DOOM 3 & DX9 [Sep 17, 2003, 7:08 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
With all the discussion lately about how Half-Life 2 will run on ATI hardware
compared with NVIDIA accelerators, BonusWeb.cz
shot off an email to id Software's John Carmack to ask how DOOM 3 and other
games are likely to be impacted by the difference between the two graphics
platforms running DirectX 9. Here's how he responded:
Unfortunately, it will probably be representative of most DX9 games. Doom has a custom back end that uses the lower precisions on the GF-FX, but when you run it with standard fragment programs just like ATI, it is a lot slower. The precision doesn't really matter to Doom, but that won't be a reasonable option in future games designed around DX9 level hardware as a minimum spec.
A couple people replied that I'm wrong about ATI cards having a custom path in Doom3. But like I said, it's not a big deal. In fact it makes even more of a case for ATI, I think.
I think that while it's still possible, we should allow nvidia (or whoever) to continue to use custom paths for benchmarking purposes, providing the image quality doesn't suffer. Obviously I'm talking theoretically here, as nvidia's "cheats" were more or less exactly that, but as far as Doom3 goes, if it doesn't matter and the game developer is willing to put up with it, then so be it.
At the same time, I totally agree with HBringer that this shit needs to end. I think that this is the last generation of cards that should need custom paths, and the second-to-last generation that can't deal with graphical High-Level Languages seemlessly without massive compiler-level customation.
I hope that ALL the graphics card players will make cards that conform to the API's, that Microsoft helps them make it possible with DX9, and that the OGL people get thier shit together and standardize the best extensions.
Zoner made a couple execellent posts there. I can understand Microsoft's actions up to now, but I think that graphics has become strange to the point where DX10 has to be done differently. Advancements need to be dictated by the users (game programmers) rather then by whichever video card group is making the next X-Box.
I think that while it's still possible, we should allow nvidia (or whoever) to continue to use custom paths for benchmarking purposes, providing the image quality doesn't suffer. Obviously I'm talking theoretically here, as nvidia's "cheats" were more or less exactly that, but as far as Doom3 goes, if it doesn't matter and the game developer is willing to put up with it, then so be it.
At the same time, I totally agree with HBringer that this shit needs to end. I think that this is the last generation of cards that should need custom paths, and the second-to-last generation that can't deal with graphical High-Level Languages seemlessly without massive compiler-level customation.
I hope that ALL the graphics card players will make cards that conform to the API's, that Microsoft helps them make it possible with DX9, and that the OGL people get thier shit together and standardize the best extensions.
Zoner made a couple execellent posts there. I can understand Microsoft's actions up to now, but I think that graphics has become strange to the point where DX10 has to be done differently. Advancements need to be dictated by the users (game programmers) rather then by whichever video card group is making the next X-Box.
--
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I like the Quake 3 Arena.
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