Half-Life 2 bench articles

[oldfart]

This is all over the net, but has not been mentioned here yet AFAIK.

Looks like the rubber is meeting the road. The nVidia 5x00 cards are basically incapable of running HL2 in DX9 mode with playable framerates. The ATi cards are totally dominating the HL2 DX9 benches. I've seen DX9 benches of Tomb Raider AOD. Same thing.

Anandtech article (http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1863)
Gamers Depot (http://www.gamersdepot.com/hardware/video_cards/ati_vs_nvidia/dx9_desktop/hl2_followup/001.htm)

[Moonwizard]

Interesting read. Awesome. :D Now we just need Doom3 benchies to go for too and we all know which graphic card we gonna buy. :D

[Jim]

More links, you have to draw your own conclusion whether Nvidia poor performance will be true in the days to come.

Nvidia's response (http://www.gamersdepot.com/hardware/video_cards/ati_vs_nvidia/dx9_desktop/HL2_benchmarks/003.htm)

Here (http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/437/437697p1.html)

Detonator 51.75s (http://www.guru3d.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=63181&perpage=10&pagenumber=1)

More (http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=257)

With the shackles on AT when they did their benchies and the benchmark soon to be relesed apparently only offered to the press how can fair and accurate conclusuions be drawn yet? :beat:

[oldfart]

I've seen other DX9 benches that concur. Tomb Raider AOD is DX9 PS 2.0.

GD TR AOD benches (http://www.gamersdepot.com/hardware/video_cards/ati_vs_nvidia/dx9_desktop/002.htm)

TR AOD 1024 x 768 PS2.0
9800P = 74.9
5900U = 41

Nvidias response is so full of holes. For instance:

The optimal code path for ATI and NVIDIA GPUs is different - so trying to test them with the same code path will always disadvantage one or the other
ATi's codepath is DX9. nVidia NEEDS a special codepath since their HW is not DX9 compliant and has serious performance issues when run in DX9 mode. No special optimizations were done or were needed for ATi since they stuck with the DX9 spec.

nVidia will have to "optimize" separately each and every DX9 game. That is not the way to do things.

Valve stated that they spent 5X the man hours to get the game working on nVidia HW as the normal DX9 port.

As it stands, Hl2 will run much slower on a 5x00 card at a reduced quality to boot.

[Thor]

Originally posted by oldfart
As it stands, Hl2 will run much slower on a 5x00 card at a reduced quality to boot.

Yep, even Valve says current nVidia's cards will default on DirectX 8.1 code path for HL2.

[Hawk]

There are too many sides to the story. I would wait until we can test it ourselves. . . .

[oldfart]

Originally posted by Hawk
There are too many sides to the story. I would wait until we can test it ourselves. . . .
I haven't seen that. Every HW site out there is posting the same results. The DX9 performance of the 5x00 is terrible. Even when nV is running mixed mode (DX 8.1) the 9x00 trounces it running DX9.

I can't see how nVidia can come up with like a 200% performance increase with a driver update.

A article comparing nV and ATi PS hardware (http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/cinefx/index_e.php) Its very detailed, and honestly, most of it is over my head, but it does point out a few things.

If we compare NV30 to its competitor from ATi on a per-clock basis, the NV30 receives a thorough beating from R300. ATi comes ahead with 8 texture ops and 8 arithmetic ops in parallel. The higher core clock improves the situation a bit for NV30, but it still only does 2600 MTO/s + 700 MAO/s or 2000 MTO/s + 1000 MAO/s.

The Shader Core allows to exchange texture ops for arithmetic ops in a 2:1 relation (see graph below). The R300 as R9700Pro reaches 2600 MTO/s + 2600 MAO/s without this balancing option. nVidia can only dare to dream of this raw performance, or try to overclock an NV30 to 1 GHz. Not only the award for best performance per clock, but also the one for best overall raw performance goes to R300 from ATi.

......


But nVidia can't expect an application to always deliver such code. At this point we can only preach that nVidia has to put instruction reordering capabilities into their drivers, but without changing the function of the code. The method the current driver uses nothing more than a stop-gap solution that is acceptable as long as the number of applications containing unfavorable shader code is small. But wiht a growing number of titles using shader technology, nVidia can't expect GeForceFX users to wait for new drivers to enjoy higher performance through replacement shaders

[Jim]

You have to consider that Anand couldn't use the 51.75 drivers for the comparison...forbidden by Valve. The Benchmark will only be given to the press??? What are they trying to hide? I agree with Hawk , until we have good 51 series drivers and the benchmark ourselves....I'll believe it when I see it. :wave:

[oldfart]

Valve would not allow ANY non released drivers or hardware to be used. No "specially optimized" drivers just for the bench. They used production drivers on production HW. Production Cat 3.7 was also used for the ATi cards. I thought that was refreshing. It's about time someone took a stand on this. The Det 50 drivers are also known to not render fog in the game. It is also the reason no A64 benches were done.

You really think 51.75 drivers will double performance?

[Jim]

You really think 51.75 drivers will double performance?

I don't know what they'll do, especially with the final retail version of the game. However, if this is as good as it gets I would have serious concerns with these numbers, even for the ATI card.

-Borrowed from Anand-

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/halflife2/performancepreview/1.gif

At 1024X768, 60 frame rates is OK. But what happens when we kick it up to 1280X1024 like I do for the games I play now?

Hopefully we'll find both cards work better when "optimized". :)

[RotorHead]

Here is a little exrta info for you guys, NVIDIA Detonator 51.75 Driver Performance over at AMDMB.com. :)

http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=257

[oldfart]

Driver Heaven did some DX9 benching with 51.75 using Aquamark 3. Does not look good. Another reduced quality driver. No wonder the driver was not allowed for HL2 benches. Driver Heaven (http://www.driverheaven.net/articles/aquamark3/index3.htm)

Now, im sure most of you have read Gabes recent comments regarding the detonator 51.75s, and Nvidia's offical response but I really do have to say, having seen this first hand it confirms to both myself and Veridian that the new detonators are far from a high quality IQ set. Alot of negative publicity is currently surrounding Nvidia, and here at driverheaven we like to remain as impartial and open minded as we possibly can, but after reading all the articles recently such as here coming from good sources and experiencing this ourselves first hand, I can no longer recommend an nvidia card to anyone. Ill be speaking with nvidia about this over the coming days and if I can make anything public I will.

[Tony]

I think it most refreshing to see ATI the king at the moment, its good they stuck to specs and that is paying off now.

I believe Nvidia will now rush to produce a FULLY dx9 compliant GPU and we will see a new card within 3 to 6 months with much better performance.Of course ATI will hit back!!

Im sorry for all the guys who have 5900Ultra cards, building a card just to show good #'s in 3dmark really isn't the way to go.Now we know why Future mark and Nvidia joined forces again, don't we!! ;)

[Jim]

More benchies (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/news_6075080.html)

Same comparisons. :(

[Fossil]

Tony: ATI stock on the Toronto stock exchange (ATY-T) was at $5.80 in May of this year. I sold it the day they annouced the X-box relationship at $21.15 two weeks ago. So far it has dropped about a dollar but it will climb again once the release of Half Life 2 gets closer. Thank you to all that have a 9800pro.

**tip** Sell Nvidia stock Half Life 2 will kill this stock unless they pull a great card out of their butts that is 15% cheaper than the Radeon with the same performance.