Half-Life 2 DirectX 9 Performance

Gorgon

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Here's a story I posted at Driver Heaven earlier today! As I'm pushed for time, I'll post it as is.

I recently posted an article from Beyond 3D called ATI vs. Nvidia Tomb Raider: Angel Of Darkness DX9 Benchmarks! The importance of this benchmark is that it is the first to full utilise PS2.0 DX9 functionality within a gaming environment.

What most people seem to have missed was they weren't looking at the game which in our Great leaders words "Zardon: I agree totally the game is utter garbage" but were looking at how well ATI's and Nvidia's High end and Midrange cards compared when the DX9 Pixel Shader 2.0 functionality is enable! Here's a rip from the thread.

Looking at the benchmarks , Nvidia is getting a spanking! also worth noting is that in all cases Cg compiled shaders were enabled for the NVIDIA boards and disabled for the ATI boards. There is no difference in the output of the shaders compiled by Cg, however this should represent the the best case for the NVIDIA boards.

WaltC: I think if you read the article you'll see that the game runs much less "sh*tty" on the Radeons...

Come on, now, after all the huff & puff coming out of nVidia about using "real 3d games" you surely can't object to using a real DX9 game as a test...? It's not a benchmark--it's a real 3d game. Lots of "real 3d games" run far less optimally than benchmarks, and other 3d games. Doesn't mean they aren't "real 3d games," however. What's interesting to me about this game is the fact that it's probably the first real DX9 game to hit the market, and looking at nVidia's DX9-feature support scores in this game it's not hard to see why the company quit FutureMark last year... If anything, nVidia's DX9 feature performance is even worse in this "real 3d game" than it is in 3dMk03.... It's an eye-opener in that regard, IMO...

and I said this at the time WaltC is right with what he says and just wait and see what happens when Half-Life 2 is released? I bet you wished you'd had bought an ATI card .

Now over to my good freind Matt Burris at 3DGPU

This isn't confirmed as 100% official, so keep that in mind. On the HalfLife2.net forums, a gamer emailed Gabe Newell of Valve Software, and asked him a question in regards to GeForce FX cards dismal performance in Tomb Raider using PS 2.0 brought up by the article on Beyond3D (see this post). Here's the question he asked Gabe:

Is a ATi 9800pro card really alot better for HL2 then Nvidia's FX5900? Or is the difference not that big (quality & fps wise)?

Click her for the Answer:
http://www.3dgpu.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=315

Thanks.:cheers:
 
Thanks for the info!

I am currently a GeForce 3 Ti200 owner and am switching to ATI as soon as HL2 comes out. The 9800 is surely the best card out right now. No arguing, please.
 
Hehe, and the funniest thing is how EVERY Nvidia fanboy screamed out loud about 3DMark2k3 not representing crap, and how the drivers where so unoptimised for DX9, and how there was no real game to try it on. Now we are shown that 3DMark2k3 actually DOES gave a show (pre Nvidia clip-planes/replacing shaders) exactly on how it would perform in a DX9 game... Yet people still complain about it (been reading hardware sites).
 
dawdler I agree with you...... check MSI.com forums for VIDEO Cards. and you will see how many hardware + software problems does the 5900 have...........
 
Holy shit... I mean, I knew nVidia's DX9 support was worse than ATI's... but I didn't think the difference would be that substantial.

It looks like I'll continue as planned and get the 9800 Pro or a later card if one is available in time.
 
good info, too bad it had to come from gorgon
 
I just ordered a 9800 ultra 256mb for 374 pounds! YAY! It better be worth it, thats a hell of alot of money but it should hopefully last a long time, i can't afford to upgrade again any time soon.

Now i just gotta get the rest my new computer.:eek:
 
£374 seems quite a lot, i've seen it for £275

might not be the ultra tho, just the pro
 
Switch it is 256 not 128. the price is very real
 
mmkay, i only really read up on stuff when i've got money to buy stuff :)
 
Wow, that's interesting, but I was already leaning towards ATi anyway.

Animal, isn't 374 pounds the equivalent of about 730 -740 US dollars? That's a shitload for a graphics card!!
 
Originally posted by dis
Wow, that's interesting, but I was already leaning towards ATi anyway.

Animal, isn't 374 pounds the equivalent of about 730 -740 US dollars? That's a shitload for a graphics card!!

589$ american .....our money isnt THAT bad.
 
Yeah, the 256mb cards are also pretty much of waste of time at this stage.. the performance difference from 128mb to 256mb is negligible, if that. I'm going to buy a 9800 and flash it to the 9800 Pro bios.. save myself $120 :)
 
I've been saying all this since the FX cards came out. But no one listened to me. Hate to say it but all those fanboys deserve it for being so thickheaded.
 
If those numbers are correct, then nVidia FX cards will be running HL2 at full detail(DX9 features on) like crap. Glad, I haven't bought a new video card yet.
 
wow...

Gorgon actually being useful to this forum? who woulda thought that?! :LOL:


well anyway, good find man! :cheers:
 
Was planning on the 9800 pro anyway, so i'm yet again assured that it will be a good buy. Thanks gorgon, good job!
 
watch you just spent all that money and the 9900 pro will be out next month for the same price :)
 
Originally posted by Ro@cH
Was planning on the 9800 pro anyway, so i'm yet again assured that it will be a good buy. Thanks gorgon, good job!
 
i don't read anything about a 7000+ score in that article...?
 
Are you sure on that? It wasnt supposed to be that much faster than a 9800pro if i recall.
 
Hey its Gorgon!

Welcome back man.

And good find. :thumbs:
 
Originally posted by mhtsaras
No way!
A new card which Scores 7000+ in 3D Mark03 http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11223 I don't think it'll have the same price with 9800.
Video cards drop in price when the next card comes out and the fastest card usually costs about the same amount as the one before it did when it was first released.

This top-of-the-line price has been going up slowly. The fastest cards used to be at or below $200... now they retail for around $400 (not including the ones with the extra memory just so they can charge an extra $100-200 for little to no performance gain).

The 9900 Pro will probably take the place of the 9800 Pro and the rest of the cards will be pushed down a notch.
 
I do hope the 9900 comes out just before i buy the 9800. It should drop the 9800's price a bit. Any accurate info when the 9900 will arrive? (sorry, too lazy to look it up, but i trust you guys can come up with an excellent answer)
 
Thx for the info. In that benchmark u linked there the AA and FSAA is turned off though. Doesn't that make a big difference? Anyway, october release is a tad late. Perhaps i'll just hang in there and try it with my 8500 first. It sure is going to be hard though. Perhaps i'll finish the game with my 8500 and don't feel like playing again, and decide i don't need the 9800 after all. aaaah dilemmas!!! *roach dies in agonising, brain-tormenting pain*
 
Originally posted by |CC|Hudson
good info, too bad it had to come from gorgon

I don't know what g0rgon did to upset so many of you, but he seems much more reasonable than the people like you who whine about him.
Seriously, this was a reasonable post he made, talk about IT or don't talk at all, if you take offense to something g0rgon posted in some other thread, then go to that thread and complain and stop spamming every thread with g0rgon's name in it with your stupid zealous comments, I think most of us are getting fed up with it by now.
 
In that benchmark u linked there the AA and FSAA is turned off though. Doesn't that make a big difference?

3DMark benchmarks are always defaulted to having AA and FSAA disabled. The 7000 marks from the 9900 are with AA and FSAA disabled as well. So as you can see, the 9900 is basically what the 9800 did to the 9700 in that it's only slightly faster, which makes sense considering they use the same chip. Any significant amount of increase is going to require an entirely new chip and board design; aka R420.
 
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