Catalyst 14.3 Beta Linux Driver Fixes OpenGL Performance Issues

[FLHerne]

Where is the difference in those 2 pictures ? I can only see slight lighting changes but there's no visible detail gain.

Most conspicuous would appear to be the helmet - with tesselation it's actually round and doesn't have odd angles in it.

I don't really see the point (heck, AssaultCube is great fun regardless of its looks), but nice graphics seem to be the future.

[Kraut]

This is what tessellation is really about:

[mmstick]

Where is the difference in those 2 pictures ? I can only see slight lighting changes but there's no visible detail gain.

Might want to get your eyes checked, there is a huge difference. Notice how the bags of sand look significantly better, along with his body/equipment/helmet which looks perfectly round instead of obviously lacking in triangle count.

[haplo602]

Might want to get your eyes checked, there is a huge difference. Notice how the bags of sand look significantly better, along with his body/equipment/helmet which looks perfectly round instead of obviously lacking in triangle count.

now imagine the scene in motion. how much of that detail do you think you'll notice ?

the unigine pictures above, that's huge difference. the soldier one is simply a case of wasted resources.

[haplo602]

Most conspicuous would appear to be the helmet - with tesselation it's actually round and doesn't have odd angles in it.

I don't really see the point (heck, AssaultCube is great fun regardless of its looks), but nice graphics seem to be the future.

that shape of the helmet has nothing to do with tesselation and a lot to do with the lighting model used. it's a very simple lighting model made for speed and not accuracy. once you introduce tesselation, you are moving towards accuracy and eating resources that the original lighting model saves. so using a proper lighting model would do the same job.

[mmstick]

now imagine the scene in motion. how much of that detail do you think you'll notice ?

the unigine pictures above, that's huge difference. the soldier one is simply a case of wasted resources.

On my 28 inch HD monitor, quite a lot, actually. I am an enthusiast PC gamer after all, so I should know. Blocky/flat models have always been rather annoying to see with my eyes.

[chithanh]

now imagine the scene in motion. how much of that detail do you think you'll notice ?

the unigine pictures above, that's huge difference. the soldier one is simply a case of wasted resources.

I used a Metro:LL picture, because that game was specifically mentioned by mmstick in the post that I was replying to. And you are not always in motion, a large part of Metro:LL is interacting with the people which you encounter in the game.

Of course there also exist examples where tesselation is a waste of resources, like the infamous Crysis 2 traffic barriers.

so using a proper lighting model would do the same job.

The lack of circles or other round shapes in computer games has bothered gamers for a long time already. It has to do with too low polygon count of the model, not with lighting. Here is another example from the game Stalker:CoP. The difference is immediately obvious even at reduced resolution.

Source: http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/video/juniper-p2.html

[Guest]

Might want to get your eyes checked, there is a huge difference. Notice how the bags of sand look significantly better, along with his body/equipment/helmet which looks perfectly round instead of obviously lacking in triangle count.

It was 4 in the morning when I tried looking at those pictures, and barely saw a difference. The bag of sand is probably the largest change that stood out. The NPC in-question doesn't look any different at all unless you sit and examine individual pixels I guess... which, as someone mentioned, I can't imagine anyone doing when there's motion going on.

This is what tessellation is really about:

Figured that to be bump mapping instead; I thought tessellation was to simply fine-tune angles on objects?

I can't believe that there are still people who insist on using Catalyst. Did you guys not get the memo that the open source drivers are superior?

I'm on Xubuntu 14.04; I had oibaf's PPA + a 3.14 kernel nightly (simply put, was running the "newest" stuff), and on my 7850, open-source drivers still fell behind in performance compared to fglrx. Just for the most significant different, highest settings on TF2 (8xMSAA being the main performance hit) had me at 40 FPS on radeon. Same settings put me between 100-200 FPS on fglrx. Diablo III also doesn't want to work on radeon either due to some LLVM register issue (works fine on fglrx though).

osu!'s instability returns with fglrx still though, so that's a single benefit I can give to radeon there. Performance is roughly the same though.

Color banding situation is still the same (heavily present on my laptop with radeon, none whatsoever with fglrx).

Dota 2 on my 7660G + 7670M laptop on the other hand with fglrx is downright terrible (12 FPS at fountain). Didn't try yet with radeon, but I can't imagine it being worse. But in any case, the performance is definitely a regression.

[curaga]

Have a picture. Bump mapping only plays with the light, so the silhouette will be wrong.

[molecule-eye]

I'm on Xubuntu 14.04; I had oibaf's PPA + a 3.14 kernel nightly (simply put, was running the "newest" stuff), and on my 7850, open-source drivers still fell behind in performance compared to fglrx. Just for the most significant different, highest settings on TF2 (8xMSAA being the main performance hit) had me at 40 FPS on radeon. Same settings put me between 100-200 FPS on fglrx.

Open source is known to perform horribly with AA enabled. I wouldn't use it. Just crank up the resolution as high as you can. Usually 1080p with FPS games like TF2 is good enough without needing AA since you don't have time to see jaggies--just kidding! Really though, I'd rather forget about AA and Catalyst and just live with some jaggies and the open source drivers.