NV30 Final Fantasy in real time

[Chalnoth]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
i'm pretty sure UT2003 runs on TNT2/V3/Kyro2, none of which of DX7 cards.

UT2k3 was originally designed to require DX7 level hardware. I believe its performance on the TNT2 and V3 are particularly poor (I haven't tried it myself, but from what I've read, we're talking below 640x480x16 for playability...)

As for the Kyro, it does have a few DX7-level features, but the primary ones that it is lacking are T&L and CEM.

Given the CPU limitations of UT2k3, however, I'd be really surprised if it performed okay on the Kyro on anything but a high-end CPU. It would be interesting to see some benches from the retail game...

Because of all this, yes, I realize that it doesn't always make sense to say that a game will not make full use of features until it requires them. I suppose I should have said that it won't make full use of features until it expects them. That is, every video card in existence displays triangles with textures. If the developer wanted to, I'm sure he/she could go ahead and produce fallbacks for any hardware.

But that's the key point. There is little difference between this argument and the one where games will require the more recent technology. That is, they both require a widespread base of hardware.

[Bigus Dickus]

I stand corrected on the UT2003 thing. In fact, I should have known better, since I have a UT2003 server running with an old Rage 128 in it... and I fired up the game just for ****s and giggles. Tough to tell what you're doing with one frame or so per second, but I guess it did "work." :D

[thcdru2k]

i question the playability of a tnt2 or v3 for ut2k3. i have a pent iii 600 and gf2 clocked at 200/365. i have it tweaked out pretty good, and it runs q3 and ut very fast. however in ut2k3, with minimum details, performance lod, no aa or af, 320x240, the avg is only around 25fps. its playable online, barely.

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by thcdru2k
i question the playability of a tnt2 or v3 for ut2k3. i have a pent iii 600 and gf2 clocked at 200/365. i have it tweaked out pretty good, and it runs q3 and ut very fast. however in ut2k3, with minimum details, performance lod, no aa or af, 320x240, the avg is only around 25fps. its playable online, barely.

well, it works as well as you can expect, considering that originally UT2003 was said to require hardware T&L.

[borntosoul]

one question , if dx8 is supposed to make so much of a difference in graphic quality ,does anyone have any knowledge of how much better the xbox game look vs pc graphics .or are devolpers simply skipping alot of features just to get extra speed ,cause from what ive seen there isnt much difference in graphics .

[Chalnoth]

Originally posted by borntosoul
one question , if dx8 is supposed to make so much of a difference in graphic quality ,does anyone have any knowledge of how much better the xbox game look vs pc graphics .or are devolpers simply skipping alot of features just to get extra speed ,cause from what ive seen there isnt much difference in graphics .

Well, if you're talking about Morrowind, then there is little to no graphical difference, aside from the lower resolution on the X-Box.

With pretty much any other games, the X-Box does have higher polycounts. I've also seen some pretty neat shaders (some in DOA3 were pretty nice...).

But most games that have been made for the X-Box haven't made full use of the hardware yet. In particular, many of the games out on the X-Box also had versions released for other systems, meaning that the X-Box port was limited by the other ports, just as today's PC games are limited by the lowest common denominator hardware.

[Bigus Dickus]

And, just as is the case for PC games, often the desired shader effects simply don't run fast enough on the NV20/NV2A hardware to be implemented by the developer. My guess is the vast majority of XBOX code is DX7 simply because the chip doesn't have the power to run a lot of DX8 stuff up to speed.

Not knocking the NV2A either... the NV25 and R200/RV250 aren't any better in that regard for the most part.

[Mod]

Originally posted by Chalnoth
I believe its performance on the TNT2

UT2003 goes at 12-30 fps at my RIVA TNT 2 mode 64 ( a TNT 2 Ultra clone ...) at 800X600 16 bit medium configs, and my comp is a XP 1800+ ... My Q3 does 50-70 fps at his res and 32 bit . Well, maybe not all TNTs are so awfull :confused:

[jbirney]

Scores on a car with out cubemapping support on UT2k3 will not be an Apples to Apples comparison. K2 does not support Cube maps and thus they have to use a different rendening path.

[thcdru2k]

ut2k3 is definately more cpu dependant. thats why it runs decent with your tnt2.

[gemini1313]

tnt2 m64 is hella slower than tnt2 ultra.

[Mod]

Originally posted by gemini1313
tnt2 m64 is hella slower than tnt2 ultra.

It is the same. I had my comp fixed some months ago. So the guy who helped me, installed a tnt2 m64 in my machine instead of my TNT 2 ultra to test my motherboard . I didn't notice any performance diference.

In fact I just noticed that he changed, when he called me 2 weeks later and said he wanted his card back. :eek: . It's over 4 months since then, and he keeps calling me to know when he's gonna come here to get it back. Unfortunantely , I don't have the same schedule as he does, so things are difficult .

[thcdru2k]

no no..theres is major speed difference. but once cards are so slow, you can't really tell the difference. the m64 only has 1.2 gig bandwidth. while tnt2 ultra has 2.9 gig bandwidth.

[Nv40]

i think the question here is whether Geforce3 features are
used in today games or not ..

anyone take a look a the Game GIants ... hehe
UT2003 hardware requirements is piece of cake ,compared with Giants -> direcx7 T&L game ..

drop your TNT2 ultra in giants and tell me if you can
play that game above 30fps at any resolution ? :)

Giants is a T&L optimized game .. ;)
at the worst case ,my old Geforce2gts +p3 600mhz was exactly 2x times faster!! that my friends Radeon1+p3 600mhz in the first map of the game . 20pfs vs 10 fps .. in 1024x768 -high detail settings. (you get slower frames near the end bridge ,where your video card need to display everything in the map.)

in that particular area was not smooth in any card ,but at least most of the time the game was beyond 40fps.. in my Geforce2
while it was not playable in my friends Radeon1.
THe huge diference was Nvidia T&L ..

if i remember well ,there was an special edition of GIants optimized
for Geforce3 pixel/vertex shader with a cool new effects never included in the original game ..

i think the gamedevelopers do not use the full potential of
Geforce3/4 special effects in the xbox because its time consuming programing pixel shaders and because it makes no big diference in the gameplay of their games.

but try to imagine a Game like Doom3 without realtime shadows or dynamics lights ,where those effects are part of the game?

i think that things will be better with RADeon9700pro/Nv30 Directx9 games because its not only increase the the range of possible effects ,but also increase the image quality
from 32bits colors to 128bits color precision and
and long pixel shaders that can match the quality of what
some CG studios use in movies.. ;)

[gemini1313]

i hope xbox games get a big jump in visual quality, due to nvidia's cg dev studio. that should give the developers the tools they need to make their games stand out from the ps2 and early gen xbox games.

hopefully the xbox devs will use cg as it supposed to be used. microsoft should use their power and force the devs to use cg to write as many shaders as possible before m$ buys them out and blows up their offices.

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by gemini1313
i hope xbox games get a big jump in visual quality, due to nvidia's cg dev studio. that should give the developers the tools they need to make their games stand out from the ps2 and early gen xbox games.

hopefully the xbox devs will use cg as it supposed to be used. microsoft should use their power and force the devs to use cg to write as many shaders as possible before m$ buys them out and blows up their offices.

uh...can they even use cg? Xbox doesn't use a straight version of DX8.0 does it? besides using a custom version of windows, i'm assuming that the DX component that games are programmed for is slightly changed from the ones used in PCs.

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by Mod
It is the same. I had my comp fixed some months ago. So the guy who helped me, installed a tnt2 m64 in my machine instead of my TNT 2 ultra to test my motherboard . I didn't notice any performance diference.

no, the TNT2Ultra is significantly faster than the normal TNT2. The TNT2M64 is clocked at the same speed about as a TNT2, but its bus runs at half the speed, cutting memory bandwidth in half.

the cards are not the same speed by any stretch of the imagination. the TNT2Ultra should easily be a good 40% faster than the TNT2M64 when playing games in bandwidth limited situations or fillrate limited ones.