Are we being sold the modern day version of snake-oil?

[Nick]

Eldren, nice post, cheers!

The comment about fps actually affecting gameplay in Q3 is a new one on me. I suppose that this is because the game is updating a little faster, giving a smoother arc to a jump?

BUT... Am I seriously expected to shell out hundreds of pounds to be able to jump a bit higher? Obviously, in a competitive game, this might be a distinct advantage, but then that's desperately unfair to those who simply cannot afford the latest kit... Who wins the game comes down to who has the most money, NOT who the best player is...

I know about the blurring thing on tv/cinema and manufacturers went implemented it on GFX cards too... why? I think Q3 was used for examples of it in one review I read. But if it gave us such a framerate drop, why nother.... unless to make us buy the expensive new card to then allow to keep a high framerate AND have motion blur.

The real question is how many more graphical bells and whistles can they add before enough is enough?

Take HL2 as a classic example. Valve obviously spent more time on the Havoc engine than on the GFX, hence the blockiness of the terrain in places.... The water does look good but that's just taken care of by a hrdware routine, isn't it? However, screens of the game running with everything are touted around to convince you that your hardware is sub-standard and in need of replacing...

You have to ask yourself, just how far can we let them go before we have to say that the latest revision, released 9 months after the last card just isn't worth paying for just to the latest, realism enhancing graphical touch...

And on a side note, I dunno about you peeps, but I'm rather enjoying this debate...

And we haven't even touched on the graphics versus gameplay argument yet...

[Kumagoro]

Deckard i think you are right about lazy coding.

The thing is though the market is governed by those things, like you said earlier they dont need to do it properly so they dont.

I think that Nvidia and ATi would be to scared to not implement anti aliasing to the levels they do because they would get rubbished in reviews even if it didnt make a noticable difference. Benchmarks are all important to most people.

Isnt it easier for hardware to run at a higher res then to use anti aliasing? which requires more space on the silicon? could that space be used for something else? im guessing not otherwise surely they would do it.

--

[ed^chigliak]

The future for 3D games is looking good and until recently 3D games have suffered from a samey kind of look due to the hardware not being sufficiently powerful or programmable. The hardware is still dictating the look and feel of games today and this must be frustrating for the artists and game designers. Rome wasn't built in a day. If you don't like small change then upgrade every 10-15 yrs and the difference will be more dramatic. Elite vs Eve Online!

[Nick]

ed, yeah, you can wait for 10 years, but coding won't let you play anything...

There's no leagcy in coding nowadays, FORCING us to upgrade... I doubt it has happened, but has anyone tried Doom 3 on a Voodoo 1? I BET it won't run...

Which kinda brings me back to the whole coding/driver issue. If back in the Amiga days they could find little tricks and shortcuts to get a game looking better or running smoother with the exact same hardware they always had, why isn't that happening now?

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I really do feel that we've reached a point where the power of the average PC with an average GFX card and average memory should be able to render pretty much anything IF the code had been fully optimised... or am I dead wrong?

Ed, you've brought up another thing which mike w said as well, that of gameplay and graphics.... Lets stick with Elite and compare that to its own successors like Frontier... now, Frontier was easily the better looking game and had Elites style of gameplay but was just rubbish compared with Elite...

Was this becuase the writers had lost sight of what made the original so good in their quest to make the sequel LOOK good? Or perhaps it could be that when the GFX aren't up to much our imaginations take over?

Anyone remember those text only adventures, how immersive and addictive were they? I spent MONTHS on 'The Hobbit'.... or Robocop 3 on the Amiga... the 3D first person bits had me replaying them until my dongle broke!

Sure, games look miles better, but are they any better? Are we getting as much enjoyment out of games as we used to? Or has our expectation of what makes a game good changed over the years and graphics become more of an issue than before?

[G4Z]

Deck mate

Well, Im only posting to disagree with you about frontier vs Elite.

I played both untill my fingers bled, and whiles elite was a great game it didnt have the longevity of frontier. I used to play it on my amiga and the frame rate was poor, wasnt until I got a 486DX that it really came into its own. And I didnt have a 3d card in it either. What im saying is that yes better hardware made the game better it was just too hardcore for the amiga (well if you had a crappy 600 like I did).

[Rythmic]

has anyone tried Doom 3 on a Voodoo 1? I BET it won't run...

Well not a voodoo 1, but certainly a Voodoo 2

http://www.firingsquad.com/media/gallery_index.asp/244 (warning for 56kers!)

Don't look to bad really

[Steve]

Well not a voodoo 1, but certainly a Voodoo 2

http://www.firingsquad.com/media/gallery_index.asp/244 (warning for 56kers!)

Don't look to bad really

It beats any other rendering of Doom III that I've seen... you can actually SEE stuff!

Back OT - I guage needing a new graphics card by whether my current card will run my latest game at 1024x768 with med-high settings. I don't upgrade to the next series just for the sake of it... I also like to see new technology in there, not just faster clocks.

[Nick]

Ok, so 'quantum leap' style jumps in hardware, as in G4Z's example of his experience of Elite and Frontier, would show that upgrading hardware is justified...

Now I'm not really disputing that upgrading is needed at some point, but I am wondering if the speed that even mid range cards run at really justifies buying a new card a year on from the last one. Surely the card has enough power in it for some more creative coding to keep frame rates up with more complex scenes being rendered?

But at the same time, there has to be a limit to just how many FPS make a difference to either the gameplay or the playing experience, no?

[yamangman]

Did you happen to ask them why they can't produce a set of drivers that work for *nix?

[alterion]

the fact is we all have this jelous obsession to "have the best stuff" an x800 may not make the game look any better but it sounds coll especially when your friend (me) only has a geforce 2. Like everything in life the emphasis is on being the best. gameplay is ultimatley what games our about and the only reson for upgrading is so that games run smoother... I don't belive that you could notice if a game ran at over 60fps but some people sware they can... Another increasisng important reson is thta modern gamers want to run games at thier TF'ts native resolution this means investing in hardware that can run at 1024by1268 (maybe wrong numbers but you know what i mean) And add to that the fact that in our heart of hearts we all think that we really are 1337 we have the reason we shel out for new cards. However the real reason we shell out IMO is to be able to say in a bragging voice " my pc is faster than yours." It's why people overclock their pentiums to 6ghz.. its is so unstable that is barley runs windows but they feel ists worth it just for people to post massive stirings of smilies.

[Nick]

Well not a voodoo 1, but certainly a Voodoo 2

http://www.firingsquad.com/media/gallery_index.asp/244 (warning for 56kers!)

Don't look to bad really

Now THAT and Kez's comment would pretty much sum it all up... Doom 3 made BETTER by LACK of a top end card... As Kez rightly says, you can SEE everything now!

[Stoo]

I think a lot of it comes down to time and money, all those careful coding tweaks to squeeze out that little bit more performance took programming time, and hence costs more money to develop.

These days software houses/publishers mostly don't care about producing the best game they can, they only care about the profit (or rather, the shareholders..), hence why gargantuans such as EA simply churn out the same crap year after year.

Why do they get away with it? Because the public buys it, and buys it every time!

Back in the days of the the Amiga/Atari and before them, the C64/Speccy battles if a game was dull and boring we didn't buy it, because there would be something new and innovative out there which we did want to spend our money on. We no longer get anywhere near the level of innovation because the company shareholders no longer tolerate any risks which would eat into their short-term profits!

[Nick]

The main thrust of my point is that manufacturers are VERY busy convincing us we HAVE to have the latest bit of kit, when in reality we don't... and its not a case of we don't REALLY need it... it's a case of we don't ACTUALLY need it...

Take SATA (or PATA) drives, as mentioned in Vaul's rather excellent thread HERE .... I've got 240gig of striped RAID in my machine and I can't tell a blind bit of difference between games loading off my IDE maxtor or my SATA western digitals... I even timed a load of Pacific Fighters from both... the RAID was about 2 seconds quicker... 2 seconds for £240 quids worth of kit...

Of course, there are other reasons for me having them as I needed more storage and SATA drives were easiest and cheapest to add to my system that already had 2 optical and 2 hard drives, but SATA was being pushed as being faster... which it is, but not in a significant way in the real world...

Similarly, benchmarks for any bit of new kit can make it look wonderful and convince us we need it, but in real world terms, I can't see the need for any of it. So what if the uber-powerful "Ultraforce 8000+ PE Titanium" can run 3D Mark 2005 at a constant 50fps... is there a game out now or oin the near future that requires something that powerful?

OH, and while we're on... Intel Centrino, just exactly HOW does it make my wifi laptop better at being a wifi laptop?

[nichomach]

OH, and while we're on... Intel Centrino, just exactly HOW does it make my wifi laptop better at being a wifi laptop?

It doesn't. We have quite a few Latitude D600s in service; if we used Intel WLAN cards we could have the nicey kite mark on them. We use Dell's alternative instead, because I find it more reliable, less finicky and with better range. Initially, we went for the Dell cards because Centrino solutions were only offered w/11Mbps speeds, whereas the Dell ones were already up to 54Mbps; having tried a couple with the Intel alternative, we're still sticking with the Dell cards.

On the GFX front, frankly, I know I'm getting HL2 for Christmas, and I'm not in any rush to upgrade my card unless and until I see that it needs it. Personally, a new CPU and motherboard are higher on my list, so unless the 9700 screeches to a halt I'll stick with it. Something that does occur is that often we're told "well, there's no games that really support x technology now, but if you buy y card which supports x technology (DirectX 9 being a good example), then your machine'll be ready for it when games do support it". What seems to happen in reality is that when games come out using x technology, y card is by that point too outdated and slow to run the game with the x technology eye candy enabled that was the reason for spending that little bit more on a card in the first place.

[jonathan_phang]

Thought I'd throw in my opinion, for what its worth:

I'd disagree (only very slightly) with the main point. Manufacturers in any industry are always going to market new products that have any - however slight - improvement. They cant be expected to hold back any new improvements because it doesnt warrant a big enough change over the previous generation, companies will always release things to gain the smallest competitive advantage.

The thing is, there will always be a demand for those types of upgrades. There are going to be a small percentage of people that are going to get, say, the X850 PE, even though they have a X800XT PE. Its all about satisying consumer demand, and as long as a market segment (early adopters/innovators, i think they're called) carries on like this then this trend will continue.

Dont get me wrong, I know that companies are trying to convince us that we need the latest GPU, just look at the way Ati and nVidia are affiliated with big games, but they can hardly be expected not to advertise can they? What business would do that? I think more lies with people just making an informed decision before rushing to buy the latest piece of kit. It only takes a little research to let you know what is *acceptable*. I just dont like it when people go and do something, when finding out about the consequences isn't that difficult, then complain about the result. To me its kind of like the way you have large groups of people who have sued McDonalds for saying it made them fat. Does it matter that they advertised it?

I think the whole crux of my point is that I dont think its terrible that minor hardware updates are made, but that we (as a market) should maybe make better decisions regarding purchasing. I DO agree about the whole driver debacle from ati and nvidia - who knows how good my 9800pro could be with better drivers?

Btw, didnt mean to step on anyones toes, just my opinion.

JOP

[Nick]

Jon, good points and well put.

But you do rasie another question there... It would be poor business sense for ANY company to hold back improvements on their products, I agree... but erm, companies do that.. How many new versions have there been of the PS2? ALl the major innnovations are going into the next console, aren't they?

What Sony did was produce a machine that met or exceeded the current requirements from developers... and then 4 years on you buy a newer PS version to replace your old one. In the meantime, developers spend their time not on figuring out how the easiest way to take advantage of new technology as its not there. They spend thier time making the best use of what they, and we, already have.

The problem I have with GFX card makers is partly down to the pricing of their latest card... which often is a revision of a previously released card but with one or two extras thrown in... For this card with not actually that much NEW on it, they still demand TOP dollar... A classic example is the soft mod you could do on some Radeon cards to give you the same performance as a more expensive one... Or they just ramp up the clock speeds and flog it off at a higher price. Why couldn't they just have released the card with the higher clock speeds at the lower price in the first place?

What really makes me laugh is that competitively, most player knock all the bells and whistles off to give them a better view of whats going on in the game... yet here they are with £400 pounds worth of card not even close to breaking a sweat.