Doom-III just became a Non Issue in the benchmark war?

[Hellbinder]

At a recent NVIDIA Editors' Day, id Software CEO Todd Hollenshed announced that DOOM 3 will be capped to 60 frames per second in the rendering engine.

We checked with John Carmack himself about why DOOM 3 will be hard-capped at 60fps in the renderer, and he had this to say:

"The game tic simulation, including player movement, runs at 60hz, so if it rendered any faster, it would just be rendering identical frames. A fixed tic rate removes issues like Quake 3 had, where some jumps could only be made at certain framerates. In Doom, the same player inputs will produce the same motions, no matter what the framerate is."

http://pc.ign.com/articles/456/456054p1.html?fromint=1

You know i really hope this is True. I am personally really burnt out on id and Epic being the sole determining factor for reviews and buying decision for the last several years. Quake etc.. Being FAR Worse of the Two. It will be a breath of fresh air if the engine internally caps at 60 no matter what. Of course it also pretty much negates the whole Nvidia, ATi cat fight over Drivers, performance etc...

Maybe id just got tired of all the constant industry BS associated with who posts the highest score pissing contests over their engines/Games.

I guess R420/Nv40 will need a different measuring stick. http://instagiber.net/smiliesdotcom/otn/happy/ylsmoke.gif

[surfhurleydude]

Or maybe John Carmack will take the cap off for benchmarking purposes only?

[ChrisRay]

I'm sure he'll have a benchmark utility with time demos with this does not apply.

[The Baron]

PARADIGM SHIFT PART TWO!

Moving away from framerates.

Moving towards IQ.

If NV really does implement that stochastic AA stuff in NV40 without an insane performance hit, and Doom 3 is capped to 60FPS... GAME OVER, MAN, GAME OVER!

[ChrisW]

The last I saw, it was capped at 10 fps on ATI cards. :eek:

I agree with the 60 fps though. Anything about 60 fps is most likely a waste anyway. If you are getting more than 60 fps anyway, you should turn on more stuff to increase image quality.

[Hellbinder]

Originally posted by ChrisRay
I'm sure he'll have a benchmark utility with time demos with this does not apply.
Hey Chris, The problem is it wont matter. IF the engine is sampleing everything at 60hz then a benchmark would be completely useless. AS he said even if you bypassed it it would just be rendering the exact same frame over and over, until the next frame is ready

The Driver Cheating possible in something like that could Boggle the Mind.

[Hellbinder]

Originally posted by ChrisW
The last I saw, it was capped at 10 fps on ATI cards. :eek:
This is a joke right? :confused:

[ChrisW]

Originally posted by Hellbinder
This is a joke right? :confused:
http://www.hardocp.com/images/articles/1052729768FyFQIMpRcj_1_3.gif

By the way, if it is capped at 60 fps then how did they get 90 fps in the 1024x768 resolution?

[Hellbinder]

Originally posted by The Baron
PARADIGM SHIFT PART TWO!

Moving away from framerates.

Moving towards IQ.

If NV really does implement that stochastic AA stuff in NV40 without an insane performance hit, and Doom 3 is capped to 60FPS... GAME OVER, MAN, GAME OVER!
Hellbinder <------------ Confused

http://www.gamers-forums.com/smilies/contrib/edoom/theyareontome.gif

[Toaster]

Timedemos with uncapped framerates are still possible. So I see no reason why there can't be a benchmark.

[edit] lol, when i opened this thread there where no replies and by the time I did write mine it was a whole lot later

Anyways that bechmarkchart was from an older version, so it might:
A) Not have any fps capping yet
B) It's a timedemo and doesn't need capping

[Hellbinder]

Originally posted by ChrisW
http://www.hardocp.com/images/articles/1052729768FyFQIMpRcj_1_3.gif

By the way, if it is capped at 60 fps then how did they get 90 fps in the 1024x768 resolution?
Um.. that was a singular issue with the Cat 3.4's.. there are other sites that show the correct numbers... http://instagiber.net/smiliesdotcom/otn/other/11doh.gif

[jimmyjames123]

Weren't people speculating that the top of the line XGI cards would be sweet for Doom 3? Possibly unfortunate for them if they wanted to really show off their card with this game.

With all the eye candy turned on, at high resolutions and with AA/AF enabled, some of today's cards will probably be struggling to reach that framerate. Should be interesting to see how things turn out.

[sxotty]

Hellbinder while you are right about the possibility of cheating I think it will be a good benchmark for certain things, and I certainly hope that people will be using it b/c I know I will be buying it no matter what (even if simply for nostalgia, but I like how it looks). Obviously it is better than having people benching quake3 still :), and I would rather see Doom3 than other openGl titles currently out there simply isn't enough of them right now. Man I can't wait for it though...oh btw don't you think that you could turn enough candy on to slow it below 60fps? I mean I know that quake3 can still give my card fits and it is how ridiculously old?

[The Baron]

Originally posted by Hellbinder
Hellbinder <------------ Confused

http://www.gamers-forums.com/smilies/contrib/edoom/theyareontome.gif
Okay. A lot of people are theorizing that NVIDIA will beat ATI in Doom3 performance and that NV3x is basically designed for Doom 3. So, it makes sense to assume that the performance increase from NV3x will probably carry over into the next generation. Then, if it is capped at 60FPS, NV40 is a good deal faster than NV35 in DX8-level games and stochastic AA is a viable option, NVIDIA will have a crazy advantage in Doom 3 that ATI simply will not be able to match unless they do something with their AA as well.

But yeah. We're seeing a paradigm shift from "dood it gets 6,000,000,000 FPS" to "it gets 60FPS with 8xAA and 32xAF." Game developers haven't been able to use advanced features because of the length of time that games take to create and the incredibly short life of a GPU, so that explains the rapid growth of AA and AF. It also explains the lengthening of product cycles that we're seeing now.

so yeah. the 3D industry is changing for the better.

[ChrisW]

Originally posted by Hellbinder
Um.. that was a singular issue with the Cat 3.4's.. there are other sites that show the correct numbers... http://instagiber.net/smiliesdotcom/otn/other/11doh.gif
I was being sarcastic. ;)

[AnteP]

a 60 fps cap sucks ass
what, are they ****ing stupid?

have they EVER heard of vsync?

so I guess I'll have to run my monitor at 60 Hz, yeah, like that will ever happen
next thing they'll be asking me to play games at 320x240 I guess :rolleyes:

[Nv40]

60fps in doom3 is still is a challenge ..for video cards. if the sites test the cards at Highquality settings.. the last T|H benchmarks shows that no card can go beyond 30Fps!! with AA+AF on. :) couldnt they just benchmark using max AA/AF +HQ settings? i think that 60fps still will be a High number to reach once you raise the IQ settings with AA/AF at the same time or with custom MP demos.. with more than 4 players.. will be more than enough to make 60fps the next big thing in performance. :)

[walkndude]

yeah what morons they are at id antep...

They should hire a really smart guy like yourself to help them out.

laff

[Socos]

Originally posted by Hellbinder
http://pc.ign.com/articles/456/456054p1.html?fromint=1

You know i really hope this is True. I am personally really burnt out on id and Epic being the sole determining factor for reviews and buying decision for the last several years. Quake etc.. Being FAR Worse of the Two. It will be a breath of fresh air if the engine internally caps at 60 no matter what. Of course it also pretty much negates the whole Nvidia, ATi cat fight over Drivers, performance etc...

Maybe id just got tired of all the constant industry BS associated with who posts the highest score pissing contests over their engines/Games.

I guess R420/Nv40 will need a different measuring stick. http://instagiber.net/smiliesdotcom/otn/happy/ylsmoke.gif

I have got to say it before someone else does.. Of course I have yet to read this whole thread yet, but I just gotta say it.. <cues music> I bet [N] paid them to do it so their hardware wouldn't look bad... :p

I just had to say it before someone else did.... hehehe sorry bout that:p

[jimmyjames123]

That's a silly comment because by virtually all reports the FX cards were frontrunning with this game.

[The Baron]

Originally posted by jimmyjames123
That's a silly comment because by virtually all reports the FX cards were frontrunning with this game.
Actually true. That's what's scary.

Although, the TBDR Series 5 could probably slap it around a bit :)

[kyleb]

it is not 60fps, it is 60hz game tic. kinda like halo has a 30hz game tick, only doom3 can do twice that.

[Hellbinder]

Originally posted by OWA
Yeah, that was what I was going to bring up. They don't have to be the same. Halo has the 30 fps cap that is supposed to make the game play smoother (more consistent) but you can still set your refresh rate to 85hz or whatever you want.
This misses the entire point that you cannot get a true render performance test at anything over 60 FPS. The halo frame lock is different, on top of which on the PC version it has a setting to sync with the refresh rate.

This is what you guys need to see...

Game runs at 60 tics. Meaning that a new frame is generated and rendered 60 times in one second. Never any more than 60 times in one second.

Say you set your refresh rate for 120hz.. . the game is still "ticking" away at 60. Thus (simplified) the video card is simply rendering every frame 2 times. In turn then... at 120hz the drivers could know to simply cache every second frame posting 120 FPS while really only rendering 60 actual new game frames. Say the Vsync is disabled and the card Runs free. It is a little more complex but Clever Driver guys could still "optomize" for it if you see what I mean.

This would be especially true in a repeatable "Timedemo1" type situation.

[The Baron]

so basically, what HB is saying is that once you hit 60FPS with Doom 3, you can hit near-infinite FPS because you don't have to render anything more than 60FPS.

so scores over 60 don't mean squat.

[GlowStick]

Im really confused about the 60fps cap, I really can tell the diffrence between a game running at 60fps and 100, but if JC says its ok then i guess so heh.

But what he could be talking about is for collision detection (physics engine) and stuff like that, because it could insantly predict what frame an object should hit a wall or other object, not guess.

And on another note, it dose seem that all id based games use FPS for alot of things, im not sure why but they do example.

In Quake 2 Expert CTF McKinly Revial

Anyways, everyone can hook out of the sniper area in the middle, but its harder to get back in. but if you bind a key to use the hook and set max fps at 5 anyone with a bit of skill can fit though the small space witch is pritty much imossible with out the little secret.