Why not work on something that could do that...but for everyone?
What could that be? My bet: Nothing. If this reduces CPU overhead it leaves more CPU resources for Lua which means smoother gameplay. I dont think we will see any other major performance improvements anymore, as it is most likely impossible to do any.
Far less problems? Like what? I had Radeon 9600 Pro, x1950 Pro, HD4950, HD4970, HD5850 and now HD7950. Never had any significant problems apart from tiny glitches that were usually tied to other problems or fixed by next drivers. On the other hand, i also had several GeForce cards (the pre GTX series era) and also never had any problems worth mentioning. So, as far as i'm concerned, they both have good products. AMD just has a better pricing policy.
Intel graphics should be excluded from all statistics unless they are the only adapter in the system. Intel stuffing GPU's in ther CPU's ramps up the statistics even though taht GPU only runs desktop... I also don't think Mantle can go the way of 3dfx. 3dfx and Glide with it was gone because 3dfx made a lot of bad business decisions. I'm pretty sure Glide would stay around if 3dfx wouldn't bankrupt.
Btw, Frostbite and Unreal Engine are already planned to support AMD Mantle. Someone said above that Crytek is also... that alone pretty much covers like what, 80% of whole graphics market? The rest of 20% are proprietary engines like the one used in NS2 and other games. If it's not too much of a hassle to implement it, i think it's always worth it even if it covers only half of the user base. It' still way more useful than stupid PhysX that only 50% of users can use and it's still limited to some gimmicky useless eye candy. Mantle on the other hand makes the whole game run faster. That's not gimmicky, thats a massive feature.
I'd really love to hear an opinion from a NS2 developer, since they know their game the best and how much work would it require to use AMD Mantle. I have an HD7950 and with recent monitor upgrade a basically lost around 30-40fps due to higher resolution. And it quite feels in the game. I now have around 90fps on max settings where before i had well over 130. With AMD Mantle i could potentially fill that gap and keep the new monitor. Graphic card upgrade somewhat doesn't make sense currently since i already have the R9-280X class graphic card so i have nothing to upgrade to. Except bloody expensive and
Why not work on something that could do that...but for everyone?
What could that be? My bet: Nothing. If this reduces CPU overhead it leaves more CPU resources for Lua which means smoother gameplay. I dont think we will see any other major performance improvements anymore, as it is most likely impossible to do any.
If it reduces CPU overhead when using HD 7000 + AMD cards, isn't the chance pretty high that a person who already invested in such a card also has a powerful CPU? If Mantle improved the performance of AMD processors directly instead, regardless of the GPU used, it would definitely be a good thing for the NS2 scene as AMD processors are the once that need a boost. But NS2 is a demanding game. If people want to play it with good performance they have to open their wallets, thus they will if they truly want to get there. So, as morally wrong as it may be, i would have to agree with those who state that it's better to work on improving the performance a little bit for everyone, if at all, instead of for the minority who suffer most. A person in a Ford Pinto shouldn't participate in a race meant for a McLaren F1.
Why not work on something that could do that...but for everyone?
What could that be? My bet: Nothing. If this reduces CPU overhead it leaves more CPU resources for Lua which means smoother gameplay. I dont think we will see any other major performance improvements anymore, as it is most likely impossible to do any.
If it reduces CPU overhead when using HD 7000 + AMD cards, isn't the chance pretty high that a person who already invested in such a card also has a powerful CPU? If Mantle improved the performance of AMD processors directly instead, regardless of the GPU used, it would definitely be a good thing for the NS2 scene as AMD processors are the once that need a boost. But NS2 is a demanding game. If people want to play it with good performance they have to open their wallets, thus they will if they truly want to get there. So, as morally wrong as it may be, i would have to agree with those who state that it's better to work on improving the performance a little bit for everyone, if at all, instead of for the minority who suffer most. A person in a Ford Pinto shouldn't participate in a race meant for a McLaren F1.
I have a top-range computer and the game still runs "less-than-optimally", but I have a GCN GPU so I could take advantage of the reduced CPU overhead, and GCN GPU's arent exactly a brand new thing from AMD.
To be fair, if soon Nvidia users can reduce CPU overhead by calculating physics with their GPU, we AMD users should also have something to make gameplay smoother. Possibly even smooth as butter, one can dream... NS2 with smooth gameplay, gimme gimme
Why not work on something that could do that...but for everyone?
What could that be? My bet: Nothing. If this reduces CPU overhead it leaves more CPU resources for Lua which means smoother gameplay. I dont think we will see any other major performance improvements anymore, as it is most likely impossible to do any.
There is ALWAYS something you can do better (well to a point, but believe me it's far from it).
I have a top-range computer and the game still runs "less-than-optimally", but I have a GCN GPU so I could take advantage of the reduced CPU overhead, and GCN GPU's arent exactly a brand new thing from AMD.
To be fair, if soon Nvidia users can reduce CPU overhead by calculating physics with their GPU, we AMD users should also have something to make gameplay smoother. Possibly even smooth as butter, one can dream... NS2 with smooth gameplay, gimme gimme
Really? Well what do you consider top-range then? You must be using plenty of eye-candy and a high res too. I have a Core i5 3570K overclocked to 4.6 GHz and a GTX 670 OC. The GPU is rather overkill for this game and i could have used my old one still. The processor is enough in 4.6 GHz to sit at 120-150 FPS except during the most intense battles on 24+ player servers where it temporarily dips to around 70. I run the game at 1600x900 and with AA, AF and shiny surfaces activated though could run it at 1080p and still never go below 50 FPS. Shadows are def not worth the performance hit in a tactical game. Surely that's smooth enough for a processor that costs 200 bucks?
If soon nVidia users can reduce their CPU overhead too by using Mantle, there would be no reason not to embed it into NS2. I'm sure UWE have already checked out the details of Mantle and decided if they'll ever work with it and when that'll be. While it's interesting to discuss these matters, i don't think UWE need protests or community surveys (not saying that this topic falls into either of those categories) to know how many that would be affected by what they choose to improve.
Far less problems? Like what? I had Radeon 9600 Pro, x1950 Pro, HD4950, HD4970, HD5850 and now HD7950. Never had any significant problems apart from tiny glitches that were usually tied to other problems or fixed by next drivers. On the other hand, i also had several GeForce cards (the pre GTX series era) and also never had any problems worth mentioning. So, as far as i'm concerned, they both have good products. AMD just has a better pricing policy.
Intel graphics should be excluded from all statistics unless they are the only adapter in the system. Intel stuffing GPU's in ther CPU's ramps up the statistics even though taht GPU only runs desktop... I also don't think Mantle can go the way of 3dfx. 3dfx and Glide with it was gone because 3dfx made a lot of bad business decisions. I'm pretty sure Glide would stay around if 3dfx wouldn't bankrupt.
Btw, Frostbite and Unreal Engine are already planned to support AMD Mantle. Someone said above that Crytek is also... that alone pretty much covers like what, 80% of whole graphics market? The rest of 20% are proprietary engines like the one used in NS2 and other games. If it's not too much of a hassle to implement it, i think it's always worth it even if it covers only half of the user base. It' still way more useful than stupid PhysX that only 50% of users can use and it's still limited to some gimmicky useless eye candy. Mantle on the other hand makes the whole game run faster. That's not gimmicky, thats a massive feature.
I'd really love to hear an opinion from a NS2 developer, since they know their game the best and how much work would it require to use AMD Mantle. I have an HD7950 and with recent monitor upgrade a basically lost around 30-40fps due to higher resolution. And it quite feels in the game. I now have around 90fps on max settings where before i had well over 130. With AMD Mantle i could potentially fill that gap and keep the new monitor. Graphic card upgrade somewhat doesn't make sense currently since i already have the R9-280X class graphic card so i have nothing to upgrade to. Except bloody expensive and
Such a beautiful post. Looks like you were killed by an axe-murderer mid-sentence, though.
I have a top-range computer and the game still runs "less-than-optimally", but I have a GCN GPU so I could take advantage of the reduced CPU overhead, and GCN GPU's arent exactly a brand new thing from AMD.
To be fair, if soon Nvidia users can reduce CPU overhead by calculating physics with their GPU, we AMD users should also have something to make gameplay smoother. Possibly even smooth as butter, one can dream... NS2 with smooth gameplay, gimme gimme
Really? Well what do you consider top-range then? You must be using plenty of eye-candy and a high res too. I have a Core i5 3570K overclocked to 4.6 GHz and a GTX 670 OC. The GPU is rather overkill for this game and i could have used my old one still. The processor is enough in 4.6 GHz to sit at 120-150 FPS except during the most intense battles on 24+ player servers where it temporarily dips to around 70. I run the game at 1600x900 and with AA, AF and shiny surfaces activated though could run it at 1080p and still never go below 50 FPS. Shadows are def not worth the performance hit in a tactical game. Surely that's smooth enough for a processor that costs 200 bucks?
If soon nVidia users can reduce their CPU overhead too by using Mantle, there would be no reason not to embed it into NS2. I'm sure UWE have already checked out the details of Mantle and decided if they'll ever work with it and when that'll be. While it's interesting to discuss these matters, i don't think UWE need protests or community surveys (not saying that this topic falls into either of those categories) to know how many that would be affected by what they choose to improve.
Also if you claim NS2 runs smooth enough right now... Well, you probably dont mind lagging around in games. However the community has continuously voted performance should be the top priority.
Performance is eons better than it was a few months back. Play on a server that uses NSL maps and you will notice a difference. You might even say it feels playable.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
@Ghosthree3
Same here. If folk who have real issues open tech support topics, make game dumps, post specs etc perhaps it gets fixed.
Remember a indie dev has less resources to worth with. Lets say there PTs all have no hardware issues. Then how to fix it for folk who do? To get the info about said systems.
@Ghosthree3
Same here. If folk who have real issues open tech support topics, make game dumps, post specs etc perhaps it gets fixed.
Remember a indie dev has less resources to worth with. Lets say there PTs all have no hardware issues. Then how to fix it for folk who do? To get the info about said systems.
Yeah, everyone must be wrong since its the #1 issue that gets complained about. :P
Mantle would probably be a massive waste of time for NS2... Most of the time when your FPS drops its not because of GPU induced CPU load issues, unless you have ambient occlusion turned on, or are using an older video card that wouldnt benefit anyways... The game is still and most likely will always be CPU limited by lua, something Mantle cannot help with.
The same can be said about GPU Physx support, unless they plan on adding capes or having buildings blow up into a million pieces I dont think there is a perceivable benefit from adding that in either.
I would much rather see improvements made to the netcode of the engine, while NS2 is played competitively I have never once considered the engine 'competitively viable'.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
@shonan
Please dont twist my words to fit your own postings. I did not say there were no performance issues.
I said that obviously if any PT would have horrid performance issues, then uwe would have loads of info and it would probably be fixed.
THEN I said that if folk who HAVE issues shower then with info, there is a better chance they uwe can find and fix the problem.
Also if you claim NS2 runs smooth enough right now... Well, you probably dont mind lagging around in games.
Why are you changing the topic? When did we start talking about lag? That has nothing to do with Mantle or graphical performance. I dislike the rubber-banding as much as anyone. But this topic is clearly about frame-rates, not stability.
However the community has continuously voted performance should be the top priority.
Of which i and everyone else who oppose the idea of UWE working on Mantle right now are part of as well. If they can almost double the performance for everyone with the release of the LUA-to-C bridge they can probably do better than Mantle ever could and for many more players.
I don't see how a person with your rig can be complaining at all anyway. I think you're simply pickier than most. The picky person that is me included.
You're mixing graphics lag with network lag. And trust me, it's there. A lot of stuff creates horrible local lag when they happen for the first time despite precaching. For example first marine bite with skulk. It always makes an awful lag for me. But doesn't happen ever again within same game session.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
NS2 has directx11 support now, ok.
Did it use any of the advanced features of DX11? (Tesselation, soft shadows, advanced shader support, ..)
Dont think so.
It didnt look better, run smoother or whatever with DX11.
How could Mantle boost the game if DX11 didnt do so?
Right now the biggest performance issue is the locked client and serverrate.
Its to low for an fast game like ns2 in my opinion.
Would have to ask if it's worth the time tbh, there are probably other things they could do that would be more helpful to more people.
Mantle is a GPU API. Not CPU.
Which is why I went and posted the GPU stats right after that being pointed out.
Not enough it seems.
Misinformation should be deleted when discovered. Just saying.
But yeah, I only quoted because it really showed a total lack of understanding, and you get a lot of respect on the forums it seems, I did not want a bunch of folks finding the chart relevant.
Far less problems? Like what? I had Radeon 9600 Pro, x1950 Pro, HD4950, HD4970, HD5850 and now HD7950. Never had any significant problems apart from tiny glitches that were usually tied to other problems or fixed by next drivers. On the other hand, i also had several GeForce cards (the pre GTX series era) and also never had any problems worth mentioning. So, as far as i'm concerned, they both have good products. AMD just has a better pricing policy.
Well pretty much every ATI card I had suffered from a lot of problems with artifacts, missing faces, texture corruption, driver problems, heat problems, or just plain doa. Then when I noticed Nvidia cards were stomping Radeons in almost every game it was an easy decision. Don't get me wrong, if you're gaming on a budget AMD has always been the best with prices, but as far as quality and reliability I have to go with Nvidia.
Btw, Frostbite and Unreal Engine are already planned to support AMD Mantle. Someone said above that Crytek is also... that alone pretty much covers like what, 80% of whole graphics market? The rest of 20% are proprietary engines like the one used in NS2 and other games. If it's not too much of a hassle to implement it, i think it's always worth it even if it covers only half of the user base. It' still way more useful than stupid PhysX that only 50% of users can use and it's still limited to some gimmicky useless eye candy. Mantle on the other hand makes the whole game run faster. That's not gimmicky, thats a massive feature.
No physX is pretty awesome when you have dual gpus, and it can actually be used by people with AMD cards also. It's just not going to be advanced PhysX which is only on Nvidia cards GTX x70 and above. I'm not saying it wouldn't be great if it worked and if it worked really well I'd consider switching, but I don't see removing CPU overhead as being a huge improvement when you have a lot of games that still don't fully utilize multiple cpu cores. That seems like a far more effective solution for EVERYONE.
I'd really love to hear an opinion from a NS2 developer, since they know their game the best and how much work would it require to use AMD Mantle. I have an HD7950 and with recent monitor upgrade a basically lost around 30-40fps due to higher resolution. And it quite feels in the game. I now have around 90fps on max settings where before i had well over 130. With AMD Mantle i could potentially fill that gap and keep the new monitor. Graphic card upgrade somewhat doesn't make sense currently since i already have the R9-280X class graphic card so i have nothing to upgrade to. Except bloody expensive and
Well you don't have the "R9-280X class" graphics card which gets beaten narrowly beaten by the 7970 which has a slightly higher clock speed but otherwise exactly the same http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html. They also both get beaten handily by the GTX 770 and don't even compete with the GTX 780 or Titan, a 7990 on the other hand will beat a single 780 due to it being a dual gpu card. So you could upgrade to Nvidia or get another card and do crossfire, as crossfire and sli are really mostly useful for higher resolutions. Considering a R9-290X is about $300 US, you'd just have to save for a while and buy them together or separately or just live with a lower resolution which is the more economic solution.
While Mantle support would surely be some nice to have feature, I'm wondering if supporting 3 different high-level renderers is not introducing too much complexity and problems.
Right now we can choose between DX9, DX11 and OpenGL - on the Windows platform, that is.
Once you release the Mac version, there will be 2 platforms that are strictly OpenGL.
Wouldn't it be easier to cut it down to OpenGL only?
Chris Roberts certainly agrees:
Timecode doesn't seem to work. See 9:00 for the quote I'm aiming for.
For a game like Natural Selection, I'd love to see hear TrueAudio support.
Just imagine being able to locate and track a skulk with your headset.
Wouldn't that be sweet?
every ATI card I had suffered from a lot of problems with artifacts, missing faces, texture corruption, driver problems, heat problems, or just plain doa.
Does that mean that all their future products will be faulty, bad and kill your PC forever? Nope.
It means that you are a delusional Nvidia fanboy - and that's where I will leave it at...
I need to learn to be nicer if i am going to reply to others
AMD/ATI cards actually have long-term problems with microstuttering (just google it up), and notoriously lower quality drivers, especially for Linux/BSD systems.
I tried to define a custom 1200x900 resolution on my notebook for old games using 4:3 aspect ratio, and while it's simple to do with Nvidia driver, in case of AMD Radeon, the only way to do is by editing registry keys, and even that solution brings other problems.
Mantle would probably be a massive waste of time for NS2... Most of the time when your FPS drops its not because of GPU induced CPU load issues, unless you have ambient occlusion turned on, or are using an older video card that wouldnt benefit anyways... The game is still and most likely will always be CPU limited by lua, something Mantle cannot help with.
The same can be said about GPU Physx support, unless they plan on adding capes or having buildings blow up into a million pieces I dont think there is a perceivable benefit from adding that in either.
I would much rather see improvements made to the netcode of the engine, while NS2 is played competitively I have never once considered the engine 'competitively viable'.
It would help since Mantle is supposed to reduce the CPU overhead which gives more CPU time for Lua.
@Ghosthree3
Same here. If folk who have real issues open tech support topics, make game dumps, post specs etc perhaps it gets fixed.
Remember a indie dev has less resources to worth with. Lets say there PTs all have no hardware issues. Then how to fix it for folk who do? To get the info about said systems.
Yeah, everyone must be wrong since its the #1 issue that gets complained about. :P
No, what I said was I have no issues (except the mentioned).
Would have to ask if it's worth the time tbh, there are probably other things they could do that would be more helpful to more people.
Mantle is a GPU API. Not CPU.
Which is why I went and posted the GPU stats right after that being pointed out.
Not enough it seems.
Misinformation should be deleted when discovered. Just saying.
But yeah, I only quoted because it really showed a total lack of understanding, and you get a lot of respect on the forums it seems, I did not want a bunch of folks finding the chart relevant.
Perhaps I should have edited my post to say I messed up with it, but I don't believe in "erasing mistakes" all that covering your ass crap is stupid and you'll never learn. If you (in this case me) made a mistake, accept it, say you made it, correct it, move on.
Well you don't have the "R9-280X class" graphics card which gets beaten narrowly beaten by the 7970 which has a slightly higher clock speed but otherwise exactly the same http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html. They also both get beaten handily by the GTX 770 and don't even compete with the GTX 780 or Titan, a 7990 on the other hand will beat a single 780 due to it being a dual gpu card. So you could upgrade to Nvidia or get another card and do crossfire, as crossfire and sli are really mostly useful for higher resolutions. Considering a R9-290X is about $300 US, you'd just have to save for a while and buy them together or separately or just live with a lower resolution which is the more economic solution.
From what I've heard SLI/Crossfire bring their very own problems...
@Davil
R9-290X will NEVER be just 300 bucks. Where did you get that insane price!? 280 maybe, but 290, not a chance. And yes, i have a highly overclocked HD7950 running at 1100/6000. So, apart from R9-290X, there is nothing to upgrade to. And i don't like the idea of running two cards in SLi/CrossX. Plus my system is miniATX so that alone prevents me from doing such setups.
@Hamlet
OpenGL only and get as pathetic framerate as we do now? No thanks. With OpenGL, Natural Selection 2 is unplayable for me as framerate drops as far down as to 40 FPS, sometimes even lower. With D3D11 i get a lot higher framerate. Something i'd consider playable in the region of over 60 FPS. But with OGL, it was simply unplayable.
Alright get ready for the longer explanation I guess, see I grew up on gaming, way back in the 90's there was this company called ATI and they made some really good video cards that were at the time better than the Nvidia ones. They were more expensive though, cards like the Radeon 9800 I had were pretty nice for their time. But then the AMD decided to buy out ATI which yes, did complete in 2006 but you're missing an extremely key point, THEY DIDN'T CHANGE THE NAME UNTIL AUGUST 30TH 2010! And even then they still had stock they had to sell off. So sure 3 years later I'm still calling them ATI because that's what I've been calling them for the previous 24 years of my remembered life, that's not going to change. But just for fun I went downstairs and took a picture of something particularly interesting in my media server's case. Prepare to have your mind blown!
Yep that's an ATI Radeon 5970, which I bought in 2010 maybe 2011, it was the last ATI card I ever bought. If you want to argue about what hardware works best probably shouldn't do it with me cause chances are I had the opportunity to compare both and I'm not very biased I just call it like I see it.
And I know it's the internet but no need to act like a turd, give respect to get respect.
@Davil
R9-290X will NEVER be just 300 bucks. Where did you get that insane price!? 280 maybe, but 290, not a chance. And yes, i have a highly overclocked HD7950 running at 1100/6000. So, apart from R9-290X, there is nothing to upgrade to. And i don't like the idea of running two cards in SLi/CrossX. Plus my system is miniATX so that alone prevents me from doing such setups.
My mistake I meant 280x, you can't even buy a 290x yet although it does look promising and may not be just a different name slapped on the exact same chip like the rest of the R9 series, but the problem with what you're saying isn't that you overclocked what you have to speeds like the other cards' stock speeds, it's the fact that core clock and memory clock aren't the only things that matter. If I overclock a 750 to speeds near a 770 it's not the same, because they have a plethora of differences between them. In your case you're missing a few stream processors, texture units, and probably shader cores. You can't make up for that by increasing the clock speeds in Catalyst. And I'll reemphasize this, I'm not trying to talk down to you or anything, I'm just saying you're not looking at it the right way. You're kinda looking at it through fanboy-ish glasses, believe me I used to preach about how much better my ATI cards were than Nvidia cards until I started approaching it with an open mind.
Comments
What could that be? My bet: Nothing. If this reduces CPU overhead it leaves more CPU resources for Lua which means smoother gameplay. I dont think we will see any other major performance improvements anymore, as it is most likely impossible to do any.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantle_(API)
Intel graphics should be excluded from all statistics unless they are the only adapter in the system. Intel stuffing GPU's in ther CPU's ramps up the statistics even though taht GPU only runs desktop... I also don't think Mantle can go the way of 3dfx. 3dfx and Glide with it was gone because 3dfx made a lot of bad business decisions. I'm pretty sure Glide would stay around if 3dfx wouldn't bankrupt.
Btw, Frostbite and Unreal Engine are already planned to support AMD Mantle. Someone said above that Crytek is also... that alone pretty much covers like what, 80% of whole graphics market? The rest of 20% are proprietary engines like the one used in NS2 and other games. If it's not too much of a hassle to implement it, i think it's always worth it even if it covers only half of the user base. It' still way more useful than stupid PhysX that only 50% of users can use and it's still limited to some gimmicky useless eye candy. Mantle on the other hand makes the whole game run faster. That's not gimmicky, thats a massive feature.
I'd really love to hear an opinion from a NS2 developer, since they know their game the best and how much work would it require to use AMD Mantle. I have an HD7950 and with recent monitor upgrade a basically lost around 30-40fps due to higher resolution. And it quite feels in the game. I now have around 90fps on max settings where before i had well over 130. With AMD Mantle i could potentially fill that gap and keep the new monitor. Graphic card upgrade somewhat doesn't make sense currently since i already have the R9-280X class graphic card so i have nothing to upgrade to. Except bloody expensive and
If it reduces CPU overhead when using HD 7000 + AMD cards, isn't the chance pretty high that a person who already invested in such a card also has a powerful CPU? If Mantle improved the performance of AMD processors directly instead, regardless of the GPU used, it would definitely be a good thing for the NS2 scene as AMD processors are the once that need a boost. But NS2 is a demanding game. If people want to play it with good performance they have to open their wallets, thus they will if they truly want to get there. So, as morally wrong as it may be, i would have to agree with those who state that it's better to work on improving the performance a little bit for everyone, if at all, instead of for the minority who suffer most. A person in a Ford Pinto shouldn't participate in a race meant for a McLaren F1.
I have a top-range computer and the game still runs "less-than-optimally", but I have a GCN GPU so I could take advantage of the reduced CPU overhead, and GCN GPU's arent exactly a brand new thing from AMD.
To be fair, if soon Nvidia users can reduce CPU overhead by calculating physics with their GPU, we AMD users should also have something to make gameplay smoother. Possibly even smooth as butter, one can dream... NS2 with smooth gameplay, gimme gimme
There is ALWAYS something you can do better (well to a point, but believe me it's far from it).
Really? Well what do you consider top-range then? You must be using plenty of eye-candy and a high res too. I have a Core i5 3570K overclocked to 4.6 GHz and a GTX 670 OC. The GPU is rather overkill for this game and i could have used my old one still. The processor is enough in 4.6 GHz to sit at 120-150 FPS except during the most intense battles on 24+ player servers where it temporarily dips to around 70. I run the game at 1600x900 and with AA, AF and shiny surfaces activated though could run it at 1080p and still never go below 50 FPS. Shadows are def not worth the performance hit in a tactical game. Surely that's smooth enough for a processor that costs 200 bucks?
If soon nVidia users can reduce their CPU overhead too by using Mantle, there would be no reason not to embed it into NS2. I'm sure UWE have already checked out the details of Mantle and decided if they'll ever work with it and when that'll be. While it's interesting to discuss these matters, i don't think UWE need protests or community surveys (not saying that this topic falls into either of those categories) to know how many that would be affected by what they choose to improve.
Such a beautiful post. Looks like you were killed by an axe-murderer mid-sentence, though.
I'm all for Mantle.
Rather than writing a post I'll just link this:
https://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/comment/2159957/#Comment_2159957
Also if you claim NS2 runs smooth enough right now... Well, you probably dont mind lagging around in games. However the community has continuously voted performance should be the top priority.
Same here. If folk who have real issues open tech support topics, make game dumps, post specs etc perhaps it gets fixed.
Remember a indie dev has less resources to worth with. Lets say there PTs all have no hardware issues. Then how to fix it for folk who do? To get the info about said systems.
Yeah, everyone must be wrong since its the #1 issue that gets complained about. :P
The same can be said about GPU Physx support, unless they plan on adding capes or having buildings blow up into a million pieces I dont think there is a perceivable benefit from adding that in either.
I would much rather see improvements made to the netcode of the engine, while NS2 is played competitively I have never once considered the engine 'competitively viable'.
Please dont twist my words to fit your own postings. I did not say there were no performance issues.
I said that obviously if any PT would have horrid performance issues, then uwe would have loads of info and it would probably be fixed.
THEN I said that if folk who HAVE issues shower then with info, there is a better chance they uwe can find and fix the problem.
Please dont ever twist my words again.
Why are you changing the topic? When did we start talking about lag? That has nothing to do with Mantle or graphical performance. I dislike the rubber-banding as much as anyone. But this topic is clearly about frame-rates, not stability.
Of which i and everyone else who oppose the idea of UWE working on Mantle right now are part of as well. If they can almost double the performance for everyone with the release of the LUA-to-C bridge they can probably do better than Mantle ever could and for many more players.
I don't see how a person with your rig can be complaining at all anyway. I think you're simply pickier than most. The picky person that is me included.
Did it use any of the advanced features of DX11? (Tesselation, soft shadows, advanced shader support, ..)
Dont think so.
It didnt look better, run smoother or whatever with DX11.
How could Mantle boost the game if DX11 didnt do so?
Right now the biggest performance issue is the locked client and serverrate.
Its to low for an fast game like ns2 in my opinion.
Not enough it seems.
Misinformation should be deleted when discovered. Just saying.
But yeah, I only quoted because it really showed a total lack of understanding, and you get a lot of respect on the forums it seems, I did not want a bunch of folks finding the chart relevant.
No physX is pretty awesome when you have dual gpus, and it can actually be used by people with AMD cards also. It's just not going to be advanced PhysX which is only on Nvidia cards GTX x70 and above. I'm not saying it wouldn't be great if it worked and if it worked really well I'd consider switching, but I don't see removing CPU overhead as being a huge improvement when you have a lot of games that still don't fully utilize multiple cpu cores. That seems like a far more effective solution for EVERYONE.
Well you don't have the "R9-280X class" graphics card which gets beaten narrowly beaten by the 7970 which has a slightly higher clock speed but otherwise exactly the same http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html. They also both get beaten handily by the GTX 770 and don't even compete with the GTX 780 or Titan, a 7990 on the other hand will beat a single 780 due to it being a dual gpu card. So you could upgrade to Nvidia or get another card and do crossfire, as crossfire and sli are really mostly useful for higher resolutions. Considering a R9-290X is about $300 US, you'd just have to save for a while and buy them together or separately or just live with a lower resolution which is the more economic solution.
Right now we can choose between DX9, DX11 and OpenGL - on the Windows platform, that is.
Once you release the Mac version, there will be 2 platforms that are strictly OpenGL.
Wouldn't it be easier to cut it down to OpenGL only?
Chris Roberts certainly agrees:
For a game like Natural Selection, I'd love to see hear TrueAudio support.
Just imagine being able to locate and track a skulk with your headset.
Wouldn't that be sweet?
Here is a TrueAudio demo:
Too bad Nvidia has killed quite a few cards lately with their 320.18 driver:
http://modcrash.com/nvidia-display-driver-damaging-gpus/
Does that mean that all their future products will be faulty, bad and kill your PC forever? Nope.
It means that you are a delusional Nvidia fanboy - and that's where I will leave it at...
I need to learn to be nicer if i am going to reply to others
I tried to define a custom 1200x900 resolution on my notebook for old games using 4:3 aspect ratio, and while it's simple to do with Nvidia driver, in case of AMD Radeon, the only way to do is by editing registry keys, and even that solution brings other problems.
It would help since Mantle is supposed to reduce the CPU overhead which gives more CPU time for Lua.
Please read up on Mantle e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantle_(API)
Perhaps this will help you understand...
http://i.imgur.com/HhukCRa.jpg
No, what I said was I have no issues (except the mentioned).
Perhaps I should have edited my post to say I messed up with it, but I don't believe in "erasing mistakes" all that covering your ass crap is stupid and you'll never learn. If you (in this case me) made a mistake, accept it, say you made it, correct it, move on.
From what I've heard SLI/Crossfire bring their very own problems...
R9-290X will NEVER be just 300 bucks. Where did you get that insane price!? 280 maybe, but 290, not a chance. And yes, i have a highly overclocked HD7950 running at 1100/6000. So, apart from R9-290X, there is nothing to upgrade to. And i don't like the idea of running two cards in SLi/CrossX. Plus my system is miniATX so that alone prevents me from doing such setups.
@Hamlet
OpenGL only and get as pathetic framerate as we do now? No thanks. With OpenGL, Natural Selection 2 is unplayable for me as framerate drops as far down as to 40 FPS, sometimes even lower. With D3D11 i get a lot higher framerate. Something i'd consider playable in the region of over 60 FPS. But with OGL, it was simply unplayable.
Alright get ready for the longer explanation I guess, see I grew up on gaming, way back in the 90's there was this company called ATI and they made some really good video cards that were at the time better than the Nvidia ones. They were more expensive though, cards like the Radeon 9800 I had were pretty nice for their time. But then the AMD decided to buy out ATI which yes, did complete in 2006 but you're missing an extremely key point, THEY DIDN'T CHANGE THE NAME UNTIL AUGUST 30TH 2010! And even then they still had stock they had to sell off. So sure 3 years later I'm still calling them ATI because that's what I've been calling them for the previous 24 years of my remembered life, that's not going to change. But just for fun I went downstairs and took a picture of something particularly interesting in my media server's case. Prepare to have your mind blown!
And I know it's the internet but no need to act like a turd, give respect to get respect.
My mistake I meant 280x, you can't even buy a 290x yet although it does look promising and may not be just a different name slapped on the exact same chip like the rest of the R9 series, but the problem with what you're saying isn't that you overclocked what you have to speeds like the other cards' stock speeds, it's the fact that core clock and memory clock aren't the only things that matter. If I overclock a 750 to speeds near a 770 it's not the same, because they have a plethora of differences between them. In your case you're missing a few stream processors, texture units, and probably shader cores. You can't make up for that by increasing the clock speeds in Catalyst. And I'll reemphasize this, I'm not trying to talk down to you or anything, I'm just saying you're not looking at it the right way. You're kinda looking at it through fanboy-ish glasses, believe me I used to preach about how much better my ATI cards were than Nvidia cards until I started approaching it with an open mind.