Much needed new dll's

[kimosabi]

Originally Posted by maclean525

Wow what a bunch of utter nonsense in this thread.

Facts
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1. When you code a graphics engine you code to the DirectX or OpenGL API. You do NOT code directly to the hardware. The API's are hardware independent. The card that is in your development machine when you build the code is irrelevant. The exception to this is if you write code for PhysX which is a proprietary NVidia API.

2. NVidia OpenGL drivers are superior to ATI OpenGL drivers as of right now. ATI's OpenGL drivers have the "blocky text" bug in IL2. NVida drivers do not have this bug.

3. Both NVidia and ATI release "performance" patches for particular games to optimize them. If SoW is markedly faster on one card than the other you can expect a patch from the other manufacturer soon after.

6. SoW will NOT be OpenGL. Therefore the performance of the two manufacturers cards in SoW should be comparable to other games out right now. (directx)

7. At this point in time the new ATI graphics cards are considerably faster than NVidia's comparable offerings.

Speculation
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1. Initial indications are that the new NVidia GTX480 not only needs an ungodly amount of power it barely even matches the 5870 in performance and will likely be much more expensive. Performance is not even in the same ballpark as the 5970.

2. There have been no indications that SoW will use PhysX.

ATI have said they are working on the "blocky text" issue in IL2.

My Opinion
========
Since there is a workaround for the ATI blocky text issue there is no reason at all to buy an NVidia card today. The new ATI cards are faster, more efficient, and support triple-screen natively. We have to wait till the new NVidia cards come out to revisit this but as of right now, ATI is the only way to go.

Good post. Especially the "SoW will NOT use OpenGL". I don't see the big difference between OpenGL and DirectX in IL-2 though so anyway, that wouldn't matter much to me, being a "non-hysterical" simmer and all.

About the Fermi, meh, it has been hyped so much the last six months now so I reckon most users will be slightly disappointed when they get it, if they compare it to a 5xxx card. Heck, I was kinda disappointed going from a 4850x2 to a 5870.... No, I wasn't.

Thanks for bringing it back to a serious level man.

~S~