Rosco[CoF]

Was just wondering on how the status is evolving with the OpenGL drivers in
upcoming builds of Catalyst drivers. I'd like to keep my 9800Pro for a little
while longer, but after seeing the Doom3 benchmarks on Anandtech
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2277&p=5
I have to say I am a bit concerned when a 6600GT can outrun a x800. Their
benchmarks for the 9800Pro in Doom3 reflect the performance I get out of my
system as well.
Can we expect to see some significant OpenGL improvements in the near
future with upcoming drivers, or is this a hardware issue that the current
ATI cards are incapable of?

bug77

No driver will ever bring huge leaps in performance by themselves. It can only optimize how the HW works, no more.

Edit: But who plays Doom3 anyway?

Rosco[CoF]

I play Doom3, and plan on playing the expansion pack as well as Quake4 when it arrives.

terror_adagio

The next driver release "should" have some OpenGL improvments, including 2.0 support now.

bug77

Really? As in finished it before and still playing? I couldn't get myself to finish it the first time... I came across Riddick while trying

On topic. Somebody, somewhere has spelled it put for me: improvements in performance barely pass the 10% mark in the whole lifetime of a card. Therefore, expecting something huge from a single driver release while maintaining quality is unrealistic.

Rosco[CoF]

Believe it or not, I played Doom3 from start to finish. I found it quite entertaining. I'm looking forward to the expansion.

I even found someone at my work willing to give me a good price on my 9800Pro with a Artic cooler. I can turn around and buy a 6600GT for less than $50 with te proceeds in selling my 9800Pro. I don't want to sell it right now, but if I can get an extra 20-30fps in games using the Doom3 for less than $50 what do you think I'm prepared to do?

I'll wait for the next release of Catalyst drivers (5.3) but if I don't see anything substantial in OpenGL I have to let it go.

Rosco[CoF]

Another thing to pay note of is, most of the bechmarks using DirectX games
such as:

Unreal Tournament 2004
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2277&p=7

FarCry
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2277&p=8

Show the 9800Pro and the 6600GT almost neck and neck in performance.
Now, with this showing, you would think OpenGL driver improvements should
be able to bring the 9800Pro in line with the performance of a 6600GT, perhaps?

The_Neon_Cowboy

I think it's sad that a X800XL whamps a 6800U

As for doom III the most "nvidia optumized" game in current existance. Not only that it runs diffently on dirrent cards there is a specail NV only path where some 32 bit texures are subsituted with 24bit and 16bit to give them a FPS boost. Not to mention no one optumizes in thie drivers like nvidia they are the king of super driver optumizations.
so much it hard to tell what it card and what is drivers anymore with them...

YOU CAN'T FAIRLY COMPAIR USEING A "MENT TO BE PLAYED" GAME!

ATI's OpenGL support has been changeing over time and will contenu to consistantly improve... yes nvidia's is better in opengl but thier D3d is inferior... considering most games by a landslide are useing direct3d opengl perfomance is less important anyways

E-SLAP! baseing your buying decisions on 1 super nvidia optumized game is totally nuts
you need to look at alot more then that.... and in more then just 1 game...

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Rosco[CoF]

You know what, that makes sense. I didn't even think of the nV optimization
in Doom3. That would be similar to the ATI optimization in Half-Life 2. It never
even crossed my mind. Thanks for the info, I appreciate it!

The_Neon_Cowboy

yep have to facter all that in hl2 is optumized NV and more for ATI maybe some what but more then anying adhereing to stanards. NOT TO BE COMPAIRED TO NV'S optumizations in doom III differance is like night and day....

NV's performance suffers when the game maker doesnt cater to thier way of doing / handleing things. For example several 5XXX FX card's run as DX 8 becouse thier not true DX9 cards they use fallbacks to DX8 in places that give them FPS advanatages... "ment to be played" game are nothing like "get in the game"... the last few games like Doom III and far cry took them it a new direction with devopler side optumizations / paths. imagine it as if there where 2 verry different games one specail for NV one for everyone else... results are totally uncompairable excpet with the same brand card.... Doom III included a NV way of doing shadows and it's own AA/AF control... along with specail paths...

It's a real nasty thing they are pulling and it can only lead to more. For example NV's ubber cheating / optumizeing led to ATI adding "AI". But unlike on nvidia cards you can turn the optumizations off and set them to high/low ad they don't sacrafice any noticeable amount of IQ... still insnt much compaired to NV's years of optuimzing... When the rolled out the FX line (The legendary 5800fx flop... ) they changed from haveing good hardware and drivers to relying on their drivers to do most the work... and paying of game delopers to help them from thier end. They've even been oputmiseing Nforce 4 chipsets for NV cards so much it actually hampers the performance of ATI cards...NV's been playing dirty pool for years and I refuse to support them in thier efforts that in the end hurt the consumers...

AS for one last note about NV and doom III. I've herd they have a common board member I forget who.... But I have the doom III beta's "pre optumzation" and ATI whips all over NV's scores funny the final game after NV's buying in and the game being optimuzed along with nv's cards them selfs and drivers being optumized...

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DarkFoss

I also believe with Ati's new found commitment to improving thier Linux drivers that some of those enhancements will also help improve the OGL performance of thier windows drivers as well in the long run.

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redsolar

Neon, you crack me up. We all remember JC talking at a certain point in time about Radeon 9700 Pro as the ultimate doom III card. In any case, this is a discussion that will lead nowhere, and will keep fanboys bashing the other fanboys. Only time will tell how well ATi plays with OpenGL.

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Rosco[CoF]

Neon,
One thing that I take into serious consideration regarding games is also how many games may be built using a perticular game engine. Sure, right now there is only Doom3, the expansion pack and Quake 4 slated using theDoom3 engine. But I'd be willing to bet that there will be many more using the Doom3 tech. This can be historically measured just by looking at how many games currently use the Quake 3 Arena engine or a modified version thereof.

Quake 3 Arena
Quake 3 Team Arena
Alice
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Wolfenstein Enemy Territory
Soldier of Fortune II
Medal of Honor including Spearhead and Breakthrough
Call of Duty including expansion
Star Wars Jedi Outcast
Star Wars Jedi Academy

and probably a few more I glossed over. As you can see, many top selling games use OpenGL and the game engine from id. My case is this, ATI "Needs" to improve their OpenGL, because there will more than likely be many more games using the latest tech from id. Ignoring OpenGL because "most new games use DirectX" is a death sentence for their cards from game enthusiasts. Even the original Half-Life was built on a heavily modified Quake engine, and upon looking at the file system of Half-Life 2, there is still some Quake blood floating around in it.

You cannot deny the influence of id's gaming engines. Unless, of course, you're a RPG gamer.

Shuflie

Predicting the future by looking backwards is not always a sensible thing to do, just how many games using the Doom III engine have been announced so far. Considering the game has been out for about a year now you would think that a few would be on the cards. Now look at the halflife source engine, there are already third party developers using the source engine, Vampire The Masquerade - Bloodlines is available now, Arkane studios have liscensed the engine (but not announced any games yet), and Twilight War: After the Fall from Smiling Gator Productions is in production at the moment. This is all in addition to Valve porting part of their back catalogue to source, and working on halflife 3.
Until a third party developer announces that they will be using the Doom 3 engine you can't assume that it will be as popular as the Quake 3 arena engine was. If you were a developer, would you pick a game engine that runs well on everyone's hardware or limit youself to a single section of the gaming community?
I'm not being anti-Doom 3 here, I liked the game and it runs decently on my X800, but halflife 2 was more realistic in the way you could interact with the environment, it looked fantastic and runs well even on older hardware.

Rosco[CoF]

I'll give both games their due, I played both Doom3 and HL2 from start to finish and had a blast with them. Even playing them on my 9800 Pro was a decent experiance. Of course, Half-Life 2 played somewhat better though.

But also, I still play some of those games I listed, Call of Duty, WolfET are a couple of my favorite online games. And framerate is life in games like those.

The_Neon_Cowboy

But it's true the game maker shouldn't take sides, they shouldn't neglect to fix an issue or be co operative becouse any "brand" bought into them or bought them off any way you'd like to see it. It's dirty pool...

They should test on both ati, nvidia , etc hardware and it doesnt hurt to support things that each companies gpu brings.. long as they are fair try to support what they can. Not just 1 brands stuff to promote you to buy thier card... They should be worried about how the game runs on all systems and work to fix an issues they can.

Basically it's like benchmarks but the highest scores are up to the higest bidder. You wouln't trust it results would you? Then why would any logical person except "ment to be played game" scores to use as "fair" compairson...

Well ati's working on thier OpenGL but with any hope nvidia working on thier Direct X...

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MikeBrass

World War II Online runs better on NVidia's cards than on ATI's. Some textures can't even be used on ATI's cards. WWIIOL is OpenGL, although it began as DX.

hitman05

I enjoyed both Doom 3 and HL2, but obviously HL2 is a much more entertaining game. Doom 3 runs pretty well on my 9800 Pro 128mb at 1024x768 on high detail, but HL2 runs faster. I'm using the Catalyst 4.7 drivers, and i'm sure that newer versions increase OpenGL performance, but it's good enough as is that i never bothered installing them.

Spyre

Well yeah since ATI cards dont support 4096 x 4096 textures

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