Why GFX card with more RAM?

[Ataros]

Originally Posted by SEE

1. Is CloD one of the exceptional tiltles that requires more than 1Gb even for a modest resolution and why?

2. There seems to be an industry practice of using identical chipsets but by disabling or changing a peformance parameter (i.e No of shaders, reducing clock speeds, etc) marketing a budget version. I.e a Nvidea GTX 2GB 560 is slightly cheaper than the 560ti version yet bench tests show only a 5% reduction in performance across the most demanding games which can be adressed by oc'ing. Would someone looking to upgrade on a budget be better going for the better chipset with lower RAM or the budget version with more RAM?

1. CloD has probably one of the highest visibility ranges multiplied by the highest texture details in gaming history multiplied by extreme number of texture surfaces. This is a next-gen game. That is why next-gen videocards come with 3GB vram (e.g. HD7970).

As I mentioned in another thread

Originally Posted by Ataros

From my experience with ArmA2 visibility distance can bring any hardware to its knees. Most of the servers limit it to 3-4 km only to provide decent FPS while game allows 10 km max. And this is a 2 year-old game.

What is the visibility distance in CloD? When visibility radius is increased amount of required CPU and GPU calculations grows exponentially. This is a big issue.

It is not supposed to run well on a 1GB card in resolutions higher than 1400x900 according to my estimates.

2. Better chipset is faster than more ram in general unless you run resolution higher than full HD. E.g. imo gtx580 3gb > gtx580 1.5gb > gtx560 2gb. Not sure how to rank gtx570 2.5gb.

However when I bought a cheap $200 video card 2 years ago I went for 2 gb version because extra 1 gb costed only about $20-30 and I am glad I did it since it runs CloD reasonably well after system optimisation. I am saving cash to get a 3GB version of gtx580 or hd7970 or hd7950 for BoM depending on their price/performance ratio and possible driver bugs.

[SEE]

Wow! great info there Ataros - I never considered the visibilty/rendering distance calculations - even when optimised, that set of algorithms remains to be performed - I have learn't something already and appreciate the problems regards current performance issues.

[bongodriver]

i.e most people having performance issues are trying to run it on max using totally innadequate hardware.

[Ataros]

I do hope that optimisation is still possible but say when I set land detail on low or even medium landscape already looks very low-res beyond the high detail square surrounding the aircraft.

Bohemia Interactive is an indi studio that made ArmA1/2/3 and VBS. They work for the US government and are 2-4 times bigger than MG (140 people) but they still do not have resources/capabilities to make ArmA2 decently run with 10km visibility radius. This means to me that optimisation has its limits or becomes prohibitively expensive at some point.

For instance I remember the first time I learned about using RAM-drive to ran a game from it. This was a solution to fix stutters in MSFS in 2000 or 2004. The problem was also the visibility distance because other games could run fine on similar hardware. In 2008/2010 the same solution was used by ArmA1/ArmA2 players to fix stutters in ArmA. Now with nextgen videocards it runs faster.

[FS~Phat]

I'd love to see if there is a developer or programmer that can do the maths on this so that it can be put into perspective. I always new people were expecting too much from current gen hardware for this game.

Originally Posted by FS~Phat

I'd love to see if there is a developer or programmer that can do the maths on this so that it can be put into perspective. I always new people were expecting too much from current gen hardware for this game.

In truth though phat, the dev's did tell us that it would run perfectly well on low/medium spec PC's. Luthier always said that all is screen shots/video's were done on a poor quality PC, I even offered to build him a top spec PC so he could show us images with FSAA on because at the time he said his PC wasn't powerful enough to show FSAA, I also said a better spec PC would allow him to show video's with 'true' in game footage. The offer was declined.

[FS~Phat]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

In truth though phat, the dev's did tell us that it would run perfectly well on low/medium spec PC's. Luthier always said that all is screen shots/video's were done on a poor quality PC, I even offered to build him a top spec PC so he could show us images with FSAA on because at the time he said his PC wasn't powerful enough to show FSAA, I also said a better spec PC would allow him to show video's with 'true' in game footage. The offer was declined.

Yes we all know that.. Im only speculating here, but somewhere along the line something significant changed in the game engine development, maybe it was the switch from opengl to directx to enable support across more platforms for the game engine? Oleg was quite disappointed about having to make this change so late in the development. That combined with other changes like the anti-epilepsy definitely broke something. Im sure with time it will be fixed though.

Remember how good the promo videos looked with AA working too? Im pretty confident they will get back to that, the quality is in there, they just have to tweak it to get it back.

Originally Posted by Oleg Maddox

Yes. Unfortunately.
And this is done also becasue of future possible portings. It is more easy from DX...
However to make better is still better in OpenGl... even it is harder now. But the life dictate us DX...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPTYO...6&feature=plcp

BTW I can play it just fine with 1 or 2 of my 1.5GB GTX 580s running at 50FPS+ without any driver tweaks, but I need to run in split frame rendering at a lower frame rate with tri or quad SLI running to keep it smooth. With settings on Ultra I can still play in surround mode 6040x1080 with AA off and I only have 1.5GB cards. More GPU memory helps but its not the whole story, the graphics engine still needs major work and hopefully the next patch that Luthier mentioned will be the main fix we've all been waiting for.

[Ataros]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

In truth though phat, the dev's did tell us that it would run perfectly well on low/medium spec PC's.

Never happened. Sorry.

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[Skoshi Tiger]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

In truth though phat, the dev's did tell us that it would run perfectly well on low/medium spec PC's.

I can't remember any of them actually saying that, could you please post a link.

[FS~Phat]

Here's some more info from Oleg's old ready room.
For those that have never read it, its long but a worthwhile read that gives you some insight into the plans and difficulties in achieving what has been done with CoD.

Here's one of my favourite quotes from one of Olegs responses to questions.

"For us is a great task how to make a lot of details and at the same time to render a lot of aircraft in air simultaniosly.... So all things will be optimized for this...
Say it is possible to make even greater details of damage, aircraft itself , etc... but probably in case of hundreds aircraft in action around you you will need the PC that will be existed only say ten years after release
Hope you all understand what the tasks we have and what the technical problems are on our board...
The is no problem to make increadible amount of polygons in aircraft (or ground units), but then will follow problem of PC power, when in air isn't just one aircraft.... When the water is trasparent, when the clouds looks like real and moving, etc...
BoB will be again a "fight of compromises" in technologies and will offer the best compromises that wioll be usable for many years ahead, like it was with Il-2"

From Q64> http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=6909