Level Analysis: volcano
This level starts out with some very nicely lighted floors in an indoor scene. Our screenshot reflects one of the different floors the demo runs across. The demo then moves outside to run across a lava-pitted volcano crater with some interesting heat and lava effects.
ATI volcano screenshot.
Click to enlarge.
NV SM2.0 volcano screenshot.
Click to enlarge.
NV SM3.0 volcano screenshot.
Click to enlarge.
Even though there is no difference between the two cards under the SM2.0 rendering path, its easy to see that the very center of the specular highlight is not as highly saturated under SM3.0. Again, this may or may not be by design, but hopefully we will be able to bring you that information soon. Either rendering seems equally likely to be more desired (either the reflection is supposed to be brighter than the SM3.0 path, or the the SM2.0 path's multipass lighting may over brighten the floor).
Here, we see huge performance gains with the new rendering path.
And even larger leaps with AA and AF enabled.
This is another NVIDIA supplied demo, and it shows the largest performance gains that we see in the SM3.0 render path. From the looks of our other benchmarks, these numbers are not typical, but they do happen as our own exploration of this level proved to reflect the numbers that we see in this demo.
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Illissius - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
For these benches, were nVidia's trilinear and/or anisotropic optimizations on or off? (This would help in comparing results with other sites, for example.) I don't recall seeing them mentioned, but they're getting to be as important as the driver revision these days.DerekWilson - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
DAPUNISHER:I'm not sure about the 64bit version of any game, as game developers are much more likely to hold everything until MS releases WinXP64 than hardware vendors. My guess is that we can expect not to see any visual improvements or differences with the 64bit move. There's much less reason to alter the graphics of the game when gaining more registers and memory address space than when you add the ability to do conditional rendering, floating point frame buffers, instancing, and all that...
Zak,
We could try to guess performance based on these numbers:
http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=2044&...
But we didn't use those because they're based on the 1.1 version of farcry under dx9b and Catalyst 4.4 ...
Our focus was the impact of SM3.0, not on overall relative performance, but in the future we will include older generation cards even when looking at next gen features. You are right, it does provide a way to relate to the numbers, and those cards should be in there for completeness' sake as well. Thanks for the suggestion.
Zak - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
I wish you guys would include one or two benchmarks on some older video cards to give a point of reference for those, such as myself, who still run R9800 and older generation cards. Without seeing how the game performs on R9800 or eqivalent card it's hard to relate to these benchmarks.Zak
DAPUNISHER - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
Very impressed with the GT's performance in this version. When can we expect your preview of FarCry 64bit version with the SM3 path Derek? and will 64bit bring some new eye candy or more performance? Inquiring minds want to know :-)Warder45 - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
Interesting. Some odd stuff like ATI's X800 line actually decreasing in performace with the 1.2 patch. I wonder if thats a driver issue that now needs to be fixed, but if I was an ATI owner I'd stick with the 1.1 version of the game. I'd really like to see someone benchmark with omega's drivers for ATI, and see if there's any difference in performace there.#9, That article at tom's is from the NV40 review months ago. This new verison, 1.2 fixes most of the IQ problems nvidia was having.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/far...
So far the only IQ problem I've seen mentioned with the new version.
araczynski - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
very nice, that 68UE sure is kicking some tail, before AND after the SM3.perhaps this will lead to developers optomizing (to some small degree at elast) their code for the 2 camps? (or at least for the camp that pays them the most...)
in any case, here's to hoping the 68U/UE are priced acceptably by xmas, or at least next tax time :)
Shad0hawK - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
"Then, during the ATi refresh,we will all be greeted the the Geforce 6900, 6900 Ultra, 6900 Turbo and 6900 Ultra Hyper Fighting Edition."actually that will probobly be after ATI anounces the super golden/silver platinum extra extra XT edition with not only one but TWO "free" certificates for games not out yet
nserra - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
#1, #2, #3, #4:I think the huge hit is because nvidia is not doing AA to the all scene as ati does.
The new drivers from nvidia have this ability. How do you think nvidia have come to top so soon, after some driver release ... Trilinear optimizations, Shader optimizations and now AA optimizations...
I also don't understand why only toms site notes differences between ati and nvidia image quality...
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040414/...
ZobarStyl - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
Bearxor, though I agree the overclocked editions are silly, don't act like ATi doesn't do the exact same thing...Ultra Extreme = XT Platinum Edition
Ultra = XT
GT = Pro
vanilla 6800 has no direct competitor, but it held it's own occasionally against the Pro in the review.
Both of the double-named cards are just the top end overclocked, so I tend to ignore them in the reviews, but then the GT was beating all of the ATi cards in some of those demos too...
RyanVM - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
#6, Ditto :p. Dell 2001FP for life :D