Hardware Discussion Thread

[Garteal]

This thread is intended for hardware related talk.
Feel free to go off-topic when necessary within reason.

The only rule is:
- No offtopic random talk. These belong here.

AMD might be revealing their new GPU series on September 25th. I'm personally pretty excited about it because of the good rumors and I'm in need of a new GPU. Been holding off on upgrading.
Some website claims to have an engineering sample of the AMD flagship and has benchmarked it against NVIDIAs flagships. The AMD card beats the Titan in certain games at a much lower (rumored) price point. Check out the website for a lot of benchmarks.

[garrlker]

I'm looking forward to it as well, not to buy one though, just to see what they've been cooking up. I'm planning on buying a nvidia gpu in the spring when maxwell comes out.

[Garteal]

Since both the PS4 and XBONE are both powered by AMD hardware, I wonder how much difference it will make on the PC if you have AMD hardware instead of NVIDIA in terms of performance, optimization, etc. I would get an NVIDIA GPU otherwise, but to be honest, I feel like a GTX 760 isn't worth it.

[masterotaku]

After forcing lots of anti-aliasing types, ambient occlusion, downsampling, prerendered frames = 1, etc with Nvidia Inspector and control panel, and using PhysX, I don't want to go back to AMD.
Still, I want both companies to compete seriously and make really powerful GPUs. The Nvidia 700 series was only a small step from the 600 series. I hope the Nvidia 960 (or whatever they call it in two years) can provide at least double the fps of a single 760.

I can't wait to play Dolphin at 4xIR+9xSSAA with a future 4k 120Hz Lightboost monitor .

[Garteal]

Ah, forgot about the many types of AA NVIDIA GPU's support. I can do/force the rest though with my AMD GPU.
And I agree, the competition will hopefully make things interesting again in the GPU world.

Why do you need 9xSSAA? You probably won't even notice much difference on such a high resolution (except your framerate of course).
4xSSAA is more than enough.

Edit: How's the 760 GTX though? Getting good framerates in PC games?

[masterotaku]

(09-23-2013, 05:30 AM)Garteal Wrote: Why do you need 9xSSAA? You probably won't even notice much difference on such a high resolution (except your framerate of course).
4xSSAA is more than enough.

I don't "need" it, but I simply want to be able to try it at fullspeed. And as I said, many years later with a 4k monitor. The image would be very antialiased even at 4k resolution . Now I remember that I have to ask this: why does Dolphin call them 4xSSAA and 9xSSAA? Souldn't it be 2xSSAA and 3xSSAA? I know resolution is 2x2 and 3x3, but drivers and games usually call them 2xSSAA and 3xSSAA...

(09-23-2013, 05:30 AM)Garteal Wrote: Edit: How's the 760 GTX though? Getting good framerates in PC games?

Yes, I get good fps on the games I tried. I limit framerate to 75 with MSI Afterburner because I play at 75Hz. Playing Battlefield on Ultra without MSAA (but using SweetFX), fps dropped to 60ish only twice in about 6 hours of gameplay (I think it was an explosion+fire+smoke effect). Deus Ex HR with SweetFX: between 100 and 160 fps (usually limited by CPU). I tried Metro 2033 at maximum settings (my resolution is 1920x1080) for an hour. It ran fine, but sometimes fps were between 40 and 50 while shooting monsters at the start of the game. Crysis 2: fine, it usually reaches 60fps, but the GPU is at its limit with that game. Very demanding.

[NaturalViolence]

Garteal Wrote:Since both the PS4 and XBONE are both powered by AMD hardware, I wonder how much difference it will make on the PC if you have AMD hardware instead of NVIDIA in terms of performance, optimization, etc. I would get an NVIDIA GPU otherwise, but to be honest, I feel like a GTX 760 isn't worth it.

As long as they use different API implementations expect little to no difference.

masterotaku Wrote:After forcing lots of anti-aliasing types, ambient occlusion, downsampling, prerendered frames = 1, etc with Nvidia Inspector and control panel, and using PhysX, I don't want to go back to AMD.
Still, I want both companies to compete seriously and make really powerful GPUs. The Nvidia 700 series was only a small step from the 600 series. I hope the Nvidia 960 (or whatever they call it in two years) can provide at least double the fps of a single 760.

Just like Intel Nvidia lays out its roadmap years in advance and strictly adheres to its schedule. They release updated roadmaps pretty much every year. It was known for years that 2013 would be a kepler refresh. 2014 is maxwell, 2015 is maxwell refresh, 2016 is volta. As you can see they release new microarchitectures along with new manufacturing process every 2 years. Which provides a tremendous increase in performance per dollar. In the years inbetween architectures they release new steppings/variants of the existing architecture which provides minimal improvement in order to at least have some improvement in between new architecture release dates.

masterotaku Wrote:I can't wait to play Dolphin at 4xIR+9xSSAA with a future 4k 120Hz Lightboost monitor

120Hz/lightboost is useless for dolphin since dolphin can't run games at 100% speed at 120 fps.

Garteal Wrote:Why do you need 9xSSAA? You probably won't even notice much difference on such a high resolution (except your framerate of course).
4xSSAA is more than enough.

Depends more on your monitor PPI and viewing distance. For me I can certainly see the difference. Maybe not at 4K though.

masterotaku Wrote:why does Dolphin call them 4xSSAA and 9xSSAA? Souldn't it be 2xSSAA and 3xSSAA? I know resolution is 2x2 and 3x3, but drivers and games usually call them 2xSSAA and 3xSSAA...

No they don't. I've never seen them called that before, ever. The common notation for any form of AA including SSAA is to list the sample count per pixel.

[lamedude]

I remember a few games being much faster on a GF3 supposedly because of Xbox optimizations, but that was the pre Catalyst era so it just could of been those infamous ATI drivers.

[masterotaku]

(09-23-2013, 07:22 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: 120Hz/lightboost is useless for dolphin since dolphin can't run games at 100% speed at 120 fps.

It isn't useless. Sure, games would still run at 60fps, so the Lightboost effect would be worse than at 120fps, but still there would be almost no motion blur. An example you should remember is playing a 30fps game on a 60Hz CRT TV. Do you remember that double image effect when moving? Exactly that, but more subtle, as you would play at double the fps and Hz.
Another advantage is I wouldn't need to change the monitor frequency so often: 60Hz for emulators, 72Hz for videos, 75Hz for PAL videos and PC games, etc. It would be 120Hz for everything except PAL videos.

(09-23-2013, 07:22 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: No they don't. I've never seen them called that before, ever. The common notation for any form of AA including SSAA is to list the sample count per pixel.

I'm not at home, so I can't check Nvidia Inspector right now, but I remember that Brütal Legend has 2xSSAA and 4xSSAA, and I have read that the new Tomb Raider has the same options:

[NaturalViolence]

masterotaku Wrote:It isn't useless. Sure, games would still run at 60fps, so the Lightboost effect would be worse than at 120fps, but still there would be almost no motion blur. An example you should remember is playing a 30fps game on a 60Hz CRT TV. Do you remember that double image effect when moving? Exactly that, but more subtle, as you would play at double the fps and Hz.
Another advantage is I wouldn't need to change the monitor frequency so often: 60Hz for emulators, 72Hz for videos, 75Hz for PAL videos and PC games, etc. It would be 120Hz for everything except PAL videos.

You don't seem to believe me so I direct your attention to an actual user with a lightboost monitor who reported the expected behavior: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-dolphin-and-zero-input-lag-lcd-monitor-issue-noteworthy

Unfortunately it seems his image links are all dead. But I assure you that depending on the scenario it either does nothing or creates a "ghost image" that actually makes it look a lot worse. You need to maintain 120fps for lightboost to function properly.

I don't remember seeing ghost images on 20/30 fps games on my CRT TV back in the day. I've played a lot of low fps games on various friends CRT TVs and I don't think I've ever seen that. If it's there it's not noticeable to me, at least not like this.

masterotaku Wrote:Exactly that, but more subtle, as you would play at double the fps and Hz.

You would be playing at the same framerate. Assuming you're still talking about dolphin.

masterotaku Wrote:I'm not at home, so I can't check Nvidia Inspector right now, but I remember that Brütal Legend has 2xSSAA and 4xSSAA, and I have read that the new Tomb Raider has the same options:

Yes, and 2x means 2 samples while 4x means 4 samples. Not 4 and 16 like you suggested earlier.