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 vote for including TR:AOD. I also vote for not only using the latest beta drivers from nVidia but also the latest WHQL drivers.Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
#8,Considering TR:AOD is a shipping DX9 game, it is most certainly "better" than a "synthetic DX9" benchmark.
I agree about Aquamark as well. Who has Aquamark installed on their system now as in the game, not the benchmark? I dare say not too many people.
So in other words, TR:AOD should most certainly be included.
Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
Use TR:AOD.Using TR as a DX9 test is AT LEAST representative of ONE DX9 APP. I'm pretty boggled by your logic on this. At the absolute WORST, it can be considered no less relevant than a "synthetic DX9" test, at least on par with Aquamark in terms of "game relevance."
GTaudiophile - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
"We will be doing a budget GPU comparison that will focus on slower CPUs as well, and we will be doing CPU scaling articles that give you an idea of how things perform on slower platforms."Anand, are you referring to a future Radeon 9200 vs. FX5200 review and/or a future Radeon 9600XT vs. FX5700 Ultra review? Any idea when you'll have the latter two in hand?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
#1Diablo II sounds like an interesting option, I have a feeling it is more CPU bound than anything but we'll give it a whirl. I'll be honest though, I don't think it'll be able to make it into Part II.
#3
I've heard mixed results about MythTV; I'm not entirely certain whether I want this MCE piece to be a look at MCE or a comparison sort of deal just yet but I'll take your comments into account.
#4
The point of using so many games was to try and show fans of these games which card would be best for them. I'd love to include things like HL2, Doom3 and UT2K4 (although that's the same engine as 2K3) however we don't have access to them right now. When we do, I'll have no problems including them.
Truform was more of a temporary thing for ATI, most developers don't support it and it will shortly become a feature that has been forgotten by ATI as well.
As far as including more cards/CPUs, since this was only a high end comparison we tried to limit the cards we included to the highest end offerings (we did throw in a couple midrange cards for comparison). We will be doing a budget GPU comparison that will focus on slower CPUs as well, and we will be doing CPU scaling articles that give you an idea of how things perform on slower platforms.
I appreciate the devotion and trust me, we do listen to what you all ask for - it's just a matter of figuring out when/where it makes sense to implement the suggestions.
#5
We have the v49 patch so that's not a problem. What isn't a correct assumption though is the idea that a game using PS2.0 shaders would be representative of other DX9 games. Remember that these shaders are basically different little programs, that all get translated into machine code differently. Saying that TRAOD would be representative of other DX9 games is like saying that how fast your computer runs MS Word is representative of how fast all other integer apps would run on your CPU.
Thanks for the feedback guys and keep it coming.
Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
Well inclusing of TR:AoD would be great, but you have to benchmark it with the v49 patch, which is not avaliable now.. Also you have to include a lot of test cases with Ps2.0 effects like glow and depth of field. Although the game looks dx7, these effects would be a good indicator how cards performed with dx9 extensions and ps2.0 shaders..I do not think people would like to spend 500$ cards now and see that the games coming next year would not work with good frame rates unless it is specifically optimized in the drivers with sacrificing the image quality
Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
Seems silly to be wasting your time benchamrking all these extra games. The average games benchmark is going to show Top Company A card, 50fps, Top Company B card, 49fps. Big deal. Its only the latest and great tech from each of the major engine players which is worth benchmarking to show the real performance difference (You can see this in the NV38 review). HL2, Doom3, Serious Sam2, UT2k4 (tho Raven Sheilds probably a better example), Max Payne 2, etc as well as a couple previous gen games just to reflect performance for those engines.And what happend to reviewing the more indepth things like Truform, or other card specific features. These dedicated features may make a large difference in the benchmark results.
And then theres the issue of the lack of cards and CPUs used in reviews. The latest review you did (NV38) didnt have the 9800SE, or the other various versions ATIs got floating round. I undertand you can only benchamrk what you have got, but still. And knowing what blah top of the line CPU plus these cards is great, but how about something on the slow side as well to see if its worth buying for those who cant get a whole new system for a while to come.
I still read nothing but this site but a few changes would be nice :)
Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
Please, if possible, compare Windows XP Media Center to a Linux box running MythTV (www.mythtv.org). I ditched the win32 platform once MythTV got rolling. I've found nothing that seems to be able to touch it. ShowShifter and Snapstream's software couldn't even hold up to it. That being said, there are still some areas for improvement with MythTV. Notably, even though it doesn't seem to tax my P4 2.2 (when watching a Live MPEG4 stream, CPU usage is around 70%), performance could probably be a whole lot better. There are some quirks. If XP Media Center has all the features and the fit & finish, I might consider it over a MythTV box.Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
I hate to inform you of this, but diablo runs on both glide and directx ... In fact, if you have a directx card, you can pick whether to use direct3d or simple 2d directdraw rendering...the game doesn't even require a 3d accelorator to run ...
it might be possible that it is dependant on quick framebuffer access, which would mean that any nvidia geforce card (even gf3) would be better than any ati card (even 9800xt). That's just a guess. Give it a shot on a GFFX 5900U and I'll bet it flys like the wind... if I'm right that is.
Balderdash - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
This is going to sound really odd, but after you think about it for a minute, you'll see why I mention it.Blizzard is still selling Diablo II, (I heard it is still the 10th best selling game this quarter) and they are still making patches for it. However, the game is really too old to be in your 'new' suite but I am wondering if it could be a special note: commentary or report etc., in your overall report.
The reason it is in question about performance is odd for such an old game but because the game was written for 'glide' (3dfx) not openGL nor DX (any version), it seems to run worse and worse on the newer machines.
I've seen for myself that the game runs slower and jerkier with newer video card in a system that ran the game fine before teh 'upgrade' and I am starting to wonder if we upgrade more and more that the game itself will become unplayable.
What say you?