Professional StarCraft 2 WoL after beta GPU review

[TheEconomist]

@mikill:

1) That article was about pixels. Since you cannot tell the difference in pixels up to a certain point the same logic applies. All AA does is give the impression of a higher resolution by up sampling and then down sampling.

2) There's no point in arguing this anymore. "Put your money where your mouth is" as you once told me and prove yourself right.

I'll be on most of the day today. Respond here when you are ready to stay here for 10 or so minutes and I'll post the screen shots. From there, you will have two minutes to make your choices. If you are wrong then there's nothing more you can say because if you can't tell the difference looking at screenshots for two minutes then you're not going to be able to tell the difference in-game no matter what you mislead yourself into believing.

From there, I will show you the methods used to count AA so you know I'm not misleading you.

@protoswarrior: That's my point. 1920x1200 is far past that resolution, however, and has even less jaggies. Some how this people think that it's possible to smooth jaggies that don't exist They're just trying to justify their ridiculous wastes of money.

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You say that starcraft 2 is dated that may be but that doesn't mean legacy of the void is going to be the same as wings of liberty when it goes down to graphics.

Yes it does. There are limits to the capability of an engine without massive amounts of overhaul which isn't going to happen in the time allotted. The best thing they can do is improve some textures or shaders here and there. The game will never be upgraded to look like the best looking RTS right now. That's just simple programming.

At that point, Anti-Aliasing still has a big benefit.

If there are no edges to smooth then anti-aliasing does nothing. Quit with the proven wrong statements and just show me wrong by guessing the right screen shots in the time allotted.

Besides, there's a difference between pictures in 3D (depth lets you see more) and seeing it from an already relatively low quality monitor.

@Xyvik: He was in the budget market and that's where nVidia wins. Right now, for SC2, ATI is bugged and glitchy with lowered performance. Until this is fixed, nVidia is the best.

If this HD 5770 hadn't been a free upgrade and the GTX460 had been out, I'd probably go for that if the price is about the same now.

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[spychi]

What??? The GTX460 is not the "top of the line" card, it's the "King of the budget cards" card. And there it really shines. Great speed, great price, low heat and power draw. It's a fantastic little card.

the power draw is high at least if you compare it to other cards at the same budget, add to that not the lowest heat temps
other than that, it's really a success, the GTX480 and GTX470 are the biggest fails so far I've seen in the GPU generation right after HD2600

my HD5870 Vapor-X OC'ed reaches max 59-64 C
low TDP and alot of fun

[mikill]

@mikill:

1) That article was about pixels. Since you cannot tell the difference in pixels up to a certain point the same logic applies. All AA does is give the impression of a higher resolution by up sampling and then down sampling.

2) There's no point in arguing this anymore. "Put your money where your mouth is" as you once told me and prove yourself right.

You have not backed up you findings with pictures. Pixels are not the discussion here AA is.

I'll be on most of the day today. Respond here when you are ready to stay here for 10 or so minutes and I'll post the screen shots. From there, you will have two minutes to make your choices. If you are wrong then there's nothing more you can say because if you can't tell the difference looking at screenshots for two minutes then you're not going to be able to tell the difference in-game no matter what you mislead yourself into believing.

Don't be surprised that have my own screenshots to back up my point.

Yes it does. There are limits to the capability of an engine without massive amounts of overhaul which isn't going to happen in the time allotted. The best thing they can do is improve some textures or shaders here and there. The game will never be upgraded to look like the best looking RTS right now. That's just simple programming.

I am sorry Mr. I work for Blizzard and I know everything. You don't know about what there future plans are so you can specify what is the future of Blizzard or where the engine will go.

If there are no edges to smooth then anti-aliasing does nothing. Quit with the proven wrong statements and just show me wrong by guessing the right screen shots in the time allotted.

Besides, there's a difference between pictures in 3D (depth lets you see more) and seeing it from an already relatively low quality monitor.

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What are you talking about? You want me to guess in a certain time frame? Yeah fat chance. Are you saying my equipment is junk?




Man I feel like I am locked in mortal combat with Tychus.

[TheEconomist]

I was waiting on you to respond. I'm giving you two minutes to look at them. How it possible that you do not understand after saying this about four times?

Okay, ready? Respond that you are ready and I will immediately post the pics. From there, you will have two minutes to make your choices. If you have not chosen correctly then I win and there's nothing you can say.

As for you "I work for Blizzard comment", based on several of your comments, I can tell you are not very computer saavy. I'm no computer genius but compared to you my knowledge is great. You should just go with whatever I say. Anyone with basic knowledge of an engine would agree with me. I wouldn't be surprised if you got a few wannabe computer people to agree with you though

And, I feel like I'm finally getting rid of that stalker that annoyed me all through out phase 2.

-- Great dodge there, bro. Keep dodging and I'll win by default.

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[FoxSpirit]

Tychus, a simple question, what distance do you keep from your monitor? I find that the only possible explanation.

And here's a picture from SC2:



Your opinion?

[TheEconomist]

I sit about six inches from the monitor. I don't know. What, do you expect me to be playing StarCraft 2 from a couch fifteen feet away? Asking if I had bad vision would be a better question.

FYI, no, I have great vision.

What am I supposed to be commenting on? We're seeing if there's a difference between 4xAA and 16xAA at 1920x1200. All that screen shot does it show StarCraft 2 looks nice.

Just face it. I'm right.

[Crazy_Jonny]

Do you really want AA?

[protoswarrior]

AA is overrated !

[FoxSpirit]

I sit about six inches from the monitor. I don't know. What, do you expect me to be playing StarCraft 2 from a couch fifteen feet away? Asking if I had bad vision would be a better question.

FYI, no, I have great vision.

What am I supposed to be commenting on? We're seeing if there's a difference between 4xAA and 16xAA at 1920x1200. All that screen shot does it show StarCraft 2 looks nice.

Just face it. I'm right.

That screen shows a lot of Aliasing. That's why I posted it. Look Tychus, do you even understand the effect of Aliasing?

Aliasing is perceived when the relative size of a pixel is larger than the resolution of your eyes. The farther away from your monitor you sit, the smaller the pixel appears to you, until you are so far away you can't see a single pixel anymore. The bigger the resolution and the smaller the monitor size, the shorter that distance will be.
Then a picture composed of those pixels will appear perfectly sharp to you, with no hint that it's made up of individual dots. This is why I asked you how far away from your minotor you sit.

For my 22" monitor at 1680x1050 and my normal working distance that isn't true, so I enjoy the benefits of sampling the pixels around polygonal edges to get a smoother look on them. TV is a similar effect, reality is a much higher "resolution" and you get a smooth look instead of a jagged one.

There's nothing to win from this, just some understanding to gain.

[Xyvik]

What's wrong with the GTX 460? It outperforms and costs 80 dollars less than the 5850. Also, I read that NVidia cards are the only ones that offer AA period right now for SC2 (and do a better job at it).

First off, these benchmarks for SC2 are so far out of line with my own experiences it's hard to imagine where the numbers came from. Granted, I don't currently (and haven't for some time) have the money to test SC2 on several machines, but I ran benchmarks on client machines before I sent them out.

Put quite simply, in most cases the 768meg GeForce 460 can barely compete with the Radeon 5830, and in no cases have I seen it even coming close to a 5850. The 1gig 460 does better but still can't compete with a 5850.

Also, all this talk of SC2 having problems with ATi cards is just that: talk. I've been running SC2 constantly since beta on 4 different ATi cards, with 3 separate sets of drivers (including a legacy driver) and not only have I had maxed AA but I've had no graphical problems whatsoever. My 5870 has Ultra on everything and AA enabled, so I really have no idea what this article is talking about when it says AA isn't ready on ATi cards...

Quite frankly I have to seriously doubt whether these benchmarks are as unbiased as they'd like to say, because they don't even come close to matching the numbers I benched. Maybe the new nVidia drivers are what makes the difference, because that's the only thing I haven't tested since I currently don't have a client machine with an nVidia card in it.

In short, Fermi is still a massive mistake in terms of architecture. It is too hot and draws too much power for the numbers it puts out, and in a lot of cases it is still too expensive. The 460 is better designed than the 470, 480, and especially the 465, but it still suffers from the basic errors of the Fermi architecture and will never receive a recommendation from me.