surfhurleydude
07-23-03, 07:15 PM
Wow.... Interesting info... one word...DENIAL!
BMore:
Why is it when you pause the beta test version of 3dmark03 and move about the environment at will, you can see massive clipping errors caused by unrendered content? (drivers 44.03)
nvidia_brian
The issues in ExtremeTech's article were a combination of the two. Some of the visual anomalies turned out to be bugs; others were aggressive optimizations. We make no secret of the fact that we are doing optimizations for 3DMark 2003. We have always maintained we would, but feel it was an unfortunate waste of time as it doesn't benefit games. We would certainly prefer to spend all of our energy optimizing games people play, as it ultimately benefits the users. Unfortunately, I think it is safe to say all GPU manufacturers tune for benchmarks.
BMoore:
It is said, nVidia automatically disabled FSAA even if you turned it on in the Control Panel for the game Splinter Cell. Although changing the name of the executable to something else other than Splinter Cell.exe would get your FSAA working, you will notice lots of artifacts and texture corruptions. Is this true? Why?
nvidia_brian:
We specifically disable AA at the request of the developer. The developer uses a glow methodology that is incompatible with AA. ATi does allow AA to be forced on, but ATi then suffers from a "glow through walls" artifact. This is why we disable AA for splinter Cell. The publisher suggests disabling AA on GeForce and Radeon video cards for this same reason on their support web site: [URL at ubi-soft's website]
nvidia_steve:
That is not exactly true. Our Multi-sampling works fine.
JBaker:
When are the Det 50's coming out?
nvidia_brian:
We can not comment on unannounced products, sorry.
Ageorgis:
Is nVidia working with Valve to create a solution to the Half Life 2 anti aliasing problems? If so, what is nVidia doing to remedy these problems? The most obvious thing I can think of is enabling super sampling in the drivers, but by using atuner to force 4x Super Sampling in programs, the performance is simply not up to par.
nvidia_brian:
As HL2 is not yet shipping, nothing is set in stone. Our engineers continue to work closely with the HL2 development team and the reason we do this, not just with Valve but with many leading developers, is to ensure that any issues discovered in the coding processs can be rectified, ensuring the final product looks great and plays great on our hardware.
Ageorgis:
As I understand, a representative of nVidia has confirmed Pixel Shader 2.0 problems in the latest drivers. If these are problems with the drivers, will they be "fixed" in future drivers so that the increase is across the board or only in certain programs? If they are truly "fixed", will I be able to zoom in to a screenshot and notice the exact same pixel quality as reference DX9 screenshots and those of ATi cards (which are the same as DX9 reference shots)?
nvidia_steve:
No one has confirmed any PS 2.0 problem on our hardware. Given that we have a different GPU architecture from ATI we do not create the exact same image pixel.
jhinkley:
Can we expect any new features with upcoming drivers?
nvidia_brian:
We are always looking to add new features to our Detonator software package. I think you will be pelased when you see our future software releases.
jhutchinson:
NVDVD 2.0 Rocks! Uh, that's a statement........
JBaker:
Does the 5900 Ultra perform better at higher resolutions than lower one. B/c i get FPS slowdowns on relatively old games but the max res. i can play at is 1024x768
nvidia_steve:
The performance delta is larger at higher resolutions, although it should perform just fine at lower resolutions.
jhutchinson:
What's up with all the leaked drivers and why hasn't nvidia posted even a beta driver in months?
nvidia_brian:
We are working on a new software release. Expect one very, very soon. On leaked drivers, we do driver drops several times a day for a lot of different reasons. We send one-off drivers to developers, OEMs, AIC makers and other third party's. The leaked drivers may come from a third party.
Ageorgis:
As to the statement of not being able to produce the same exact pixel as ATi, if ATi can produce the same exact image pixel quality as the Direct X 9 Reference, then if the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra follows Direct x 9 specs, it should therefore be able to provide the same pixel image as the DX 9 reference image, and in turn the ATi card, correct?
nvidia_brian:
key word is "if". A diff image will show you that neither ATi nor NVIDIA images match RefRast images pixel for pixel.
ddrake:
would you ask if they have any idea about the flicker problem that some of us are having?
nvidia_steve:
The EVGA guys have filed a bug with us and we are looking into it now. These types of things take time to track down since everyone's configuration is different in the retail space. We will let the eVGA guys know as soon as we find something.
JBaker:
Will the NV40 use PCI Express and will there be any significant performance gain over the current AGP standard?
nvidia_steve:
Can't comment on NV40. PCI express could help in a number of ways due to being able to transfer data in both directions as well as being scalable to higher transfer rates.
JBaker:
Can you comment on any plans nVidia has for AMD 64 or is this strictly graphics cards? (BTW i have an nForce 2 and I love it)
nvidia_brian:
Thanks much for the support and kind words. It goes without saying that we are working closely with AMD on their upcoming technologies.
CPermatteo:
What is the "normal" temperature at which the 5900 Ultra 256 should idle at? And what would be the highest temperature the card can withstand?
nvidia_steve:
Your card should fine just running idle (ie. desktop)
jhinkley:
What is nvidia's future stance on optimization in drivers? Some websites reported that the 44.90 driver doesn't anymore have application specific optimizations... Is it true and if not, will future optimizations change image quality or just enhance performance?
nvidia_brian:
Optimizations must produce the correct image, and must accelerate the normal running of the application, not just the benchmark mode. In our view, if an optimization produce the correct picture it is beneficial to the end user and is legitamite. If a change in the driver does not produce...[blah blah blah, you all know the same PR Crap, maybe I'll add the actual stuff that was said, but you're not missing much]
JBaker:
It has been rumored that Futuremark might create a demo for a future nVidia card, is this true?
nvidia_brian:
haven't heard this rumor before.
JBaker:
Are any of the NV guys avid gamers, If so what are the favorite games around there and do these preferences influence any work on developing cards or driver optimizations?
nvidia_steve:
Yes, we are gamers. No it doesn't affect what we work on in terms of working with developers. I am a big on warcraft III (and FT expansion), and Splinter Cell right now.
rcartagena:
Do you know when nVidia will release the 50 detonator drivers?
evga_joe:
Neither we nor nVidia can comment on unannounced products - sorry.
Ageorgis:
How will nVidia respond to the upcoming R360 chipset offered by ATi?
evga_joe:
I imagine that nVidia has its own plans for development that don't necessarily revolve around responding to other companies.
JBaker:
O yea, is there such thing as built by nVidia card like ati has?
nvidia_brian:
We do not boards direct to end users.
CPermatteo:
My 5900 Ultra will reach temperatures @ 70-80'c during 3d gameplay with all of the eye candy maxed. Is that a normal operating range during gameplay?
nvidia_steve:
How are you measuring?
JBaker:
Will the game STALKER implement any of the FX's built in features such as Ultrashadow? And will this be on by default or will this be a setting?
nvidia_brian:
Stalker is a TWIMTBP title. We have been working closely with them ever since we say them in a little booth at E3. The graphics look better every time I see it. They will take advantage of alot of nVidia features. Not sure about the settings in the game and how they plan to expose the nVidia goodness.
jhinkley:
3rd party programs like RivaTuner enable special AA and AF modes which are not availible through the nVidia driver panel like 16xAA mode for OpenGL. Are these features just driver hacks or why are they not availible for everyone?
nvidia_brian:
I have not looked at the RIVATUNER code, so I really can not comment on it.
jhutchinson:
I pushed the temp in my 5900U to 90c and that was reported by your own Temp monitor.....
nvidia_steve:
I am checking, but I believe 90C should be OK.
jhutchinson:
Is 140 C really the temp threshold for the 5900 Ultra? Why can't I set it to a lower value?
nvidia_steve:
Under that temperature, there is no risk to operating life of the GPU, so there is no need to set it lower.
ddrake:
even though you say you do driver drops daily is there an official stand on nvidia's part for quality...i.e... the 5900 Ultra runs better on the 44.71's and the 44.90's but not the driver that came out with the 500 dollar investment that quite a lot of us have made.
nvidia_brian:
We have made a big investment in our compatibility labs and they test a huge number of applications across a huge number of platforms. We need to make sure the driver is solid before we release it to the public. It may work great with some app/system combos and not great with others. We are working to get a new driver out to the public very soon.
JBaker: When will the new revision of the 5600 Ultra be availible?
evga_joe:
The flip chip versions of the 5600 Ultra are currently availible from eVGA.com!
Jbaker:
Evga Can I order a flip chip 5600 Ultra off of your site and if so how much does it cost?
evga_joe:
You will see it in the Products section of our website by the end of this week.
rcartagena:
Can you give us a hint if a faster card is coming out before the end of this year that will de-throne the 5900 Ultra?
nvidia_brian:
In the past, we have released a product every 6-9 months. We do not plan on changing that. We are driving 3D graphics technology hard and fast.
That's about it.... There was also a post made about the "way it's meant to be played" program, and it was fairly obvious the response was copied and pasted from some PR crap, so no need to post it here... The full chat log will be posted tomorrow...I had to type all of this EVERY LETTER at a time because you can't copy and paste from the chat java client and it well, sucked...So all donations to treat my CT syndrome surgery would be greatly appreciated thanks :)
BMore:
Why is it when you pause the beta test version of 3dmark03 and move about the environment at will, you can see massive clipping errors caused by unrendered content? (drivers 44.03)
nvidia_brian
The issues in ExtremeTech's article were a combination of the two. Some of the visual anomalies turned out to be bugs; others were aggressive optimizations. We make no secret of the fact that we are doing optimizations for 3DMark 2003. We have always maintained we would, but feel it was an unfortunate waste of time as it doesn't benefit games. We would certainly prefer to spend all of our energy optimizing games people play, as it ultimately benefits the users. Unfortunately, I think it is safe to say all GPU manufacturers tune for benchmarks.
BMoore:
It is said, nVidia automatically disabled FSAA even if you turned it on in the Control Panel for the game Splinter Cell. Although changing the name of the executable to something else other than Splinter Cell.exe would get your FSAA working, you will notice lots of artifacts and texture corruptions. Is this true? Why?
nvidia_brian:
We specifically disable AA at the request of the developer. The developer uses a glow methodology that is incompatible with AA. ATi does allow AA to be forced on, but ATi then suffers from a "glow through walls" artifact. This is why we disable AA for splinter Cell. The publisher suggests disabling AA on GeForce and Radeon video cards for this same reason on their support web site: [URL at ubi-soft's website]
nvidia_steve:
That is not exactly true. Our Multi-sampling works fine.
JBaker:
When are the Det 50's coming out?
nvidia_brian:
We can not comment on unannounced products, sorry.
Ageorgis:
Is nVidia working with Valve to create a solution to the Half Life 2 anti aliasing problems? If so, what is nVidia doing to remedy these problems? The most obvious thing I can think of is enabling super sampling in the drivers, but by using atuner to force 4x Super Sampling in programs, the performance is simply not up to par.
nvidia_brian:
As HL2 is not yet shipping, nothing is set in stone. Our engineers continue to work closely with the HL2 development team and the reason we do this, not just with Valve but with many leading developers, is to ensure that any issues discovered in the coding processs can be rectified, ensuring the final product looks great and plays great on our hardware.
Ageorgis:
As I understand, a representative of nVidia has confirmed Pixel Shader 2.0 problems in the latest drivers. If these are problems with the drivers, will they be "fixed" in future drivers so that the increase is across the board or only in certain programs? If they are truly "fixed", will I be able to zoom in to a screenshot and notice the exact same pixel quality as reference DX9 screenshots and those of ATi cards (which are the same as DX9 reference shots)?
nvidia_steve:
No one has confirmed any PS 2.0 problem on our hardware. Given that we have a different GPU architecture from ATI we do not create the exact same image pixel.
jhinkley:
Can we expect any new features with upcoming drivers?
nvidia_brian:
We are always looking to add new features to our Detonator software package. I think you will be pelased when you see our future software releases.
jhutchinson:
NVDVD 2.0 Rocks! Uh, that's a statement........
JBaker:
Does the 5900 Ultra perform better at higher resolutions than lower one. B/c i get FPS slowdowns on relatively old games but the max res. i can play at is 1024x768
nvidia_steve:
The performance delta is larger at higher resolutions, although it should perform just fine at lower resolutions.
jhutchinson:
What's up with all the leaked drivers and why hasn't nvidia posted even a beta driver in months?
nvidia_brian:
We are working on a new software release. Expect one very, very soon. On leaked drivers, we do driver drops several times a day for a lot of different reasons. We send one-off drivers to developers, OEMs, AIC makers and other third party's. The leaked drivers may come from a third party.
Ageorgis:
As to the statement of not being able to produce the same exact pixel as ATi, if ATi can produce the same exact image pixel quality as the Direct X 9 Reference, then if the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra follows Direct x 9 specs, it should therefore be able to provide the same pixel image as the DX 9 reference image, and in turn the ATi card, correct?
nvidia_brian:
key word is "if". A diff image will show you that neither ATi nor NVIDIA images match RefRast images pixel for pixel.
ddrake:
would you ask if they have any idea about the flicker problem that some of us are having?
nvidia_steve:
The EVGA guys have filed a bug with us and we are looking into it now. These types of things take time to track down since everyone's configuration is different in the retail space. We will let the eVGA guys know as soon as we find something.
JBaker:
Will the NV40 use PCI Express and will there be any significant performance gain over the current AGP standard?
nvidia_steve:
Can't comment on NV40. PCI express could help in a number of ways due to being able to transfer data in both directions as well as being scalable to higher transfer rates.
JBaker:
Can you comment on any plans nVidia has for AMD 64 or is this strictly graphics cards? (BTW i have an nForce 2 and I love it)
nvidia_brian:
Thanks much for the support and kind words. It goes without saying that we are working closely with AMD on their upcoming technologies.
CPermatteo:
What is the "normal" temperature at which the 5900 Ultra 256 should idle at? And what would be the highest temperature the card can withstand?
nvidia_steve:
Your card should fine just running idle (ie. desktop)
jhinkley:
What is nvidia's future stance on optimization in drivers? Some websites reported that the 44.90 driver doesn't anymore have application specific optimizations... Is it true and if not, will future optimizations change image quality or just enhance performance?
nvidia_brian:
Optimizations must produce the correct image, and must accelerate the normal running of the application, not just the benchmark mode. In our view, if an optimization produce the correct picture it is beneficial to the end user and is legitamite. If a change in the driver does not produce...[blah blah blah, you all know the same PR Crap, maybe I'll add the actual stuff that was said, but you're not missing much]
JBaker:
It has been rumored that Futuremark might create a demo for a future nVidia card, is this true?
nvidia_brian:
haven't heard this rumor before.
JBaker:
Are any of the NV guys avid gamers, If so what are the favorite games around there and do these preferences influence any work on developing cards or driver optimizations?
nvidia_steve:
Yes, we are gamers. No it doesn't affect what we work on in terms of working with developers. I am a big on warcraft III (and FT expansion), and Splinter Cell right now.
rcartagena:
Do you know when nVidia will release the 50 detonator drivers?
evga_joe:
Neither we nor nVidia can comment on unannounced products - sorry.
Ageorgis:
How will nVidia respond to the upcoming R360 chipset offered by ATi?
evga_joe:
I imagine that nVidia has its own plans for development that don't necessarily revolve around responding to other companies.
JBaker:
O yea, is there such thing as built by nVidia card like ati has?
nvidia_brian:
We do not boards direct to end users.
CPermatteo:
My 5900 Ultra will reach temperatures @ 70-80'c during 3d gameplay with all of the eye candy maxed. Is that a normal operating range during gameplay?
nvidia_steve:
How are you measuring?
JBaker:
Will the game STALKER implement any of the FX's built in features such as Ultrashadow? And will this be on by default or will this be a setting?
nvidia_brian:
Stalker is a TWIMTBP title. We have been working closely with them ever since we say them in a little booth at E3. The graphics look better every time I see it. They will take advantage of alot of nVidia features. Not sure about the settings in the game and how they plan to expose the nVidia goodness.
jhinkley:
3rd party programs like RivaTuner enable special AA and AF modes which are not availible through the nVidia driver panel like 16xAA mode for OpenGL. Are these features just driver hacks or why are they not availible for everyone?
nvidia_brian:
I have not looked at the RIVATUNER code, so I really can not comment on it.
jhutchinson:
I pushed the temp in my 5900U to 90c and that was reported by your own Temp monitor.....
nvidia_steve:
I am checking, but I believe 90C should be OK.
jhutchinson:
Is 140 C really the temp threshold for the 5900 Ultra? Why can't I set it to a lower value?
nvidia_steve:
Under that temperature, there is no risk to operating life of the GPU, so there is no need to set it lower.
ddrake:
even though you say you do driver drops daily is there an official stand on nvidia's part for quality...i.e... the 5900 Ultra runs better on the 44.71's and the 44.90's but not the driver that came out with the 500 dollar investment that quite a lot of us have made.
nvidia_brian:
We have made a big investment in our compatibility labs and they test a huge number of applications across a huge number of platforms. We need to make sure the driver is solid before we release it to the public. It may work great with some app/system combos and not great with others. We are working to get a new driver out to the public very soon.
JBaker: When will the new revision of the 5600 Ultra be availible?
evga_joe:
The flip chip versions of the 5600 Ultra are currently availible from eVGA.com!
Jbaker:
Evga Can I order a flip chip 5600 Ultra off of your site and if so how much does it cost?
evga_joe:
You will see it in the Products section of our website by the end of this week.
rcartagena:
Can you give us a hint if a faster card is coming out before the end of this year that will de-throne the 5900 Ultra?
nvidia_brian:
In the past, we have released a product every 6-9 months. We do not plan on changing that. We are driving 3D graphics technology hard and fast.
That's about it.... There was also a post made about the "way it's meant to be played" program, and it was fairly obvious the response was copied and pasted from some PR crap, so no need to post it here... The full chat log will be posted tomorrow...I had to type all of this EVERY LETTER at a time because you can't copy and paste from the chat java client and it well, sucked...So all donations to treat my CT syndrome surgery would be greatly appreciated thanks :)