Adding some new games

by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/3/2003 11:20 AM EST
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  • Anonymous - Sunday, October 5, 2003 - link

    Battlefield 1942, yeah.

    And please, please PLEASE PLEASE include a Ti4200. A big portion of the market owns these things. You can leave out the 9500 Pro, the Ti4600, the Ti500, whatever, but the Ti4200... =(
  • Anonymous - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link

    OT: How about a TV Tuner card roundup review? Take all of the stand-alone TV Tuner cards available at NewEgg.com, and comparison test. Including the ATI TV Wonder Pro, MSI TV@nywhere Master, Leadtek, etc. Maybe include 3rd-party software, such as DScaler, ShowShifter, PowerVCR, etc.
    Also, compatability with Windows Media Center Edition.
    Thanks!
  • Anonymous - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link

    #46

    Are people able to realize what the shadermark score means, in your opinion?
    i don't think so.
  • Luagsch - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link

    i guess for a lot of people the tomb raider game is interesting cause it's a dx9 game and uses ps2.0 stuff. we have come to a point in time where all the old games run at speeds that it's almost rediculous benchmarking them (i still enjoy the comparison though:) ). quake 3 at 400 or 250 fps? who cares? if i buy a card now for 400$ i'm interested in future game-performance and that means dx9-performance with shader stuff.

    sure older games are interesting from an iq point of view. that's why i'm really looking forward to part 2. if a company sacrifices iq so that a game runs at 234 fps instead of 145, well wth?

    i think mainstream cards are bought for current games and a little bit of future-proof. high-end cards on the other hand... (just my 2 cents)
  • Anonymous - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link

    I don't care what it's based on. It's not a real game. It's synthetic. If you take a position that "only games" should be used, then Aquamark should not be used.

    Again, my position is that games AND synthetic tests should be used. And ShaderMark 2.0 is IMO the most robust synthetic DX9 benchmark to date.
  • Anonymous - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link

    #44

    Aquamark3 is based on a real game: Aquanox 2
  • Anonymous - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link

    # 43,

    So then remove AquaMark. Aslo, stop the Unreal Tournament Flyby demos...they aren't game situations and are just as synthetic.

    The best reviews have combinations of synthethic and game tests.
  • Anonymous - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link

    #41.

    Good call! shadermark is a very nice game.
    Let's remove real games for putting on shadermark.
    Are you a moron or what?
  • Anonymous - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link

    Why not testing old games up to 2048x1536?
    Who get a 400$ card without having a decent monitor?
  • Anonymous - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link

    shadermark.. shadermark.. shadermark.. shadermark.. shadermark.. shadermark.. shadermark.. shadermark.. shadermark..

    we getting yet Anand?
  • GoGiants - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link

    I would like to see Madden 2004 used as a benchmark. It looks fantastic and can really stress a video card when 6x AA and 16x Aniso are used in conjunction with the highest detail settings and resolutions above 1024x768.
  • Anonymous - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link

    Any idea if ATi can send you the CAT 3.8s a few days ahead of time, or will you wait until the 8th to get them? I think everyone is anxious to see OverDrive in action.
  • aNom - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link

    I would like to see shadermark in as well. Again with both sets of drivers and with anticheat on and off. I think this is one of the only really fair benches.
    Many that you and other sites use are known nVidia driver enhanced benches (read games). Even if you do use custom inhouse demos you would be applauded if you did the 'rename game.exe' and then see if there was a difference. This applies to both companies.

    I really think that in this latest round all the measures should be taken to ensure that we the buyers get the real overall idea of what the best card is and what drivers are doing to the games that we play.
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    Thanks for the responses guys, here's an update:

    1) We are working on including BF1942 as a benchmark; it didn't make it into Part I because we weren't happy with the benchmark (it wasn't stressful enough) but worst case scenario we can just do what THG did although I'd like to have something more stressful. Any suggestions?

    2) You've spoken and your voices do not go unheard, TRAOD will make it into Part II. I have no reservations about including the game other than I didn't think many people played it. You all want it, you'll get it, that's how it works :)

    3) For Part II we are benchmarking with both 52.14 and the publicly available WHQL drivers. The NV38 will only work under 52.14 but we will have a 5900 Ultra for comparison with the currently available and upcoming drivers.

    4) This review will focus on the high end only, so you'll only see three cards - the XT, the 5900U and the NV38. We are testing at 12x10 as well as 16x12, with and without AA/AF. We are focusing heavily on IQ and will provide full screenshot disclosures for everything.

    5) So far we haven't identified any driver "cheats" (looks like the Aquamark stuff is fixed too in 52.14) although both ATI and NVIDIA have problems in a handful of games. We will identify all problems we see and provide full IQ disclosures for you all to verify yourself.

    6) We had to use the unreleased drivers in order to provide NV38 support for the article (we also had to use unreleased drivers for 9800XT support, but they were still cat3.7s). As I mentioned above, you will see old and new drivers in Part II.

    I think that should answer most questions, let me know if I missed anything.

    Thanks again for the great feedback, keep it coming guys.
  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    you can't even buy an NV38 yet ... why are you arguing about drivers?

    its an unreleased card. we cant touch it. this is different than say that we could have this performance now if we wanted and then keeping it from us. this is a card that will come out with new drivers based on the ones anand tested with. get over and and get on with your life
  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    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.

    WOW ...so anand said this !!!!!!!!!

    interesting
  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    and who are you you piece of shit to tell me what to do........

    Use facts you moron before you reply!
  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    Get a life you pathetic excuse for a human being and stop posting.
  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    Anand Lal Shimpi wrote:
    NVIDIA clearly spoiled the preliminary introduction of the Radeon 8500 back in August with the release of their Detonator 4/XP drivers. We were told by NVIDIA that these new drivers would not only improve performance, but that they would be made publicly available the very same week we tested with them. Obviously, that didn't happen, and it ended up taking another month before the drivers were released. The performance gains were tangible, but the drivers weren't fit for release when NVIDIA provided them to the press and honestly shouldn't have been used. 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.

    and you DARE to use the cheatonators 5x.xx for your reviews. LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!

    NOW YOU KISS NVIDIA'S ASS, that's why ;)

    HOW PATHETIC !!!!!!!!!
  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTI5LDQ=

    Another proof;)

  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    #28


    try a to read some REAL reviews for a start!

    http://www.nordichardware.com/reviews/graphiccard/...

    BF1942!!!!!! ye right....its not going to happend for anand....it obvious why!!!!

  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    #28


    try a to read some REAL reviews for a start!

    http://www.nordichardware.com/reviews/graphiccard/...

    BF1942!!!!!! ye right....its not going to happend for anand....it obvious why!!!!

  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    Wow, I didn't know the ATI trolls were out in full force today, as can be seen by the moron comment from #25.

    Anyway Anand, keep up the good work. And no, TR: AOD just plain sucks. Just because it's a DX9 game doesn't mean you should waste your time. People recommending it don't understand that it's not going to be a very heavily played game and therefore not really useful.
  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    Now ... why Anand don't want to include TR:AoD ????????????????????????????????????


    I know .....HE don't want to make Nvidia look bad!!!!!

    Anand= Nvidia's bitch


    How pathetic

  • x_fiddle - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    I believe I agree with the majority out there in saying that unless there is something inherently wrong with the way TR:AOD, it should still be included in benchmarking. Even though it may not look "pretty" it is still one of the few DX9 games out there and it a test of the DX9 feature set.

    As far as popular games are concerned I think that as others have suggested BF1942 should deffinitely be included.
  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    Now ... why Anand don't want to include TR:AoD ????????????????????????????????????


    I know .....HE don't want to make Nvidia look bad!!!!!

    Anand= Nvidia's bitch


    How pathetic

  • Adul Tangtam - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=...

    had to do it boss ;)
  • Adul Tangtam - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=...

    had to do it boss ;)
  • Morten - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    #16 I agree that it -can- be a bit misleading to post benchmarks on unreleased hardware. But, seeing as the hardware is just clocked higher, no actual architectural differences/improvements, I see no harm in this. The only thing of relevance in that article that was missing, was IQ. Which is coming in part 2. If your a hardware enthusiast like myself, I would think that you would enjoy getting these benchmarks. All they did, was prove that nVidia's next refresh won't be anything special. Just like ATI's. It'll be an improvement over the 5900Ultra. Like the TX is over the Pro. Nothing special. Anyway, a preview is a preview. If you don't know the difference between a review and preview, just ignore those results that are based on preview hardware from now on. It's not so hard. And if some readers get burnt on this, and thinks it's actual hardware, too bad for them. They should learn to READ. I really don't see a problem with this. Not in this case anyway.
  • josedawg - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    I think you should include BF1942. It's a very popular game nowadays. Also try the BF1942 addons Road to Rome, and Desert Combat (I hear Desert Combat is much more demanding on the GPU than the original BF1942 and Road to Rome, but I haven't played it personally so I can't make a positive conclusion)
  • 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 Aquamark
    with 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.
  • 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

    #1

    Diablo 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?

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