interesting.. counterpoint to d3: hl2 30% faster on ati hardware?

[CaiNaM]

Of course, those of you interested in the full experience will want a 2 gigahertz or higher processor, 512 megabytes of RAM and a DirectX 9 video card. Doug specifically stated that the ATI x800 was the card of choice amongst many of the testers, as it ran roughly about 30% faster than Nvidia's best cards.

full article (August 02, 2004)

this is getting ridiculous... i'm thinking we're getting a little too much hardware influence in games... is this truly coincidental, or a deliberate attempt by nvidia/ati to hamper performance in specific games to make their cards look more appealing?

 

[Sylvanas]

i thought we already knew that? (at least i did) ATI own NV in halflife2 and NV own ATI in d3....

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: Sylvanas
i thought we already knew that? (at least i did) ATI own NV in halflife2 and NV own ATI in d3....

actually most nv fans are denying that, citing the benches published at xbit labes, run on the almost year old alpha leak. this article seems to contradict that. this isn't a 'slam' at nvidia per se, as even if it IS 30% slower, i'm sure it will still run fine, just as doom3, while not necessarily as fast as nv hardware, will run fine on ati.

the point is (at least in this situation with 2 high profile titles) it seems software is becoming "vendor specific", which imo is not a good thing.

 

[nemesismk2]

Where are the numbers because 30% of nothing means nothing to me?

 

[Shinei]

30% of "not finished" is still "not finished". I don't want to hear about Half-Life 2 until Valve can confirm (for real, not this hype-up crap they've been pulling) that Half-Life 2 is done and will be going to retail chains within x days.
I think that by the time Valve gets Half-Life 2 done, nVidia will have moved on to NV50 and the situation will have changed by then.

And let's not forget that not only is Doom 3 out now, but it seems to have more of a future as an engine than Half-Life 2 does (Return to Castle Wolfenstein 2 and Quake 4 are already being worked on using the Doom 3 engine, and I for one am psyched to hear that).

 

[blazerazor]

"Return to Castle Wolfenstein 2 and Quake 4 are already being worked on using the Doom 3 engine"

Nothing left to do but

 

[Tab]

Show me the numbers...

 

[Ages120]

Lets just wait and see. Remember when they said they would release the game last year.

 

[Pentium]

Half life 2 will be a great game, but engine wise, its already outdated. Doom3 style rendering IS the future.

 

[nRollo]

The screenshot in that article looked like a$$ compared to D3?

Oh well, the original HL based on the Q1 engine in Q3 times wasn't exactly the cutting edge of graphics either, but people loved the game.

Personally, I care a lot more about Doom3 and Quake 4 than I do HL2.

 

[gururu]

yea, quake 4 with D3-like graphics gives me chills just thinking about it . HL2 sets out to accomplish a lot. The outdoor environments are huge and the AI is supposed to redefine gaming. If it can do these things without being a buggy turd, I think it will own D3, where the AI stinks. If it stinks, my D3 will keep me happy for awhile. )

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Edit: err disregard below didn't read carefully enough.

I'm pretty sure the 30% was comparing old gen cards. I thought new gen nvidia cards were actually beating ATI in hl2 benches (granted beta benchies but that's all your going to get). Amazing how some people will take faith in ATI over some marginally believable benchies.

 

[NJDevil]

Originally posted by: Shinei
30% of "not finished" is still "not finished". I don't want to hear about Half-Life 2 until Valve can confirm (for real, not this hype-up crap they've been pulling) that Half-Life 2 is done and will be going to retail chains within x days.
I think that by the time Valve gets Half-Life 2 done, nVidia will have moved on to NV50 and the situation will have changed by then.

And let's not forget that not only is Doom 3 out now, but it seems to have more of a future as an engine than Half-Life 2 does (Return to Castle Wolfenstein 2 and Quake 4 are already being worked on using the Doom 3 engine, and I for one am psyched to hear that).

Hmmm, good point. After reading that article, I was certainly going to upgrade to x800 pro (still waiting for real benchmarks) but if many future games use the doom3 engine, I might get hammered in those. Then again, the only real FPS game I play is half life. I usually stick to RTS games which are less graphics intensive.

 

[Genx87]

Marketing dollars hard at work.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: Shinei
30% of "not finished" is still "not finished". I don't want to hear about Half-Life 2 until Valve can confirm (for real, not this hype-up crap they've been pulling) that Half-Life 2 is done and will be going to retail chains within x days.
I think that by the time Valve gets Half-Life 2 done, nVidia will have moved on to NV50 and the situation will have changed by then.

And let's not forget that not only is Doom 3 out now, but it seems to have more of a future as an engine than Half-Life 2 does (Return to Castle Wolfenstein 2 and Quake 4 are already being worked on using the Doom 3 engine, and I for one am psyched to hear that).

it makes little difference when discussing it. doom3 was not finished, yet we had a pretty good idea it would run faster on nv hardware - and of course when it was finally released, it did.

i'm sure the performance will improve on nv hardware with later driver revisions (even if the drivers require specific, rather than generic, optimizations), just as i'm sure we'll see doom3 performance increased on ati hardware.. but again, the point here is not to posture and proclaim whose hardware is faster; rather i wanted to see what people thought of the influence hardware vendors had on the performance of these 2 high profile titles, and how nv and ati used it to market their products as the 'superior' hardware...

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: Rollo
The screenshot in that article looked like a$$ compared to D3?

Oh well, the original HL based on the Q1 engine in Q3 times wasn't exactly the cutting edge of graphics either, but people loved the game.

Personally, I care a lot more about Doom3 and Quake 4 than I do HL2.

i wasn't impressed with the d3 screenshots either, however the game in motion is much different from the "static" shots.. we'll just have to see... but hl wasn't a bad looking game at all, and has certainly had much more longevity than q3.. don't forget, there will be a CS2

 

[GeneralGrievous]

Half life 2's graphics aren't quite up to Doom 3's level. It's a more developed multiplayer game and there will likely have to be more enemies on screen and a more sophisticated physics engine.

In anycase, there are rumors about that the game will go gold this month. I hope the NV40 isn't running the garbage NV3x mixed mode path, it doesn't need to.

I don't know what the suprise in the figures are. When we all bought GTs it was pretty much a given that D3 performance would be superior and HL2 performance inferior.

"Return to Castle Wolfenstein 2 and Quake 4 are already being worked on using the Doom 3 engine"

From what I have heard, Doom 3's extensive shadowing gave the NV40 an advantage. The performance gap over the x800s might not translate over to other games based off the engine.

 

[Schadenfroh]

even if it is, nvidia will prolly release a new driver a lil while after its release that will help close the gap.

but as tab says

Show me the numbers...

i dont trust gabe as far as i can throw him after he screwed me last year

 

[reever]

dont trust gabe as far as i can throw him after he screwed me last year

Yeah, he was totally off on those 5900/9800 numbers from shader day, it's not like the FX's still get beat with the beta benchmarks on ixbt, he was completely wrong, and those numbers he talked about concerning 6800's a year before they came out, sheesh what was he thinking :roll:

 

[Illissius]

Hmm. It says "ATI x800 was the card of choice amongst many of the testers, as it ran roughly about 30% faster than Nvidia's best cards". That's a pretty ambiguous statement :/. Does it mean the X800XT is 30% faster than the 6800U and the X800 Pro is 30% faster than the 6800GT? Or just the former? I could easily imagine that being the case - on a PS2.0 codepath in Far Cry, the other DX9 game, the X800XTPE is 20-30% faster than the 6800U, courtesy of its much higher core clocks. On the other hand, the 6800GT is equal to better than the X800 Pro, and I see no real reason why this can't be the case in HL2, asides from Valve not wanting it to be (although I've heard that it'll utilize 3Dc, so that could be a reason; but I don't think that would make for a very huge difference, certainly not Doom 3 proportions).
So I don't really know what to make of the ATi being faster at HL2 thing. With the previous generation it's almost certainly true; GeforceFX is crap at DX9, so the R9x00s will no doubt outpace it by, err, a lot. On the other hand, asides from 3Dc, I see no technical reason why the GF6s couldn't perform just as well at HL2 as they do at Far Cry. All we can do is wait and see.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: reever

dont trust gabe as far as i can throw him after he screwed me last year

Yeah, he was totally off on those 5900/9800 numbers from shader day, it's not like the FX's still get beat with the beta benchmarks on ixbt, he was completely wrong, and those numbers he talked about concerning 6800's a year before they came out, sheesh what was he thinking :roll:

i was refering to when HL2 was due to be released but delayed,and the reasons it was delayed. i could care less about the 5900/9800 numbers in half life 2, i did not buy either, people that buy cards based on what some guy tells them about performance of a card in a game that has not been released yet are making bad moves IMO. I know loads of people listened to him last year when he said it would be out in september 2003 and that the 9800 XT ruled in it. People shelled out top dollor for HL2 vouchers and for a card that's value has decreased, a card they bought with the excuse of playing that one game. I was going to wait till the day Doom3 was released and see the numbers in it before i went with ATI/nvidia, Doom3 was released, and my 6800GT is ordered. The 5900/9800 did not offer enough of a performance increase over my TI4x00 to justify buying either, for i use not FSAA (cause it screws up text in 1942) and run at low resolutions because of my monitor's size.

 

[oldfart]

Originally posted by: Rollo
The screenshot in that article looked like a$$ compared to D?

Oh well, the original HL based on the Q1 engine in Q3 times wasn't exactly the cutting edge of graphics either, but people loved the game.

Personally, I care a lot more about Doom3 and Quake 4 than I do HL2.

It was actually VERY loosely based on Q1 engine to start, but was its own engine by the time it was done. It was out during Q2 days, not Q3 and had better graphics than Q2 did at the time and (MUCH) better SP gameplay. Q2 had (MUCH) better MP gameplay.

 

[RadioHead84]

You can say that Q2 had better MP to start , but deff not as good as it aged. I remember playing a lot of Q2 online..wow i loved playing CTF on that thing it was just so much fun!

But now HL has pretty much ruled the MP part with all the very well made mods they have for it.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: oldfart

Originally posted by: Rollo
The screenshot in that article looked like a$$ compared to D?

Oh well, the original HL based on the Q1 engine in Q3 times wasn't exactly the cutting edge of graphics either, but people loved the game.

Personally, I care a lot more about Doom3 and Quake 4 than I do HL2.

It was actually VERY loosely based on Q1 engine to start, but was its own engine by the time it was done. It was out during Q2 days, not Q3 and had better graphics than Q2 did at the time and (MUCH) better SP gameplay. Q2 had (MUCH) better MP gameplay.

iirc the original hl was based on q2 engine.....

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: RadioHead84
You can say that Q2 had better MP to start , but deff not as good as it aged. I remember playing a lot of Q2 online..wow i loved playing CTF on that thing it was just so much fun!

But now HL has pretty much ruled the MP part with all the very well made mods they have for it.

Action Quake 2 and Action Half-Life (mods) are still the best multiplayer computer games ever made IMO.