View Full Version : I think Nvidia and ATi should slow down
Think about it, when in the hell are we going to use DX 9???? not any time soon, nothin will push the maxium out of ATi or Nvidia Cards...why don't they slow down for 6 months then release a BIG beast.....
There was a press release a while back the nVidia and ATi were going to (eventually) slow to 1 year cycles. However, if they stopped now, and waited for games to catch up, they would be totaly obsolete cards and probably couldnt play the first DX 9 game. I personally think the 6 month cycles are good because it furthers the gaming market quite a bit. The more they release cards, the sooner we will have DX 9 based games available (of DX 8 even, heh)
Black_Paladin
03-27-03, 04:12 PM
That's right! Remember that it's always the games pushing the video cards, not the other way around. ;)
Even if you make the argument that you can play current games at very high resolutions with 100+ fps, this changes when you turn on 4x anti-aliasing and 8x anisoptric filtering.
We already know that this will become even more true as games such as Doom III hit the shelves (and I think Doom III will finally be hitting the shelves soon).
I don't think even the fastest cards today will be able to provide very high frame rates in Doom III type games (the game might run smooth, I'm just saying not very high frame rates) at high resolutions with 4x anti-aliasing 8x anisoptric filtering.
The thing is, I don't think games that come after Doom III will be less demanding either.
Like Evnas said, I think a 6 month cycle is good and the introduction of new cards benefit the consumer the most as the older cards drop in price.
You DON'T have to buy the every new card that comes out. If you don't think you need a new card, just don't buy it. But remember that every new card introduced will drive the prices of the older cards down. As a result, I don't think anyone should be complaining about the short intervals between the cards introduced.
CSaddict
03-27-03, 04:15 PM
I think they should increase speed of releasing cards! That way people want to always upgrade and I can buy the slower, still way fast stuff for dirt! Hurray for speed of release! As long as you guys stay up with the Jones I will always get a great deal on a kick ass video card.:D
ninthebin
03-27-03, 04:24 PM
think people have already made point of this...when DX9 games come out that will take "advantage" of 3D chipsets that support it the card will be horribly out of date...lets take UT2003 for example, it uses some DX8 (apprently mostly DX7) yet can strain DX8.1 based cards unless they are backed up by a significantly beefy processor
I personally think the 6 month cycles are good because it furthers the gaming market quite a bit.
thats and even with 6 month cycles its the best part of the year until you can actually get your hands on the next best thing, so lets not have them slacking with a years gap
funnyperson1
03-27-03, 04:38 PM
Originally posted by CSaddict
I think they should increase speed of releasing cards! That way people want to always upgrade and I can buy the slower, still way fast stuff for dirt! Hurray for speed of release! As long as you guys stay up with the Jones I will always get a great deal on a kick ass video card.:D
word :p couldnt have said it better.
AmigoThree
03-27-03, 04:43 PM
I wouldnt worry about it, just because a card comes out every 6 months doesnt mean that you have to buy it. Skip a cycle or two.
Black_Paladin
03-27-03, 04:44 PM
It's so nice when we all agree on something. :)
a first thought was telling me that a slowdown would be okay, but all your points are quite convincing... Anyway game developers should take advantage of hardware features faster, it just sounds stupid we are still playing on quake3 like games with huge ass textures :mad:
DDR-PIII
03-27-03, 05:55 PM
whats the cycle now ? 3 months ? haha :) im not complaing :)
Hehehe true true....like cars, if they came out with a new model of cars only every 2-3 years, used cars would be expensive...
There area always guys who want the latest and greatest..for me 30fps + is fine...which is why a MX440 or a Radeon 7000 is good. It keeps older video cards cheap for us =)
Captain Hilts
03-27-03, 07:19 PM
Those are all good points, and it is good for the consumer if the companies are at eachothers' throats, trying to out-do eachother.
The problem is that it may not be sustainable for the industry in the long run. It becomes difficult for the companies to recoup all those R&D costs. Just take a look at ATi, even though they've had their best product ever over the past nine months are so, they still haven't had great financial results to go along with it.
And if they product cycles still stay at six months, what happens when you miss and screw up a product cycle? nVidia was able to get away with this because they were in such a strong position to begin with, but what if it happened to ATi? Same goes for the CPUs, look what happened to AMD when they just had some yield problems with the Tbreds for just a few months. It severely drained their resources and has put them in a comprimising financial position that they have yet to recover from.
Stuff like this is inevitable with short product cycles and high R&D costs. One mistake can kill you, leaving only one main producer in the industry.
I'm not saying that they should lengthen the product cycle, I don't even know if that's really possible for them to do without it being collusion. I'm just saying that there can be negative consequences in the long run because of it. What they should be doing is diversifying their product line, protecting themselves from getting killed because of one mistake. I think both companies are on their way to doing that, but still have a long way to go.
Black_Paladin
03-27-03, 08:09 PM
Originally posted by Captain Hilts
Those are all good points, and it is good for the consumer if the companies are at eachothers' throats, trying to out-do eachother.
The problem is that it may not be sustainable for the industry in the long run. It becomes difficult for the companies to recoup all those R&D costs. Just take a look at ATi, even though they've had their best product ever over the past nine months are so, they still haven't had great financial results to go along with it.
And if they product cycles still stay at six months, what happens when you miss and screw up a product cycle? nVidia was able to get away with this because they were in such a strong position to begin with, but what if it happened to ATi? Same goes for the CPUs, look what happened to AMD when they just had some yield problems with the Tbreds for just a few months. It severely drained their resources and has put them in a comprimising financial position that they have yet to recover from.
Stuff like this is inevitable with short product cycles and high R&D costs. One mistake can kill you, leaving only one main producer in the industry.
I'm not saying that they should lengthen the product cycle, I don't even know if that's really possible for them to do without it being collusion. I'm just saying that there can be negative consequences in the long run because of it. What they should be doing is diversifying their product line, protecting themselves from getting killed because of one mistake. I think both companies are on their way to doing that, but still have a long way to go.
True, true. I would hate to see either ATI or AMD miss a product cycle (well AMD actually kinda has with Hammer). That would really mess up these companies if not kill them.
6 months or 1 year doesn't mean anything to me, but the price does.
599 $ for the best card in the market?
I don't think so....
bafbrian
03-27-03, 10:17 PM
A 6 month cycle is way better and it allows for more competition and it forces game companies to go with DX9 now.
Like Black Paladin said, it is games pushing the vid cards, not the other way around, it if was imagine what would happen to game companies and vid card companies ? Weird
gahdzila
03-27-03, 11:28 PM
because folks addicted to 3dmark are gonna buy those latest-greatest video cards as soon as they come out. There is a market for a faster-than-it-was-six-months-ago video card...people do buy them, or else they wouldn't sell them.
I think they should increase speed of releasing cards! That way people want to always upgrade and I can buy the slower, still way fast stuff for dirt! Hurray for speed of release! As long as you guys stay up with the Jones I will always get a great deal on a kick ass video card.
I couldn't agree more!
Originally posted by bafbrian
A 6 month cycle is way better and it allows for more competition and it forces game companies to go with DX9 now.
Like Black Paladin said, it is games pushing the vid cards, not the other way around, it if was imagine what would happen to game companies and vid card companies ? Weird
The video cards push the games, and the games push the video cards...its a mutual thing. The faster, and more feature-rich the value cards are now, the sooner we will see the features in games (in roughly 2 years). The GF4 MX cards are a MAJOR reason we still have 90% DX 7 based games. Now that nVidia did something smart in their value based cards (add "DX 9 support", if u want to really call it that, heh), it will push DX 9 into the value market faster, and thus into games faster
Originally posted by PhobMX
... Anyway game developers should take advantage of hardware features faster, it just sounds stupid we are still playing on quake3 like games with huge ass textures :mad:
Do we have to get into "Game Developers won't make a game that 75% of the market can't play." (High End Games) It's just not feasible. They will make games that over 75% of the market CAN play. 75% of the market does not have a Ti4200 128mb or better.
EDIT: PS: I am just pulling these numbers out of my azz, don't spam me if they are totally incorrect. You get the idea.
Michfan
03-28-03, 08:59 AM
Doom 3 is going to push the DX9 envelope even further once its released. Just look at the Quake 3 engine and how many other software developers have licensed it off of ID. The same will happen with Doom 3. You will see so many variations of the gaming engine running DX 9 specs from other gaming developers in a short period of time because alot of the work is already coded for them. Not to mention Quake 4 is due out later this year also. Another game that is going to push the envelope even further.
Originally posted by Hurk
Do we have to get into "Game Developers won't make a game that 75% of the market can't play." (High End Games) It's just not feasible. They will make games that over 75% of the market CAN play. 75% of the market does not have a Ti4200 128mb or better.
EDIT: PS: I am just pulling these numbers out of my azz, don't spam me if they are totally incorrect. You get the idea.
i agree with you dude, but think about it, if game developers keep the compatibility, technologies arent gonna be used and therefor nobody will upgrade their video cards. I think it was a big step when they finaly discontinued tnt2 cards support with the T&L thingy (anyway people where i live still think tnt2 is kickass :rolleyes: ). GF4 mx should've never been released IMO, geforce3s where all dx 8.1 compliant and that was a switch to the right direction, but its dumb that gf4mx owners feel the same level than gf4 4600 ones just because of the name.
To make it short, if hardware manufacturers stick to crap, game developers are going to keep making just that, crap games
Niels W K
03-28-03, 05:23 PM
Heh also agree on the shorter intervals.
Like fast stuff cheap.
Which reminds me of that it is soon time to upgrade the Mobo to a NForce2 ;)
Originally posted by PhobMX
but think about it, if game developers keep the compatibility, technologies arent gonna be used and therefore nobody will upgrade their video cards.
To make it short, if hardware manufacturers stick to crap, game developers are going to keep making just that, crap games
How are we so far in the gaming world? How did we come to ATI Radeon 9700 Pro's and more. How are we able to see things in 3D on a flat surface? How can we fly a plane, shoot a mobster, Battle with HUNDREDS of soldiers at a time on 1 screen. How can we do anything now, that we couldn't do 3 years ago. It's evolving quicker than we think. I bought a top of the line ATI 8500 less than a year ago. I need to upgrade because the games are already pushing my video card. Don't be concerned with the game devolopers... they are pushing and pushing...
yes they do, but not in the right direction, i mean, there are lots of very eficient 3d engines out there that run with cool detail even on "old" video cards. Examples like max payne and serious sam which have l337 framerates and texture quality, even with a gf3 at 1024x768. I believe that if game developers rely on newer tech, their programs will use better the features of the hardware thus better quality with kinda lower processing power.
Ugmore Baggage
03-29-03, 10:39 AM
Originally posted by PhobMX
a first thought was telling me that a slowdown would be okay, but all your points are quite convincing... Anyway game developers should take advantage of hardware features faster, it just sounds stupid we are still playing on quake3 like games with huge ass textures :mad:
What kind of games you been playin? Most of my games use huge face textures.
Originally posted by PhobMX
yes they do, but not in the right direction, i mean, there are lots of very eficient 3d engines out there that run with cool detail even on "old" video cards. Examples like max payne and serious sam which have l337 framerates and texture quality, even with a gf3 at 1024x768. I believe that if game developers rely on newer tech, their programs will use better the features of the hardware thus better quality with kinda lower processing power.
But then we refer to the other post, where game developers won't be making a game for "the majority", they'd be making them for the people with anything Ti4200's/ATI 8500's and better. It's a catch 22, they could make games like that, but won't make money on doing so.
alexhuzar
03-30-03, 12:15 AM
Doom 3 is going to push the DX9 envelope even further once its released. Just look at the Quake 3 engine and how many other software developers have licensed it off of ID. The same will happen with Doom 3. You will see so many variations of the gaming engine running DX 9 specs from other gaming developers in a short period of time because alot of the work is already coded for them. Not to mention Quake 4 is due out later this year also. Another game that is going to push the envelope even further.
Dood, Doom 3 is gonna be a OpenGL-based game...just like all the other games released by ID Software.
Black_Paladin
03-30-03, 12:17 AM
Originally posted by alexhuzar
Dood, Doom 3 is gonna be a OpenGL-based game...just like all the other games released by ID Software.
Bingo!
EDIT: By the same token, Quake 4 will also be an OpenGL based game.
alexhuzar
03-30-03, 12:40 AM
One more thing. Here are some deadlines:
Eve Online (http://www.eve-online.com/) - May 6 *
Doom 3 - June
NV 35 - June-July
NV 40 - Q4 2003 - Q1 2004
Duke Nukem Forever - ???
*NOTE: I am currently beta-testing EVE and I can tell you that in the game with many objects in the same space as you, even my system which scores 11, 000 in 3D Mark 2001, I can have as low as 3-5 fps.
There's gonna be lots of games out there that will really push even cards like the 9800 PRO to their limit and beyond.
Black_Paladin
03-30-03, 12:50 AM
*NOTE: I am currently beta-testing EVE and I can tell you that in the game with many objects in the same space as you, even my system which scores 11, 000 in 3D Mark 2001, I can have as low as 3-5 fps.
Well, since you are using the Beta version, the 3-5 fps you are getting is by no means any indication of what fps you will be getting from the final version of this game.
As several people already said, game developers try to cater to the the biggest market segment possible and the biggest market segment is made up of people that have low to average graphics cards.
People that pay $300+ for a graphics card make up only about the 5% of the population. Do you think the game developers would make a game only this 5% of the population can play? (obviously 3-5fps is totally unplayable for any game)
alexhuzar
03-30-03, 01:53 AM
No, there have been some interviews with the developers and the beta testers and the general mood is that EVE is going to be a game that will be there for 2-3 years and will still be able to majorly drain the resources of any system.
There will be one or two expansion packs in the future which might probably tweak the 3D engine so that things look better and require more speed.
Right now 95% of the time you will get 20-40 fps while playing the game if you have a minumum of 1 GHz CPU and a GeForce 2 ULTRA and 256 MB RAM.
What will slow down the game is events created by the Game Moderators that will require hundreds of players flying their ships to one area. Think about it...MILLIONS of polygons (1, 000-10, 000 poly's per ship)(let's not even talk about the space stations which can easily have over 100 000 poly's). Such events will probably occur only once a week and do not require player participation.
What is needed for this game is raw GPU power. Highly pipelined GPU's with a high MHz is what this game will be driving. Just take a look for yourself and think about what the processing requirements are:
http://www.eve-online.com/bitmaps/img/weekly/rogue.jpg
This is no joke...once you get a lot closer, the stations are about 100 times longer than your ship. The developers of this game don't much care if you can't play this game right now if you don't meet the requirements (DX 9 required, pixel and vertex sharers required, GeForce 2 ULTRA or higher required).
No one using the Quake 3 engine anymore, but to compromise, the new UT 2003 engine isn't using even 25% of it's potential. Just look at it...Unreal 2 and UT 2003 both use lots of poly's but the textures are extremely low-res. If it weren't for pixel and vertex shaders the game would look like $h*t. Even thou I can barely squeeze out 30 fps at 1600x1200 with everything maxed (no FSAA or Aniso) my friend with his GF4 MX card which can pump out 7,000 points on 3D Mark 2001 can also get 25-30 fps.
The point to all of this is that if game developers want to release a product that will truly compete then they don't much have to care about what kind of hardware most people have. They are releasing something with high requirements because they know that eventually everyone has to upgrade and when the people finally do upgrade they will buy their product and play it. So in the end they make more money then someone who releases a game that everyone can run but the *hype* goes away after you've played it once. For example...person A buys a game like Ghost Recon, then plays it. He finishes it in hard mode in about 5 hours. Then he goes back to playing BF 1942 or Counter Strike because those games have long-term potential. Even thou Ghost Recon has some purdy graphics, they are only negligeably better than Counter Strike and the replay value of Ghost Recon is horrible.
Think about it...Counter Strike...the 2-nd most played online game (after BF 1942) still uses the Half-Life engine. The engine was too much for a lot of people at the time it was released (and still is for people who refuse to upgrade).
This is why game engines that require awesome computing power will always make the most $$$ and will last for years. The people who don't upgrade face an extreme amount of peer pressure and pressure from the media (which tells them how great the product is).
In the end, people with high-end cards can play any game out there and will be anxiously waiting for something that will be able to slow them down, and the people who want to play the latest games will either have to compromise image quality for minimum playable fps or upgrade their hardware.
I have a GF 4 Ti 4200 and still haven't found a game that will drop my fps below 30 (with the exception of EVE which still is a beta so it does not really count). So right now the hardware is pushing the software, but once EVE and Doom 3 come out, it will be the software pushing the hardware. Also anyone who played Unreal 2 will be able to tell everyone how amazing the enviroment can look using the UT 2003 engine, but will be also able to say how much better the graphics could be. And once we do see games that will do to UT 2003 what Return To Castle Wolfenstein did to the Quake 3 engine, then there will be a real drive to upgrade hardware.
The GF FX flagship software, the Dawn demo (the half-naked forest fairy), which computes the skin colour based on the amount of blood under the skin, and oiliness is a good sign of what we will be seeing by Q1 2004. So for anyone who thinks that (any) GF 4 card or equivalent is going to be enough after Doom 3 is released, then they are sorely mistaken.
i agree with alex, as long as software developers dont FORCE the crap sixpacks to get rif of their uber mxs, we wont see a true sweetspot between hardware and software. Think about this, PC gaming industry is well stablished by now, not so many ppl play from consoles online so thats a strong point on the PC gaming market. If the joes really need a good gfx card to play the best game out there they will shell out the money for both the card and the game.
i think they should just cust costs so a top of the line vid card doesn't cost $400.
I would love if vid cards costed $300 when they first came out, and i think companies would get a lot more people buying it that way.
Black_Paladin
03-30-03, 03:16 PM
Well, I disagree and for several reasons.
For one thing, you are conflicting yourself when you say:
DX 9 required, pixel and vertex sharers required,
and
GeForce 2 ULTRA or higher required
Last I checked, GeForce 2 and even GeForce 4MX cards didn't have even DX 8 support!! These cards don't support vertex and pixel shaders! Remember 3DMark2001SE? Remember the nature demo? Remember the bump mapping and the pixel shader demos? That's right, GeForce 2 and GeForce 4MX cards can't play these demos.
And you are talking about DX9 being required. OK, then your *minumum* requirements would have to be either a 9500 non-pro or a GeForce FX 5200. These are the cards that support DX9.
Second: No, there have been some interviews with the developers and the beta testers and the general mood is that EVE is going to be a game that will be there for 2-3 years and will still be able to majorly drain the resources of any system.
I would like to read or hear that interview. As you can realize, 2-3 years is a *VERY* long time. Let me put it this way: In the year of our lord 2000, at the end of April, we have 2 graphics cards being announced. One is GeForce 2 GTS and the other is Radeon 256.
Take a look here: http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20000427/index.html
And here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20000425/index.html
OK, so roughly 3 years ago, the GeForce 2 GTS cards were just coming out. Any idea about how faster the graphics cards have become since then? I don't think I need to tell you here that a Radeon 9500 pro will sweep the floor with a GeForce 2 GTS let alone a 9800 pro or a 5800 Ultra.
Not only that, but the graphics industry is even more heated now than 3 years ago. Product cycles having gone down to 6 months, we have faster and faster cards being introduced to the market faster than ever before. Furthermore, the performance gap between the cards introduced are also beginning to widen. For instance, the 9700 pro almost doubled the performance of the Ti4600 cards when it was announced. 3 Years ago, when the GeForce 2 GTS was announced, its performance certainly didn't double the performance of the card before it.
So your logic is faulty. Why? It's because 3 years from NOW, you are saying that this game will still:drain the resources of *ANY* system. as you put it. That's a bold argument. No, a very BOLD argument because 3 years from now, the Radeon 9700 cards we have now won't even be the GeForce 2 GTS cards to what the 9700 pro cards are to the GeForce 2 GTS cards now. Whatever comes out as the top card in 3 years will simply make the 9700 pro look like the original GeForce. AND WITH THAT CARD *AND* the CPUs (don't forget that a 3.06Ghz P4 will be cheap as dirt 3 years from now so you can expect even Joe Sixpacks to have one) in year 2006, you are saying that this game will still be pushing the top systems. What a joke!!! *IF* this was the case and this game could do that then logic dictates that NO SYSTEM right now could begin to handle this game.
And you go tell us that a GeForce 2 Ultra should be able to play this game (I'm assuming that when you list the minimum requirements, you are referring to equipment that will give you more than 3-5fps and more like 30fps at least) when the card doesn't even support DX8.
But there is more: They are releasing something with high requirements because they know that eventually everyone has to upgrade and when the people finally do upgrade they will buy their product and play it. So in the end they make more money then someone who releases a game that everyone can run but the *hype* goes away after you've played it once.
Well, first of, I don't see how the replayibility of a game figures into your argument here. You start by saying that the developers will be releasing a game early at which point nobody can play it and then say that this is because the game is very replayable??!!
I don't see the correllation here. What will happen if the game developers release a game right now nobody could play above 3-5 fps is that very few people will buy the game initially because of its hype and realising how bad the game runs on their machines, these people will tell everybody they know not to buy it. Needless to say, all the game reviews will be ripping the game apart left and right as well. AND 3 YEARS DOWN THE LINE, do you think that the price of this game could still remain the same? I mean who would play $50+ for a game that is 3 years old for god's sake!! How is this helping the game developers make more money??!!
But this keeps going:
The point to all of this is that if game developers want to release a product that will truly compete then they don't much have to care about what kind of hardware most people have.
I can't even begin to tell you how wrong this is! Game developers DO want to sell their game to as many people as they can WHEN THE GAME IS RELEASED! *NOT* 3 years down the line. You say they don't care, eh? So maybe these guys are thinking: "Yeah, this game will sell to people with Prometias and overclocked P4s running at 4Ghz and overclocked 9800pros so we should be able to make a couple hundred bucks at least by selling this game a handful of people". Yeah? We'll see about that.
I have a GF 4 Ti 4200 and still haven't found a game that will drop my fps below 30
You're right about that one! I don't think this game will be an exception either. You might need to sacrifice image quality, yes but that applies to all games. If you list a GeForce 2 Ultra as the minimum requirement, this means to me that if you turn down all the eye candy, you should be able to get at least 30+ with even this card. NEEDLESS TO SAY, a ti4200 is a far better card than the GeForce 2 Ultra. As a result, you should be able to play this game FINE with possibly reduced settings. People with 9700pro should be able to play this game with *ALL* the eye candy turned on. And 3 years down the line, everybody with a moderate system will be able to play this game with all the eye candy turned on.
You gave the example of Counter-Strike. Do you even know what game engine it uses? It uses a highly modified Quake II engine. There is nothing revolutinary about that. By the time Counter-Strike got released, Quake III has been on the market for some time now so the game had nothing to do with having a great engine that would last.
The GF FX flagship software, the Dawn demo (the half-naked forest fairy), which computes the skin colour based on the amount of blood under the skin, and oiliness is a good sign of what we will be seeing by Q1 2004. So for anyone who thinks that (any) GF 4 card or equivalent is going to be enough after Doom 3 is released, then they are sorely mistaken.
I say it is you who is sorely mistaken. You got all your facts wrong and I am willing to make a bet about whether a GeForce 4 will be sufficient for Doom III or not.
For god's sake man, you make the GeForce 4 look like a dinasour. It was nVidia's top of the line card before they released their GeForce FX cards. AND the GeForce FX cards have problems and they beat the GeForce 4 cards only when they eye candy is turned on. Other than that, the FX cards lose to or are on par with the Ti4200 cards (with all eye candy turned off).
Well, if you were right about this game and Doom3, them stressing the cards so much, I guess you can forget about running them with 4x AA and 8x AF. And IF you are not running this kind of eye-candy, how is a GeForce 4 so much worse than a GeForce FX? Cinematic effects my ass! :rolleyes:
Dragonprince
03-30-03, 06:05 PM
Originally posted by alexhuzar
Dood, Doom 3 is gonna be a OpenGL-based game...just like all the other games released by ID Software.
Dood
Open-GL and DX access the same hardware, they just use a different programing language to do it. Open-GL doesnt run new games on old hardware or no one would be writing DX games....;)
Originally posted by alexhuzar
Just look at it...Unreal 2 and UT 2003 both use lots of poly's but the textures are extremely low-res. If it weren't for pixel and vertex shaders the game would look like $h*t.
Umm, actually the Unreal 2 engine only uses shaders in a VERY, VERY tiny bit to help OUTSIDE rendering...the engine is 98% DX 7. And the shaders arent there for visual purpose, as they dont help that at all. (in the Unreal 2 engine that is)
Originally posted by alexhuzar
No, there have been some interviews with the developers and the beta testers and the general mood is that EVE is going to be a game that will be there for 2-3 years and will still be able to majorly drain the resources of any system.
Impossible...they dont know what wil be available in 2 - 3 years. Now, the engine might last 2 - 3 years...but Carmack predicts the Doom 3 engine will be around for 4 - 5 years...now whats that say ;)
alexhuzar
03-30-03, 06:24 PM
Last I checked, GeForce 2 and even GeForce 4MX cards didn't have even DX 8 support!!
You don't need to have a DX9 compatable card to play EVE, you just need to have DX9 installed. It will revert to the 1.x pixel and vertex shaders. This is not what you want, but at least you'll be able to play. If you got DX8 installed the game just won't run.
You're right about that one! I don't think this game will be an exception either. You might need to sacrifice image quality, yes but that applies to all games. If you list a GeForce 2 Ultra as the minimum requirement, this means to me that if you turn down all the eye candy, you should be able to get at least 30+ with even this card. NEEDLESS TO SAY, a ti4200 is a far better card than the GeForce 2 Ultra. As a result, you should be able to play this game FINE with possibly reduced settings. People with 9700pro should be able to play this game with *ALL* the eye candy turned on. And 3 years down the line, everybody with a moderate system will be able to play this game with all the eye candy turned on.
I play ALL my games at 1600x1200 with everything to max with FSAA and aniso. turned off.
Originally posted by alexhuzar
You don't need to have a DX9 compatable card to play EVE, you just need to have DX9 installed. It will revert to the 1.x pixel and vertex shaders. This is not what you want, but at least you'll be able to play. If you got DX8 installed the game just won't run.
The GF2 and GF4MX dont have and shaders at all, so its kinda hard to revert to 1.x shaders ;)
alexhuzar
03-30-03, 06:34 PM
Then they just emulate the shaders and use software mode which is much slower.
Black_Paladin
03-30-03, 07:49 PM
You don't need to have a DX9 compatable card to play EVE, you just need to have DX9 installed. It will revert to the 1.x pixel and vertex shaders. This is not what you want, but at least you'll be able to play. If you got DX8 installed the game just won't run.
Well, Evnas already said what I was going to say about this with:
The GF2 and GF4MX dont have and shaders at all, so its kinda hard to revert to 1.x shaders
And you are saying:
Then they just emulate the shaders and use software mode which is much slower.
Do you even realize what you are saying here? First of all, from your post, it sounds to me like this game will be using pixel and vertex shaders extensively. If so, then let me tell you right away that a GeForce2 Ultra *WILL NOT* be able to give you 30fps at even 800x600 with minimum detail settings.
Let me put it this way so things maybe come in to perspective for you: I can run the Nature demo in 3DMark 2001 SE by emulating pixel and vertex shaders on my Voodoo 5 5500.
Do you have any idea whatsoever how slow the demo runs when I do that?
A game that requires so much power that it will be stressing systems even 3 years after it gets released and the minumum requirements for this game require a GeForce 2 Ultra AND this card will use software emulated pixel and vertex shaders to give you 30 fps????
IMPOSSIBLE. Just sit down for a minute and think about what you are saying.
Also, I don't understand what you mean by this:
I play ALL my games at 1600x1200 with everything to max with FSAA and aniso. turned off.
Are you then admitting that Doom III and this game of yours will should run just fine on your card?
EDIT: Also this makes no sense to me:
You don't need to have a DX9 compatable card to play EVE, you just need to have DX9 installed.
Why?? If a card doesn't have DirectX 9 compatibility and won't be able to use DX9 functions, what good will installing DX9 do???
Take a look at Splinter Cell. The game supports DX9 but you don't have to have DX9 installed to run it. You CAN run the game with DX8.
Black_Paladin
03-30-03, 07:54 PM
Hey Alex, do you work the company that is making this Eve game? ;)
madcow235
03-30-03, 08:05 PM
I can see a few games coming out soon that will push graphics cards to the limit. They are:
Planetside so many people so many polygons so much lighting and trees and omg my card just melted :)
Star Wars Galaxies just like eq(shudder) pushed cards when it came out this will push them too it supposedly has huge textures.
Eve Online its been said by someone in this thread why
And FINALLY THE REASON WE ALL EXIST
Doom ]|[ mainly because that ]|[ is so much fun to make
Sure its good that games are getting better graphics, but I always stop and think how better many games could have been if they focused more on gameplay and less on graphics........ I mean there are plenty of great games and many which have great looking graphics and gameplay, but there is quiet a few games which are horrible, yet they look amazing. Im sure much of this is because small devolpers with small teams dont have enough people to have both... and they often leave one out in the cold.. Lots of games have horrible graphics, but are very very good games.
I think they need to slow down a tad so devolpers wont be trying to get perfect graphics and totally forget about the gameplay. If every new game tried to look as good as quake there would only be a few good games.
alexhuzar
04-01-03, 06:30 AM
Originally posted by Black_Paladin
Hey Alex, do you work the company that is making this Eve game? ;)
No, but I'm a very active beta tester. EVE gets a new build version almost every day. I joined the beta just before new years 2003 and the build then was 742 and now it's 985. The funny thing is that there was a build using EACH AND EVERY number and NO they did not ever skip any numbers. (If you do the math then you will realize that there were days where they had as many as 10-15 new builds. So yes...the developers are keeping busy. ;))
We have frequent community discussions with the developers on IRC and these events have no less than 300 people every time they happen. We had a LONG discussion on why they decided to switch to DX9 in the middle of development. The two reasons were that it was easier to work with for implementing new technologies, and the second reason was to make sure the game was future-proof.
I'm sorry to brag about EVE but I just like it so much. It's the first game released in a LONG time that is as intricate as this. It has many bugs, but now there are a lot less of them since I joined the beta. The game is extremely addictive and it's one of those games that you can play for on and on without getting bored.
alexhuzar
04-01-03, 06:33 AM
By the way...the only people having problems with this game (graphics problems I mean) are the people with ATI cards. Most notourious are: 8500, 9700. Just shows how much quality and care ATI put into the manufacture of their products.
Originally posted by alexhuzar
By the way...the only people having problems with this game (graphics problems I mean) are the people with ATI cards. Most notourious are: 8500, 9700. Just shows how much quality and care ATI put into the manufacture of their products.
Actually, ive noticed ATi has much better quality in terms of parts used on their cards. (hell, ive seen water cooling systems leak all over the thing, and it came out working fine.)
IMO, that just goes to show u the quality of programing done on that game :rolleyes:
Black_Paladin
04-01-03, 10:25 AM
Originally posted by alexhuzar
By the way...the only people having problems with this game (graphics problems I mean) are the people with ATI cards. Most notourious are: 8500, 9700. Just shows how much quality and care ATI put into the manufacture of their products.
You know, m8, you just picked a horrible, horrible place to rip out on ATI cards. :D
But really, ATI *used to* have bad drivers AND bad cards but neither of these things are true anymore.
If you read the GeForce FX reviews (especially the 5200 and 5600 reviews) you'll see that it is now nVidia that has given up on quality and care they are putting into *their* products. For instance:
1- Whole bunch of effects missing on Splinter Cell
2- Problems with games using Anisoptric Filtering
3- Hacked drivers that don't make use of FX cards' 128 bit full floating point precision AND sacrifice image quality settings only to get better scores in 3DMark
There is more but you get the idea. ATI cards may be still far from perfect but at this time there is no question as to their quality.
Darkseid
04-01-03, 01:18 PM
you guys are forgetting something, you can emulate vertex shaders with your cpu, but you canīt do it with pixel shaders!! if they are no present in the gpu you canīt use them, period.
Black_Paladin
04-01-03, 03:12 PM
Originally posted by Darkseid
you guys are forgetting something, you can emulate vertex shaders with your cpu, but you canīt do it with pixel shaders!! if they are no present in the gpu you canīt use them, period.
Good point!
But even when you emulate Vertex Shaders, you get *really* low frame rates unless you got one monster of a CPU so I think it's worthless to emulate vertex shaders for practical purposes.
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