Brent_Justice
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Need for Speed SHIFT Gameplay Performance and IQ
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HaMMerHeD
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It is difficult to say with certainty. It may be reasonable to expect at least a small performance increase in many games with the new driver, but it is likely that some or most of what we saw in Shift was related to game-specific optimizations.
Brent_Justice
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Since the driver changes are under NDA at the moment, we cannot specify what other improvements, changes, fixes etc... the driver contains.
Digital Viper-X-
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Might have to pick this game up 
anyway, when you do game performance and iq reviews, could you add in some opinions on the game itself. Say comparing NFS Shift to pro street etc?
also in the blurb about multi-gpu scaling from a GTX275 to a GTX295 the GTX 275 is also clocked 10% higher on the core and shaders and 12% on the memory
anyway, when you do game performance and iq reviews, could you add in some opinions on the game itself. Say comparing NFS Shift to pro street etc?
also in the blurb about multi-gpu scaling from a GTX275 to a GTX295 the GTX 275 is also clocked 10% higher on the core and shaders and 12% on the memory
Intel_Hydralisk
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For the 4870x2, the highest playable setting was 2560x1600 8xMSAA 16xAF while the 5870 was 24xCFAA.
In the apples to apples though, it shows that the 4870x2 can indeed do 24xCFAA and only took a dive in one spot down to 10 fps. Was that the reason the highest playable was only 8xMSAA?
In the apples to apples though, it shows that the 4870x2 can indeed do 24xCFAA and only took a dive in one spot down to 10 fps. Was that the reason the highest playable was only 8xMSAA?
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RTFA? We were very specific about this.
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Might have to pick this game up
anyway, when you do game performance and iq reviews, could you add in some opinions on the game itself. Say comparing NFS Shift to pro street etc?
also in the blurb about multi-gpu scaling from a GTX275 to a GTX295 the GTX 275 is also clocked 10% higher on the core and shaders and 12% on the memory
Game is great. I am not a racing sim guy and I very much enjoy SHIFT.
No, we are not going to start doing game reviews.
Yes.
Oscar Meyer
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So your NDA only lets you compare driver perfomance changes within NFS Shift? If not how bout some other games too....
Brent_Justice
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Yes, this was only for our SHIFT evaluation. Think of this as a preview of things to come in regards to this game.
So at 1920 x 1200 the GTS 250 is capable of 16x CSAA and at 1680 x 1050 it is capable of 8x MSAA with little difference in frame rates. I thought that 16x CSAA was better than 8x MSAA. Or am I wrong? I don't do a lot of gaming on the PC but I read every video card and game performance review from you guys!
They explained it in the article. I wasn't sure too, until ran back and read it again.
snaggletooth
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Can't wait for these patches to be available so I can give them a whirl. I've been putting off playing this title in anticipation of these releases.
Too bad you dropped coverage of the 4890.
Too bad you dropped coverage of the 4890.
MrLonghair
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If only the 5770 kicked this much ass in all the other games. What a great deal it is!
HaMMerHeD
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I don't see how.
NFS Shift uses PhysX on the CPU only, regardless of what your NVIDIA control panel setting is.
maleficarus
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This game runs great on my system in 1680x1050 max quality but with zero FSAA and 4X AF ( I find FSAA usless anyways in a racing game) Using fraps and driving for 60 seconds I was averging around 50 fps which is in m y opinion perfectly smooth....
I know..but at lot of..."uninformed" posters around (even on this forum) kept blaming their NFS - Shift woes on PhysX/NVIDIA...when the real reason where AMD's drivers.
It dosn't make any sense, but then again it has never stopped people from posting crap
I've got to praise you guys for noting how choppy/laggy/smooth the gameplay was. This is actually what matters most. I've played plenty of games that have "high fps" but stutter so badly it's unplayable. I mean...if you went by the "other guys" benchmarks...the 4870x2 would look better than the 5870 when in reality it is the opposite. MAJOR KUDOS
HaMMerHeD
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I've got to praise you guys for noting how choppy/laggy/smooth the gameplay was. This is actually what matters most. I've played plenty of games that have "high fps" but stutter so badly it's unplayable. I mean...if you went by the "other guys" benchmarks...the 4870x2 would look better than the 5870 when in reality it is the opposite. MAJOR KUDOS
It is an important part of why we do things the way we do.
Raw FPS does not tell the whole picture. The gameplay experience is about more than just a high framerate. There are a great many factors, most if which cannot be measured or expressed mechnically or mathmatically. Thus, we have to analyze the whole experience, not just the graphed data.
Sparrow_69
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Nice performance increases, I'm hoping this translates to other games also. Must admit though, stock 5870 still pushes shift pretty well, even on an eyefinity setup. I've only played the demo, but haven't seen performance drop any lower than about 40fps running at 5760x1200 with 16xAF, no aa though. Higher performance is always welcome when it comes to a racing game. Crysis/warhead could definitely use some speed increases though. Such a stunning game, especially on eyefinity, but performance is too low @ 5760, hovering about 10-15fps, even on a tweaked/high settings.
Try the game...screenshot are bad to jugde moving graphics...remember how people said FEAR look like shite, based on screenshots?
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Do you not like using your CPU for gaming? Encoding a lot of video while you game? I suggest a i7.
The game looks great. It is still not a sim, it rides the line between sim and arcade.
what a waste of a benchmark article, because this game looks like ass. Hell its a EA console port, ofcorse its going to run on anything above lowend maxed.
good to see I'm not the only one here who sees this plainly, there are cars in Test drive unlimited that are smoother looking! The thing that gets me the most is how they lied in the prerelease screenshots, just like codemasters GRiD and Dirt2 the game doesnt look half as good in the flesh maxed out as 2007 forza 2 or 2005 Gran Turismo 4.
good to see I'm not the only one here who sees this plainly, there are cars in Test drive unlimited that are smoother looking! The thing that gets me the most is how they lied in the prerelease screenshots, just like codemasters GRiD and Dirt2 the game doesnt look half as good in the flesh maxed out as 2007 forza 2 or 2005 Gran Turismo 4.
I read the changelog for the new patch and they addressed a lot of the gameplay issues I've personally noticed. Funny thing about FPS. It really doesn't mean anything unless it's somewhere like 5.
Hopefully I can finally get that last S-corner in Donnington GP mastered when the patch comes out! It's costing me a STAR!
In my own experience I've played games that looked smooth with all the eye candy with nary a dropped frame but somehow there's something amiss with controls like there's a nanosecond of delay between your action and what happens on the screen. Just enough to screw you up. I know that happened with GRID and it still happens if I don't turn off SLI on one of my rigs. I had a friend of mine verify it too. GRID actually seems to be more controllable on my E8400 with a GTX260-216 than my I7940 with 285's in SLI.
Hopefully I can finally get that last S-corner in Donnington GP mastered when the patch comes out! It's costing me a STAR!
In my own experience I've played games that looked smooth with all the eye candy with nary a dropped frame but somehow there's something amiss with controls like there's a nanosecond of delay between your action and what happens on the screen. Just enough to screw you up. I know that happened with GRID and it still happens if I don't turn off SLI on one of my rigs. I had a friend of mine verify it too. GRID actually seems to be more controllable on my E8400 with a GTX260-216 than my I7940 with 285's in SLI.
So I don't appear as a hater, let me start of by saying that this is a very good article if I were wanting to spend £100 or more on a graphics card to play NFS Shift.
But. Where was the CPU performance scaling?
NFS Shift is known to have peformance problems with CPUs in the 2-3 GHz region, when running along side an ATI graphics card. I can talk with such certainty because I've been following this on all the forums, including EA's for the last 8 weeks.
I'm using a C2Q Q9400 at 2.66 GHz with 4GB of DDR2 @ 800 MHz, along side an ATI 3870, running all the latest drivers on Windows 7 64 bit (and XP 32 bit). You would expect that if I turned all the settings down appropriately I should be getting decent frame rates in Shift, like the constant 50-60 fps that I get at running Grid at 1080p with everything on high. But no, even with all settings in Shift at low, at the lowest resolution, my frame rate constantly drops below 30 with a field of cars in front of me. There is a post on the EA forum with 120,000+ views, full of posts from ATI users experiencing and arguing about the same problem. People with 4870s have similar frame rates to me, and their card is twice mine... EA support have no answer for this (the had the cheek to tell me and others to do a clean install of Windows), and the developer SMS have told us that renaming shift.exe to grid.exe has helped some people. That's the full extent of the support offered.
The only ATI users who don't seem to be reporting these frame rate dips and lagging problems run high clocked, top end CPUs.
Nvidia users - apart from some glitching and micro stutters - seem to be able to get good enough frame rates on last gen mid-range hardware like the 9600GT.
Who wants to play with 12xCFAA at 40 fps (dropping to the 30s)? Most gamers I know would far prefer playing with 4xAA at 60 fps. In racing games 60 fps is the holy grail and that's the kind of number we really want to see.
So what I really want to know after Ian Bell promised that "We’ve worked hard to add additional optimisations for ATI cards with success.", is it finally possible to play Shift on a mainstream CPU, similar to that of which most ATI owners probably have? Or did he just mean they've added CrossFire support and we can either go buy a Core i7/5 or get f******.
[/RANT]
But. Where was the CPU performance scaling?
NFS Shift is known to have peformance problems with CPUs in the 2-3 GHz region, when running along side an ATI graphics card. I can talk with such certainty because I've been following this on all the forums, including EA's for the last 8 weeks.
I'm using a C2Q Q9400 at 2.66 GHz with 4GB of DDR2 @ 800 MHz, along side an ATI 3870, running all the latest drivers on Windows 7 64 bit (and XP 32 bit). You would expect that if I turned all the settings down appropriately I should be getting decent frame rates in Shift, like the constant 50-60 fps that I get at running Grid at 1080p with everything on high. But no, even with all settings in Shift at low, at the lowest resolution, my frame rate constantly drops below 30 with a field of cars in front of me. There is a post on the EA forum with 120,000+ views, full of posts from ATI users experiencing and arguing about the same problem. People with 4870s have similar frame rates to me, and their card is twice mine... EA support have no answer for this (the had the cheek to tell me and others to do a clean install of Windows), and the developer SMS have told us that renaming shift.exe to grid.exe has helped some people. That's the full extent of the support offered.
The only ATI users who don't seem to be reporting these frame rate dips and lagging problems run high clocked, top end CPUs.
Nvidia users - apart from some glitching and micro stutters - seem to be able to get good enough frame rates on last gen mid-range hardware like the 9600GT.
Who wants to play with 12xCFAA at 40 fps (dropping to the 30s)? Most gamers I know would far prefer playing with 4xAA at 60 fps. In racing games 60 fps is the holy grail and that's the kind of number we really want to see.
So what I really want to know after Ian Bell promised that "We’ve worked hard to add additional optimisations for ATI cards with success.", is it finally possible to play Shift on a mainstream CPU, similar to that of which most ATI owners probably have? Or did he just mean they've added CrossFire support and we can either go buy a Core i7/5 or get f******.
[/RANT]
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HaMMerHeD
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Good to know.
Next time, we'll be sure to run our plans by you just to make sure you approve.
I guess I completely missed that paragraph some how.
Thanks, it makes a lot more sense now!
Were you high when you typed this? Because I've played both NFS Shift, Forza 3 and GT5 Prologue for weeks at a time and NFS Shift looks better than both of them in most ways, My only real complaint with Shift is the specular aliasing that shows up on chrome wheels and shiny objects. Forza 3 has some aliasing issues and lower quality interior textures, GT5P has terrible aliasing issues. Forza 3 is the best game overall, but NFS Shift is a close second and a load of fun to play.
Tamlin_WSGF
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What happened here? Its a TWIMTBP title and one should assume that the game would be at least a little bit optimized for GTX285. The 5870 is 92% faster then a GTX285 according to this. Question is, is the 5870 hardware that much faster or does the Nvidia drivers lack optimization for this game?
No it isn´t, just that the latest NFS usually runs better on ATI than NV cards.
But the 5870 are faster, but not that mutch or that ist is worth it to think about now when we know it will be surpassed by at least 3 cards in near future.
Tamlin_WSGF
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Question is: Why does it run faster and even by that much in a Nvidia TWIMTBP title? I would assume its optimized for GTX285? 92% faster is a bit to much for a game thats not specially optimized for ATI hardware.
As for the future, we don't know anything solid. There is only speculations and paper dragons about the cards coming next year (Intels Larrabee, Nvidia's Fermi and ATI´s "Island series").
Either the driver inproved drasicly as it was eye to eye with 285 in first review but the 92% is something i take with a big truckload of salt unless driver and patch made that mutch of difference, if so god job AMD.