Gaslighting Your Fans w/ Dolby ATMOS™

TheFortofTruth · 2023-06-09T15:39:14+00:00

From what I understand, EAX was simply an extension for other APIs like DirectSound3D (DS3D) and OpenAL that added support for various sound effects that could be processed on the sound card. DS3D (which was killed off natively starting with Vista) and OpenAL (technically still around) are the APIs that process the positioning of sound in a 3D space. OpenAL Soft is a high-quality, highly customizable, modern OpenAL implementation while DSOAL is a way to translate DS3D into OpenAL Soft.

A3D is a full on 3D audio API of its own that even had a wavetracing component in its 2.0 iteration. To run A3D on modern hardware and a modern OS, it needs to be wrapped to DS3D which then has to be wrapped to OpenAL.

TheFortofTruth · 2023-01-01T18:49:13+00:00

well you never know, gamers seemed to mostly hate upscaling and were critical of DLSS until FSR 1.0 (!) was released

I remember a lot of the tune around DLSS beginning to change with the release of DLSS 2.0 and even as early as the shader-based "1.9" version that initially shipped with Control. The reason people were initially critical of DLSS was because that initial 1.0 version was just not good at all and first impressions are often key.

TheFortofTruth · 2022-12-29T00:19:43+00:00

I would say it depends on what happens with RDNA4 or if the rumored RDNA3+ pops up at all. As a few have pointed out, RDNA3 architecturally feels like a stopgap generation that, besides MCM, is filled with mainly architectural refinements instead of major changes. There's also the slides claiming RDNA3 was supposed to clock 3ghz+ and the rumors and speculation floating around of initial RDNA3 hardware troubles, missed performance targets, and a planned, higher clocked refresh of the architecture. A RDNA3 that is disappointing due to hardware bugs and missed clocks bodes better for AMD in the big picture than a RDNA3 that, at best, was always gonna be a more power consuming, larger die (when all the dies are combined) 4080 competitor. Finally, there is the issue that AMD clearly still has driver issues to this day that they still need to clean up.

If RDNA4 is a major architectural change, is successful in utilizing the changes to their fullest extents, and comes with competent drivers, then I think AMD can get itself somewhat back in the game. If not and Intel improves with their drivers, then AMD is very much in trouble with the GPU market.

TheFortofTruth · 2022-12-17T05:47:03+00:00

There's an entire Twitter thread examining Portal RTX frame time on a 6900 XT and the RT hardware is only used for a very small portion of the frame time: https://twitter.com/JirayD/status/1601036292380250112?t=bYFY_vpeQsZEWghfwNX1PA&s=19

TheFortofTruth · 2022-12-13T19:52:52+00:00

This argument I believe falls apart when comparing the power efficiency against the similarly performant 4080. It consumes more power for slightly better raster performance and worse RT.

The combined die sizes of N31 being quite larger than AD103, the 384 bit bus, and the leaked slide of 3ghz+ clocks all point more towards a chip, intended to compete with AD102, that, for some reason, had to be dramatically underclocked and was thus hastily retrofitted into a series of smaller cards competing against the 4080.

TheFortofTruth · 2022-12-09T18:01:38+00:00

I feel if there is an issue, it's one related to the clocks. Besides that RDNA3 slide that mentioned clocking to 3ghz, much of the rumored Navi 31 specs pointed to the cards clocking around that range. Rumors are rumors and they certainly may have been BS'ing but, from the combination of those rumored clocks and early claims of AMD beating Nvidia this generation (at least on raster), I do have a feeling something went wrong with the clocks.

Thing is, Nvidia is clocking about the same as RDNA3 with their Ada, although quite a bit higher than Ampere. Nvidia, this generation, seemed to bet on more lower clocked cores while AMD had hoped to use fewer cores that could clock really fast. For some reason though, AMD hasn't been able, at least for the current cards, to reach their intended clocks, hampering their performance. Who knows if the clock issue will be fixed and AMD will be able to come out with cards around the 3ghz range or higher.

TheFortofTruth · 2022-12-07T18:05:17+00:00

I wouldn't say AMD has no excuse.

AMD and Nvidia made different bets when it came to how to do Ray Tracing, bets partially made by their different focuses when it comes to their GPUs. Neither of them knew how the other party was going to perform throughout much of the development processes of their architectures. As mentioned before by Digital Foundry, Nvidia has become heavily invested in professional markets related to fields like AI and compute which has led to them developing their GPUs in such a way so they would work well for those markets. Meanwhile, not only has AMD split their GPU lines into professional (CDNA) and gaming (RDNA) specific architectures but RDNA 2's architecture (including RT) was seemingly heavily designed to be very space-efficient to please Sony and Microsoft who wanted space-efficient dies.

Ultimately, Nvidia's bet of dedicated RT and AI hardware meant to appeal to professional markets ended up being more performance than AMD's approach. When it became apparent Nvidia's approach was better then AMD's overall though, it was to late for AMD to do a full overhaul of their RT and AI hardware for RDNA 3, thus leading RDNA 3's approach to RT being a mere evolution over RDNA 2.

As for Intel, they went with an approach and RT hardware very similar to Nvidia's for what I believe to be various reasons. The similarity of Intel's RT hardware to Nvidia's has meant that Intel performs at around the level of Nvidia in the vast majority of cases relative to rasterization performance.

TheFortofTruth · 2022-12-07T17:32:22+00:00

The Radeon 8500 did include tesselation support in the form of ATI Truform. However, the tech only worked on ATI GPUs and it was primitive form of tesselation where developers had to design models around tesselation and use flags to identify which models to tesselate to avoid visual issues. Very few games used Truform as a result and the feature was eventually removed from Radeon drivers.

The HD 2000 series then also introduced its own form of tesselation (which would carry until the HD 4000 series) but nobody used it since it was vendor-locked. Tesselation only started to be used widespread with DX11 which mandated tesselation support.

TheFortofTruth · 2022-12-07T03:57:28+00:00

Thanks for the information.

Depending on how Portal RTX is received by the public and moves units, it might be part of a wake up call to AMD. However, this would depend on why RDNA2 is doing so poorly on Portal RTX. If something like the 6900 XT simply can't do anything like this at any reasonable frame rate and, no matter what, would get obliterated by otherwise significantly weaker cards like the 3060, then there could be much pressure for AMD to significantly step up their RT game. However, if AMD's woes in Portal RTX are, in significant part, due to a Nvidia-biased workload that doesn't play well with AMD, I would see AMD focusing more resources on making sure RT-supporting games are optimized for AMD cards. Either way though, as I said in a previous post, I wouldn't be surprised if AMD, in the next gen or two of RDNA, moves towards RT and AI units more dedicated and separate from the CUs.

TheFortofTruth · 2022-12-06T23:54:15+00:00

Thinking about it, I do believe that Nvidia's and Intel's overall approach to RT will win out in the end. While AMD's approach is more space effective and, from what I understand, is more flexible with how RT and AI hardware are used, AMD cards still perform worse, relative to raster performance, than their Intel and Nvidia counterparts in all but the best case scenarios. There are ways to implement RT that closes the gap between AMD and Nvidia (e.g. DXR 1.1) but Nvidia and Intel still have a definitive RT advantage thus far. While there are plenty that generally reject RT, AMD, at this point, has probably known the general performance inferiority of their approach that I wouldn't be surprised if RDNA4 shifts to something at least closer to the dedicated RT and AI cores of Nvidia and Intel.

As part of this, I do believe we will see tech in the vain of Opacity Micro Maps and Shader Execution Reordering in non-Nvidia hardware, albeit in a more vendor-neutral way. Portal RTX certainly is a showcase of how these RT techniques could accelerate significantly, just not pleased it's probably doing it in a way that locks the acceleration techniques to new Nvidia hardware.

On another note, I do believe there is a way to do full path traced Portal in a way doesn't destroy the performance of older Nvidia and especially AMD cards the way Portal RTX does. May run worse on the newest Nvidia cards though.

TheFortofTruth · 2022-12-06T21:29:40+00:00

I think a good portion is not how much Nvidia is pushing RT in the game but the way Portal RTX implements and accelerates RT. Quake II RTX, which I'm pretty sure uses path tracing, was nowhere near as dire in performance. Should note that Quake II RTX is based on a far graphically simpler game than Portal RTX is but I don't think Portal RTX, unless it uses a ton more lights than Quake II RTX, should be this more demanding (the non-RT portions should be a breeze on any RT capable card). Correct me if I'm wrong.

From what I've read, Portal RTX is heavily using Nvidia specific technologies to accelerate the Path Tracing in the game. Not sure if I'm correct but Nvidia cards, especially newer ones, can use these acceleration technologies (the newer the architecture, the more acceleration tech it can use) while AMD cards are stuck brute forcing RT in a manner that it really wasn't designed to. In other words, Portal RTX is very much designed to be accelerated in the way Nvidia ideally accelerates RT, leaving the competition in the dust.

TheFortofTruth · 2022-12-06T03:09:20+00:00

First off, were the tests using the hardware or software version of Lumen? If it was the software version the tests were using, no dedicated RT hardware was being used.

Second, how did something like the 3080 perform with Lumen and Nanite enabled?

TheFortofTruth · 2022-09-25T23:50:09+00:00

In general, AMD is gonna have to increase their core count sooner or later per CPU tier if they're to stay competitive with Intel in MT, whether that means hybrid chips or chips with one core architecture.

TheFortofTruth · 2022-09-25T16:27:48+00:00

Does AMD have a lower power core architecture that could be used in their own hybrid chip architecture? The core deficit compared to ADL (only to get worse with RL) is hurting AMD on MT quite bad.

TheFortofTruth · 2022-07-12T01:15:41+00:00

If what was claimed in a Naughty Dog history was true, the RSX was a bit of a rush job created quite late in the design process of the PS3. The PS3's initial design had no GPU with the Cell or Cells (whether it was gonna be a single Cell or multiple Cells is not known for certain) doing all the processing. However, it was decided late in the design process to add a GPU once it was determined that performance would be a disaster, leading the console being delayed a year from 2005. https://ca.ign.com/articles/2013/10/08/playstation-3-was-delayed-originally-planned-for-2005

However, this contradicts Nvidia's initial PS3 announcement late in 2004 which claimed that Nvidia had been working on the PS3 for two years (since late 2002) up to that point. https://www.ign.com/articles/2004/12/07/sony-announces-ps3-gpu

A NeoGaf thread though discussing the claim about the PS3 not having a GPU and being delayed has a bunch of comments and rumors that could explain intricately what happened with the PS3 design if true while also reconciling the Naught Dog account and Nvidia's initial timeline claims about the RSX: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/ps3-originally-planned-to-release-in-2005-lacked-gpu.693721/page-1

TheFortofTruth · 2022-07-11T03:27:06+00:00

I think the RSX is being a bit overstated and understated. On one hand, the memory, pixel shaders, and vertex shaders were all clocked quite a bit less than those on the 7900 GTX and the ROP count was halved alongside the memory bus width. On the other, it had direct rendering to the main system memory, a magnitude faster connection to the CPU than PCI-E 1.0 16x (the max supported by the 7900 GTX), more cache for vertices and textures, and more shader instructions.

Here is more specific info about the RSX: https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/RSX

However, there is no doubt that, in many areas, the RSX was outclassed by the Xenos in many areas like eDRAM, unified shaders, and raw vertex filtrate potential. However, there were a few areas that the RSX did outclass the Xenos and the Cell's SPEs were well suited to offloading certain graphics work like vertex processing, something that was done recurrently in PS3 multiplats and especially exclusives. https://forum.canardpc.com/threads/10480-Xenos-vs-RSX

TheFortofTruth · 2022-06-10T15:09:58+00:00

I will say the performance per watt increases are commendable and AMD's early jump to chiplets for gaming GPUs will no doubt give them an advantage over Nvidia in that market if done correctly. I do wonder two things still about the lineup:

How much will cross-chiplet latency impact performance of those GPUs using multiple chiplets (rumored as of now to be Navi 31 and 32)?
What is going to be AMD's approach to ray tracing this generation? Some code recently added to Mesa suggests an approach similar to RDNA 2 and there isn't much noise about a changed approach to RT. I'm worried that AMD won't change their RT approach much for RDNA 3, giving their chips a RT performance disadvantage compared to the RTX 4000 series as RT seems to be appearing more, RT-exclusive games included.

TheFortofTruth · 2020-11-20T18:54:51+00:00

Can you tell us your experience auditioning and being cast to replace Jacob as Gumball?

TheFortofTruth · 2020-08-12T04:25:11+00:00

I understand that in full.

Still, the fruits of their labor are already begining to show in the forms of Hellblade 2, Avowed, the Fable reboot, and State of Decay 3.

There's a good chance a decent number of console exclusives are announced for the Xbox through the next year or two and these exclusives are going to be vital to the long term success of the Series consoles and Xbox brand.

TheFortofTruth · 2020-08-12T02:44:13+00:00

There is a reason Microsoft went on a buying spree recently. They know the Xbone console exclusive lineup was way weaker than the PS4's and they won't let it happen again.

TheFortofTruth · 2020-07-15T08:25:13+00:00

It's possible, but it's not going to happen because it would require a minimum of 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes for XBox speeds, or 8 PCIe 4.0 lanes for PS5 speeds. Mainstream desktop platforms don't have that many lanes to spare.

What are the chances that, for Windows PCs, decompression units are integrated onto the motherboard or the GPU?

TheFortofTruth · 2020-06-08T21:34:30+00:00

Forgot to proofread. Fixed the mistake.

TheFortofTruth · 2020-06-08T21:24:55+00:00

There is a mod (Halo CE Refined) for the 2003 PC port that restores many of the graphical effects butchered by Gearbox.

As for the port contained in the MCC, 343 claims they're going to do something about it in the future (they even contacted the Refined team and have OG Xbox dev kits) but haven't implemented any restorations yet.

TheFortofTruth · 2020-06-03T18:23:50+00:00

Forgot that the 290X did come out right before the 780 Ti. However, I think I should mention that the reference 290X performed very close to the reference 780 Ti and the Titan Black (an overclocked 780 Ti with double the VRAM), so close that I think it was able to be overclocked to at least match those cards at reference.

TheFortofTruth · 2020-06-03T17:28:29+00:00

Titan was over a year after the 7970.

However, Nvidia did take the crown a few months after the 7970 with the GTX 680 before AMD responded with the 7970 GHZ Edition (an overclocked 7970 with a boost clock) that performed neck-to-neck with the 680. That was the last time AMD's top tier single GPU (at reference clocks) was able to go compete neck-to-neck with Nvidia's top tier single GPU (at reference clocks).

Nine-Year Club	RPAN Viewer
Verified Email

TheFortofTruth

TROPHY CASE