Half Life 2 Coded Against NVIDIA?

jmke · 1st December 2004, 00:46

Picked this one up from [H]

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread....0&page=1&pp=20

Oh, it's pretty sad really.

Basically, some guys on Guru3d figured out what Valve did to cripple nVidia cards.

First off, you need 3dAnalyze. I'm assuming everyone knows that you can force HL2 to run in DX9 mode on FX cards, right? Only, you get artifacts in the water and other areas?

Well, that's pretty easy to fix. Just have the 3dAnalyze util report your card as an ATI Radeon instead of a GeForce FX.

*taddah* All the artifacts go away, and you get true DX9 reflections!

Okay, but there IS a performance hit doing that. How to get around that?

Well, the funny thing is that Valve coded Half-Life 2 to use FP24 shaders all the time every time. And it's really not needed. Nope. In fact, FP16 seems to do the trick all the time - as seen in that above pic. FP16 and FP24 are indistinguishable in Half-Life 2.

Again, using 3dAnalyze you can test this. It is capable of forcing a card to use only FP16 shaders no matter what is requested. You'll see no image quality difference doing that - just a HUGE performance boost. Why? Well, because while FP16 is all that Half-Life 2 *needs*, if they let the GeForce FX cards do THAT, they might have been competitive! So, instead, they forced FP24 (unneeded), which caused the GF-FX cards to render the DX9 mode in FP32 all the time. With the obvious associated performance hit.

Try it yourself. The link to the article is here. Download 3dAnalyze, and follow these instructions:

Quote:

Open it and follow the numbers:
1. select HL2.exe file in half-life 2 folder
2. select any file inside the folder half-life 2\bin
3. select Steam.exe
than check these options:
- Under the section Pixel and Vertex Shader: FORCE LOW PRECISION PIXEL SHADER
- Under the section Remove stuttering: PERFORMANCE MODE
- on the bottom left: FORCE HOOK.DLL

If you haven't change the file dxsupport.cfg with the method described in the beginnig of this thread, you can obtain the same result typing in the section DIRECTX DEVICE ID'S the ATI Vendor and Device ID, there are just two device though.
....
In the end 3D ANALYZE gives me an error, CREATEPROCESS FAILED, I launch HL2 anyway, the water looked awesome, awesome detail and I noticed a boost in performance too. I think around 20/30% which allowed me to play the WATER HAZARD level with this setting: 1024x768 everything max, water relection to ALL, 2xAA, 4xAnisotropic with a range of fps of 40 and >150.

Amazing, huh?

1st December 2004, 00:56

I know I should be disgusted by this but for some reason, I just think it's funny

jmke · 1st December 2004, 00:58

I have FX5900XT , will give it a try tommorow (or lazyman should fine the time

)

Sidney · 1st December 2004, 01:06

Playing games with PC does associate playing real money games in business to some people, doesn't it?

The players are; game developers; ATI; Nvdia and some software and hardware engineers couldn't keep BLANK.

It happened before; it will happen again ...... games people play and that's what we are into.

1st December 2004, 01:06

oh btw, he editted and added some more info to his post :

http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.ph...57&postcount=9

Sidney · 1st December 2004, 01:11

I felt strange when I noticed 9600XT returned 1850 3DMark03 while FX5900XT @1150.
When I read Doom3 was so "good" with Nvdia; I kind of figured news would be made in favor of ATI in short.

The funny part is both ATI and Nvda are trading neck to neck.

1st December 2004, 06:33

Man, I hate when they do that. They may boost the competitor's technology if they want, but they may not downgrade the performance and quality of the other competitor. That's pure cheating on all the players.

uke:

jmke · 1st December 2004, 08:14

they are not exactly cheating you know, the FX series included higher FP precision, which they used, simple as that

1st December 2004, 08:48

yes, but it isn't needed.

I'm also referring to the artifatcs appearing when playing it in DX9 modus with an nVidia card, while you don't have any artifact when playing like with an ATI card.

1st December 2004, 10:23

@jmke werkt het?

heb ook FX5900 XT

1st December 2004, 00:58	#3
jmke Madshrimp Join Date: May 2002 Location: 7090/Belgium Posts: 79,021	I have FX5900XT , will give it a try tommorow (or lazyman should fine the time) __________________

1st December 2004, 01:06	#4
Sidney Member Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 15,738	Playing games with PC does associate playing real money games in business to some people, doesn't it? The players are; game developers; ATI; Nvdia and some software and hardware engineers couldn't keep BLANK. It happened before; it will happen again ...... games people play and that's what we are into. __________________ lazyman Opteron 165 (2) @2.85 1.42 vcore AMD Stock HSF + Chill Vent II

1st December 2004, 01:11	#6
Sidney Member Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 15,738	I felt strange when I noticed 9600XT returned 1850 3DMark03 while FX5900XT @1150. When I read Doom3 was so "good" with Nvdia; I kind of figured news would be made in favor of ATI in short. The funny part is both ATI and Nvda are trading neck to neck. __________________ lazyman Opteron 165 (2) @2.85 1.42 vcore AMD Stock HSF + Chill Vent II

1st December 2004, 08:14	#8
jmke Madshrimp Join Date: May 2002 Location: 7090/Belgium Posts: 79,021	they are not exactly cheating you know, the FX series included higher FP precision, which they used, simple as that __________________

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1st December 2004, 00:56	#2
kristos Posts: n/a	I know I should be disgusted by this but for some reason, I just think it's funny

1st December 2004, 06:33	#7
Xploited Titan Posts: n/a	Man, I hate when they do that. They may boost the competitor's technology if they want, but they may not downgrade the performance and quality of the other competitor. That's pure cheating on all the players. uke:

1st December 2004, 08:48	#9
Xploited Titan Posts: n/a	yes, but it isn't needed. I'm also referring to the artifatcs appearing when playing it in DX9 modus with an nVidia card, while you don't have any artifact when playing like with an ATI card.

1st December 2004, 10:23	#10
Astro Posts: n/a	@jmke werkt het? heb ook FX5900 XT