AnandTech Half-Life 2 Info :)

[Pocatello]

I guess all those Linux servers waiting for Counter Strike 2 will be dissapointed. It would be amusing to see all those M$ haters forced to use Windows 2000 and XP :evil:

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

You'll see my own numbers tomorrow night at midnight, but we've been given the go ahead to reveal a bit of information about Half-Life 2. I'll keep it brief and to the point and will explain it in greater detail tomorrow night:

- Valve is pissed at all of the benchmarking "optimizations" they've seen in the hardware community;
- Half-Life 2 has a special NV3x codepath that was necessary to make NVIDIA's architecture perform reasonably under the game;
- Valve recommends running geforce fx 5200 and 5600 cards in dx8 mode in order to get playable frame rates.
- even with the special NV3x codepath, ATI is the clear performance leader under Half-Life 2 with the Radeon 9800 Pro hitting around 60 fps at 10x7. The 5900 ultra is noticeably slower with the special codepath and is horrendously slower under the default dx9 codepath;
- the Radeon 9600 Pro performs very well - it is a good competitor of the 5900 ultra;
- ATI didn't need these special optimizations to perform well and Valve insists that they have not optimized the game specifically for any vendor.

There you have it folks, there's much more coming tomorrow.

Doom3 works best on NV and ATI works best on HL2.

If I remember correctly Nvidia uses proprietary instructions that FUBAR other cards when used. That means if the special instructions are used the Nvidia card ownz and the ATi is crap. Standard code works better for ATI because nvidia cards work their best with the special code

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: rbV5
10x7@60FPS sounds bad to me.

uh...not when you have as much going on with a DX9 game as HL2 does

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: OddTSi
Haven't we all already seen that nVidia's NV3x are a) not completely DX9 compatible because of not using floating point shaders (or something to that effect) and b) that they have poor Pixel Shader 2.0 performance (possibly because of 'a') in DX9 benchmarks.

Also, let's not forget that I believe when Doom3 was coming out that one of the game programmers (John Carmack?) said that using the default rendering path ATi's cards performed their best, whereas with the nVidia cards they got poor performance using anything but nVidia's proprietary rendering path.

So why is anyone doubting the validity of Valve's claim that they had to use a "special" path to get nVidia cards to perform half-way decent?

exactly...Nvidia almost requires you to do special code to kill other cards. It's no wonder most games aren't performing as well on the 5900 does on paper

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: NFS4


Dude. HL was based on Quake technology.

Quake = OGL
Quake != DX

Quake1 doesn't even work with OpenGL. The only GL mode that Quake1 supports is 3dfx Glide's GL mode. If you try to run GLQuake with OpenGL and not Glide, it tells you it can't find the drivers.

i just played this on my 9700pro a few weeks ago so...no

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: rbV5
10x7@60FPS sounds bad to me.

uh...not when you have as much going on with a DX9 game as HL2 does

Dude, 10 pixels by 7 pixels is pretty awful... That had better be some freakin' amazing pixel shading if those 70 pixels are all I have to entertain me...

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Nebor

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: rbV5
10x7@60FPS sounds bad to me.

uh...not when you have as much going on with a DX9 game as HL2 does

Dude, 10 pixels by 7 pixels is pretty awful... That had better be some freakin' amazing pixel shading if those 70 pixels are all I have to entertain me...

again shadows, pixel shaders, dynamic lighting, the CPU is loaded with AI processing, massive amounts of vertex shaders, not to mention the high polygon count

 

[First]

In addition, who says you have to run anything at 1024x768? Some gamers think it's the end of the world if you're playing at 800x600. At that res you'll be getting noticeably more fps in HL2.

 

[ShawnD1]

800x600 is pretty smooth looking. Anything lower and it looks too pixelated. 1024x768 is my fav though .

 

[lameaway]

My prediction: By the time HL2 ships, when the focus is on actually selling copies of the game, Valve will have finally buckled down and written a _real_ NV3x codepath that will adress the particular quirks and incompatibilities of the FX hardware, perhaps to the detriment of image quality, perhaps not. Until then, it's really in their interest to let these benchmarks float around and score a huge PR boost for ATI..... no, wait, politics could NEVER influence game developers, right?

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: Nebor

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: rbV5
10x7@60FPS sounds bad to me.

uh...not when you have as much going on with a DX9 game as HL2 does

Dude, 10 pixels by 7 pixels is pretty awful... That had better be some freakin' amazing pixel shading if those 70 pixels are all I have to entertain me...

again shadows, pixel shaders, dynamic lighting, the CPU is loaded with AI processing, massive amounts of vertex shaders, not to mention the high polygon count

Dude, 70 pixels will look like crap. Cell phones have higher resolution than that. 1280x1024 = 1310720 pixels.... So someone made a mistake when they said 10x7. And yet, you continue to argue that with pixel shaders and dynamic lighting, 10x7 resolution will roxxor our 3ghz CPUs.

 

[mechBgon]

Sounds like my rustic old GeForce2 GTS-V ain't gonna cut it.

 

[lameaway]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Sounds like my rustic old GeForce2 GTS-V ain't gonna cut it.

Sure it will. Thats what the 10x7 resolution is for

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: lameaway

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Sounds like my rustic old GeForce2 GTS-V ain't gonna cut it.

Sure it will. Thats what the 10x7 resolution is for

Knock it down to 4x3 for awesome fps!!

 

[Adul]

20 hours and 51 minutes to gooo

 

[NOX]

Why I'm I not surprised with this reaction...

There is no way in hell Valve (etc.) will make a game that won't run reasonably on both ATI(s) and Nvidia(s) current offerings.

There are many more sites that will say exactly the opposite of Anand. That I'm sure of...

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: sandorski

Originally posted by: lameaway

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Sounds like my rustic old GeForce2 GTS-V ain't gonna cut it.

Sure it will. Thats what the 10x7 resolution is for

Knock it down to 4x3 for awesome fps!!

Maybe I can knock the color depth down to 1-bit monochrome *watches pixel on screen flash black & white*

 

[Corporate Thug]

Originally posted by: Nebor

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile

Originally posted by: Nebor
BTW, Detonator 50.00 could fix everything.

Some are praying...

Sorry, but I think the problems are hardware specific.

It's kinda funny, none of this deters me from buying a FX5900... Still the card of my dreams.

i would jump on a $250 card that is gonna run HL2 like crap in a second

 

[MaDDaWg1018]

hmmm...i currently have a Geforce 3 Ti200, and I'm considering upgrading in the near future (probably when doom 3 and half life 2 come out, which is probably Q1 of 2004...HOPEFULLY). my first ATI card was a Rage IIc, for which they had horribly poor support. so i vowed never to buy an ATI product again. since then, i've purchased a geforce 1, geforce 2 gts, and a geforce 3 ti200, and i'm in the market to buy another one soon. however, reading all these posts, it seems that ATI has gotten a lot better, and seems to have the edge over Nvidia at this point. im THINKING that i'll get a 9600 pro, but thats yet to be decided.

funny how the market can change so quickly. who knows...maybe in a few months, nvidia will be back on top again...

but remember guys, take into consideration the fact of how long each of these have been out. the 5900 ultra JUST came out...the 9800 pro has been available for a lil bit longer...and ATI seems to have more refined drivers for their cards at this point, so by the time Doom 3 or HL2 or whatever comes out (in several months im presuming), nvidia will probably come out with updated drivers that may significantly increase performance on their new cards, and very possibly, outperform the ATI cards. the 5900's seem to have MUCH potential...just look at the hardware stats, compared to the 9800's.

so PRESENTLY, ati has the upper hand...but that can change in the blink of an eye.

 

[Corporate Thug]

Originally posted by: MaDDaWg1018
hmmm...i currently have a Geforce 3 Ti200, and I'm considering upgrading in the near future (probably when doom 3 and half life 2 come out, which is probably Q1 of 2004...HOPEFULLY). my first ATI card was a Rage IIc, for which they had horribly poor support. so i vowed never to buy an ATI product again. since then, i've purchased a geforce 1, geforce 2 gts, and a geforce 3 ti200, and i'm in the market to buy another one soon. however, reading all these posts, it seems that ATI has gotten a lot better, and seems to have the edge over Nvidia at this point. im THINKING that i'll get a 9600 pro, but thats yet to be decided.

funny how the market can change so quickly. who knows...maybe in a few months, nvidia will be back on top again...

that very well may be true but i always have that nvidia cheating thing in the back of my mind. i had to make a decision between a 9800 pro and a 5900 recently, before these benchies came out. that optimizing thing was the deciding factor for me. i will never go back to Nvidia unless it is killing ATi in performance which i dont see it doing. i'm very happy with my decision to go with the 9800 pro

 

[Maleficus]

Originally posted by: MaDDaWg1018
hmmm...i currently have a Geforce 3 Ti200, and I'm considering upgrading in the near future (probably when doom 3 and half life 2 come out, which is probably Q1 of 2004...HOPEFULLY). my first ATI card was a Rage IIc, for which they had horribly poor support. so i vowed never to buy an ATI product again. since then, i've purchased a geforce 1, geforce 2 gts, and a geforce 3 ti200, and i'm in the market to buy another one soon. however, reading all these posts, it seems that ATI has gotten a lot better, and seems to have the edge over Nvidia at this point. im THINKING that i'll get a 9600 pro, but thats yet to be decided.

funny how the market can change so quickly. who knows...maybe in a few months, nvidia will be back on top again...

but remember guys, take into consideration the fact of how long each of these have been out. the 5900 ultra JUST came out...the 9800 pro has been available for a lil bit longer...and ATI seems to have more refined drivers for their cards at this point, so by the time Doom 3 or HL2 or whatever comes out (in several months im presuming), nvidia will probably come out with updated drivers that may significantly increase performance on their new cards, and very possibly, outperform the ATI cards. the 5900's seem to have MUCH potential...just look at the hardware stats, compared to the 9800's.

so PRESENTLY, ati has the upper hand...but that can change in the blink of an eye.

Huh?

Both use uniform drivers and the 5900 has been out for a little while.

I don't see performence changing drastically if at all really because of drivers. if anything Nvidia will make it do ignore certain things for the HL2 benchmark

 

[Vonkhan]

What part about the fact that nVIDIA's 5x00 line has a hardware issue do people not understand when they go about tootin' that it'll all be good with driver fixes :|

 

[ronnn]

Originally posted by: Vonkhan
What part about the fact that nVIDIA's 5x00 line has a hardware issue do people not understand when they go about tootin' that it'll all be good with driver fixes :|

Nvidia has good drivers that do not need fixes. I guess nvidia has found another way to be known for their driver famous driver support.

 

[MaDDaWg1018]

well im not saying that drivers will fix EVERYTHING, but it could provide a moderate performance boost, correct? a while ago i remember updating my detonator drivers on my geforce 2 gts i used to have, and when i did, my 3dmark2001 score actually went up quite a bit. and from a lot of the benchmarks i've seen comparing the two video cards, they werent TOO far off from each other...so im assuming that the detonator drivers might provide enough push to perform up to the 9800pro level, if not surpass it. then again, the drivers may not be enough either.

im not a hardware guru, so please correct me if im wrong.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: Vonkhan
What part about the fact that nVIDIA's 5x00 line has a hardware issue do people not understand when they go about tootin' that it'll all be good with driver fixes :|

Nanobots! Within each FX card there is a Nanobot Garage, when Nvidia needs to fix something, the new driver programs the Nanobots, they scurry off and redesign the GPU!

That said, the drivers could probably do something similar to what Valve has done, re-routing DirectX 9 calls to DirectX 8(if DirectX 8 and 9 can function simultaneously). That would "fix" the issue in a growing number of games and benchmarks, although it would affect Quality. I'm no expert, but they may be able to offload some work to the cpu and use part GPU and part CPU to make up some weakness. (?)