Now I've got a question for you all; one of the requests I've seen was for us to include Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness in our benchmarking suite. Controversy aside, I'd like to know if you all are actually concerned with the performance of TRAOD or if it is more of a "hey the game says it's DX9 and there's controversy surrounding the benchmark" kind of thing. Personally, I think the game looks like a DX7 title (even using PS2.0 shaders) and the only place that has given it a good review is Maxim Magazine (go figure). With this new benchmarking suite I wanted to focus on games that people actually played or care about (Aquamark3 is the exception), and I'd rather include another game that people are going to play if TRAOD isn't something you have installed on your system.
So let me know; I want honest opinions here, do you own the game? Do you care about how it runs? Should we include it (and why)? We already own a copy of the game (given to us by NVIDIA actually, there's one for the conspiracy theorists) so running the benchmark is no big deal. It's an issue of time more than anything else, if you guys would like to see it we'll include it but if you think something else is more important we'll do that.
We want to include FIFA in our benchmarking suite but we're going to wait for the new version of the game to be released (due out at the end of this month I beleive). The new version of FIFA will be based on EA's Eagle engine which is a DX9 engine, so we figure it makes sense to wait for that.
Derek is working on benchmarking Tron 2 as well as some other new titles we have, while I snagged a Radeon 9800 Pro and a GeForce FX 5900 Ultra from the lab last night to play around with at the house. I'll be focusing on gameplay experience with the two cards/drivers and will be looking for any visual artifacts or other random issues during gameplay. We're working hard at this and we are shooting for a quick turnaround on Part II (hopefully very early next week if I can have my way), but I'll keep you posted.
After I hand Part II off to Derek completely I'm going to begin work on the new version of Windows XP Media Center Edition. If there's anything you'd like to see/know about for inclusion in this forthcoming review, let me know.
For now it's time to heat up some leftovers for lunch (made nacho cheese turkey burgers and hushpuppies last night, or I could heat up the enchiladas from two nights ago...hmm...decisions). Enjoy your Friday and have a great weekend, I'll be around here all weekend working so you'll definitely hear from me.
Take care.
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Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
I did buy TR:AOD but after playing just few minutes I unistalled.I'd like to see Rally Sport Challenge
Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
What Anand is trying to point out is, TR:AOD does not give any idea of "DX9 robustness" at all. He points out that the PS2.0 would not represent PS2.0 in any other DX9 game.Anand: PLEASE bench at higher resolutions. Most of the games are CPU bound at 1024x768. I want to see 1600x1200 and 1280x104. I bet most of the gamers owning the top of the line card plays games at 1600x1200, and would like to know how they perform at that resolution.
Thanks for your articles!
Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
#14,I don't have 1/2 of the games on Anand's list (including TR). That doesn't mean I don't get value from the benchmarks being run on a variety of games...including the ones I don't have.
The purpose of using a variety of games and synthetic tests, is to get an idea of the strong and weak points ("robustness") of a graphics card. Or is a review only valuable to you if it has the exact same games that you play?
There happens to be very few DX9 games out at the moment...but at the same time I am certainly concerned about DX9 performance. And the more DX9 tests you throw at these cards, the better idea of "DX9 robustness" we'll get.
Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
#14,I don't have 1/2 of the games on Anand's list (including TR). That doesn't mean I don't get value from the benchmarks being run on a variety of games...including the ones I don't have.
The purpose of using a variety of games and synthetic tests, is to get an idea of the strong and weak points ("robustness") of a graphics card. Or is a review only valuable to you if it has the exact same games that you play?
There happens to be very few DX9 games out at the moment...but at the same time I am certainly concerned about DX9 performance. And the more DX9 tests you throw at these cards, the better idea of "DX9 robustness" we'll get.
Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
#15,Actually, I don't care if I get it now or wait till next month. All that matters is that we get the data by the time the product ships, so that a buying decision can be made.
A preview of nVidia's next refresh doesn't mean much if there is no confidence level in the data. Might as well not do it...benefit = zero, potential risk = misleading the readers.
I'm anxious to upgrade myself...but I can't upgrade to a product that I can't actually buy, so I'm most concerned with a quality review, than an early one.
Morten - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
#12 That's a nice point. But I'd much rather see benchmarks on unreleased hardware with unreleased drivers and it take it with a grain of salt, than be without it, and wait a month. I mean, who else was able to provide us, the readers, with a preview of nVidia's next refresh? Noone but AT that's who. And now everyone who has the slightest bit of understanding of hardware, knows that the next nVidia isn't worth the wait. Just get the TX if you're thinking of upgrading. As I'm sure there's quite a few people who are anxious to upgrade.Morten - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
#8 atleast Aquamark *looks* good. And it's representative for a game that's coming (wether it'll be a big game or not, remains to be seen. Also, it was requested by readers). What's the use if nobody even cares as noone has got the game? Have YOU got the game? If you have the game, say so, and say you want it benchmarked.I haven't got TRAOD, and I don't know anyone who has it either. Just knowing it's a Tomb Raider game, made me stay away. But seeing those graphics, it just makes me laugh. It's like they put in PS2.0 shaders two seconds before announcing it gold, so hopefully it might sell on account on being a DX9 part. I sure as hell hope that didn't work.
And Anand, I love that you benchmark all these games. It makes it much harder for ATI and nVidia to focus on optimizing for specific games. I just wish other sites would follow your lead. That way, they just had to make it run DX9 and OpenGL really fast. And wouldn't have time to optimize for specific titles. Not that I know that they do...
Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
#11,I agree.....I'd rather see ShaderMark (with and without anti-cheat mode enabled) for synthetic DX9 tests than AquaMark.
And on a related note...FutureMark is supposed to start actively enforcing their anti-cheat driver rules by the end of the month. At that time, 3DMark03 should be a strong candidate for a synthetic DX9 test as well.
Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
#9,That's why I said "at worst", even if Anand think's it's the most irrelevant game on the planet, it is no worse than a synthetic DX9 benchmark. I fully agree with you that it most certainly is better than a synthetic DX9 test for looking at DX9 in game situations.
Anand,
Whatever happened to this:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1544...
YOU wrote:
"Hindsight being 20/20, we made a promise to ourselves that we would not allow any further performance enhancing drivers to be used in our video card reviews unless we could make the drivers publicly available to our readers immediately."
I completely disagree with the concept of using drivers that the IHV itself is not confident will hold up to public scrutiny. If nVidia would publically release them....even in beta form, it would be a different story.
If you feel so compelled to do this, then you owe it to your readers to ALSO test with the drivers that they have public access to.
I can at least understand a point of view for using "unreleased" drivers for an unreleased product that is a brand new architecture. (Has features and technology not available in any previous shipping product....so there might not be available drivers to reasonably test it.) NV38 surely aint this though.
Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
Personally I think you should replace Aquamarkwith Shadermark if you are even going to use it at all since Shadermark already has specific tests for the mixed precision of NV3x and is a much, much better DX9 feature test. I don't know anyone that has ever played any of the Aquanox games that aquamark came from either.