Nvidia GT300: 512-bit bus + GDDR5 memory = enormous bandwidth

[Air Raid]

It's looking like GT300 will have at least 256 GB/sec bandwidth.
Somewhere around 256 ~ 280 GB/sec, around double that of GT200. The
increased bandwidth is thanks to a 512-bit bus (which the current
GT200 already has) combined with GDDR5 memory (GT200 does not have).
What could all of that bandwidth be needed for? Probably more ROPs,
perhaps upto 64, that would be double what GT200 has.

and / or newer, better-designed ROPS.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=49139&page=47

If it allows me to play Crysis cranked up all the way, at 60fps, on a
single GPU/single card without needing SLI, I'm all for it.

 

[Thomas S.]

It's looking like GT300 will have at least 256 GB/sec bandwidth.
Somewhere around 256 ~ 280 GB/sec, around double that of GT200. The
increased bandwidth is thanks to a 512-bit bus (which the current
GT200 already has) combined with GDDR5 memory (GT200 does not have).
What could all of that bandwidth be needed for? Probably more ROPs,
perhaps upto 64, that would be double what GT200 has.

and / or newer, better-designed ROPS.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=49139&page=47

If it allows me to play Crysis cranked up all the way, at 60fps, on a
single GPU/single card without needing SLI, I'm all for it.

I play Crysis at 60 FPS cranked all the way up.. not on a single GPU
card though.

Crysis is one of those mythical, waste-of-time-to-talk-about goals /
benchmarks of achievability that gamers like to latch onto, sort of
like the Duke Nukem fiasco.

The fundamental problem is that the game pretty much sucks, even if
you do run it at acceptable levels. And even "acceptable levels" never
really amount to GOOD performance. It's simply a poorly written
engine.

What's even more funny is when you consider the fact that during the
period of time this game was in development (2004-2006 or so), there
was no hardware available that could even come close to running this
game with everything maxed out. So, even the developers never got a
chance to play test their own game to determine if it was headed in
the right direction or was even fun to play. That explains a great
deal right there.

 

[Tim O]

I play Crysis at 60 FPS cranked all the way up.. not on a single GPU
card though.

Crysis is one of those mythical, waste-of-time-to-talk-about goals /
benchmarks of achievability that gamers like to latch onto, sort of
like the Duke Nukem fiasco.

The fundamental problem is that the game pretty much sucks, even if
you do run it at acceptable levels. And even "acceptable levels" never
really amount to GOOD performance. It's simply a poorly written
engine.

What's even more funny is when you consider the fact that during the
period of time this game was in development (2004-2006 or so), there
was no hardware available that could even come close to running this
game with everything maxed out. So, even the developers never got a
chance to play test their own game to determine if it was headed in
the right direction or was even fun to play. That explains a great
deal right there.

While I disagree that Crysis sucks, I'd also have to ask why you'd buy
hardware that plays it at 60fps if you don't like it. There isn't
really any other game that pushes hardware like Crysis, so your setup
seems kind of silly if you're using it to play Left4Dead or COD4,
which runs lightning fast on a single 8800GT.

Crytek always pushes the envelope with their engines. Far Cry was no
different in its day. I also remember when id used to do the same
thing. It was kind of a commonplace thing for software to exceed the
limits of hardware in the late 90s and early 2000's.
Its uncommon now, mainly because most of the software out there is
designed with running not only on a PC, but also on the XBox360 and
PS3 with their relatively limited resources.

The part where we might agree is that there is no way I'm spending 500
bucks on a new cutting edge video card to run one 2 year old game
fast. We're at the point now where software no longer drives PC
hardware development. Nearly every big release from here on out is
going to be multi-platform. Crytek and id both scaled their upcoming
engines to work on the consoles.

Too bad you don't like Crysis, because its likely the only thing thats
going to challenge your system for a long time to come.

 

[Skybuck Flying]

While I disagree that Crysis sucks, I'd also have to ask why you'd buy
hardware that plays it at 60fps if you don't like it. There isn't
really any other game that pushes hardware like Crysis, so your setup
seems kind of silly if you're using it to play Left4Dead or COD4,
which runs lightning fast on a single 8800GT.

Hold on there chap... try Call of Juarez...

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[Thomas S.]

While I disagree that Crysis sucks, I'd also have to ask why you'd buy
hardware that plays it at 60fps if you don't like it.

What makes you think I would buy hardware to play Crysis? Its a crap
game with or without good framerates.

There isn't
really any other game that pushes hardware like Crysis, so your setup
seems kind of silly if you're using it to play Left4Dead or COD4,
which runs lightning fast on a single 8800GT.

L4D and COD4 were not my thing. Now Far Cry 2, theres a game. I'm
not happy with framerates unless I get a minimum 60 fps (not avg) even
under the most extreme conditions. With this hardware I can achieve
that in FC2 with all the eye candy matched even (and here's the rub)
on some of the massive multiplayer maps with dense jungle foilage.

Crytek always pushes the envelope with their engines.

Not as far as those who license older versions of their engines
(talking about the Dunia engine here which is a modded version of the
FC1 engine). Far Cry 2 makes Crysis look like pong.

Far Cry was no
different in its day. I also remember when id used to do the same
thing. It was kind of a commonplace thing for software to exceed the
limits of hardware in the late 90s and early 2000's.

I never thought very highly of the original FC.

Its uncommon now, mainly because most of the software out there is
designed with running not only on a PC, but also on the XBox360 and
PS3 with their relatively limited resources.

The part where we might agree is that there is no way I'm spending 500
bucks on a new cutting edge video card to run one 2 year old game
fast. We're at the point now where software no longer drives PC
hardware development. Nearly every big release from here on out is
going to be multi-platform. Crytek and id both scaled their upcoming
engines to work on the consoles.
Too bad you don't like Crysis, because its likely the only thing thats
going to challenge your system for a long time to come.

Not true, GTA 4 makes good use of the hardware (looks and plays
remarkably better than console versions), and I do much more with my
PC than just play games. Just because Crysis doesn't run as well as
games that look and play better than it, doesn't mean I have (or am
looking for) a good reason to continue to go back to it.

The only reason Crysis continues to show up in benchmarks is because
it's interesting to see how much it really takes to run it decently.
If you remember, for a couple of years Oblivion outdoor benchmarks
were the benchmark-article favorite, because they were so brutal on
hardware. The big difference is that Oblivion was an enjoyable game
to play through.

 

[Tim O]

L4D and COD4 were not my thing. Now Far Cry 2, theres a game. I'm
not happy with framerates unless I get a minimum 60 fps (not avg) even
under the most extreme conditions. With this hardware I can achieve
that in FC2 with all the eye candy matched even (and here's the rub)
on some of the massive multiplayer maps with dense jungle foilage.

I like the Dunia engine as well, providing the engine itself is
capable of overcoming one of Far Cry 2's huge limitations.
If the complete respawning of enemies/buildings/vehicles as soon as
the player is 1/4 mile away was just a poor design choice thats was
just a poor design choice, the engine gets a pass.

If they had to do that to overcome a limitation of the engine, than
its no better than Cryengine, its just happens to run a little
smoother.

There is another huge irritation with Dunia and that is if you have
too many save games, its takes forever to load the game list. If you
decide to pare it down by deleting them, it has to reload the list at
a minute + a shot.

Didn't play much of the multi-player, but I played through the single
player campaign when I had an 8800GT and it looked great and played
pretty fast with just a couple things less than max.

Not as far as those who license older versions of their engines
(talking about the Dunia engine here which is a modded version of the
FC1 engine). Far Cry 2 makes Crysis look like pong.

I disagree, but whatever.

The only reason Crysis continues to show up in benchmarks is because
it's interesting to see how much it really takes to run it decently.

Well, yea. LOL.

 

[Les Steel]

Tim O said the following on 20/05/2009 10:47:

I like the Dunia engine as well, providing the engine itself is
capable of overcoming one of Far Cry 2's huge limitations.
If the complete respawning of enemies/buildings/vehicles as soon as
the player is 1/4 mile away was just a poor design choice thats was
just a poor design choice, the engine gets a pass.

If they had to do that to overcome a limitation of the engine, than
its no better than Cryengine, its just happens to run a little
smoother.

There is another huge irritation with Dunia and that is if you have
too many save games, its takes forever to load the game list. If you
decide to pare it down by deleting them, it has to reload the list at
a minute + a shot.

Didn't play much of the multi-player, but I played through the single
player campaign when I had an 8800GT and it looked great and played
pretty fast with just a couple things less than max.


I disagree, but whatever.

Me too. Also dunia is apparently based on the same engine as crysis, not
the best of the two Far Cry games.

 

[Thomas S.]

Me too. Also dunia is apparently based on the same engine as crysis, not
the best of the two Far Cry games.

Looking this up once more it does appear Dunia is based on the
CryEngine2 Crysis rather than than mods to the original used in Far
Cry 1. It sort of begs the question of why can Ubisoft do better with
the engine than the original developers? When I say better, I'm not
counting subjective opinions about which game is more fun.. in my case
any game that goes from shooting Koreans to having aliens drop out of
the sky (Crysis) is never going to be fun. I'm talking about the
overall optimization, how good the graphics look overall (and how well
the framerate performs on a given set of hardware), an area where Far
Cry 2 trounces both Crysis and Crysis Warhead. What did Crytek do
that made Crysis perform so poorly?

 

[Thomas S.]

I like the Dunia engine as well, providing the engine itself is
capable of overcoming one of Far Cry 2's huge limitations.
If the complete respawning of enemies/buildings/vehicles as soon as
the player is 1/4 mile away was just a poor design choice thats was
just a poor design choice, the engine gets a pass.

If they had to do that to overcome a limitation of the engine, than
its no better than Cryengine, its just happens to run a little
smoother.

You aren't the only one to complain about the respawning of check
points. Somewhere on the Ubi site I watched a video where the
developers mentioned this was a design decision. I personally didn't
mind it, because if they had not done it, eventually every check point
would have gotten slowly cleared out, and completing each mission
would have become successively easier. Once you cleared a checkpoint,
you would be freely roaming around the world as if you were one of the
last survivors of a nuclear holocaust in Africa. It would have then
become a simple matter of driving straight to each mission goal,
shooting a few bad guys, then done.

There is another huge irritation with Dunia and that is if you have
too many save games, its takes forever to load the game list. If you
decide to pare it down by deleting them, it has to reload the list at
a minute + a shot.

I never experienced that issue, I saved games often and the list
loaded quicky for me. I have heard of other bugs in single player but
did not experience them myself, admittedly I didn't play through all
of the SP game because I became hopelessly addicted to MP shortly
after release.

Didn't play much of the multi-player, but I played through the single
player campaign when I had an 8800GT and it looked great and played
pretty fast with just a couple things less than max.

I originally played it at DX9 with similar hardware and similar
settings, and single player and all of the retail MP maps still looked
gorgeous and played great as you said. When I discovered how
addictive the multiplayer game was, and discovered the vast number of
user-created maps, I became aware that my machine was not able to give
me acceptable framerates on some of the larger maps with lots of
detail..this was not my only reason for getting a new PC (but helped
give me an extra reason to upgrade), and loading the game for the
first time with DX10 and all options maxed (with blazing fast
framerates under ALL conditions), made me feel like I was playing a
whole new game.

I disagree, but whatever.

Ok, pong was a bit of an exaggeration but the difference is still
night and day.