Originally Posted by Firehed Man that PC is insane in your sig. Umm... how do you USE 2x 2405FPWs? Aside from needing an ungodly huge desk, you can't run multimonitors with SLI enabled (unless I've really missed something and should give up trying to sell my second 6800GT and put it back in)
Haha, one's for my Apple G4 Tower, that used to be my main machine but I sorely missed pc gaming. I hate getting bashed by Mac zealots for doing graphics and 3d and using a PC, I mean come on OS X IS better, but games ftw! Hopefully I'll hook 'em both up to the PC but atm you have to reboot to turn SLI on and off depending (therefore allowing multiple monitors) if I want to game or work.
am I the only one who thinks that this doesn't sound quite right?
Hey rubber, if you do all your graphic work on your mac why bother with 4 gig of ram, 400 gig space and a dual core? I could understand when the unreal 3 engine makes the appearance that you would but for now whats the point? BTW i'm gonna track you down and steal those dell screens :D
EDIT:
I just re-read your post and it all makes perfect sense now :D how do you find the 4 gigs work for you? I like my dual Dual Channel but I'm wondering if I should get the 4 gigs instead.
We didn't "get" this video - I made it myself. It is a bit-tech original production, which is why you won't see it anywhere else. All the screenshots were also taken by us, and the benchmarks run in-house.
I'm keen for some feedback on the video actually - is it something you'd like to see more of? Or do you normally try and avoid videos like this so as to not spoil the first-play experience when the game comes out. As you can imagine, a production like that isn't thrown together in 5 minutes, so is it worth us spending the time on making more?
For example, would you like to see a Day of Defeat: Source video to decide whether to shell out 20 bucks for it on Monday?
You lucky buggers :) That video was very good, particularly the scene showing HDR on and off. I remember d/l pretty much all the HL2 vids, official and leaked, and enjoyed every single minute of them. They didn't detract from wanting to play the game at all and, tbh, neither does your video. It furthers the anticipation for when it is released!
I'd love to see some dod:source, although I recently upgraded my steam package so it included this, I guess people would definately want to see it in action. (btw bargain - I had the free HL2 ATI voucher and upgraded to have everything apart from the tin, t-shirts, music cds etc for a little under £7!)
I wouldn't do any more vids showing off Lost Coast though. You can have too much of a good thing. Blummin' good job though - I thought it was something Valve had thrown together to take back from your visit!
Hello Bit-tech. I was a little curious about this:
Quote:
Less good news for GeForce 6800 GT owners: we found a performance hit of nearly 30%. Still, maintaining 45 FPS in the most demanding scenes is hardly cause for panic. If you prefer red beans to green beans, the X850 XT fares better: a drop of 23%, and a still very playable 51 FPS.
Which means 6800GT loses 17fps while X850XT loses 15fps (45fps vs 51fps) is that really less than good news for 6800GT owners? I would think that would be fairly good news considering X850XT has a 170MHz core and 80MHz memory clock advatage. 5fps difference between the 2. It gave me a giggle thats all. Why did the Ultra get left out of the HDR impact graph? :?
Well, hello Bit-Tech!. This is my first post, but not my first visit. And hopefully not the last one either. :)
I just wondered about the FX-part in this article.
Quote:
Here is a quick overview of what we found:
Low-end: Less than Radeon 9600, GeForceFX 5900 - not playable, less than 5FPS
Mid-range: Around Radeon 9800, Radeon X700, GeForce 5950, GeForce 6600 - playable at 800x600 with AA turned off
I fired of an e-mail to Wil, asking if Valve had done some dx 9-path for the FX-series. If you remember, dx 9 on the FX-series in HL 2 (or any Source-game) could only be achieved by changing the dxconfig-file, which became known as the "Presi tweak". That way you got the water, the soft shoreline shaders etc. This tweak was not supported by Valve officially, you were restricted to dx 8.0 for the slower cards and dx 8.1 for 5800 and up. If you just wrote -dxlevel 90 in the command line the water would disappear... I played HL 2 on an FX 5900 Ultra in dx 9 @ 1152x864 (using only the first part of Presi's tweak, not the 3DAnalyze part, which of course modded the files in a more serious way, and if you changed the files you ran the risk of being banned).
Now, as I understand it, in order to get HDR working on the FX, Valve need to have a SM 2.0-path. Which means that they have to treat the FX-series as a dx 9-part. So, are they now using a SM 2.0 dx 9-path in Source for the FX-series?
I was going to ask the same thing. Actually, I was under the impression that the hardware of the X800 series didn't support HDR. Am I right or just mistaken?
In fact, all dx 9 cards can do hdr, that is, the whole range of the FX-series and up from Nvidia, and 9500 and up from Ati. This has been shown in techdemos since day one. But for what purpose you may ask, as you only hear about hdr and sm 3.0. This is Nvidias take, a marketing approach.
The thing is that there are different kinds of hdr. A whole bunch of them, in fact. I don't have the name of the numerous variants in my head, but if I find the page I once looked at that covered this I'll post the link.
But in dx 9.0c sm 3.0, it's a hdr standard that supposedly gives a higher quality hdr, maybe without as much of a performance hit as the other ones give. Now, Valve seems to have used both sm 2.0 and sm 3.0 paths to do hdr - that's why I'm so interested in finding out what they did for the FX-series in my first post. They've treated those cards as dx 8.1-level cards maximum when they released HL 2.
The Geforce FX and the Radeons 9500-9800, X300-X600 are sm 2.0, Radeons X700 and up are sm 2.0b, Geforce 6/7 are sm 3.0, and the coming Radeons are 3.0 as well.
adq1034: I'd love to know where all this disinformation came from. Was there some sort of NVIDIA campaign that I missed? Don't feel bad - there are literally thousands of people like you who think X800-series doesn't support HDR. Which is weird, because afaik it's not doing anything super-magical inside the GPU to do it.
Anyway, steelmartin is quite correct. Indeed, my little video was shot on my X850 XT PE, so if anything, that proves it.
For everyone else who is suggesting there is a possible conspiracy going on because XYZ card wasn't featured - there really isn't guys. The bottom line is that this kind of testing takes a fair bit of time - we simply didn't have the time or resources to test HDR vs non-HDR on a dozen cards at this point, especially for a single-level expansion.
We did what we could in the time available to provide as much of a ball park for everyone as possible. Rest assured that HDR is a very big deal, and it's popping up everywhere now: DoD: Source will have it on Monday, and the Brothers in Arms demo released the other day has it.
Our graphics card guru, Tim, is busy planning future features that examine HDR more closely, so this certainly isn't the last you'll be hearing of it
A little extra clarification: As steelmartin said, there are multiple types of HDR and I believe all cards shader model 2.0b and up support it in one fashion or another. That B is important, because I believe that FX5 series are excluded as SM2a products, at least as far as I know. Bigz will clear this up if I am incorrect, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works.
SM3 supports a more robust HDR by a number of magnitudes, due to the fact that it has an FP16 buffer (which ATI cards do not until the x1800). It also is supposedly easier to code for and runs a hair more efficiently than the SM2 version, but that's to be expected as it's true for nearly all of the SM3/SM2 discussion. Until Valve released Lost Coast info, it was widely accepted that the only HDR in commercial gaming was Far Cry's latest patch, which only supported SM3 cards. So it's not that it's an NVidia mass smear campaign (though since it's been disproven they haven't exactly helped spread that information), it's that nobody figured out how to do the same thing in SM2 until after it was already done in SM3.
However, the difference won't be noticed for many end users, as most current-market TFTs support a max of 1000:1 contrast ratio, and that's for a fairly expensive one (heh heh). So, is a valid misconception to clear up, but not because it was an NV smear campaign...it's because until valve bothered to do it, it wasn't even known to be able to be done.
WOW! Thanks, steelmartin, this clears up some misconceptions on my part.
I'm still not sure whether valve's HDR supports less than 2.0b. But I now see where you're coming from. Those are some impressive videos for that old of hardware!
Originally Posted by The_Pope adq1034: I'd love to know where all this disinformation came from. Was there some sort of NVIDIA campaign that I missed? Don't feel bad - there are literally thousands of people like you who think X800-series doesn't support HDR. Which is weird, because afaik it's not doing anything super-magical inside the GPU to do it.
Anyway, steelmartin is quite correct. Indeed, my little video was shot on my X850 XT PE, so if anything, that proves it.
For everyone else who is suggesting there is a possible conspiracy going on because XYZ card wasn't featured - there really isn't guys. The bottom line is that this kind of testing takes a fair bit of time - we simply didn't have the time or resources to test HDR vs non-HDR on a dozen cards at this point, especially for a single-level expansion.
We did what we could in the time available to provide as much of a ball park for everyone as possible. Rest assured that HDR is a very big deal, and it's popping up everywhere now: DoD: Source will have it on Monday, and the Brothers in Arms demo released the other day has it.
Our graphics card guru, Tim, is busy planning future features that examine HDR more closely, so this certainly isn't the last you'll be hearing of it
Wil actually put those together, but from looking at it, it's just a dodgy crop mate. Both are 1600x1200 screencaptures, but I think probably because the Dev Comments are switched on in the second, Wil decided to crop them out, resulting in the slightly smaller image, that's all.
Any idea how a 9800pro will take HDR? I've messed about with that source mod that 'enables' hdr on hl2. It looked pretty damn good on the game menu, but the game fell over when I tried to start a new game.
very good article also. well done. I can see valve has done i very good job with hdr.
What catalyst version did you use for the benchs?
you didn't use other cards?
The objects in the Valve's engine can't cast shadows in themselfs or in other object. this is going to change?
It may not be "fast" but it does run, and HDR works just fine - it's what I used to take all the screenshots in my Preview article. So HDR very much does run on SM2 hardware.
How will a 9800Pro fair? It's hard to say for sure, but take whatever FPS you get in HL2 currently and chop off 20-40% it seems - that will give you an idea. Please remember that Lost Coast has high-res textures & models that cause it to run slower than normal.
DoD: Source will be out in < 24 hours, and that has HDR without all the extra OTT eye candy, so that will give you a better idea. HDR has also popped up in Serious Sam 2 and Brothers in Arms - give those demos a go.
Exo: I didn't do the bench testing myself, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow for an answer. I'm personally running Omega Drivers v2.6.25 on my X850XT PE / 2.2 P4.
As for the shadowing issue, I don't have an official answer, but please bear in mind that the code we have is not final. In fact, it will be over a month old by the time Lost Coast is released, so it's possible Valve will fix this issue in that time.
Ooh look, my first post on Bit-Tech....and why? ->
1. Does this mean CrossFire is released on Monday?
2. Does this mean the NDA from ATI expires on Monday?
3. Is there another surreptitious reason for waiting until Monday to release the details?
4. Can I wait for Monday?
Guess you guys were too busy examining the images or watching the video, or just plainly don't care about CrossFire to even notice that bit in the article!
Doing a good job Bit-Tech.
Looks like I was right....shame CrossFire on the X850 sucks.
Originally Posted by The_Pope Wil actually put those together, but from looking at it, it's just a dodgy crop mate. Both are 1600x1200 screencaptures, but I think probably because the Dev Comments are switched on in the second, Wil decided to crop them out, resulting in the slightly smaller image, that's all.
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Haha, one's for my Apple G4 Tower, that used to be my main machine but I sorely missed pc gaming. I hate getting bashed by Mac zealots for doing graphics and 3d and using a PC, I mean come on OS X IS better, but games ftw! Hopefully I'll hook 'em both up to the PC but atm you have to reboot to turn SLI on and off depending (therefore allowing multiple monitors) if I want to game or work.
Why does exist a difference between the screen resolutions above?
7800 with 1600x1200 ( http://www.bit-tech.net/content_images/lost_coast_benchmark/eyecandy1.jpg)
X850 with 1596 x 1170 (http://www.bit-tech.net/content_images/lost_coast_benchmark/aticomparison1.jpg)
Health/font HUD problem..
Best Regards
D3lta
From Brazil...
am I the only one who thinks that this doesn't sound quite right?
Hey rubber, if you do all your graphic work on your mac why bother with 4 gig of ram, 400 gig space and a dual core? I could understand when the unreal 3 engine makes the appearance that you would but for now whats the point? BTW i'm gonna track you down and steal those dell screens :D
EDIT:
I just re-read your post and it all makes perfect sense now :D how do you find the 4 gigs work for you? I like my dual Dual Channel but I'm wondering if I should get the 4 gigs instead.
http://img305.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hl2hdrexposure10li.jpg
You lucky buggers :) That video was very good, particularly the scene showing HDR on and off. I remember d/l pretty much all the HL2 vids, official and leaked, and enjoyed every single minute of them. They didn't detract from wanting to play the game at all and, tbh, neither does your video. It furthers the anticipation for when it is released!
I'd love to see some dod:source, although I recently upgraded my steam package so it included this, I guess people would definately want to see it in action. (btw bargain - I had the free HL2 ATI voucher and upgraded to have everything apart from the tin, t-shirts, music cds etc for a little under £7!)
I wouldn't do any more vids showing off Lost Coast though. You can have too much of a good thing. Blummin' good job though - I thought it was something Valve had thrown together to take back from your visit!
Which means 6800GT loses 17fps while X850XT loses 15fps (45fps vs 51fps) is that really less than good news for 6800GT owners? I would think that would be fairly good news considering X850XT has a 170MHz core and 80MHz memory clock advatage. 5fps difference between the 2. It gave me a giggle thats all. Why did the Ultra get left out of the HDR impact graph? :?
I just wondered about the FX-part in this article.
I fired of an e-mail to Wil, asking if Valve had done some dx 9-path for the FX-series. If you remember, dx 9 on the FX-series in HL 2 (or any Source-game) could only be achieved by changing the dxconfig-file, which became known as the "Presi tweak". That way you got the water, the soft shoreline shaders etc. This tweak was not supported by Valve officially, you were restricted to dx 8.0 for the slower cards and dx 8.1 for 5800 and up. If you just wrote -dxlevel 90 in the command line the water would disappear... I played HL 2 on an FX 5900 Ultra in dx 9 @ 1152x864 (using only the first part of Presi's tweak, not the 3DAnalyze part, which of course modded the files in a more serious way, and if you changed the files you ran the risk of being banned).
Now, as I understand it, in order to get HDR working on the FX, Valve need to have a SM 2.0-path. Which means that they have to treat the FX-series as a dx 9-part. So, are they now using a SM 2.0 dx 9-path in Source for the FX-series?
Anyone know why?
In fact, all dx 9 cards can do hdr, that is, the whole range of the FX-series and up from Nvidia, and 9500 and up from Ati. This has been shown in techdemos since day one. But for what purpose you may ask, as you only hear about hdr and sm 3.0. This is Nvidias take, a marketing approach.
The thing is that there are different kinds of hdr. A whole bunch of them, in fact. I don't have the name of the numerous variants in my head, but if I find the page I once looked at that covered this I'll post the link.
But in dx 9.0c sm 3.0, it's a hdr standard that supposedly gives a higher quality hdr, maybe without as much of a performance hit as the other ones give. Now, Valve seems to have used both sm 2.0 and sm 3.0 paths to do hdr - that's why I'm so interested in finding out what they did for the FX-series in my first post. They've treated those cards as dx 8.1-level cards maximum when they released HL 2.
The Geforce FX and the Radeons 9500-9800, X300-X600 are sm 2.0, Radeons X700 and up are sm 2.0b, Geforce 6/7 are sm 3.0, and the coming Radeons are 3.0 as well.
Anyway, steelmartin is quite correct. Indeed, my little video was shot on my X850 XT PE, so if anything, that proves it.
For everyone else who is suggesting there is a possible conspiracy going on because XYZ card wasn't featured - there really isn't guys. The bottom line is that this kind of testing takes a fair bit of time - we simply didn't have the time or resources to test HDR vs non-HDR on a dozen cards at this point, especially for a single-level expansion.
We did what we could in the time available to provide as much of a ball park for everyone as possible. Rest assured that HDR is a very big deal, and it's popping up everywhere now: DoD: Source will have it on Monday, and the Brothers in Arms demo released the other day has it.
Our graphics card guru, Tim, is busy planning future features that examine HDR more closely, so this certainly isn't the last you'll be hearing of it
SM3 supports a more robust HDR by a number of magnitudes, due to the fact that it has an FP16 buffer (which ATI cards do not until the x1800). It also is supposedly easier to code for and runs a hair more efficiently than the SM2 version, but that's to be expected as it's true for nearly all of the SM3/SM2 discussion. Until Valve released Lost Coast info, it was widely accepted that the only HDR in commercial gaming was Far Cry's latest patch, which only supported SM3 cards. So it's not that it's an NVidia mass smear campaign (though since it's been disproven they haven't exactly helped spread that information), it's that nobody figured out how to do the same thing in SM2 until after it was already done in SM3.
However, the difference won't be noticed for many end users, as most current-market TFTs support a max of 1000:1 contrast ratio, and that's for a fairly expensive one (heh heh). So, is a valid misconception to clear up, but not because it was an NV smear campaign...it's because until valve bothered to do it, it wasn't even known to be able to be done.
HDR on DirectX 8.1(!) hardware:
http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/mshdribl/index.html
HDR on DirectX 9 hardware:
http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/index.html
I'm still not sure whether valve's HDR supports less than 2.0b. But I now see where you're coming from. Those are some impressive videos for that old of hardware!
Hi The_Pope
Did you see my Post above about resolutions? :o
Regards
D3lta
Linky.
What catalyst version did you use for the benchs?
you didn't use other cards?
The objects in the Valve's engine can't cast shadows in themselfs or in other object. this is going to change?
It may not be "fast" but it does run, and HDR works just fine - it's what I used to take all the screenshots in my Preview article. So HDR very much does run on SM2 hardware.
How will a 9800Pro fair? It's hard to say for sure, but take whatever FPS you get in HL2 currently and chop off 20-40% it seems - that will give you an idea. Please remember that Lost Coast has high-res textures & models that cause it to run slower than normal.
DoD: Source will be out in < 24 hours, and that has HDR without all the extra OTT eye candy, so that will give you a better idea. HDR has also popped up in Serious Sam 2 and Brothers in Arms - give those demos a go.
Exo: I didn't do the bench testing myself, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow for an answer. I'm personally running Omega Drivers v2.6.25 on my X850XT PE / 2.2 P4.
As for the shadowing issue, I don't have an official answer, but please bear in mind that the code we have is not final. In fact, it will be over a month old by the time Lost Coast is released, so it's possible Valve will fix this issue in that time.
Looks like I was right....shame CrossFire on the X850 sucks.
OK.. Thank you..... ;)
Best Regards