Slashdot Mirror
NVidia Recommended Graphics Card For Doom 3
Griffon4 writes "Nvidia
announced today that they have been branded the recommended graphics card for id's forthcoming PC FPS Doom 3. Now I'm wondering:
Recall a little over a year ago that Carmack said the Nvidia
card at the time was just a slight bit more worthy than the ATI?
Jump forward to today - are we getting a real recommendation based on id's own
experience or just seeing the end result of a financial deal that
benefits both?" Other possible factors (apart from NVidia simply being the better graphics card for Doom 3) include the alleged origination of some Doom 3 Alpha version leaks, unlikely to endear ATI to id, and, of course, ATI already having a major bundle deal in place with a certain other FPS.
Considering this is coming from Nvidia, this is clearly, purely, a financial deal between Nvidia and Id. This isn't a .plan file from Carmack or even an interview with the same, which might be more interesting from a technical point of view. This is a cobranding, most likely decided upon in light of ATI's association with Valve and Half-Life 2.
I believe this is what he has done, as it says "recommended" graphics card. More likely than not this is just business, ie. "here's X million dollars, recommend our graphics card." To write directly for a single graphics card platform would be crippling/pissing off your audience.
This is just a marketing ploy. nvidia says hey I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. Since ATI recently struck a deal valve they prolly don't have as much resources available to offer and so nvidia easily made a better offer to id. I really doubt it will make a noticable difference whether you are running a 9800 pro or a 5800, and the only thing we have to look forward to is another spiffy nvidia intro where a flaming skull flys a few circles around the nvidia logo before getting shot up and exploding.
You can't tell the difference because for that particular game, they are used in essentially identical ways. I would assume that if the Unreal series is going to bother supporting both APIs, they simply added a layer of abstraction to their graphics code, coded the engine using that abstraction, and then created implementations of the abstraction for both OpenGL and Direct3D that look exactly the same by design.
This, however, implies nothing about the quality of either API, it merely suggests that the developers coded to the greatest common subset of both APIs. Of course, it does seem that this subset is good enough to make a nice-looking game, which seems to suggest that it doesn't really matter from an end-user perspective which API the developer chooses. Therefore...
But if your going to program a game in an API, why not DirectX? It handles Video, Audio, and input. OpenGL is nice, but it only does video (that I know of).
This is totally irrelevant - we just saw that Direct3d and OpenGL are equally capable so why choose the one that limits you to a single platform? The fact that DirectX handles other things is totally irrelevant - you can use OpenGL alongside the other components of DirectX without a problem (and this is in fact what Carmack has done in the past). You can also just use other libraries for other aspects - for example, SDL works just great. While certainly not of the scope of these commercial games, I found that SDL+OpenGL was more than adequate for my own game, and I got the bonus of being able to make Linux, Mac, and even Windows versions with only about 2 total lines of code changed (had to switch where the #include's pointed for each platform, though a more clever build environment probably could've handled that). Offhand, about the only thing we couldn't do with SDL + OpenGL that DirectX provides is the network coding/matchmaking stuff from DirectPlay, but AFAIK most commercial games don't use this anyway.
The first ever Ultimate Frisbee video game: here (now
> I've played the same game in both OpenGL and DirectX (Unreal 2003 or Unreal2...I forgot which one) and they flawlessly. In fact, I can't tell which one is better.
> But if your going to program a game in an API, why not DirectX?
On that matter, I'd quote some post, which maybe has some relevance to your question:
>> Why build for a closed platform (DirectX)?
id Software is not only producing games of the Quake and Doom-series on various platforms, which are not very demanding on the input devices, and usually only have a minimum of video. They also sell the graphics engine to other companies. IRC, that is actually the main income of the company.
So, why should a company which makes its money mainly from graphics engines restrict oneself to one platform? Its not like they can't use DirectX for video, audio, and input anymore when they use OpenGL for graphics.
Especially, when they have experts on that API and at the time when Quake emerged, DirectX 3D was nothing more than a hack.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
When the man himself once made a post righ here on
about the only thing we couldn't do with SDL + OpenGL that DirectX provides is the network coding/matchmaking stuff from DirectPlay
Here comes the SDL_net
(Not to the parent poster): In case you are curious, there're plenty userful and commercial-quality libs out there, such as SDL_image, SDL_mixer, SDL_ttf...They just rock, some of them had been used in commercial titles (remember Lokigames?)...forget about DirectX, and screw MS.
He could have, but he likes the OpenGL API more, as he documented in his plan file in 1996. This also addresses your question later in the thread as to how DirectX is a kludgey hack; in 1996 at least, the interface was really nasty. It has probably improved since.
There's also the portability issue. If he coded it using DirectX, that locks the code to Microsoft platforms. No easy Mac, Linux, or console ports aside from the xbox.
NVIDIA is pleased to announce that id Software recommends the GeForce FX family of graphics processing units for DOOM 3.
This means nothing, it could even be simply that the box system requirements says "GeForce FX or better" under the recomended sub-heading.
Anyway, I hate this crap with games manufacturers officially "reccomending" hardware or deliberately coding a game to be more efficient with one brand over another. I despise seeing the Nvidia logo on game intros and thought a lot less of Valve when they endorsed ATi. I'll be thinking id has come a long way down in the world if they start endorsing nvidia, not that it would make sense since who wants to buy a game engine that is deliberately coded to run better on one specific brand's hardware.
Its just such a cheap shitty way to try and make people buy your product. Cant beat the competition by making a better product? Frightened your competitor just does everything better than you? Screw being competitive and trying to offer something better for your customers, pay off developers to make the competition crapper instead!
Developers should be ashamed of themselves, theyre supposed to be about making something as good as possible for any customer, not only if theyre using hardware from whoever theyve shacked up with.
DirectX is Microsoft proprietary and Carmack has always stated that proprietary isn't a good thing. It's easier to port a game if it's built from the ground up for portability. I don't know what he's developing on now but in the past he hasn't always even done initial development on Windows.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
iD has always said the XBOX version will be equal to the PC version (even at half the cpu/gfx capability) and released simultaneously.
Maybe this has something to do with it, due to the XBOX having an NVIDIA GPU and not an ATI.
I just bought a new ATI card. When I read that nVidia is the better choice for Doom 3, I wonder "Hrm, maybe I should just stick with HalfLife 2 and skip Doom altogether." No way am I forking out for a new videocard again...might as well buy a console and sit by the TV. In reality, the differences between cards may be small, but there is a two-edged sword with these company claims.