NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 (G80): GPUs Re-architected for DirectX 10
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on November 8, 2006 6:01 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The thing to remember is that, even when all optimizations are disabled, there are other optimizations going on that we can't touch. There always will be. The better these optimizations get, the faster we will be able to render accurate images. Gaining more control over what happens in the hardware is a nice bonus, but disabling optimization for no reason just doesn't make sense. Thus, our tests will be done at default texture filtering quality on NVIDIA hardware. In order to understand the performance impact of High Quality vs. Quality texture filtering on NVIDIA hardware, we ran a few benchmarks with as many optimizations disabled as possible and compared the result to our default quality tests. Here's what we get:
We can clearly see that G70 takes a performance hit from enabling high quality mode, but that G80 is able to take it in stride. While we don't have the ability to specifically disable or enable optimizations in ATI hardware, Catalyst AI is the feature that dictates how much liberty ATI is able to take with a game, from filtering optimizations all the way to shader replacement. We can't tell if the difference we see in Oblivion is due to shader replacement, filtering, or some other optimization under R580.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
They did the same thing with the original Halo, porting it (and slowing it down) to DX9. MS seems to think making Halo 2 Vista-only will get people to upgrade to the new OS. [:rolls eyes:]stmok - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
How else are they gonna get gamers to upgrade to Vista? :)(by cornering them into adopting Vista, using DirectX 10.0)
Its sad and pathetic at the same time.
DirectX 10.0 should be a "transitional" solution...That is, it covers both XP and Vista. This allows people to gradually upgrade their hardware, and if they wish, to Vista. What MS is doing now, is throwing everyone (developers and consumers) into the deep end, and expecting them to pay for the changes. (I suspect some would be put off by this, while the majority will continue to accept it...Which is unfortunate).
Great article BTW. Interesting to see the high-end stuff...But I doubt I can afford it in this lifetime!
I have two questions!
(1) Any chance of looking at a triple video card setup?
(I saw a presentation slide which had 2 video cards in SLI, while a third showed something else on screen).
(2) Any idea when the GF8600-series comes?
(mainstream market solution).
yyrkoon - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
Great, links arent working ?http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/featu...">http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/featu...
yyrkoon - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/featu...">This article was written by a friend of mine back in April after an interview with ATI. Perhaps this will clear some things up.
yyrkoon - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
When you break all hardware/software ties to something that has been around for 4-5 years? Its not that easy making it "transitional". From a software perspective, D3D10 is not compatable with XP in the least.I for one, think this is a step in the right direction.
JarredWalton - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
Supposedly all of the changes to the WDDM make porting DX10 back to Windows XP "impossible", although I'm more inclined to think the correct term would be "difficult" and you also have to add in "it doesn't fit with MS marketing protocol". WDDM is quite different in Vista however, so maybe there's some substance to the claims.cosmotic - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
On page 9:--Briefly explain what a sub-pixel is in the sentence before--
JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
Due to the size of this article and the amount of time it took to get ready, let me preempt any comments about the spelling and grammar. I am in the process of editing the final document as I read through it, and there are spelling/grammar errors. If they bother you too much, check back in an hour. If you read this an hour from now and you still find errors, then you can respond, though it would be useful to keep all responses in a single thread like this one.Thanks in advance,
Jarred Walton
Editor
AnandTech.com
xtknight - Thursday, November 16, 2006 - link
On p 12 (gamma corrected AA):"This causes problems for thing like thin lines."
acejj26 - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
"If DirectX 10 sounds like a great boon to software developers, the fact that DX10 will only be supported in Windows XP is certain to curb enthusiasm. "I believe this should say "DX10 will only be supported in Windows Vista..."
Not to be rude, but shouldn't the article be edited BEFORE being published??