon. This multiplayer shooter is perhap... [+] (Comments) |
| EVGA P55 FTW Review
 Looking for a good P55 motherboard to OC your CPU beyond 4GHz? If so, you may want to check out EVGA's P55 FTW. With its extra ATX12V connector, this ... [+] (Comments) | Borderlands PC Review
 Is it an RPG or is it an FPS? Borderlands blends the best elements of both in one entertaining package. Vandy has spent the past week playing the PC v... [+] (Comments) |
ATI Radeon HD 5770/5750 Performance Preview
 With prices ranging from $109-$159, ATI's Radeon 5700 series of cards bring DX11 gaming to mainstream price points and usher in new levels of energy e... [+] (Comments) | Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Review
 While it's not the true sequel to Operation Flashpoint, Dragon Rising is billed as a modern tactical sim just like its predecessor. Does it live up to... [+] (Comments) |
Batman: Arkham Asylum PhysX Features and Performance
 One eye candy feature PC users can enjoy over the console edition of Batman: AA is PhysX. Rocksteady's PhysX implementation is more than just tearing ... [+] (Comments) | Batman: Arkham Asylum PC Review
 Already a smash hit on consoles, the PC version of Batman: Arkham Asylum sports better graphics and support for NVIDIA technologies PhysX and 3D Visio... [+] (Comments) |
ATI Radeon 5850 Performance Preview
 Not everyone's got $400 to spend on a shiny new Radeon 5870 card, which is why it can be argued that ATI's Radeon 5850 is the more relevant GPU for a ... [+] (Comments) | Resident Evil 5 PC Review
 Sporting a new mercenaries mode with more enemies on screen, higher resolution DX10 graphics, and 3D Vision support, Resident Evil 5 is definitely bes... [+] (Comments) |
| More Hardware » | More Games » | Interviews » |
| |
• This Month
• October 1 - 31, 2009
• September 1 - 30, 2009
• August 1 - 31, 2009
• July 1 - 31, 2009
• June 1 - 30, 2009
• May 1 - 31, 2009
• April 1 - 30, 2009
• March 1 - 31, 2009
• February 1 - 28, 2009
• January 1 - 31, 2009
• December 1 - 31, 2008
• November 1 - 30, 2008
|
|
|
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
SU
furl
