ATI Radeon X800 Pro and XT Platinum Edition: R420 Arrives
by Derek Wilson on May 4, 2004 10:28 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Homeworld 2 Performance
Interestingly enough, Homeworld 2 (with the 1.1 patch) makes use of two different shadowing methods. NV40, R420, and R3xx parts make use of a shader model 2.0 program for shadowing, while other GPUs (including NV3x) make use of shadow maps.
We can see that the shadow map technique runs much faster on NV3x than the shader runs on everything but R420.
The same trend continues at higher resolutions as well. It is possible to force NV3x to run using the shader program, but this is how the game will play on end users hardware, so this is how we will look at performance. It is important to note that there is no image quality difference between the shadow mapped and shaded methods used in the game.
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saechaka - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
wow. very impressive. i was set on getting an nvidia but just don't know anymorePhiro - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
The message is clear; Matrox has failed!Brickster - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
Show me the money!MemberSince97 - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
Advanced features are worthless if your driver team keeps breaking them..f11 - Tuesday, May 4, 2004 - link
kinda starting to feel sorry for nvidia now. each generation they stuff their cards with more feautures than they need to, end end up with a slower and more featured card. If anyone's expecting SM3 to be a big hit, remember that the original FX line had lots of extensions to DX9 and they never really made much a difference.