GTX 660 Ti Review Comment Thread

[TedShackley]

If 1 of my cards fry in the near future, I might save up for a 660, then try sli

Seeing as how close it is to the 7950, did there price change any?

 

[Dave Baumann]

Can you show me a single game we are currently using that is a TWIMTBP title and uses specific routines that are meant to handicap the competitors' products? And actually, AMD is using their initiative FAR MORE right now to hobble NVIDIA's performance. Sniper Elite, Dirt Showdown and Shogun 2 have ALL received either updates or were launched with visual features that were specifically designed for this purpose.

As for Dirt 3, you do realize that it is a Gaming Evolved title, right? NVIDIA's performance advantage was attained through driver optimizations after (once again) being confronted with AMD-sponsored features.

No, sites that used Dirt Showdown should be considered biased against NVIDIA. But....most aren't.

What are you basing this on?

The direction of Showdown started long before anyone anyone knew Keplar would be relatively weak on the Compute side of things. There is nothing that was "designed" to hobble Keplar with Showdown, at least not from our part, not least because we simply didn't know what Keplar was or where it would be weak when Showdown work was being done.

DirectCompute is already being used by lots of titles and devs will adopt it more and more as new algorithms are developed using it. Likewise, when we initially demo'ed forward plus with Leo it garnered a lot of developer interested and experimentation because it is a rendering technique that has the efficiencies of Defferred Shading without some of the limitations.

 

[JJThomp]

What are you basing this on?

The direction of Showdown started long before anyone anyone knew Keplar would be relatively weak on the Compute side of things. There is nothing that was "designed" to hobble Keplar with Showdown, at least not from our part, not least because we simply didn't know what Keplar was or where it would be weak when Showdown work was being done.

DirectCompute is already being used by lots of titles and devs will adopt it more and more as new algorithms are developed using it. Likewise, when we initially demo'ed forward plus with Leo it garnered a lot of developer interested and experimentation because it is a rendering technique that has the efficiencies of Defferred Shading without some of the limitations.

He never said it was done on purpose to gimp Nvidia, he just said it would be a poor representation of relative performance which is absolutely true. It makes no sense to have Showdown in a set of benchmarks because the results only really apply to people who plan on playing nothing but Dirt.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Showdown uses a PROPRIETARY shader sub-routine.

If there is anything proprietary then it is proprietary to Codemasters, not to AMD. The Forward+ rendering mechanism is based on industry standard API code and any DX11 complaint GPU can operate it, and the source code of the Leo demo featuring it is available to anyone; as per the previous comment numberous devs have been playing around with it and variations thereof.

 

[Dave Baumann]

He never said it was done on purpose to gimp Nvidia, he just said it would be a poor representation of relative performance which is absolutely true. It makes no sense to have Showdown in a set of benchmarks because the results only really apply to people who plan on playing nothing but Dirt.

I would argue that reviews are there not just to give people an understanding of relative performane on games right now, but also give you an indication whether they are going to be good for the future as well (at least that is the axiom that I took to reviewing). Yes, the relative performance differencences on Showdown currently only represents Showdown, but the question is whether the redendering techniques and features of Showdown may be present on titles in the future.

The most strenouous element of Showdown is the Global Illumination lighting - Global Illumination has for a long time been something that many developers have been striving to put in to realtime rendering, and here is a game that is delivering it already. Are future titles going to be looking at GI? Fo sure, in fact GI is integral to the UE4 Engine so any game licensing that engine in the future is going to have access to a GI path integrated in the engine.

 

[sswilson]

I would argue that reviews are there not just to give people an understanding of relative performane on games right now, but also give you an indication whether they are going to be good for the future as well (at least that is the axiom that I took to reviewing). Yes, the relative performance differencences on Showdown currently only represents Showdown, but the question is whether the redendering techniques and features of Showdown may be present on titles in the future.

The most strenouous element of Showdown is the Global Illumination lighting - Global Illumination has for a long time been something that many developers have been striving to put in to realtime rendering, and here is a game that is delivering it already. Are future titles going to be looking at GI? Fo sure, in fact GI is integral to the UE4 Engine so any game licensing that engine in the future is going to have access to a GI path integrated in the engine.

Getting an idea of future performance is a good idea, but it would have to be based on several available AAA titles so that it's obviously something that the industry is going to adopt.

 

[JJThomp]

I would argue that reviews are there not just to give people an understanding of relative performane on games right now, but also give you an indication whether they are going to be good for the future as well (at least that is the axiom that I took to reviewing). Yes, the relative performance differencences on Showdown currently only represents Showdown, but the question is whether the redendering techniques and features of Showdown may be present on titles in the future.

The most strenouous element of Showdown is the Global Illumination lighting - Global Illumination has for a long time been something that many developers have been striving to put in to realtime rendering, and here is a game that is delivering it already. Are future titles going to be looking at GI? Fo sure, in fact GI is integral to the UE4 Engine so any game licensing that engine in the future is going to have access to a GI path integrated in the engine.

Well the problem with doing things with the future in mind is that we can't tell the future, things can always change. There are so many things (especially in the technology world) that were seen as the next awesome thing everyone needs to have and they have never taken off. For that reason I would stick to the here and now as the focus of my reviews. It is good to know that if I hear of this technology taking off that the next card I should buy an AMD card however right now it's pretty much irrelevant.

Do you have a list of games that the redendering techniques and features of Showdown will be used in, in the next year or two? If yes and you have some major titles I would say you have a case. If not I would argue that the here and now is much better than speculation in the future.

 

[Galcobar]

I would argue that reviews are there not just to give people an understanding of relative performane on games right now, but also give you an indication whether they are going to be good for the future as well (at least that is the axiom that I took to reviewing). Yes, the relative performance differencences on Showdown currently only represents Showdown, but the question is whether the redendering techniques and features of Showdown may be present on titles in the future.

On that basis, should cards be tested against TXAA, despite it being supported by as yet one game?

Future-proofing requires the ability to accurately predict the future. Lacking that ability, I'll look for repeatable results from technologies and techniques which we know will be used in future games, because they're being used now.

Otherwise, I'd be back to reading reviews about how exciting and powerful my 8800 GTS will be because it can handle DX10.