Does scene coders still favor nvidia or is it safe to buy an ATI card?

category: general [glöplog]

Nvidia bought the scene

added on the 2008-10-21 08:29:01 by Queen_Luna

Trident xwris zaxari.

added on the 2008-10-21 08:46:32 by Optimus

Well in case of Adobe - they seem to rely more on ATI drivers, as CS4 supports all 3xxx and 4xxx ATI cards, but only quadro cards of Nvidia (maybe because they are more stable?).

added on the 2008-10-21 09:26:33 by Shiranai

shiranai: that seems more like nvidia's call, as they'll rather sell the ultra expensive adobe accelerator than a geforce they're barely making money on. But I guess it backfires when it turns out there's full support on the radeons..
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_quadro_cx_us.html

added on the 2008-10-21 09:48:26 by Psycho

What bullshit you two are peddling - all CS4 requires from the GPU is 128 MB of RAM and SM 3.0/OpenGL 2.0 support:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb404898

Quote:

Photoshop CS4 leverages the graphics display card's GPU, instead of the computer's main processor (the CPU) to speed its screen redraw. For Photoshop to access the GPU, your display card must contain a GPU that supports OpenGL and has enough RAM to support Photoshop functions--at least 128 MB of RAM--and a display driver that supports OpenGL 2.0 and Shader Model 3.0.

added on the 2008-10-21 10:50:25 by gloom

Oh, and since you're probably to lazy to click your way to the supported cards-list, here it is:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb405711&sliceId=1

Quote:

List of tested graphics display cards for Photoshop CS4

This is a list of graphics display cards that were tested by Adobe before release of Photoshop CS4. They are listed by operating system, and with the amount of video RAM that was on the card during testing.

nVidia

nVidia 260 GTX 896MB
nVidia 9800 GTX 512MB
nVidia 9600 GT 512MB
nVidia 8800 GTX 768MB
nVidia 8800 GT 512MB
nVidia 8600M 256MB
nVidia 7900 GTX 512MB
nVidia 7900 GS 256MB
nVidia 7800 GTX 256MB
nVidia 7600 256MB
nVidia 6800 256MB
Quadro FX 4600 768 MB
Quadro FX 4500 512MB
Quadro FX 4400 512MB
Quadro FX 3700 512MB
Quadro FX 3500 256MB
Quadro FX 1700 512MB
Quadro FX 1500 256MB
Quadro FX 1400 -128MB
Quadro FX 570 -256MB
Quadro FX 370 256MB

ATI

ATI Radeon 4850 512 MB
Radeon x3870 x2 512MB
Radeon x2900HD 512MB
ATI Radeon HD 2400 256MB
Radeon x1900XT 512MB
ATI Radeon x1800 - 512MB
Radeon x1800 256MB
ATI Fire GL 7700 512 MB
ATI Fire GL 7600 512 MB
Fire GL V7200 256MB
ATI Fire GL 5600 512MB
Fire GL V3600 256MB
Fire GL 3350 256 MB

added on the 2008-10-21 10:55:08 by gloom

yeah, looks like it... but no wonder with all the bull there have been about this thing from nv marketing compared to what actually turned up from adobe...

added on the 2008-10-21 11:26:23 by Psycho

Yeah, they built this "special card" for CS4, which is sort of daft I guess, but I don't really see how someone releasing a card marketed towards CS4 users is any different than releasing a card marketed towards 3DStudio or Maya users.

added on the 2008-10-21 11:33:34 by gloom

Quote:

I think the main poblem is coders being happy with their (incorrect) code working on the too forgiving nvidia drivers, but nevertheless the result is a problem, and you'll see more demos running on nvidia cards.

psycholns : yep, that's also true indeed :D

added on the 2008-10-21 22:55:26 by keops

Which is why you should buy ati: you'll have an extra excuse to bitch at coders.

added on the 2008-10-22 01:36:06 by psonice

Haha. New Photoshop with GPU support? Why is this news to me? :)

added on the 2008-10-22 09:54:50 by doomdoom

For demos I would say the balance is just in favour of Nvidia. More will work on Nvidia than on ATi. For intros, Nvidia now dominate. So, my recommendation is buy nvidia.

Also agree with psycholns and iq. ATi drivers are not bad at OGL but Nvidia allow lots more non-standard stuff. The upshot of that is a developer working on Nvidia cards will often not be able to run his code on ATi but developers working on ATi will usually be able to run on Nvidia. Lets face it, its a rare developer who doesnt just code->compile->run until it works.

added on the 2008-10-22 13:12:49 by auld

If ATI is stricter, it's better to get ATI if you're coding I'd think. Stuff made on ATI is more likely to run everywhere than stuff made on nvidia.

Besides, isn't the 'non-standard' stuff that runs on nvidia just 'loose coding' rather than 'great new features'?

added on the 2008-10-22 14:26:22 by psonice

I really prefer demos that run on both ATI and Nvidia. It kinda feels cooler. Demos running only on one of them make me feel like a website that says "Optimized for blabla browser". Sucks.

added on the 2008-10-22 16:40:34 by Raven^NCE

psonice, yes, it's stuff that the nvidia compiler should emit a warning about. On the other hand, I wonder how many demo coders would ignore the warnings... :)

added on the 2008-10-22 16:42:51 by parcelshit

hmm.. i wonder if it's possible to tell the ati glsl compiler to be less strict somehow?

And are there any really cool little features in the 3d cards these days only supported by one vendor? That used to be the case sometimes. Do ATI cards have a tesselator that nvidia don't? I'd respect a one-vendor demo more if it used something like that :)

added on the 2008-10-22 16:48:33 by psonice

all your above problems can be illustrated with a single image:

BB Image

added on the 2008-10-22 17:21:54 by Gargaj

it's a pain to have to change code that works on nvidia gpus, to also work on ati, just for the same of ati users. if every scener had nvidia gpus, making demos would be a much faster process :)

added on the 2008-10-22 17:29:51 by mop

get an s3

added on the 2008-10-22 19:11:58 by dodke

paranice: I understood the thread to be about which card to get to watch demos, not to code them. So let me be clear. You want to watch demos: buy nvidia, more will run. You want to code in OGL: buy ati, they will run on nvidia too. You want to code in directx: get a psychiatrist.

Religious war 14, commence.

added on the 2008-10-22 19:12:03 by auld

clearly, opengl is superior

added on the 2008-10-22 19:21:47 by skrebbel