Author Topic: PS3.0 testers needed (Read 25195 times)

taj · « **Reply #20 on:** May 13, 2007 »

Quote from: Shockwave on May 13, 2007

I think it's time I updated my gfx card anyway, I was thinking about doing it soon. I have radeon X300 SE 128mb card at the moment.
What card would you reccomend? The processor in this machine is an intel Pentium 4 3.0ghz so it's quite up to date.

O now theres a question! Well the truth in shaders is that each new generation of card is getting better at shaders much faster than at normal polygons - meaning, you get what you pay for. For example I had an x1600, upgraded to x1800 and shaders are 10x-20x faster. So...whats the budget?

Chris

va!n · « **Reply #21 on:** May 13, 2007 »

tested on Intel DualCore Notebook with 2 GB DDR2 @ 800 RAM and ATI X1400 .... damn amazing!!!! it works here... even if it does not move smooth... amazing! dont know anything about shader coding and whats / how its possible... but what i see, its wonderfull!!

va!n · « **Reply #22 on:** May 13, 2007 »

@shockwave:
if you want, i can do a divX video for you for d/l .... just tell me if you are interested... greetz

Jim · « **Reply #23 on:** May 13, 2007 »

nVidia 7600GT is good bang for buck right now. I usually look here, because it changes every few weeks. They do a 'best of' at different price points each month.
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphics/graphicscards/

The only reason to hold off right now would be to make sure you got a DirectX10 compatible part.

Jim

taj · « **Reply #24 on:** May 13, 2007 »

Quote from: va!n on May 13, 2007

tested on Intel DualCore Notebook with 2 GB DDR2 @ 800 RAM and ATI X1400 .... damn amazing!!!! it works here... even if it does not move smooth... amazing! dont know anything about shader coding and whats / how its possible... but what i see, its wonderfull!!

a) Im pleased it worked
b) Thanks for the awesome review :-).

Here is the original in just 256b By Baze. This is one of the best ever 256b intros. By using shaders I can do much higher resolution, more dramatic lighting, make it faster etc but fundamentally the idea wasnt mine :-(. Mine is 4x the size though due to OGL/shaders. Frankly I always wanted to see lattice run quickly thats why I wrote the code.

http://www.intro-inferno.com/production.php?id=1299

Chris

benny! · « **Reply #25 on:** May 14, 2007 »

@taj:

Screenies looks just awseome, Chris!!! Unfortunately I have PS2.0 only here. So a divX would
rock. Again, you make me being very interested in shaders again. Damn, why is time so limited.
Need definately more time. Anyway, well done !!!

@va!n:

A little sequence as a divX would truley rock !!!

Rbz · « **Reply #26 on:** May 14, 2007 »

Looking good, I'll test it at home...

Shockwave · « **Reply #27 on:** May 14, 2007 »

I think I will go for the Radeon 7600XT, it seems straight forward enough to install and powerful and good value too

ninogenio · « **Reply #28 on:** May 14, 2007 »

i got my radeon x1550 256mb for Â£55 and thats fairly easy to install and it runs just about everything you can throw at it.

although im thinking of updating to a nvidia 8800GTS

Jim · « **Reply #29 on:** May 14, 2007 »

X1550 is a bit old now nino, it's a great card, but it's not in the bang-for-buck category any more. The X1600 and X1650 have filled that gap.

I've been buying a new card about once a year, but never the top of the range. I buy what was hot 12-18months ago, when they hit $150. Why? Because there's a worrying trend now that shows the top of the range video board at over $1000, when the dual core CPU is only $350! And they want you to by two so you can use SLI mode! There can't be any sense in buying that except for bragging rights. The games companies won't target those boards until everyone has them, and that means they need to trail the cutting edge by 12 months.

The 8800GTS is a monster, but it's nearly $500!

Jim
Â£1=$2.40

ninogenio · « **Reply #30 on:** May 15, 2007 »

yeah jims right i would go for mabey the x1650 shockwave.

i know the guy at our local computer store quite well and hes going to do me a deal on a core 2 due and GTS for Â£300 saving me about Â£100. but thats with me trading my old parts in.

taj · « **Reply #31 on:** May 15, 2007 »

Shockie My 2 pennorth,

I agree with Jim for more general reasons. There isnt much to chose between AMD..er...Ati and Nvidia currently but as a big Nvidia fan (once upon a time) I have switched to Ati. Here are some reasons:

1. Nvidia dont follow glsl very well, meaning you can write incorrect shaders and they will work so its harder to learn proper glsl on Nvidia. I guess thats because Nvidia focus on cg.

2. Ati have the price edge, they are slightly cheaper.

3. Ati have the performance edge (check 8800 v HD 2900XT). http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/video/r600-part3.html

I had an x1600...no real problems, nice performer. If you can get to an x1800 by, say, selling your grandmother, do so as its 10x faster at shaders in some cases.

Chris

Rbz · « **Reply #32 on:** May 15, 2007 »

@Chris: I got an orange screen

I have an Nvidia Geforce 6600GT, as you know ps_3.0 should work here, "tracert" 1kb worked fine here, maybe an issue with GLSL for Nvidia

Anyway the screenshot looks amazing!

taj · « **Reply #33 on:** May 15, 2007 »

Quote from: rbraz on May 15, 2007

@Chris: I got an orange screen

I have an Nvidia Geforce 6600GT, as you know ps_3.0 should work here, "tracert" 1kb worked fine here, maybe an issue with GLSL for Nvidia

Anyway the screenshot looks amazing!

Thanks for that Rbraz. I have access to a 7XXX at work and it has the same problem (8800 doesnt). I'll try some stuff at work and see if I can figure out whats wrong. I think it might be numerical accuracy at this stage - which if it is, could be hard to fix (going all integer maybe?). I will try to fix because I'm curious as hell. This is a weird one.

Chris

Stonemonkey · « **Reply #34 on:** May 15, 2007 »

Works ok here, x1650 amd64 3200.

taj · « **Reply #35 on:** May 15, 2007 »

Quote from: Stonemonkey on May 15, 2007

Works ok here, x1650 amd64 3200.

Thanks dude, seems Ati handles it ok, Nvidia not.

Shockwave · « **Reply #36 on:** May 15, 2007 »

Well, I have a few quid burning a hole in my pocket at the moment so I will be getting a new card. Probably I will go the Radeon route now after reading all the helpful posts so with luck I will b e able to comment properly on your work with shaders Chris

I know it is going to be good, I expect it will be astounding and time will tell

Thank you for all the advice on GFX cards and sorry for sort of hijacking the topic but I think it was relevant.

taj · « **Reply #37 on:** May 16, 2007 »

Nvidia guys,

I found the NVidia problem. After I compiled and ran >20 versions of my code and found nothing I resorted to reading the web.
http://developer.download.nvidia.com/opengl/glsl/glsl_release_notes.pdf is very interesting.
It says:

Flow Control Limitations and Caveats
NVIDIAâ€™s GLSL implementation does not (currently) provide for arbitrary branching and looping in the fragment domain on the NV30 and NV40 targets. Branching and looping is more general in the vertex domain. Loops will perform best when the iteration count can be determined statically at compile time. Loops based on uniforms are restricted to 255 iterations on NV40, and they are not supported on NV30. It may be best to compile multiple versions with constant loop counts rather than attempting to use a uniform value to control the loop count. The G80 target is significantly more capable with branching and dynamic flow control, so it does not face these caveats.

6XXX series cards are NV40 variants, meaning they cannot run real PS3.0 no matter what the marketing says.
I checked an 8800 and its G80 works fine with my code (as the document says it would).
I guess the 7XXX series with G70 have the same issue as g40 and explains why they dont run my code.

So , to cut a long story short, I dont currently see a way to get the code to work on Nvidia platforms <8800. That said, I will continue to think...as obviously, no point in writing code that doesnt run...

Chris

Chris

Chris

taj · « **Reply #38 on:** May 16, 2007 »

NVIDIA guys - help!!!

I coded round the nvidia problems and got an exe I think works on ati and nvidia. I had to drop colour and texture as it uses bytes (hmmm beginning to sound like rtrtrace from loonies).

Could you guys test?

Its meant to look like the picture - yeah I know nowhere near as good as the first version.

benny! · « **Reply #39 on:** May 16, 2007 »

yeahh ... it just works fine on NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT !!! Rulez!
Very well done, Chris !!!