Shader 3.0 [Archive] - Page 5 - EQ2 Forum Archive @ EQ2Wire

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Gormak

03-22-2010, 09:51 PM

Might be time to get a FAQ or tips thread/sticky going for shader 3 so we have a single point of info, this threads quite large now.My questions:<ol><li>Im looking at getting a new rig shortly, Nvidia is frankly, not up to its ATI competion at present. If i was to get a Nvidia card, whats the recommendation (im looking at a 285 or 295)? Are there expected issues with ATI cards? My preverence is the ATI 5870 or 5970.</li><li>Is shader 3.0 optimised specifically for Nvidia GPUs?</li><li>Whats your internal test configuration look like? what GPU are you seeing best results with (likely more a driver issue).</li><li>If a train leaves seattle at 5pm, and a car leaves at 6:30 pm both heading east....</li></ol>

Child

03-22-2010, 10:49 PM

imago - do you mind a stupid question again?at the rate shader 3.0 is currently going, when can we expect it to be on live servers?

Imago-Quem

03-22-2010, 11:49 PM

<cite>Child@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>sorry all, found the issue. i was apparently forcing 16x anti-aliasing via the nvidia control panel. disabling it entirely, and it's fully plyable again.<blockquote>tried shader 3.0 on my geforce gts 250. MAJOR MAJOR hit on performance. i'm talking a over half total framerate loss. i usually get around 40 fps in qeynos with max graphics, shadows, everything. when i enabled shader 3.0 and restarted, i was down to averaging less than 10 fps! it also did not look too much better.is there a known problem with the geforce 2xx series of graphics cards and shader 3.0? i know when they first came out, eq2 barely played at all, causing the developers to make the "reuse vertex buffers" checkbox</blockquote></blockquote>Awesome. Glad it got figured out. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

steelbadger

03-23-2010, 04:41 AM

<cite>Imago-Quem wrote:</cite><blockquote>Also, I'm making my way through and fixing white outlines on leafs, nets, and other things like them.Thanks for the testing!</blockquote>omg, yay.This happens on live too, seems to be GPU shadows related. The shadow mask is generally off by about 1 pixel, gets noticed most with thin objects but everything has it. And swaying trees leave the shadow mask behind.It's the main reason I don't like using GPU shadows at the moment. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" />

Imago-Quem

03-23-2010, 02:26 PM

<cite>Caillie@Najena wrote:</cite><blockquote>Playing with the 3.0 shaders, and things just seem to be kinda messed up for me.Specs:<ul><li>NVidia GeForce gtx 260 with the 196.21 drivers. </li><li>Windows 7 64-bit</li><li>Intel Core2 Duo E8400 (3ghz)</li><li>4GB Ram</li><li>Resolution: 1920x1080</li><li>Graphics set to maximum with 3.0 shaders enabled. (Also tried various other settings, including resetting everything to defaults)</li></ul>Problems:Character select screen: Parts of my toon seem overly dark. (her eyes / shoulders)Some characters / npcs are missing body parts.Lighting seems over bright, with poor contrast. May be a pre-existing problem with GPU shadows, but bits of swaying branches leave behind an unmoving unshadowed mask.Some details just look... wrong / ugly / have white outlines.</blockquote>Thanks for the testing. I'll be sure to fix these issues. Could you tell me what armor pieces you have on by name? That would help. The other two bugs I know.

Jeeshman

03-23-2010, 02:35 PM

<cite>Gormak wrote:</cite><blockquote><ol><li>Im looking at getting a new rig shortly, Nvidia is frankly, not up to its ATI competion at present. If i was to get a Nvidia card, whats the recommendation (im looking at a 285 or 295)? Are there expected issues with ATI cards? My preverence is the ATI 5870 or 5970.</li></ol></blockquote>Nvidia releases its new cards, the GTX 470 and 480, in three days (March 26), so you may want to wait to see how they stack up against the 5870/5970. As for 285 versus 295, for EQ2 the 285 would probably be better because EQ2 is terrible at utilizing dual GPU cards and the 295 has two GPUs onboard. You would most likely get better framerates with the 285. --Unless Shader 3.0 will resolve EQ2's problems with SLI/Crossfire. Ryan? Any info on that? <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" />

MurFalad

03-23-2010, 02:52 PM

<cite>Shaydu@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Gormak wrote:</cite><blockquote><ol><li>Im looking at getting a new rig shortly, Nvidia is frankly, not up to its ATI competion at present. If i was to get a Nvidia card, whats the recommendation (im looking at a 285 or 295)? Are there expected issues with ATI cards? My preverence is the ATI 5870 or 5970.</li></ol></blockquote>Nvidia releases its new cards, the GTX 470 and 480, in three days (March 26), so you may want to wait to see how they stack up against the 5870/5970. As for 285 versus 295, for EQ2 the 285 would probably be better because EQ2 is terrible at utilizing dual GPU cards and the 295 has two GPUs onboard. You would most likely get better framerates with the 285. --Unless Shader 3.0 will resolve EQ2's problems with SLI/Crossfire. Ryan? Any info on that? <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>The only bit to add here is I believe the 285 and 295 are both dual GPU cards, all the NVidea cards ending with 5 are dual GPU (unless they've changed their naming scheme again), not sure how well they run in EQ2 myself.But as for graphics card power I think an ATI 4870 is overkill right now, a 5870 would be nice but the prices are ridiculously high in my opinion. I'd recommend buying something more reasonable for now if you had to buy now and wait until NVidea's DX11 card adds some competition to lower those prices.Also, I wonder though with DX11, they say that the video drivers are better written (multi-threading wise) to take advantage of multiple CPU's, it sounds like they could give a small performance increase to EQ2 I assume even if there are no DX11 effects used?

Imago-Quem

03-23-2010, 03:07 PM

<cite>Sasquattch wrote:</cite><blockquote>I've been getting quite a bit of a performance hit lately too.. I can run the game mostly maxed except for the usual, cpu shadows off (gpu shadows on), complex shaders set to 30, the rest of the sliders mostly all the way to the right.. I play in 1920x1200 resolution as well and have been able to play everything so far with at least decent fps..However on test with shader 3.0, my fps is pretty much half of what it is on live with shader 1.0Currently running with Nvidia 9800GTX, core 2 duo 3.0 ghz, 4gb ram, newest drivers + system tweaked etc.. anyone else getting a big performance hit with shader 3.0?</blockquote>That sucks. What frame rate are you getting? Also, are you getting this between different zones and areas, like indoor areas and outdoor. Shader 3 and 1 seem to be opposite in their better and worse frame rate zones (for example: shader 1 is best in one area but shader 3 is worst there. And in another area shader 3 is best but shader 1 is the worst there.). What I've seen so far is that the "average" frame rates are near equal between shader 1 and 3. This might not be the case anymore since I haven't gotten any benchmark data in a while.If you feel like getting a higher frame rate and don't mind torch lights and shadows disappearing, then you can pull the Complex Shader distance down to -1 with minimal visual impact (besides those shadows and torch lights). I've found the frames to sky-rocket by doing this.

Jeeshman

03-23-2010, 04:00 PM

<cite>MurFalad wrote:</cite><blockquote>The only bit to add here is I believe the 285 and 295 are both dual GPU cards, all the NVidea cards ending with 5 are dual GPU (unless they've changed their naming scheme again), not sure how well they run in EQ2 myself.</blockquote>It *is* a strange naming scheme, but the 285 is a <a href="http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_gtx_285_us.html" target="_blank">single-GPU card</a>. (See also Wikipedia's entry listing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units" target="_blank">Nvidia graphics cards</a>).

Imago-Quem

03-23-2010, 04:03 PM

<cite>Gormak wrote:</cite><blockquote>Might be time to get a FAQ or tips thread/sticky going for shader 3 so we have a single point of info, this threads quite large now.My questions:<ol><li>Im looking at getting a new rig shortly, Nvidia is frankly, not up to its ATI competion at present. If i was to get a Nvidia card, whats the recommendation (im looking at a 285 or 295)? Are there expected issues with ATI cards? My preverence is the ATI 5870 or 5970.</li><li>Is shader 3.0 optimised specifically for Nvidia GPUs?</li><li>Whats your internal test configuration look like? what GPU are you seeing best results with (likely more a driver issue).</li><li>If a train leaves seattle at 5pm, and a car leaves at 6:30 pm both heading east....</li></ol></blockquote>You're right. This thread is massive. I pretty much play catch up on it with everyone's comments and questions. Once I'm caught up maybe I'll close out the thread and start a new one.1. Probably a better idea to check hardware comparison sites. I wouldn't be the best guy to ask how they stack up. Plus, I would likely get in trouble if I made any hardware suggestions.2. Nope, shader 3 has not at this time been optimized for Nvidia, nor ATI, nor Intel, nor any other HW company.3. My CPU is dual core 2.66 GHz, but my graphics card is always swapping (Nvidia 8800 GTS, ATI x1950, 1900, HD 3850, etc.). Our test lab is running on lots more graphics cards and CPU's. I don't have the full list, but they range from the low end to the high end cards and CPU's. I don't have any recent benchmark data from them at this time, sorry.4. 42

Child

03-23-2010, 04:17 PM

@gormak - find oyur price budget, then find all cards within that category.go to <a href="http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php</a> and compare the cards you can afford side-by-side with all specs.

Imago-Quem

03-23-2010, 06:59 PM

<cite>Child@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>imago - do you mind a stupid question again?at the rate shader 3.0 is currently going, when can we expect it to be on live servers?</blockquote>Sorry, not allowed to answer that question here right now. I would if I could... and still keep my job.

Imago-Quem

03-23-2010, 07:00 PM

<cite>steelbadger wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Imago-Quem wrote:</cite><blockquote>Also, I'm making my way through and fixing white outlines on leafs, nets, and other things like them.Thanks for the testing!</blockquote>omg, yay.This happens on live too, seems to be GPU shadows related. The shadow mask is generally off by about 1 pixel, gets noticed most with thin objects but everything has it. And swaying trees leave the shadow mask behind.It's the main reason I don't like using GPU shadows at the moment. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>You're talking about a separate issue. I'll be looking at that sometime later. Sorry. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" />

Imago-Quem

03-23-2010, 07:01 PM

Imago-Quem

03-23-2010, 07:05 PM

<cite>MurFalad wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Shaydu@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Gormak wrote:</cite><blockquote><ol><li>Im looking at getting a new rig shortly, Nvidia is frankly, not up to its ATI competion at present. If i was to get a Nvidia card, whats the recommendation (im looking at a 285 or 295)? Are there expected issues with ATI cards? My preverence is the ATI 5870 or 5970.</li></ol></blockquote>Nvidia releases its new cards, the GTX 470 and 480, in three days (March 26), so you may want to wait to see how they stack up against the 5870/5970. As for 285 versus 295, for EQ2 the 285 would probably be better because EQ2 is terrible at utilizing dual GPU cards and the 295 has two GPUs onboard. You would most likely get better framerates with the 285. --Unless Shader 3.0 will resolve EQ2's problems with SLI/Crossfire. Ryan? Any info on that? <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>The only bit to add here is I believe the 285 and 295 are both dual GPU cards, all the NVidea cards ending with 5 are dual GPU (unless they've changed their naming scheme again), not sure how well they run in EQ2 myself.But as for graphics card power I think an ATI 4870 is overkill right now, a 5870 would be nice but the prices are ridiculously high in my opinion. I'd recommend buying something more reasonable for now if you had to buy now and wait until NVidea's DX11 card adds some competition to lower those prices.Also, I wonder though with DX11, they say that the video drivers are better written (multi-threading wise) to take advantage of multiple CPU's, it sounds like they could give a small performance increase to EQ2 I assume even if there are no DX11 effects used?</blockquote>I would be surprised if DX11 improved CPU performance. I would expect the multi-threading to affect "G"PU's only, speeding up graphics rendering, not CPU calculations.

MurFalad

03-23-2010, 08:42 PM

<cite>Imago-Quem wrote:</cite><blockquote>I would be surprised if DX11 improved CPU performance. I would expect the multi-threading to affect "G"PU's only, speeding up graphics rendering, not CPU calculations.</blockquote>Hmm, I guess then it will at best only shorten the time taken to service GPU requests. Although I'm intrigued to see what sort of difference it will make on a quad core, <a href="http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gdc-2010-borderlands,2580-2.html" target="_blank">the original information I found came from a story from the GDC</a> about the Civ5 engine and how they changed it from Civ4 (which they admit was CPU bound). From the article it definitely seems like they had to throw out some standard approaches to get things to work such as dropping memory allocation.

ElogostElundiel

03-23-2010, 09:56 PM

I'm going to second the motion of waiting to see how the new 400 series nvidia cards are before buying. Its the first series of cards since the 8000s that they seem to have spent more than a few weeks developing <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Alienor

03-27-2010, 08:55 AM

The flaming carpet of the order of flame looks a little bit weird here, also the spires:<img src="http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/4447/sh3f.jpg" />

Imago-Quem

04-01-2010, 10:49 PM

<cite>Alienor wrote:</cite><blockquote>The flaming carpet of the order of flame looks a little bit weird here, also the spires:<img src="http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/4447/sh3f.jpg" /></blockquote>Cool, thanks. I'll look into fixing it ASAP. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

krinkled

04-04-2010, 02:33 AM

Our company has purchased a new system for gaming this year (it is great to have a business in the industry you can write off expenses like this, or our trip to Fan Faire <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> )Anyway, it is just up and running, we have:256GB Gen2 SSD w/TRIM built in (Windows 7 Ultimate and major MMOs installed here)1TB data drive (to support our websites and host data)Intel SIX-CORE 980X Extreme Edition CPU currently clocked at 4.1Ghz all six cores on AIR (best processor we have ever seen)Dual Blu-ray Drives one ROM and one RW so we can copy all disks or back up data this way to optical format12GB RAM rock solid stable with Intel XMP (extreme memory profile) all at 1600Mhz of DDR3 goodnessASUS P6X58D X58 Intel chipset motherboard, with SATA 6GB/s and USB 3.0 standardsCurrent placeholder GTX280 (To be replaced with DUAL GTX480 EVGA FTW overclocked cards in SLI already pre-ordered)Custom built by our team in a HAF 932 full tower case.It is a beautiful thing and we are going to push the overclocks on everything to the max once the dual GTX480s arrive. This will be the fastest possible machine available on earth and I will PM you Imago with some extensive testing results once we get the new cards - it should give you a great idea of how the game performs on the most powerful equipment available - for instance if we have a performance problem, you can be sure 99% of your players will have an unplayable experience.Also-Is there any interest here for EQ2 players to have a chance at winning some of our computer hardware? We could hold computer based raffles on our website - items available would be 4x 2GB Corsair 1600Mhz DDR3 sticks, a QX9770 Intel Extreme Edition Processor, 2x GTX280 O.C. editions we could give away as an SLI set or individually, a Striker II Extreme ASUS MB, DVD-RW drives, Zalman CNPS9700 solid copper air cooler, an entire HTPC computer with ultra quiet black horizontal case for your audio rack with dual core Intel and RADEON home theater graphics card, a Gateway FX gaming laptop with 9800GTX+ mobile and 1920x1200 laptop screen, two AMD "common" integrated graphics laptops made by Lenovo, One AMD laptop made by Acer.Anyway, we have tons of stuff and are not sure if we are going to give it away on one of our MMO sites or maybe I'll talk to the PR department about raffling it at Fan Faire -- although this limits the possible winners to people who can go to Vegas.Would you be interested in paying $5 for a raffle ticket, with 50% of proceeds going to a renewable energy charity, for a chance to win one of the items above?Would you prefer we did it online or at Fan Faire - I need to ask (oops name deleted) my friend at Sony PR what he thinks too.But this stuff was just going to be donated to charity for a tax write-off, instead my boss said we should give it to fans, and still support a charity.So thats 3 laptops, one HTPC, and the components of a monster gaming rig (other stuff too not listed PCPC 1000watt power supply etc etc). Total value of the items is probably $8,000.00. Anyway I don't want this thread hijacked with discussion on that - so if you are a player/fan PM me if you would even be interested in a $5 raffle ticket for charity, if you would like us to do it online or at Fan Faire, and if we should do it at all or just give it all away directly to the charity instead. Please PM me, and I'll report to my boss, we will most likely do what the majority of folks want. He was leaning towards talking to SoE about a raffle - last year our company gave away over 700 DAYS OF STATION TIME CARDS AT FAN FAIRE 2009 and also 1 AWESOME GAMING LAPTOP.THIS YEAR WE COULD OFFER EVEN MORE GOODIES! But we don't want to exclude anyone and frankly want more people to check out one of our video game sites in our network, hence consideration for doing it online instead of just at Fan Faire. Anyway thanks for your opinions!

zimmer

04-04-2010, 11:04 PM

I got my upgrade finally and am very pleased.core i7 9306gb ram3 tb drive with 2 striped for games drive. do not need that much space for games but they were the 6gb/64mb cache drives.1 750gb for OSRadeon 4870got an aftermarket cooler coolermaster n520have not oc yet and everything runs great. I did tweak the settings a little but for the most part maxed.It is really great to see though that you will be doing benchmarks krinkle as you can find a ton of benchmarks with a system like that and on the new cards etc but just hard to find one on EQ2I am very curious to see some of the benchmarks and hope you update this page with that info or a link to it.I just hope they get server side issues well sorted by the time you do so they are more accurate to the difference the rig makes.I am also looking at replacing the 750gb with an SSD but thought I would wait just a little longer for prices/performance ratio to improve even just a little.newest SSD's are pretty darn fast especially the sandforce controller based drives. load times would be so little would be awesome.will be watching this thread. =)

psisto

04-07-2010, 11:14 AM

hi,Ive just tried shader 3.0 as well, and performance seems very satisfactory. However Ive been getting the occassional screen flicker whenever the HUD updates (mostly on quest update messages, or when the quest reward dialog pops up).System is:win xp pro x64intel e8400geforce 260gtx, 196 driver seriesand running eq in windowed mode. not getting this on 1.0 shaders

Imago-Quem

04-07-2010, 05:05 PM

<cite>krinkled wrote:</cite><blockquote>Our company has purchased a new system for gaming this year (it is great to have a business in the industry you can write off expenses like this, or our trip to Fan Faire <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /> )Anyway, it is just up and running, we have:256GB Gen2 SSD w/TRIM built in (Windows 7 Ultimate and major MMOs installed here)1TB data drive (to support our websites and host data)Intel SIX-CORE 980X Extreme Edition CPU currently clocked at 4.1Ghz all six cores on AIR (best processor we have ever seen)Dual Blu-ray Drives one ROM and one RW so we can copy all disks or back up data this way to optical format12GB RAM rock solid stable with Intel XMP (extreme memory profile) all at 1600Mhz of DDR3 goodnessASUS P6X58D X58 Intel chipset motherboard, with SATA 6GB/s and USB 3.0 standardsCurrent placeholder GTX280 (To be replaced with DUAL GTX480 EVGA FTW overclocked cards in SLI already pre-ordered)Custom built by our team in a HAF 932 full tower case.It is a beautiful thing and we are going to push the overclocks on everything to the max once the dual GTX480s arrive. This will be the fastest possible machine available on earth and I will PM you Imago with some extensive testing results once we get the new cards - it should give you a great idea of how the game performs on the most powerful equipment available - for instance if we have a performance problem, you can be sure 99% of your players will have an unplayable experience.Also-Is there any interest here for EQ2 players to have a chance at winning some of our computer hardware? We could hold computer based raffles on our website - items available would be 4x 2GB Corsair 1600Mhz DDR3 sticks, a QX9770 Intel Extreme Edition Processor, 2x GTX280 O.C. editions we could give away as an SLI set or individually, a Striker II Extreme ASUS MB, DVD-RW drives, Zalman CNPS9700 solid copper air cooler, an entire HTPC computer with ultra quiet black horizontal case for your audio rack with dual core Intel and RADEON home theater graphics card, a Gateway FX gaming laptop with 9800GTX+ mobile and 1920x1200 laptop screen, two AMD "common" integrated graphics laptops made by Lenovo, One AMD laptop made by Acer.Anyway, we have tons of stuff and are not sure if we are going to give it away on one of our MMO sites or maybe I'll talk to the PR department about raffling it at Fan Faire -- although this limits the possible winners to people who can go to Vegas.Would you be interested in paying $5 for a raffle ticket, with 50% of proceeds going to a renewable energy charity, for a chance to win one of the items above?Would you prefer we did it online or at Fan Faire - I need to ask (oops name deleted) my friend at Sony PR what he thinks too.But this stuff was just going to be donated to charity for a tax write-off, instead my boss said we should give it to fans, and still support a charity.So thats 3 laptops, one HTPC, and the components of a monster gaming rig (other stuff too not listed PCPC 1000watt power supply etc etc). Total value of the items is probably $8,000.00. Anyway I don't want this thread hijacked with discussion on that - so if you are a player/fan PM me if you would even be interested in a $5 raffle ticket for charity, if you would like us to do it online or at Fan Faire, and if we should do it at all or just give it all away directly to the charity instead. Please PM me, and I'll report to my boss, we will most likely do what the majority of folks want. He was leaning towards talking to SoE about a raffle - last year our company gave away over 700 DAYS OF STATION TIME CARDS AT FAN FAIRE 2009 and also 1 AWESOME GAMING LAPTOP.THIS YEAR WE COULD OFFER EVEN MORE GOODIES! But we don't want to exclude anyone and frankly want more people to check out one of our video game sites in our network, hence consideration for doing it online instead of just at Fan Faire. Anyway thanks for your opinions!</blockquote>Your testing would be very appreciated. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Imago-Quem

04-07-2010, 05:06 PM

<cite>psistorm wrote:</cite><blockquote>hi,Ive just tried shader 3.0 as well, and performance seems very satisfactory. However Ive been getting the occassional screen flicker whenever the HUD updates (mostly on quest update messages, or when the quest reward dialog pops up).System is:win xp pro x64intel e8400geforce 260gtx, 196 driver seriesand running eq in windowed mode. not getting this on 1.0 shaders</blockquote>I will look into it. Thanks! <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Imago-Quem

04-07-2010, 05:12 PM

I'd like to move all further Shader 3.0 discussions to the <a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=475005">Shader 3.0 (2010)</a> thread.Please don't reply to this thread any longer.Thanks.

Imago-Quem

04-07-2010, 05:13 PM

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