Quake 4 Graphics Performance Compared

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Quake 4 Graphics Performance Compared

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @06:21AM from the lush-bloodsplosions dept.

Timmus writes "nVidia's huge lead in OpenGL performance is apparently gone. According to Firingsquad, ATI's latest hotfix driver brings major performance improvements to ATI's RADEON X1800 cards in OpenGL games like Doom 3 and Quake 4. The X1800 XT is now faster than GeForce 7800 GTX, while the X1800 XL is faster than the GeForce 7800 GT in most cases. The article also includes GeForce 6800 Ultra/GT scores, including both in SLI. It's a pretty interesting read if you like graphical benchmarks." From the article: "A little over a week ago, rumors began spreading that ATI was working on a new tool that delivered substantially improved performance to their recently launched X1000 cards in OpenGL titles such as DOOM 3, Quake 4, and many others. Some reports claimed ATIs performance improved by up to 35% in these titles in 4xAA mode. Then, posts on Beyond3Ds forums and sites like Guru3D confirmed these rumors. So how did ATI pull this off?"

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low end performance by sycomonkey · 2005-10-25 06:24 · Score: -1, Offtopic

I wonder how well this game works on a Radeon 8500LE. I can play Doom 3 with the settings turned down a bit, so does it stand to reason that I could run this too?

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--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
1. Re:low end performance by cyxxon · 2005-10-25 06:56 · Score: 1
  
  I haven't really compared it myself my loading it up and checking the fps, but the consensus on teh boards and forumz seems to be that Quake 4 actually performs a little better than Doom 3, maybe they just had more time to optimize, known engine and such. Don't take my word on it, though. For me, it ran good on a GF 6600 GT.
2. Re:low end performance by Guspaz · 2005-10-25 08:07 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I'm tempted to say that if it ran Doom 3, it will run Quake 4. I concur with other posters that the performance is on-par, and often better. On the other hands, there are graphically intense scenes too that are as bad as they get. Grab a copy off BitTorrent, see how it runs, and then decide if it runs fast enough to buy the game or not.
Jesus. Just Jesus. Jesus.... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-25 06:26 · Score: -1, Troll

Is there any reason this GAMER SHIT doesn't get "posted" in the GAMER section? Maybe, Zonker, you should take time out from BONEING your little sister's friends on your parent's HARD WOOD FLOORS, and take the time to properly EDIT your stories?
How did ATI... by Bin_jammin · 2005-10-25 06:40 · Score: 4, Funny

pull this off? Money, hard work, and development. Did you think it came from aliens?
1. Re:How did ATI... by Enti · 2005-10-25 06:55 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  ATI's drivers tend to be a bit shabby from the get-go (based on my personal experience over the past five-ish years). Assuming that the initial driver support for the X1000 series was horrible, such a large performance boost is understandable. It used to be that ATI cards were on par with Nvidia's and the poorly written drivers held them back. Can't say when exactly, but ATI started turning things around a bit before the 9800Pro was released.
  
  --
  In these days, bleeps and bloops mean something more
2. Re:How did ATI... by Sancho · 2005-10-25 06:56 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Maybe.
  Or maybe they tweaked their drivers for Doom3 and Quake4? Haven't read the article, so don't flame me if this is mentioned, but it wasn't all that long ago that it came out that ATI had been doing this for other popular games/benchmarks. It was easy to do (tweaking for specific cases instead of improving performance in the general case) and it made them look like the best on paper--win/win for ATI.
3. Re:How did ATI... by Erioll · 2005-10-25 07:04 · Score: 1
  
  Ya, I'll be taking this with a grain of salt until there's a lot more independant confirmation. Everybody remember the quack vs quake debacle?
  
  At various times BOTH manufacturers have been guilty of "internal tweaks" to degrade quality for a performance boost in a popular benchmark. I hope it's not happening again, and that the performance increase is genuine (I have a vested interest, as I have an X800), but it could be another fraud.
  
  "Wait and see" is what I'll do.
4. Re:How did ATI... by LLuthor · 2005-10-25 07:17 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Actually the last few months have seen nothing but great drivers from ATI. I have an X800 in one of my machines and every release from ATI is better than the last. I haven't seen any crashes for a long time, and although I am not a big gamer, I do play games frequently and they have been running great.
  
  I still stick to Nvidia for the time being, but ATI is nowhere near as bad as they used to be (except for Linux support where they still suck).
  
  --
  LL
5. Re:How did ATI... by DingerX · 2005-10-25 07:27 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, and who shopped the "quack" story around the hardware news outlets until someone (*cough* HardOCP) traded scruples for site hits and bought it?
  
  Anybody
  
  That's right... nVidia. It's funny, isn't it, that when I hear "unscrupulous reporting" and "smear politics" I think of two things: the Bush Administration and the Graphics Hardware marekt. I'll take it with a grain of salt, but not because of some campaign two generations ago that was entirely orchestrated by the competition.
6. Re:How did ATI... by Guspaz · 2005-10-25 07:32 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  This isn't a question of ATI having poor drivers, it's a question of taking time to do optimizations.
  
  The X1000 series features programmable memory controllers. For Quake 4 (And Doom 3, so this may be a general OpenGL optimization) they have put together some new code for the memory controller that provides the large benefits.
7. Re:How did ATI... by Guspaz · 2005-10-25 07:35 · Score: 1
  
  They have and they haven't. The tweak is targeted at Doom 3 and Quake 4, and it is indicated that there is some game-detection going on, but this isn't a quality-sacrificing optimization. The X1000 series has a programmable memory controller, and it is obvious that some games benefit from certain memory controller settings. Since D3 and Quake 4 are popular games, they obviously deemed that it was worth the effort to try to find more optimal settings for the memory controller for these two games. They did, and it led to a rather large performance increase.
8. Re:How did ATI... by theantipop · 2005-10-25 07:35 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Actually one of ATi's lead developer's explained that they are simply taking advantage of some of the properties of the new memory controller in the X1000 series. They have optimizations (I would guess) specific to some types of memory calls, and it seems that they just now had time to perfect them in driver. As I understand it, you won't see these performance gains with older Radeons.
9. Re:How did ATI... by Guspaz · 2005-10-25 07:45 · Score: 1
  
  Programmable memory controller in new cards. Tweaks to it for these games. No quality degredation, though it is still directed at the two specific games.
10. Re:How did ATI... by Sancho · 2005-10-25 08:17 · Score: 1
  
  I never said there was quality-sacrificing giong on--that was someone who replied to me. And my point stands--popular games might run better on this card if ATI decides to make a memory profile for them, but it tells us nothing about the general case.
11. Re:How did ATI... by Guspaz · 2005-10-25 08:46 · Score: 1
  
  It boils down to if the tweak is applied only to Quake 4/Doom 3, or OpenGL apps in general.
  
  The thing is that it is hard to tell without somebody who has both the beta driver and one of the new cards who can actually fire up some other OpenGL games. The difference in that case may be academic, since there are few (if any) major games that use OpenGL other than Q4/D3.
  
  The way I see it, they've had performance issues with OpenGL games, and it would seem, as far as most people are concerned, that they've fixed them. It doesn't matter that it doesn't apply to Direct3D games; they had a weakness in their product and they've improved upon it. They already had the performance lead in similar-generation products in many Direct3D titles, so they're just trying to fix up the ones where they are at a disadvantage.
  
  The 7800 still has other advantages over the X800 XT in my mind; it is a single-slot card for one thing, while the X1800 XT is a two-slot card. I'm pretty dissappointed in ATI for that one.
12. Re:How did ATI... by Enti · 2005-10-25 09:17 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I'm with you on that, having been on the ATI bandwagon with an X800 ever since my TI4400 exploded on me. I was just recalling days when some of the more popular games would never render quite right when running on an ATI card.
  
  --
  In these days, bleeps and bloops mean something more
13. Re:How did ATI... by DudemanX · 2005-10-25 10:24 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  You may have an X800 but if you read the article you'ld see that this performance boost doesn't apply to you. It only works for X1800(and maybe X1600 and X1300) cards that have the programable memory controller. The X800 actualy loses one or two FPS using the new driver, sorry :(
14. Re:How did ATI... by Erioll · 2005-10-25 12:48 · Score: 1
  
  I noticed that, but I hope they address that by the time they make this the "official" release, so that either we can ALL enjoy an increase in performance, or at the least they don't screw something up that's already working fine.
15. Re:How did ATI... by Breakfast+Pants · 2005-10-25 13:31 · Score: 1
  
  Ok, maybe it wouldn't have come to light without nVidia and maybe nVidia has done it too; so what: the Quack story wasn't made up and I am glad I heard about it. Through that story I learned a lot of the dirty stuff that both manufacturers do to artificially boost their numbers.
  
  --
  
  --
  
  WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Bought the game for an ATI 9600 xt, useless by linzeal · 2005-10-25 06:40 · Score: -1, Offtopic

I can't even play the damn game at 800x600 without serious choppiness. With fraps I am getting under 20 fps in most cases dipping down to single digits pretty quickly. I think I am just going to sell the damn thing back on Amazon and forget about it till I can afford an x800 for 150 bucks or so in a year.

--
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
1. Re:Bought the game for an ATI 9600 xt, useless by LLuthor · 2005-10-25 06:48 · Score: 1
  
  A 6600GT is just fine for Quake 4 and costs $80. How can you afford the game ($50) and fraps ($37) and not get an $80 graphics card to play it on?
  
  --
  LL
2. Re:Bought the game for an ATI 9600 xt, useless by paradigmdream · 2005-10-25 07:06 · Score: 1
  
  where are you buying a 6600gt for $80?
3. Re:Bought the game for an ATI 9600 xt, useless by LLuthor · 2005-10-25 07:20 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I am in the London at the moment, and I bought a 6600GT for £45 from a shop called GHS Technology on Tottenham Court road last friday. That is almost exactly $80.
  
  --
  LL
4. Re:Bought the game for an ATI 9600 xt, useless by MBraynard · 2005-10-25 07:56 · Score: 1
  
  zactly. Out of his mind.
5. Re:Bought the game for an ATI 9600 xt, useless by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-25 08:02 · Score: 0
  
  OK, but if you're not going to buy stolen goods you still need a 6600 (a GT is overkill) which is about $100.
6. Re:Bought the game for an ATI 9600 xt, useless by LLuthor · 2005-10-25 08:03 · Score: 1
  
  Read my reply to paradigmdream's post.
  
  --
  LL
7. Re:Bought the game for an ATI 9600 xt, useless by Guspaz · 2005-10-25 08:05 · Score: 1
  
  I played through all of Quake 4 on a Mobility Radeon 9700, which in the performance spectrum is slightly below a desktop 9600 XT. Yes, it was choppy in places, but it was playable on the whole.
  
  Besides, I was playing at 800x600 on medium quality. Had I decided to play at low quality at 640x480, I am certain that the game would have had much higher framerates and still looked good. Let us not forget Carmack's statements about how the Doom 3 engine was designed to look good at 640x480. I'm just a sucker for eye candy.
  
  In short, the 9600 is more than capable when it comes to Quake 4.
8. Re:Bought the game for an ATI 9600 xt, useless by rAiNsT0rm · 2005-10-25 08:05 · Score: 1
  
  Are you sure it was a GT? Even at my wholesale prices I can get a 6600 for about $75-80, however the 6600 GT's go for about $125-130 and retail low at $145.
  
  --
  http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
9. Re:Bought the game for an ATI 9600 xt, useless by Deliveranc3 · 2005-10-25 08:52 · Score: 1
  
  Turn off soft shadows, there is probably some shadow setting that disabling will give you like 60-70% more performance.
10. Re:Bought the game for an ATI 9600 xt, useless by MBraynard · 2005-10-25 12:38 · Score: 1
  
  What version of the 6600GT is it? PCI Express? AGP? I still think you are a fluke. If you have to walk into some arcane shop to find it and it's not on pricewatch, then the price doesn't exist.
11. Re:Bought the game for an ATI 9600 xt, useless by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-28 15:17 · Score: 0
  
  I have a Radeon9600XT bought directly from ATI and the game wont even start. It freezes on a blank blue screen and all is left is to push the Reset button... I'm using the latest ATI drivers (not beta ones)... Any ideas?
Same old, same old... by stienman · 2005-10-25 06:56 · Score: 2, Insightful

if(Window.Title=="DOOM"){
employGraphicsShortcuts();
}

As always, the graphics card makers quantify the leading game's usage of the API and take shortcuts as needed in order to improve gameplay. Since Doom is released, they can also release these driver shortcuts. These same shortcuts wouldn't necessarily work under another program, and may cause unintended artifacts, crashes, etc.

The only question is why hasn't nVidia released their tweaks yet?

This would only be news once they've both optimized their drivers for this game and one clearly has the advantage.

-Adam
1. Re:Same old, same old... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-25 07:43 · Score: 0
  
  Troll. You start with a premise close to reality then come out with
  and may cause unintended artifacts, crashes, etc.
  If you would've done any reading on the subject, you would realize that they are implementing a programmable memory controller. What they have done is make optimizations based on the memory useage patterns of the Doom3 engine. This is in no way a shortcut. There hasn't been any drop in image quality. If this pisses you off then you are welcome to run older drivers that don't take full advantage of the hardware.
2. Re:Same old, same old... by Guspaz · 2005-10-25 07:49 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  nVidia already HAS optimized their drivers for it. They did that back when Doom 3 was news. ATI did the same.
  
  What ATI is doing this time is tweaking the programmable memory controller in their new cards, not really tweaking the drivers. As I said both ATI and nVidia have already tweaked their drivers for Doom 3. So unless nVidia has some similar tweak up their sleeves (Which they may or may not) then the situation won't change with waiting. I think Doom 3 has been out enough that both companies have grabbed the low-hanging fruit, and even the medium-hanging fruit (And perhaps even the hard-to-reach fruit). The only reason we're seeing this is because of new possibilities opened up by ATI's new hardware.
I wonder... by stienman · 2005-10-25 07:07 · Score: -1, Offtopic

So, when is there going to be a NetBSD port to this graphics card?

-Adam
1. Re:I wonder... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-25 14:30 · Score: 0
  
  Hey, I thought it was funny.
So Close, Yet So Far Away.... by DeadBugs · 2005-10-25 07:12 · Score: 3, Informative

Apparently it only works at 4XAA and only on the X1800XT. There are also performance differences when playing multi-player versus running time demos.

This is a step in the right direction. However, this is not the OpenGL driver fix that everyone has been waiting for. It is a manipulation of ATI's new programmable memory controller.

--
http://www.kubuntu.org/
1. Re:So Close, Yet So Far Away.... by Guspaz · 2005-10-25 07:59 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Apparently you should RTFA.
  
  1) It does not only work at 4xAA, that is just where the gains are more impressive. With or without AA before they were behind, now they're ahead.
  
  2) It is not just the X1800XT. The review was a roundup of high-end cards, and as such only included the X1800 XT and X1800 XL (Not just the XT like you suggest). The optimizations should affect ATI's entire product line fom the X1300 on up.
  
  3) There are no other major games, to my knowledge, that still use OpenGL. As such, this can be considered a general fix for OpenGL performance. General in the sense that it fixes the problem (Poor OpenGL performance) as far as the vast majority of gamers are concerned.
2. Re:So Close, Yet So Far Away.... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-25 11:38 · Score: 0
  
  Um... Halflife 2?
That takes smart people by Odocoileus · 2005-10-25 07:13 · Score: 1

So how did ATI pull this off?
Maybe they have an aspie?

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...
Or its the new NVIDIA drivers by shoptroll · 2005-10-25 07:16 · Score: 2, Informative

I don't know what NVIDIA did with the drivers (81.85) released about 1 week ago, but they broke OpenGL support in Doomsday 1.8.6 (3D Source Port of DOOM). According to the changelog it adds OpenGL 2.0 support.

Not sure if that's related, but if NVIDIA is accidentally breaking support for OpenGL in apps (perhaps deprecated API calls? I dunno) that could have something to do with it.

--
Insert Sig Here
1. Re:Or its the new NVIDIA drivers by hawkbug · 2005-10-25 07:36 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, I also noticed problems with the 81.85 drivers. I am no longer able to play Unreal Tournament on my Gefore 6200 TC card like I was before. Granted, it's not the fastest card - but UT played fine before. The new drivers did drastically speed up UT2004 for me, but absolutely killed the original UT. I was surprised by this.
2. Re:Or its the new NVIDIA drivers by SevenTowers · 2005-10-25 15:59 · Score: 1
  
  The 81.85 drivers cause all sorts of havoc such as breaking dual screen support on 6800 cards. They rushed out the drivers as an answer to ATI without properly testing them. I recommend staying away from that particular upgrade until they release a fixed version.
  
  --
  Imperium et libertas
  Autocracy and freedom
3. Re:Or its the new NVIDIA drivers by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-26 20:58 · Score: 0
  
  In the 81.85 release notes there's an item about some game breaking because it only checks for OpenGL 1.5, not 1.5 or above. At a guess, Doomsday does the same.
Doesn't mean much if you can't buy the x1800xt by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-25 07:47 · Score: 0

Title says it all.
Yes but by Xarius · 2005-10-25 07:51 · Score: 3, Insightful

does it run on linux?

*ducks*

Seriously, have they made the same improvements in the linux native drivers?

--
C17H21NO4
1. Re:Yes but by Frodo+Crockett · 2005-10-25 11:06 · Score: 1
  
  I can say without doubt that, no, they have not made the same improvements. Why bother with such a minor tweak when their Linux drivers are so far behind the Windows drivers? UT2004, for example, is too choppy to play under Linux with settings that are fine under Windows.
  
  --
  "The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
great line from article by Surt · 2005-10-25 07:53 · Score: 3, Insightful

As shown by our testing, with one simple driver update, ATI's gone from last to first place in Quake 4 performance. There's a wealth of data you can glean from these benchmarks.

Of course it's a comparison between two companies, so they were either going from last to last or last to first, there wasn't any other possibility.

--
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Memory controller features arbitration logic.... by Toadius · 2005-10-25 08:03 · Score: 1

From http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/quake_4_high-e nd_performance/

One cool feature ATI has added to their X1000 family is the ability to make changes to the memory controller's arbitration logic and/or its algorithms via software. This allows ATI to make adjustments with a simple driver update.

This is what ATI has done with their new hotfix driver, they've simply optimized memory access inside their memory controller to better handle OpenGL titles. This is all invisible to the end user: once an OpenGL game such as Quake 4 or DOOM 3 is loaded by the user, the new driver automatically loads up the optimized algorithms for the memory controller's arbitration logic.
Isn't the bigger question... by bconway · 2005-10-25 08:25 · Score: 3, Funny

How did the ATi fare when running quack4.exe?

--
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
OpenGL is much more than Doom3 by Outland+Traveller · 2005-10-25 08:35 · Score: 1

3) There are no other major games, to my knowledge, that still use OpenGL. As such, this can be considered a general fix for OpenGL performance. General in the sense that it fixes the problem (Poor OpenGL performance) as far as the vast majority of gamers are concerned.

There are a LARGE NUMBER of professional OpenGL applications that push current graphics hardware and drivers to their limits. Also, Linux game environments such as Cedega translate DirectX to OpenGL calls, and would benefit from any general OpenGL improvements ATI could provide. Special optimizations for one game is in no way "a general fix for [ATI's] OpenGL performance". I know you qualified your statement, and ID software certainly has done great things for OpenGL, but this was a silly statement to make.
1. Re:OpenGL is much more than Doom3 by Guspaz · 2005-10-25 09:11 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Professional applications are best suited to professional graphics cards, not gaming graphics cards. Professional cards use different drivers for good reason. So they are totally irrelevant in this discussion.
  
  And note that I said major games. Cegeda is a niche product at best, and don't really matter in the grand scheme of things. ATI has a dedicated Linux driver team anyhow, so it is up to that team to put the effort into porting these optimizations to the Linux drivers.
  
  I should point out that I missed one other major OpenGL game; Half-Life 1. Luckily it doesn't really matter in this context, since cards have been able to run that game at its hard-coded FPS cap (100FPS) for several generations; any OpenGL optimizations would be redundant at this point.
  
  So as far as fairly recent games that would benefit from such optimizations, I think D3/Q4 is just about it. One could argue that some of the Q3 licenced games are recent enough, but IIRC some of them don't even use OpenGL, and they all run pretty well on even outdated hardware.
2. Re:OpenGL is much more than Doom3 by thebdj · 2005-10-25 10:51 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Wasn't Half-Life 1 a Quake engine game? Which brings me to a point...look at the number of games that used the Q3/TA engine, these include MoH series, CoD series JK2 series, RTCW. You can bet a good number will probably be using the Q4 engine.
  
  Of course there are also a ton of games using the various iterations of the Unreal Engine. There is one game with its own engine that will get me to upgrade though.
  
  --
  "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
3. Re:OpenGL is much more than Doom3 by yoyhed · 2005-10-25 12:39 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, HL1's engine was based on the Quake engine, but basically only for really low-level rendering stuff (I think the figure Valve gave was something like 10% of the final engine was Quake code).
  You've got a good point with the Q3 engine, it was really widely used in major games and D3 probably will be too.
  And as far as Oblivion goes, great choice ;-) Morrowind is my all-time favorite game, and I upgraded to a 6800GT just for Oblivion (since it'll use lots of SM3.0 optimizations).
  
  --
  WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
4. Re:OpenGL is much more than Doom3 by yoyhed · 2005-10-25 12:54 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  HL1 was OpenGL, Direct3D, and Software. When it came out, D3D was the default setting, although now with Steam OpenGL is (and it always ran way better in OpenGL on both ATI and NVidia).
  I believed for a long time, too, that the fps in HL1 was capped at 100fps, but not so. If you enable developer mode (either "developer 1" in console, or -developer added to the shortcut, I don't remember exactly), it uncaps it.
  In addition to D3/Q4, Starbreeze's Chronicles of Riddick uses OpenGL (and has all the features of the Doom3 engine). I'd consider that a major game. Other than that, though, I'd only note Far Cry's OpenGL renderer (which isn't officially supported and has minor rendering issues), and Q3-engine games (which are falling out of the "current" realm, although CoD is current enough).
  Anyway, just some minor things I thought I'd clarify. I agree with you on the whole.
  
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  WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
5. Re:OpenGL is much more than Doom3 by Guspaz · 2005-10-25 14:16 · Score: 1
  
  Actually HL1 never defaulted to Direct3D. When it came out, software mode was the default, and OpenGL was the suggested 3D accelerated model. Direct 3D was only included because OpenGL support wasn't as good back then as it was now; it was a fallback, albeit one that ran much slower and with stuff missing.
  
  I did forget it, though, yes, as I pointed out in another one of my replies. However since it is of the era of DX6 capable cards, no optimization made to modern graphics cards is going to mean anything. The game maxed out at its hardcoded cap of 100FPS years ago on hardware many generations past. Developer mode does indeed unlock that, but causes other problems, making it useless for serious gameplay.
  
  The same could be said of the Quake 3 engine, which is indeed another engine I neglected. I was only thinking of modern engines, and Quake 3 is a few generations out of date; even the newer Q3-based games run fine on much older hardware and aren't likely to benefit from OpenGL tweaks. CoD 2 is out using a new renderer, though CoD is still popular today. It's just not a new enough engine for performance improvements to mean much.
  
  CoR is indeed a good one that I missed. It doesn't have anywhere close to the capabilities of the Doom 3 engine (It does not use per-pixel lighting, it simply uses bumpmaps, stencil shadows, specular highlights, etc, only part of what made D3 what it was). It lacks multiplayer support, so in the long run isn't really that important. As in, it won't get the same kind of time commitment that Doom 3/Quake 4 multiplayer and mods might.
  
  I really should have written my original statement as recent or current-gen games rather than just "games". Sloppy of me.
6. Re:OpenGL is much more than Doom3 by Guspaz · 2005-10-25 14:21 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, HL1 was OpenGL and Quake 1. See my other comments for that and Quake 3 (and similar).
  
  It is important to keep in mind, though, that Unreal Engine is a Direct3D engine. It contains an unsupported beta OpenGL renderer, but considering few people if any use it, it's not worth mentioning. Unless you mean the Linux port that relies on that renderer, but I've already put forth my opinion on why Linux gaming shouldn't enter into the discussion (Yes, it would be nice to get better support for it, but it is unimportant in terms of marketshare and willingness to purchase games).
  
  It looks likely that Oblivion will be a Direct3D game on the PC, though. It is portable, yes, so will use OpenGL where it needs to, but if they're doing both an 360 and PC port, it makes sense to use the same interface for both platforms. Less work since they're so similar.
7. Re:OpenGL is much more than Doom3 by yoyhed · 2005-10-25 20:39 · Score: 1
  
  Not sloppy of you, since you're completely right that optimizations won't help Q3 or HL1 at all on current hardware.
  I'm sure you're right about HL1 defaulting to software, I just remembered having to manually change to OpenGL, so I assumed it was D3D it defaulted to.
  I had heard that CoR did what D3 did (real-time lighting, normal mapping) so I guess I took it literally to mean everything D3 did. Apparently not so, but I'm sure we can both agree that CoR and D3 both look amazing :-)
  And we can also agree that Carmack's latest engine will always be used for years to come, and that's a good thing :-)
  
  --
  WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
8. Re:OpenGL is much more than Doom3 by Outland+Traveller · 2005-10-28 01:45 · Score: 1
  
  Professional applications are best suited to professional graphics cards, not gaming graphics cards. Professional cards use different drivers for good reason. So they are totally irrelevant in this discussion.
  
  This is a largely a myth. A significant portion of openGL-based professional applications work just as well on "consumer" cards as they do on a "professional" line. I help develop one at the openGL level and I've done the benchmarks personally. A significant segment of the userbase uses it on "consumer" graphics cards. The NVidia consumer GeForce / professional Quadro parts especially are quite similar for the majority of models, and both lines share a great deal of openGL driver code. For our products, the difference between professional and consumer graphics cards is mainly in procurement stability and manufacturing tolerances than performance or features. There are professional openGL products out there that do utilize special features in professional cards, but these are by no means the rule.
  
  To restate the original point, OpenGL is much more than Doom3, and OpenGL improvements in consumer graphic cards are very relevant to the professional market.
You mean like NVidia did? by jgoemat · 2005-10-25 10:31 · Score: 1

Don't forget NVidia made "optimizations" back in May '03 to detect 3DMark03 to improve performance by as much as 24% in the benchmark. That would have no impact on any game and could only have been used to mislead the public as to the performance of their cards. Extremetech found it using a BETA of 3DMark that didn't follow the standard benchmark, it would let you roam around the scenes. When flying around they would see things that didn't render correctly at all or missing objects. Now that is low... NVidia couldn't find the problem that gave them away because they didn't have access to the BETA 3DMark.
Audit report (PDF)
Breaking story
Your sig by Frodo+Crockett · 2005-10-25 10:57 · Score: 1

Trying to install Linux on a laptop with nocdrom or Ethernet but DLINK usb wi-fi. I NEED HELP!

Get an external cd-rom drive, or a housing to turn an old internal drive into an external drive.

--
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
Sig Help._.Way off topic by MrCopilot · 2005-10-25 12:39 · Score: 1

Tried a USB ThumbDrive with linux yet? I know some laptops wont boot to usb but it can be configured to work in most cases.
FeatherLinux http://featherlinux.berlios.de/
Slax http://slax.linux-live.org/
FlashPuppy http://www.goosee.com/puppy/flash-puppy.htm>
Good Luck

--
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
However by obeythefist · 2005-10-25 14:13 · Score: 2, Funny

Let's look at ATI's business process

1) Launch Product
2) Benchmark Onslaught
3) Release better drivers
4) Benchmark Onslaught that beats nVidia
5) Marketing and sales blitz
6) Design product
7) Produce product
8) Announce product availability schedules
9) Look for factory to start making cards
10) ??
11) Profit!

Not that I'm suggesting ATI has severe production issues - if nVidia can kill paper launches, surely ATI could at least try to keep up.

--
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
X800XL by alexo · 2005-10-25 14:39 · Score: 2, Informative

Unfortunately it seems that the previous generation (X800XL) was hurt by the the driver upgrade.
As the end of the review says... by Swift(void) · 2005-10-25 15:41 · Score: 1

Having the faster card means nothing until they can get adequate volume to retail.

If your card is the fastest, but i cant go into any old computer store and buy it, why do i care?
How about some Linux benchmarks now? by IntergalacticWalrus · 2005-10-26 04:46 · Score: 1

I can't imagine ATI faring as well against nVidia under Linux.

Fuck ATI.
AT who? by JustNiz · 2005-10-26 04:50 · Score: 1

I won't even consider an ATI card given the state of their linux support.
Decent Performance... by TheZorch · 2005-10-26 05:03 · Score: 1

I run Doom 3 on my system with few issues. My specs... SIS K7 Mobo...Custom Built PC AMD Athlon XP 2000+ 1.6GHz 512MB DDR-RAM 8x AGP nVidia GeForce FX 5600 w/256MB DDR-RAM 80GB UDMA IDE Hard Drive DirectX 9.0c nVidia Forceware 78.01 Drivers Creative SoundBlaster LIVE! 5.1 Doom 3 settings: Resolution: 640x480 Shadows: On High-Res Special Effects: Off Bump-Mapping: On VSync: Off I'll have to try Quake 4. Doom 3 restored some of my confidence in Id Software. Quake 3: Arena was a very poorly designed game as compared to Unreal Tournament which was superior in gameplay options and sigle-player bot A.I. Doom 3 had an engaging storyline. It wasn't a blind run, find a key, and shoot everything that moved sort of game. It did make you think a little in some places. Not quite as much as with games like Half-Life 2, though. Even though I think Q3A was an inferior game the graphcis engine was decent and was used to make some very good game titles like Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, American McGee's Alice, Call of Duty and the Medal of Honor series.

--
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
Q4 OpenGL? by Scooter · 2005-10-26 11:44 · Score: 1

"...OpenGL titles such as DOOM 3, Quake 4,..."

Quake4's installer told me it *required* directx 9c. How does one make it go with OpenGL instead?
1. Re:Q4 OpenGL? by spuzzzzzzz · 2005-10-26 18:03 · Score: 1
  
  I bet Quake4 on windows uses DirectX for input (mouse/keyboard handling, etc. (although they say they're using SDL on Linux; I don't see why they can't use it on windows, too)). I'm pretty sure all the rendering is done in OpenGL.
  
  --
  
  Don't you hate meta-sigs?