Final Words
Both of our custom benchmarks show ATI cards leading without anisotropic filtering and antialiasing enabled, with NVIDIA taking over when the options are enabled. We didn't see much improvement from the new SM3.0 path in our benchmarks either. Of course, it just so happened that we chose a level that didn't really benefit from the new features the first time we recorded a demo. And, with the mangoriver benchmark, we were looking for a level to benchmark that didn't follow the style of benchmarks that NVIDIA provided us with in order to add perspective.Even some of the benchmarks with which NVIDIA supplied us showed that the new rendering path in FarCry isn't a magic bullet that increases performance across the board through the entire game.
Image quality of both SM2.0 paths are on par with eachother, and the SM3.0 path on NVIDIA hardware shows negligable differences. The very slight variations are most likely just small fluctuations between the mathematical output of a single pass and a multipass lighting shader. The difference is honestly so tiny that you can't call either rendering lower quality from a visual standpoint. We will still try to learn what exactly causes the differences we noticed from CryTek.
The main point that the performance numbers make is not that SM3.0 has a speed advantage over SM2.0 (as even the opposite may be true), but that single pass per-pixel lighting models can significantly reduce the impact of adding an ever increasing number of lights to a scene.
It remains to be seen whether or not SM3.0 offer a significant reduction in complexity for developers attempting to implement this advanced functionality in their engines, as that will be where the battle surrounding SM3.0 will be won or lost.
UPDATE: CryTek has pointed out that the new lighting implimentation is essentially the same but uses branching in the pixel shader to accomplish what needed to be done in multiple shaders under the PS2.0 path. This indicates that the conditional rendering feature of SM3.0 is actually faster than using multiple shaders (which gives NVIDIA 6 series cards a performance advantage when multiple shaders would have been required).
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misnad - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
Hey guys, when playing an adrenaline pumping game like far cry or doom 3, how on earth does one take the time to notice the minute details??? True enough you need decent quality, but what's required the most is a decent framerate!!! Or else, we'll end up with a slideshow of hi-res pictures! My 2 cents.misnad - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
KJ1a - Thursday, July 8, 2004 - link
I noticed a difference in the comparison pictures.I lloks like Nvidia is rendering less and in lot of the areas the quality is lower and bumpmapping is a little less pronounced as well.
I have owned ATI and Nvidia cards and I can honestly say my games allways look better on the ATI cards.
Look at the detials in the pictures.
Thats my 2 cents.
bangbilo - Saturday, July 3, 2004 - link
I once was a really happy ATI customer, until i bought my 9600 ( this was before the XT ) and i liked the card at the time it was kicking the crap out of any game out there. Then one day i decided to have some fun with a thing called Linux. I started out with the Suse 9.0 distro and i quickly noticed i did not have 3D support. After a week of my life slaved over forums and people saying that this works and ATI's drivers not i decided my next card was going to be a NVidia. Ati has always had crappy support issues with there drivers in my opinion and if they would just get that fixed i would be buying me a X800 XT not a 6800 Ultra (Ordered that baby today) I love ati they have allowed me to be a somewhat descent gamer for 4 years not its time to try out the other guy. If i'm not satisfied with them and ati figures out a few things that the customers have been wanting for years. Then i might be buying me an XI800 XT ULTRA PLATNUM EDITION with CHROME HUBCAPS.... yes i said it HUBCAPS... :) thats my 2 cents-Bangbilo
"pain is weakness leaving the body"
Bangbilo@dynxweb.com
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Staples - Saturday, July 3, 2004 - link
In some of those first few screens, you may want to fix the gamma in an image editor. They are dark in the game but not that dark, at least they shouldn't be unless you are playing at default settings.DerekWilson - Saturday, July 3, 2004 - link
I could use those burgers ...Thanks again, Pete :-)
Pete - Saturday, July 3, 2004 - link
Craziness! Nice to see that you're on top of things, Derek. Now that you've averted an aliased crisis, head out to the grill and set some burgers to medium. :)Dasterdly - Saturday, July 3, 2004 - link
Then you gotta get the Ultra Hyper (Kung Fu) Fighting Edition.Or dont forget the Ultra Extreme XT Platinum Edition or the GT2 Pro Turbo Extra-Special Edition.
.
bearxor - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
Wow, that little change with the AA really changed the look of those benchmarks.The ATi X800 XT PE Alpha 3 Pro Turbo doesn't look so bad now.
nordlaw - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link
9800 Pro's referred to as 'Older' video cards - Moore's Law is being smashed open, lately by GPUs.CPUs, not so, of course.
I need a slightly better CPU so I can keep up with GPUs. ;)