Crysis 2 Tessellation Article

[Grooveriding]

I could max the game out at 2560x1600, for the most part I only saw a few framerate dips, of course I am using nvidia cards.

What I will say is that Crysis & Warhead look a good deal better than Crysis 2 and run at a much better framerate. Clearly that is because of the tessellation implementation in C2, but it's unfortunate the game still does not look better than it's older brother. Especially as it is more demanding.

As for another case of nvidia purposefully trying to gimp the competition, the tessellation meshes of water on land and the useless curbside tessellation pretty much answer that. Nothing to debate unless you want to try to absolve them. No doubt nvidia needed to establish at least one game where they could point to the 590 as being faster than the 6990.

 

[SirPauly]

I'd like to hear all sides, if possible, before I take wild conspiracy conjecture as anything factual.

 

[apoppin]

I'd like to hear all sides, if possible, before I take wild conspiracy conjecture as anything factual.

You'd have to ask CryTek. Personally i think it is stupid to assume that Nvidia would cripple their own midrange cards' performance just to make "AMD look bad". That is a conspiracy mindset and ignores that it is asinine for business - and Nvidia is profit-oriented.

People are assuming that this patch is the last one. According to interviews, evidently it is not. i expect further optimizations.

And Nvidia just went from unplayable in 3D Vision with the last WHQL drivers to "3D Vision Ready" with the latest. Obviously there is room for performance improvements from both AMD and Nvidia (and Crytek).

 

[Kenmitch]

You'd have to ask CryTek. Personally i think it is stupid to assume that Nvidia would cripple their own midrange cards' performance just to make "AMD look bad". That is a conspiracy mindset and ignores that it is asinine for business - and Nvidia is profit-oriented.

Not saying Nvidia did it intentionaly but......

I'd have to think that Crysis 2 will be used as a benchmarking tool for at least a year or two for next generation video cards. Going on the shooting yourself in the foot theory it would be in Nvidia's best interest to make the upper end cards look even better than their budget line cards or the competitions cards. If your lower to mid-range cards have to suffer a performance hit to make the competitions cards look weaker then so be it....After all the markup on the latest and greatest single gpu/single card solution always carries a nice premium and the higher one goes up in the food chain for performance the greater the profit!

I'm sure Crysis 2 will be getting more Dx11 patching. I guess it's just a matter of by who and for what purpose....Guess time will tell.

 

[AtenRa]

HAWX2 was supposed to cripple AMD cards but it was producing very high frames with NV cards (actually AMD cards produced adequate frame rates).

Lost planet 2 was using more tessellation and it was again evil NVIDIA crippling AMD cards.

Same happened with Heaven when NV again made them use a higher tessellation mode than before.

Now NV again cripples AMD cards in Crysis 2 with extensive Tessellation that cripples NV cards as well, you got to be kidding me.

Although I regard Crysis 2 a PC game failure and the DX-11 patch over a DX-9 game not the way Tessellation was mend to be used/implemented, the fact remains that NV GF100/110 and derivative chips do Tessellate better than AMD 5xxx and 6xxx series.

Count my words, we will see the same thing happen with BF3 and other DX-11 native titles.

 

[apoppin]

With AMD and Nvidia, it's all "business".. They make decisions based on economics and their bottom line.

If they intentionally crippled their midrange cards - their bread and butter in the gaming market - it would be foolish to show that a GTX 560 Ti (for example) - is insufficient to run DX11.

Nvidia changed their mantra when they went from GTX 400>500. Their motto became "the fastest DX11 cards on the planet"

Personally i believe that BFG10K had a lot to do with this change by his published articles that showed the weakness of Fermi - when transitioning from his GTX 285 to GTX 470. Performance was only really improved with the newest games.
:thumbsup:

Not saying Nvidia did it intentionaly but......

I'd have to think that Crysis 2 will be used as a benchmarking tool for at least a year or two for next generation video cards. Going on the shooting yourself in the foot theory it would be in Nvidia's best interest to make the upper end cards look even better than their budget line cards or the competitions cards. If your lower to mid-range cards have to suffer a performance hit to make the competitions cards look weaker then so be it....After all the markup on the latest and greatest single gpu/single card solution always carries a nice premium and the higher one goes up in the food chain for performance the greater the profit!

I'm sure Crysis 2 will be getting more Dx11 patching. I guess it's just a matter of by who and for what purpose....Guess time will tell.

 

[Kenmitch]

With AMD and Nvidia, it's all "business".. They make decisions based on economics and their bottom line. If they intentionally crippled their midrange cards - their bread and butter in the gaming market - it would be foolish to show that a GTX 560 Ti (for example) - is insufficient to run DX11.

I never said that they did intentionally cripple their bread and butter cards nor did I come out and say they did anything at all in the 1st place. Just stating that if they did do it and to make the competition look bad they had to sacrifice some mid-range performance then it would most likely equate to more profit in the long run....As in the geeks looking at the reviews and basing their buying decision on frames per second thus moving up higher in the food chain. Just a thought

 

[apoppin]

I never said that they did intentionally cripple their bread and butter cards nor did I come out and say they did anything at all in the 1st place. Just stating that if they did do it and to make the competition look bad they had to sacrifice some mid-range performance then it would most likely equate to more profit in the long run....As in the geeks looking at the reviews and basing their buying decision on frames per second thus moving up higher in the food chain. Just a thought

Well, i never said that you said, that they did; and don't give them any ideas!


You can tell that i have a little time while watching the benchmarks run.

:whiste:

And i am benching Crysis right now for a GeForce 280 Performance analysis. After all this time, Nvidia has still managed to squeeze out another frame or two in Crysis. Next up, Cat 11-8 testing of HD 6990/6790/6770 (vs. the comparative Nvidia cards, GTX 590/580/560Ti)

. . . it's a dirty job, i know .. but someone has to do it
:wub:

 

[3DVagabond]

My guess is it was easy to create and it is all over the game.

Yes, a single model that's not very complex, and will reappear all over the place. Easy and worthless.

What does excessively even mean? Is it excessive because one brands hardware chokes on it more than the other? Because you cant see any benefit from it? This looks like how games will be designed going forward. Personally I didnt see any benefit from 16x AA or 16x Anistrophic filtering. But do I advocate we should be capped at 8x?

This. You answered your own question.

Add to that tessellation is their to improve performance, not hurt it. Until someone comes out with a game that does that, it's not being properly implemented. So, hopefully, we won't continue to see games designed this way (tacking on Dx11 features as a check-box after thought).

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Personally I didnt see any benefit from 16x AA or 16x Anistrophic filtering. But do I advocate we should be capped at 8x?

That's not a solid analogy. If you don't see a difference you have the option to turn down the 8x and you won't lose anything. Such an option does not exist for Crysis Tessellation. If you turn down the tessellation everything gets affected, so there will be a more noticeable IQ difference on the brick walls than the concrete barriers. Although if no one notices the differences they can live with it, but I can clearly tell the brick walls benefit nicely form tessellation while the concrete does not.

 

[Larries]

With AMD and Nvidia, it's all "business".. They make decisions based on economics and their bottom line.

If they intentionally crippled their midrange cards - their bread and butter in the gaming market - it would be foolish to show that a GTX 560 Ti (for example) - is insufficient to run DX11.

....

How about not crippling the midrange card, but add in enough things to make midrange card looks like they need to sacrifice some image quality for sufficient performance, in hope that customers will buy a higher end product because the game runs "better" on it?

After all, if a 560Ti can do 100+ fps (just saying), most people won't think about 570/580.

 

[Jacky60]

This stinks and is another example of Nvidia doing the 'wrong thing' whenever they can. Instead of making things look better for Nvidia owners they artificially handicap AMD owners and spend time and money making the game experience poorer for them. Its an insane and cynical waste of resources and just illustrates what turds Nvidia are.

 

[Silverforce11]

I think i made this point in the other big thread on this..

But jesus crysis, move on already, Crysis 2 is a shit game regardless of the dx11 patch and it's dead already as the online population is non existant.

Lets all agree that this is a common practice, trying to tweak games to perform better on your GPU than your opponents. This isn't even new. Just don't take these specific games in benchmarks as anything meaningful.

 

[nemesismk2]

I think i made this point in the other big thread on this..

But jesus crysis, move on already, Crysis 2 is a shit game regardless of the dx11 patch and it's dead already as the online population is non existant.

Lets all agree that this is a common practice, trying to tweak games to perform better on your GPU than your opponents. This isn't even new. Just don't take these specific games in benchmarks as anything meaningful.

I agree with what you have said. I would find it odd to learn that AMD or Nvidia wasnt trying to gain an advantage over their competition lol

 

[RussianSensation]

Next up, Cat 11-8 testing of HD 6990/6790/6770 (vs. the comparative Nvidia cards, GTX 590/580/560Ti)

HD6790 vs. GTX580
HD6770 vs. GTX560Ti

I see lack of sleep has finally caught up to you this fine friday morning. Thanks for cracking me up. I need a good laugh with the stock market. Want a coffee? It's on me.

 

[apoppin]

HD6790 vs. GTX580
HD6770 vs. GTX560Ti

I see lack of sleep has finally caught up to you this fine friday morning. Thanks for cracking me up. I need a good laugh with the stock market. Want a coffee? It's on me.

No coffee please; i am allergic. Yes they are typos and that was yesterday - i got some sleep last night. Just like in my last evaluation (two HD 6770s compared with GTX 550 Ti), where i had to change close to 30 "6s" to fives.


At least i got one right - HD 6990 vs GTX 590; and a case can be made for comparing the top two single-GPU vendor cards - GTX 580 vs. the HD 6970 - as there is a price vs. performance variable to consider.

Anyway, i triple-checked my benches and i should have the GF 280 performance analysis up tonight; the comparison vs the Radeons on the latest Cats, by Monday.

Crysis 2 is a shit game regardless of the dx11 patch and it's dead already as the online population is non existant.

Back on topic, Crysis 2 turned out to be a pretty popular game and the DX11 patch and high resolution pack seemed to have even given sales a boost. i think i'd be remiss not to include it in my benching; that said, i won't have Radeon Crysis 2 results this week as that will be the focus of a separate tessellation investigation.

 

[SirPauly]

Crysis 2 may not be the PC powerhouse icon that the original Crysis was but sales of Crysis 2 over-all is over 3 million. 1 million sales is considered Platinum status. And ya wonder why developers go multi-platform.

 

[AtenRa]

How many of that 3 millions are PC sales ?? 5-10% ??

 

[SirPauly]

I don't know, need to find the data that offers the PC box and digital downloads.

 

[HeXen]

This game isnt even that good. a decent single play through. Even on dx9 its still one of the best looking games i've ever played and certainly looking at pics of games coming out later this year and next year doesn't appear anything else is going to look noticeably better.
So i'll save my proper DX11 usage complaints for all these new games that are coming out that still don't use it properly or at all. If only the NPC's in Deus ex 3 with DX11 maxed looked half as good as they do in dx9 Crysis2

 

[Red Hawk]

HAWX2 was supposed to cripple AMD cards but it was producing very high frames with NV cards (actually AMD cards produced adequate frame rates).

Lost planet 2 was using more tessellation and it was again evil NVIDIA crippling AMD cards.

Same happened with Heaven when NV again made them use a higher tessellation mode than before.

Now NV again cripples AMD cards in Crysis 2 with extensive Tessellation that cripples NV cards as well, you got to be kidding me.

Although I regard Crysis 2 a PC game failure and the DX-11 patch over a DX-9 game not the way Tessellation was mend to be used/implemented, the fact remains that NV GF100/110 and derivative chips do Tessellate better than AMD 5xxx and 6xxx series.

Count my words, we will see the same thing happen with BF3 and other DX-11 native titles.

Dragon Age II. Also, since the Battlefield series is an AMD "Gaming Evolved" title and not "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" if Battlefield 3 does contain tessellation, it won't have the pointless tessellation maps that games like Crysis 2 has because AMD should know not to pointlessly cripple their own cards. I'm not even sure if BF3 will have tessellation; DICE has talked about lots of other DirectX 11 features but they haven't mentioned tessellation. Bad Company 2 was DirectX 11 as well and it didn't have tessellation.

 

[apoppin]

How many of that 3 millions are PC sales ?? 5-10% ??

About 450,000 by my calculations - nearly 15%

http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/sales/35003/crysis-2/
Evidently Crysis 2 has sold close to 300,000 physical copies not counting digital D/Ls, i

And here it was 14% of the total sales - but again the figures don't account for digital sales
http://www.destructoid.com/crysis-2-huge-success-xbox-360-dominates-sales-197396.phtml

i'd say the sales figures are significant enough not to ignore Crysis .

 

[Seero]

HAWX2 was supposed to cripple AMD cards but it was producing very high frames with NV cards (actually AMD cards produced adequate frame rates).

Lost planet 2 was using more tessellation and it was again evil NVIDIA crippling AMD cards.

Same happened with Heaven when NV again made them use a higher tessellation mode than before.

Now NV again cripples AMD cards in Crysis 2 with extensive Tessellation that cripples NV cards as well, you got to be kidding me.

Although I regard Crysis 2 a PC game failure and the DX-11 patch over a DX-9 game not the way Tessellation was mend to be used/implemented, the fact remains that NV GF100/110 and derivative chips do Tessellate better than AMD 5xxx and 6xxx series.

Count my words, we will see the same thing happen with BF3 and other DX-11 native titles.

You made AMD cards sounded like crippled in nature.

 

[badb0y]

HAWX2 was supposed to cripple AMD cards but it was producing very high frames with NV cards (actually AMD cards produced adequate frame rates).

Lost planet 2 was using more tessellation and it was again evil NVIDIA crippling AMD cards.

Same happened with Heaven when NV again made them use a higher tessellation mode than before.

Now NV again cripples AMD cards in Crysis 2 with extensive Tessellation that cripples NV cards as well, you got to be kidding me.

Although I regard Crysis 2 a PC game failure and the DX-11 patch over a DX-9 game not the way Tessellation was mend to be used/implemented, the fact remains that NV GF100/110 and derivative chips do Tessellate better than AMD 5xxx and 6xxx series.

Count my words, we will see the same thing happen with BF3 and other DX-11 native titles.

nVidia does tessellate better than AMD but who says DX11 is all about tessellation? BF3 probably isn't going to have a lot of tessellation because it's a Gaming Evolved game.

To be really honest though the people who picked up the AMD 5800 series on release got a lot more than they could have hoped for. It was a strong performer when it came out and it has aged gracefully. Now with the bitcoin mining craze it still retains a really good market value if you sell it which is nuts for a card that came about nearly 2 years ago.

 

[Genx87]

nVidia does tessellate better than AMD but who says DX11 is all about tessellation? BF3 probably isn't going to have a lot of tessellation because it's a Gaming Evolved game.

To be really honest though the people who picked up the AMD 5800 series on release got a lot more than they could have hoped for. It was a strong performer when it came out and it has aged gracefully. Now with the bitcoin mining craze it still retains a really good market value if you sell it which is nuts for a card that came about nearly 2 years ago.

These are the biggest features of DX11

1. Tessellation
2. Compute
3. Multithreaded rendering

Yes, for gaming DX11 is about tesselation.