Company of Heroes directx10 patch released

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: Zenoth
I was wondering ... if a PC title has ever been released so far that's only a DirectX 9 game, I mean that it wouldn't be possible at all to change the game's options to make it DX8 for example, was there ever a DX9-only game released ?

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time required a DX9 card I believe. Splinter Cell Double Agent required an SM3 card. Can't think of anything else right now.

Sands of Time only requires DX8.0 Pixel Shader 1.1 Double Agent and RS:Vegas are the only 2 Shader model 3.0 only games to my knowledge.

Suffice it to say it takes ages to move to a new Shader Model. DX10 Shader Model 4.0 required games are still a few years out.

 

[VERTIGGO]

I know what you mean woof, I'm getting nasty lows, but since gameplay is smooth, I think you're right about the memory hitching. (need 4GB of ram i guess or more GDDR!)

Anyway, here's another test I ran comparing VISTA Dx10 path with XP on Dx9 at the same quality levels:

XP runs like butter:
10.3 47.6 62.0
http://i24.photobucket.com/alb.../DX9XPCOH01results.jpg
at these settings:
http://i24.photobucket.com/alb...DX9XPCOH01settings.jpg

VISTA runs slower in Dx10 even though we're comparing High quality so there are no radical graphical improvements like the soft grass, etc:
5.9 22.4 39.6
http://i24.photobucket.com/alb...0VISTACOH01results.jpg
at these settings:
http://i24.photobucket.com/alb...VISTACOH01settings.jpg

 

[swtethan]

vertigo, use tinypic.com

 

[VERTIGGO]

thanks bro
lets see if this works....
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=637ppvc

 

[swtethan]

the faces look bbetter

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Zenoth

Originally posted by: BD2003

Originally posted by: terentenet
It's VERY poorly coded. DX10 titles should be DX10 only, not a pull down menu with DX9/DX10 selection. That's sh*t and you all know that. What's so intensive in this game that video cards can't push more than average 30fps? If you look at Crysis screenshots, you can see much more effects, better textures, great physics. Yet, from the looks of it, the game runs smoothly.
With CoH, even the best systems are brought to their knees. Memory leakage all over the place. The same game loads and memory usage is all over the place. Sometimes, RAM load is 98%, other times is 40%. Buggy as hell.
Talking DX9 - DX9, I get more fps in Oblivion, outdoors with HDR-8xAA and all on high.

You wont see DX10 only games for 3-4 years, so get used to it.

I was wondering ... if a PC title has ever been released so far that's only a DirectX 9 game, I mean that it wouldn't be possible at all to change the game's options to make it DX8 for example, was there ever a DX9-only game released ? And I mean a PC game here, not a Console port. I know that plenty of games by today's standards feature DX9 effects, but most, if not all of them can be tweaked via the in-game options to "downgrade" the effects, or even have command line parameters to allow only DX8 render (Half-Life 2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to name only those).

A period of three to four years is perhaps a little exaggerated though. I think that the PC gaming market is more ready today for DX10 than it was four years ago for DX9. It seems to me that we see DX10 content within a mere 6 to 7 months after its announcement (was it somewhere in 2006 ? around October or November ?). How long did it take for a game to feature mostly DX9 effects ? Was it Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided somewhere back in 2003 ? That was like a year after DX9 was released.

It seemed to me like Doom 3 was the first real push for pixel shaders (open though it was openGL and arguably DX8). But I remember having a DX9 capable card for a LONG time before those shader effects really began to be taken advantage of.

I say 3-4 years because thats pretty much what I've always heard from developers. DX10 is like 1% of the market right now.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: coldpower27
Sands of Time only requires DX8.0 Pixel Shader 1.1

Really?? Cause I remember when I tried to play it with my Geforce 2 MX400, starting up the game gave me an error stating I needed a DX9 card...lol I upgraded to a 9600XT right away.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: coldpower27
Sands of Time only requires DX8.0 Pixel Shader 1.1

Really?? Cause I remember when I tried to play it with my Geforce 2 MX400, starting up the game gave me an error stating I needed a DX9 card...lol I upgraded to a 9600XT right away.

You just needed DX9.x installed on the system, but DX8.x hardware was supported. They specifically stated the G4MX wasn't supported though, as it was basically your nv11 with a few features e.g. LMAII added on. The G4 labeling was doubtless confusing some owners, wondering why it couldn't run the game.

 

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: coldpower27
Sands of Time only requires DX8.0 Pixel Shader 1.1

Really?? Cause I remember when I tried to play it with my Geforce 2 MX400, starting up the game gave me an error stating I needed a DX9 card...lol I upgraded to a 9600XT right away.

You just needed DX9.x installed on the system, but DX8.x hardware was supported. They specifically stated the G4MX wasn't supported though, as it was basically your nv11 with a few features e.g. LMAII added on. The G4 labeling was doubtless confusing some owners, wondering why it couldn't run the game.

Yeah the Geforce 4 MX Series was NV17/NV19 still part of the Nv1x generation which is DX7.0 class hardware. You need hardware based on R2xx/RV2xx or NV2x or newer in order to run DX8.0 required games.

I am glad were out of that era with the current times as most of a lineup is part of the same generation.

 

[Wreckage]

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/507/3/

1280x1024 no AA

8800U------ 53.1
8800GTX--- 45.5
8800GTS--- 38.0
2900XT----- 33.5

1280x1024 8xAA

8800U------ 43.2
8800GTX--- 35.6
8800GTS--- 28.1
2900XT----- 23.4

1600x1200 no AA

8800U------ 44.1
8800GTX--- 37.6
8800GTS--- 29.5
2900XT----- 28

1600x1200 4xAA

8800U------ 39.1
8800GTX--- 32.7
8800GTS--- 26.2
2900XT----- 23.2

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/507/3/

This was already linked to before in this thread.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: Wreckage
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/507/3/

This was already linked to before in this thread.

I just posted the benchies for easier reading.

 

[Woofmeister]

Originally posted by: Woofmeister
Starting from the shortcut with Vsync diabled (yeah, I get why NVIDIA is telling us to do that now) and with everything set to best possible and 4xAA at 1920 x 1200, my slightly overclocked 8800GTX (I'm non-SLI for obvious reasons) gets:

30.9
69.7
3.8 (wtf?)

Actually, the 3.8 is because of one weird stutter right when the German soldier is looking out at the horizon and the searchlights first pop on. Otherwise, it runs pretty smooth.

I don't have any option for AF in game, I assume everyone's setting that at driver level?

Edit Setting 4xAF using Nvidia Control Panel and going to 8xCSAA made a big difference in the quality of the images. Frankly, the game really looks good.

30.5
56.9
3.9 :|

Boy, this game is a memory hog. Even after a restart, the game is using 80-85% of my two GBs of RAM just to run the test.

Just for grins, I thought I'd run COH with the new patch in XP to see how it compared to Vista. Since the DX10 Patch doesn't support SLI, I used only one 8800GTX so that the comparison was fair. If you're running your own comparisons, the hardware is as below except with one gfx card. I've got a very stable overclock on my 8800GTX in XP of 625/2022.

To make sure I was attempting to render images as pretty as DX10 supposedly will, I went into NVIDIA Control Panel and maxed out everything I could:

16X AF with Gamma Correction; 16xQ enhanced AA with Super Sampling; High Quality Texture Filtering with triple buffering.

At 1920 x 1200 and all in-game non-driver controllable settings at maximum, I got:

94.0
229.6
25.6

I can see a difference in DX10 with some of the lighting and shadows, but otherwise, there is no comparison--my XP version with all driver and in-game settings maxed looks better!

I'm not posting this to complain, only to inform. I think its unreasonable to expect a game patched to DX10 to perform the same as native DX10 games ultimately (hopefully) will. At the same time, as of right now, it seems pretty obvious that the trade off in performance and quality doesn't make running COH in DX10 worth it.

If some of you are rushing out to buy Vista so that you can play COH in DX10, my advice is to wait a while and see how Crysis, Alan Wake and UT3 pan out. It's likely that game developers will eventually get up to par with DX10 and Vista and maybe even surpass the performance and quality attainable with top flight hardware in DX9 but it doesn't look like we're getting there any time soon.

 

[VERTIGGO]

229.6 fps on one card running 16xQAA?

Not to be a fanboy but that just sounds fishy. Even compared to the reviews.
The link to legitreviews shows the Ultra getting 53 fps with 4xAA at 1280x1024.

 

[thilanliyan]

Just tried mine again:

settings:
1024x768 (can't go higher in Vista after installing 158.45 driver)
Control Panel = "application controlled"
vsync = off (for sure this time)
4x AA
All other in-game settings at high or ultra
hardware settings same as sig

DX9:
average = 170
maximum = 315
minimum = 70

DX10:
average = 57
maximum = 129
minimum = 10

Lol that's more than a 50% performance drop. And the water looks like crap in DX10 mode right now.

 

[CaiNaM]

can you force dx9 mode in vista, or does it have to run dx10?

 

[thilanliyan]

nm

 

[schneiderguy]

Originally posted by: CaiNaM
can you force dx9 mode in vista, or does it have to run dx10?

You can use either DX9 or DX10 (or probably even DX8 shaders if you dropped shader quality to low:Q) in Vista

 

[VERTIGGO]

In Dx10 my water looks a lot better, with ripples flowing downstream, but still nothing like Crysis water.

 

[Woofmeister]

Originally posted by: VERTIGGO
229.6 fps on one card running 16xQAA?

Not to be a fanboy but that just sounds fishy. Even compared to the reviews.
The link to legitreviews shows the Ultra getting 53 fps with 4xAA at 1280x1024.

[Sigh]

http://img362.imageshack.us/im...27/controlpaneldf5.jpg

http://img483.imageshack.us/im...1/controlpanel2mc7.jpg

http://img361.imageshack.us/im...266/cohsettingsgu7.jpg

http://img483.imageshack.us/im...773/testresultsql2.jpg

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: VERTIGGO
In Dx10 my water looks a lot better, with ripples flowing downstream, but still nothing like Crysis water.

In the screenshots you posted I think you're having the same issue as others including myself. The sky is not reflected in the water whereas in DX9 it is.

 

[VERTIGGO]

Originally posted by: Woofmeister

Originally posted by: VERTIGGO
229.6 fps on one card running 16xQAA?

Not to be a fanboy but that just sounds fishy. Even compared to the reviews.
The link to legitreviews shows the Ultra getting 53 fps with 4xAA at 1280x1024.

[Sigh]

http://img362.imageshack.us/im...27/controlpaneldf5.jpg

http://img483.imageshack.us/im...1/controlpanel2mc7.jpg

http://img361.imageshack.us/im...266/cohsettingsgu7.jpg

http://img483.imageshack.us/im...773/testresultsql2.jpg

Dude I'm not trying to be a dick, I know the GTX is probably 30% faster than the 2900, but you're not running Dx10 or any Anti-Aliasing. I've been testing, and the COH settings are what matter. It has to be on in the COH options.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: VERTIGGO

Originally posted by: Woofmeister

Originally posted by: VERTIGGO
229.6 fps on one card running 16xQAA?

Not to be a fanboy but that just sounds fishy. Even compared to the reviews.
The link to legitreviews shows the Ultra getting 53 fps with 4xAA at 1280x1024.

[Sigh]

http://img362.imageshack.us/im...27/controlpaneldf5.jpg

http://img483.imageshack.us/im...1/controlpanel2mc7.jpg

http://img361.imageshack.us/im...266/cohsettingsgu7.jpg

http://img483.imageshack.us/im...773/testresultsql2.jpg

Dude I'm not trying to be a dick, I know the GTX is probably 30% faster than the 2900, but you're not running Dx10 or any Anti-Aliasing. I've been testing, and the COH settings are what matter. It has to be on in the COH options.

Think hes running AA through the NV control panel NOT through the ingame option.

edit - hes said he was trying to mimic DX10 by maxing all the IQ stuff on DX9.

 

[schneiderguy]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: VERTIGGO

Originally posted by: Woofmeister

Originally posted by: VERTIGGO
229.6 fps on one card running 16xQAA?

Not to be a fanboy but that just sounds fishy. Even compared to the reviews.
The link to legitreviews shows the Ultra getting 53 fps with 4xAA at 1280x1024.

[Sigh]

http://img362.imageshack.us/im...27/controlpaneldf5.jpg

http://img483.imageshack.us/im...1/controlpanel2mc7.jpg

http://img361.imageshack.us/im...266/cohsettingsgu7.jpg

http://img483.imageshack.us/im...773/testresultsql2.jpg

Dude I'm not trying to be a dick, I know the GTX is probably 30% faster than the 2900, but you're not running Dx10 or any Anti-Aliasing. I've been testing, and the COH settings are what matter. It has to be on in the COH options.

Think hes running AA through the NV control panel NOT through the ingame option.

edit - hes said he was trying to mimic DX10 by maxing all the IQ stuff on DX9.

Setting everything to maximum in DX9 isnt the same as DX10. The DX10 patch adds an "ultra" option for shaders and terrain (afaik) that isn't there in DX9.

 

[terentenet]

NV CPL. Not an expert, but if you set AA to "Enhance app setting" and 16xQ, that's dependant on the in-game setting. If AA is OFF in the in-game menu, no AA will be forced by the driver.
AA set to Enhance app setting will apply the level requested by the driver (16xQ in our case) ONLY if AA is started in the game. And the driver will try to apply the 16xQ AA using the Game's AA mechanism. Good for games that only offer 2x-4x AA settings.

If it was set to Override app settings, then it would apply regardless of the in-game setting.