Newsgroup: it.comp.hardware.video-3d
Titolo: doom3 e halflife in hardware [lungo][pot]

When I first began computer gaming, the big way to boost your l33t status,
to get those crazy visuals, and to really "immerse" yourself in the game.was
to buy a color video card and monitor.  Its difficult to express how old
that makes me feel, but it drives home a point about how much computer
gaming has changed over the past twenty years.  I still remember articles
discussing the purity of the "monochrome gaming experience", or debating
whether a 3.5" floppy drive was worth the money.
The next big "game experience" definer was probably the CD-ROM.  The
simultaneous evolution of "FMV Gaming" coupled with huge hits like Doom and
Quake suddenly put both the CD-ROM and the CPU at the center of the gaming
picture with one required to hold the video and the other required to play
it.  Then, of course, came 3dfx with the Voodoo 1, and gaming changed again.
We may be on the cusp of a new sea change in gaming, but unlike all the
others I'm not sure this one is a positive change.  With the launch of Doom
3 two weeks ago and Half Life 2 (supposedly) going gold in roughly a week it
looks as though we're entering a new era of "Optimized" Gaming where
hardware and software manufacturers work hand-in-glove to ensure titles are
absolutely optimized for their own technology.
At first glance, that sounds like a great idea, and I used to be a proponent
of it.  I've often wondered what would've happened if 3dfx had cut a deal
with Blizzard prior to the launch of Diablo II to bundle the game with
Voodoo5 cards (More broken left mouse buttons?? -Ed).  For those of you who
don't know, Diablo II was much better visually when played on a 3dfx card
using Glide as compared to a TNT2, GeForce, or Radeon of the day.  Visuals
were smoother, FSAA looked great, and the card could be adjusted for
internal 32-bit rendering.  Even though D2 was a 16-bit game, the internal
32-bit render still produced smoother dithering, which made a subtle
difference.
Could bundled sales of Diablo II have made a difference for 3dfx?  Quite
possibly yes.  Even if the real revenue generated by additional "upgrade"
sales wasn't very high, there's still the tremendously positive PR cranked
out by the usual suspects.  Ever since then I've thought closer relations
between video card designers and game developers was a good idea, but having
now seen the idea in action I'm not so sure it's the case.
At the moment, there's no question-Doom 3 runs best on an NVIDIA 6800-class
card.  ATI is frantically re-writing its OpenGL driver, and we honestly wish
them all the best, but when you consider that the 6800 standard regularly
beats the X800 Pro (a card costing nearly twice as much), ATI would have to
pull one hell of a re-write in order to catch up, to say nothing of actually
leading the way.  Frankly, any re-write THAT good would have me wondering
what the heck the company's priorities were all these years its supposedly
been committed to driver quality.  Driver re-writes this late in the game
don't tend to yield 30-40% speed improvements unless you had some major
problems to begin with--and we don't think ATI did.
So what's that mean for ATI?  After all, despite being much weaker from a
price / performance perspective, the X800 Pro can still turn in nearly 70
FPS in 1024x768 with 4xFSAA and AF turned on.  Its not as if buying an ATI
card for Doom 3 gets you bad performance, does it?
No, it doesn't.  In fact, it gets you pretty damn good performance from the
perspective of the "gamer playing Doom 3."  From the perspective of someone
trying to get the best bang for their buck, however, its lousy.
Now of course, Doom 3 isn't the only game released this year, but for all
practical purposes its one of two (we're betting that Duke Nukem Forever
will NOT ship this year and thus will enter its seventh year of development.
The truly scary part?  This is nearly double the length Daikatana took).
The other, of course, is Half Life 2.  Maybe.  .
Before I go any further I've got to stand up and honestly say I'm not happy
with Valve or ATI regarding Half Life 2.  When NVIDIA and id allowed
reviewers to sneak-peak on Doom 3 performance, John Carmack specifically
stated
"We have been planning to put together a proper pre-release of Doom for
benchmarking purposes, but we have just been too busy with actual game
completion. The executable and data that is being shown was effectively
lifted at a random point in the development process, and shows some obvious
issues with playback, but we believe it to be a fair and unbiased data
point.We were not happy with the demo that Nvidia prepared, so we recorded a
new one while they were here today. This is an important point -- while I'm
sure Nvidia did extensive testing, and knew that their card was going to
come out comfortably ahead with the demo they prepared, right now, they
don't actually know if the demo that we recorded for them puts them in the
best light. Rather nervy of them, actually.
.Doom is going to be an excellent benchmarking tool, but for now you can
still make some rough assessments with it."
Was it a bit sneaky of NVIDIA to pop some Doom 3 tests into the 5900 launch?
Yeah, it was.  But from the start, Carmack made it clear that the game wasn'
t launch-ready (or even near launch ready), and that this was a rough
preview only.
In contrast, ATI's Shader Day's presented Half Life 2 as ready-to-launch,
and Valve's benchmarks as indicative, final, and trustworthy.  Furthermore,
the event itself absolutely tore into NVIDIA over shaders, designs, and
rendering.  In the Doom 3 preview NVIDIA was stronger but ATI looked
playable--just not as good.  When Valve previewed Half-Life 2, NVIDIA looked
like they'd been mauled by a shark.  Ordinarily reviewers would be quite
wary of taking such numbers at face value, but Valve promised a shipping
benchmark in two weeks.  Since no company is going to release bogus numbers
and then put independent review software in the hands of testers, this gave
the numbers respectability.
The code theft a week later was an understandable cause-of-delay-for awhile.
As time dragged on people begun to wonder;  we raised the question if
something else was going on in February.  Gabe Newell confirmed in June when
he said: But was the leak the main reason behind the game's delay? "No, the
fundamental reason was because we underestimated the amount of work left to
do and how long it was going to take, especially when the team were so
demoralised after the leak."
That's bullshit, plain and simple.  If its June 1st and you're planning a
launch on September 30th, that's when you've "understimated the amount of
work left to do."  But when you stand up in front of a group of people and
tell them you'll have benchmark programs and possibly the entire game ready
in under a month?  That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call LYING.
So why is this an issue?
Because after the HL2 benchmarks were posted, general opinion of the GeForce
FX series went in the toilet.  Even in cases where reviewers remained
neutral and cautioned readers to wait for shipping product, forums and
commentary exploded, most of it damning NVIDIA and vindicating ATI as "the"
hardware to purchase.  The entire process did tremendous PR damage to the
GeForce FX line and influenced consumer buying decisions all based on
benchmark results using a game engine whose status as a finished product had
been substantially mis-represented.
This partially explains both why ATI has picked up 3-5% of the discrete GPU
market from NVIDIA as well as why their gross margins are running 6-7%
higher.  It honestly doesn't look as though ATI knew Valve had
mis-represented the game's readiness but that hasn't stopped the firm from
reaping the benefits.  That's not to say that all the problems of the
GeForce FX line were caused by HL2 benchmarks--but those numbers took a bad
situation and made it much worse.
If Valve ships Half Life 2 and the performance trend lines today match up
with the performance trend lines a year ago, then ATI can at least say that
they didn't mis-represent the performance advantage the 9800 / 9600 series
held over the GF FX series.  The release of the X800 and 6800 product lines
may have made such comparisons spurious, but it isn't ATI's fault that Valve
lied about their own release date.
If, however, the "real" Half Life 2 engine can't duplicate the results
demonstrated at Shader Days almost a year ago, ATI and Valve both come away
looking like first-class liars.  This kind of scenario could (and probably
would) leave a lot of consumers who bought ATI cards FOR the express purpose
of Half Life 2 quite unhappy, especially if they bought the many cards that
do NOT have a free coupon for the game.
Could this happen?  Yes.  Remember at the beginning of the article where I
said that driver revisions don't tend to increase performance 30-40% unless
there's a serious problem?  That's still true-but in Half Life's case, its
now clear that the engine wasn't finished either, and that can make a
tremendous difference in the final game. (Ironically, the thieves who stole
the game reported the engine wasn't finished, but were shot down as being
"thieves and liars").
Worst-case scenario for ATI would be the GF FX series being able to come
within much-closer range of equivalently-positioned Radeon 9600 / 9800
hardware while the 6800 assumed the lead by a Doom-3-esque margin.
Even if this doesn't happen, even if ATI pounds NVIDIA into the ground in
Half Life 2, its still not a good situation for consumers as a whole.
Its All About the Money:
What changed my mind about the advisability of game developers working
hand-in-glove with hardware designers was the supposedly-demonstrated
bifurcation between ATI + Half Life 2 and NVIDIA + Doom 3.  Yes, this lends
itself to a simple solution "Buy ATI for HL2, buy NVIDIA for D3", but what
if you're a consumer that wants to play both at high quality?  Buying two
video cards is not an option for the vast majority of people even when the
cards are designed to work with each other SLI-style via PCI-Express.
I believe John Carmack when he says he didn't optimize unfairly for one
architecture over the other, but John Carmack is the exception in the gaming
industry, not the rule.  99.9% of game developers (and game development
firms) are not rich, well-established, and powerful, they do not have long,
proven track-records, they are not regarded as near-Messiah's on 3D gaming
design, and they do not have huge personal cash reserves.
The line between "We built the best game possible that happens to run better
on NVIDIA (ATI) hardware" and "We built the best game possible to run better
on NVIDIA hardware" is razor-thin, especially for a hypothetical company
struggling to survive long enough to push their product out the door.  While
obviously there must be communication between hardware designers, software
developers, and standard developers, such communication should not rise to
the level of hand-in-hand marketing and development.
We've already seen what can happen when a manufacturer is faced with
sub-standard performance in a flagship product line (NV3X); imagine that
effect across the entire industry as a rule-of-business.  Do we want to see
ATI constantly optimizing for NVIDIA games or NVIDIA digging around for
driver tweaks in ATI games, each with the sole goal of gaining a few FPS?
We complain about that situation now.  Imagine how much worse it could be if
picking up "the next big game" became a direct race.  Corporate
 "sponsorship" could end up stifling the industry if partnership with one
company or the other is seen as essential to building a successful product.
Did NVIDIA gain from its Doom 3 partnership?  Yes.  Did it gain more from
Doom 3 than it lost on Half Life 2?  Certainly not yet-and final verdict
will doubtlessly depend  on how good or bad Half Life 2 looks.
Did ATI gain from its Valve partnership?  No.  Will it, in the long run?
Only if final performance figures vindicate the purchasing decisions of
people who bought HL2-enabled cards as long as 18 months ago.  If they don'
t, ATI and Valve both end up looking like liars, if they do, we end up with
a bifurcated system where you buy NVIDIA for Doom, ATI for Half Life, and
suffer if you wanted both.
In this case its not even Doom 3 or Half Life 2 themselves that's the
problem so much as what'll happen if the game industry picks up on the
benefit of this type of partnership.  Too much focus on one manufacturer (or
simply walking too close to that line) can lead to problems for both.  Given
the delays, the coupon embarassments, and the further delays, I'm betting
some at ATI wish they hadn't touched HL2 with a ten foot pole.  But then
again, with NVIDIA backing Doom 3, ATi needed SOMETHING.  Wanna take bets on
who gets Quake 4 or Unreal Tournament 2005?  Hopefully no one.  This type of
fragmentation doesn't help consumers, the designers, or the industry.  In
the long run, it might not even help NVIDIA or ATI.

the long run, it might not even help NVIDIA or ATI.
D'altra parte nessuno vieta a nessuno di fare un gioco/programma che
funzioni ESCLUSIVAMENTE su un hardware specifico. Se questa è una loro
scelta commerciale faranno poi un bilancio per vedere se è stata giusta o
meno.

 E francamente si dimostra tuttora un'ottima scelta.
Stessa cosa io per la 9700Pro. A distanza di 2 anni basta un'overcloccatina
che DooM3 gira benissimo con dettagli alti!

 un'overcloccatina che DooM3 gira benissimo con dettagli alti!
Anche senza overclokkarla :-)
-- 
Yra Ghore
[Arcane Vaultkeeper]
Abit NF7-2 rev. 2.0  Bios 18
2x512MB DDR 433 Kingmax (2,5-3-3-11) vCore Default
Athlon XP 2500+ Mobile @ 2300Mhz (209x11) vCore 1.7 Still Testing :-)
[42衰dle, 47蚜eavy] HD Maxtor 60Gb 7200
Powercolor Radeon 9700Pro @ 370/660
Monitor Samsung 959NF  (1152x864 @ 85Hz)
Windows XP Sp1