Nvidia GPUs support DX10.1 features in Far Cry 2
Ubisoft has revealed that Far Cry 2 uses DirectX 10.1 to improve AA by reading the multisampled depth buffer. What's interesting is that this is also enabled on all Nvidia DirectX 10 GPUs.
Today, we have gathered some more information from Ubisoft on the implementation and it's quite an interesting one because the capabilities are also enabled on all Nvidia GeForce 8, 9 and GTX 200 GPUs, even though they don't comply with DX10.1's requirements.
"The Ubisoft team wanted to enhance the anti-aliasing through the reading of the multisampled depth Z-buffers, explained Vincent Greco, Worldwide Production Technical Coordinator at Ubisoft. "This feature was enabled by either using DX10.1 or using a DX10.0 extension supported by Nvidia DirectX 10 GPUs."
All of Nvidia's DirectX 10 GPUs support a superset of DX10, but don't fully support all of DirectX 10.1's requirements so Nvidia cannot claim compliance with DX10.1.
When we asked what DirectX 10.1 features Nvidia supported back in May, the company was very cagey, with Tony Tamasi claiming that "the red team will go out and try to get every ISV to implement things that aren't supported [by our GPUs] for competitive reasons. That really isn't good for game developers, Microsoft and also for us too. So I'd rather not say what [DX10.1] features we don't support."
"I can tell you that one thing we support for sure is reading from the multisample depth buffer [with deferred rendering], which right now seems to be the thing that people are finding interesting in 10.1. And so for the ISVs that are doing that, we're supporting them directly [and exposing the feature to them]," explained Tamasi.
So how does this affect performance? "In the case of Far Cry 2, either option will work with similar performance," said Greco.
Stay tuned for our Far Cry 2 review tomorrow - there's also plenty more exciting Far Cry 2 coverage to follow after that as well. In the meantime, feel free to discuss these developments in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyAll DX10.1 is pretty much is, is just a bunch of DX10 commands put together to make a new API. I think there was just 1 little feature that could not be in DX10 and only it doesn't target games, more like CAD and even then.
What I dont get is why does nVidia not care enough about their customers to not add 10.1 support, as it is nVidia could be screwed when Direct X 11 comes out and if they do end up supporting Ray Tracing which nVidia doesnt have the tech capability to implement such a thing into their video cards unlike AMD/ATI and Intel who can, also why nVidia has been bad mouthing Ray Tracing as much as possible because of that mention fact.
Nvidia demoed GPU-accelerated Real-Time Ray Tracing at SIGGRAPH this year... They own both RayScale and Mental Images (the latter's work has been used in animations like Cars) - two specialists in ray tracing technology.
They don't think ray tracing is the future of 3D games - and AMD agrees, frankly. Speaking to both AMD and Nvidia execs about this was interesting, because they've both independently said essentially the same thing. It's only Intel execs that have said something different and I don't believe Intel is the expert when it comes to 3D graphics.
AMD and Nvidia believe in using the right tools for the job and they don't believe a fully ray traced 3D games engine is an intelligent use of resources - it's re-solving a problem that has (mostly) been solved with rasterisation. That's not to say ray tracing will never be used in games, but instead it will be used in combination with rasterisation for reflections on things like curved surfaces. Calculating accurate reflections on flat surfaces is very easy with rasterisation, but it's not when you start involving curved surfaces.
I'd love to benchmark that card!
DX10.1 is mainly higher textures and an improvement in the now for games. Nvidia was foolish to talk smack about something that was a step in the right right direction. They be flippin' and a foppin'
Something is wrong with Nvidia as a whole. They price like crooks, use bad Mccain political tactics, and hate kitties.
I'm still ticked that microsoft hasn't made dx10 for xp and is not going to
We all know why nVidia doesn't support DX10.1, and why DX10 is not in XP. You can't miss either thread, on this forum.
Of course I wasn't in to sign for it, and due to the unique way the mail in bristol works I'm going to to have to get to the depot before work tomorrow morning :( (and then work all day before I can play it), :( x2
I'd almost forgotten why I buy all my games on Steam nowadays
I know I know. I read stuff about it online all the time, but I really like xp and dread vista. Atleast windows 7 is going to be released in a year or two.