![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Monday , December 24, 2001
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Radeon 8500 Revisited
The first time we did an 8500 review, the Radeon 8500 was simply not ready for prime time, but what about now? And how 'bout we throw in a GF3 Ti500 just for fun?
Serious Sam The Second Encounter:
You are probably familiar with us using Serious Sam in the past for performance tests. It has a great OpenGL based engine with incredible graphics that still stress video cards today. However, it's time for Croteam to push us to the next level. What we have been using in the past is the full version game of Serious Sam the First Encounter. Now, Croteam has released a 110MB demo of Serious Sam the Second Encounter, which is the next step for Serious Sam. Not only do they still have their great OpenGL engine, but they now also fully support DirectX 8 for D3D graphics. The multiplayer in this demo is incredibly fun and its graphics have been tweaked for current video cards to push the envelope a little further. The best part about it for me are the vast amount of Advanced Graphics settings in the game that you can tweak. There is no question you can tweak any part of the game engine graphics-wise. It has an incredible amount of options, so many in fact there are some I don't even know what they do. If you like to play and tweak with your video card, Serious Sam the Second Encounter is fun to play with, and its gameplay is great too. Quake3, UT, and CS may be the most popular multiplayer games out there right now, but you should Seriously give Serious Sam the First Encounter and Second Encounter a look; IMO it's got great multiplayer value. Check out all the details at Croteam.com.
Serious Sam the Second Encounter demo also includes support for TRUFORM in the Radeon 8500 as well as Anisotropic filtering levels. With the technology that Serious Sam the Second Encounter uses, I wanted to concentrate on TRUFORM, Anisotropic filtering, and Anti-Aliasing with the 3286 drivers on the Radeon 8500 as well as image quality screenshots. This demo really makes an excellent platform to test out video cards in different graphics areas. For these tests, I'm using this demo in OpenGL mode and 16-Tap Anisotropic and utilized the "Little Trouble" demo in Quality mode with 32bit color. The first one we are going to look at is TRUFORM performance.
With no TRUFORM at 1024x768x32 we are averaging 68.5 FPS. When we set TRUFORM on Maximum for TRUFORM ready models, the frame rate only drops by .2 FPS. However, I'm not 100% sure if TRUFORM is being applied to the character models at this setting. I could not visual tell any character model differences. However, when we turned on Maximum for ALL models the frame rate dropped to 38.9 FPS, and I could tell TRUFORM was being applied to all models. 16-Tap anisotropic was enabled in all tests. Hopefully we will learn more about this to share as we move along. Certainly TRUFORM is not worth using if you cannot tell any visual difference.
We can see what the character model difference is with TRUFORM off and on below. This first image is with TRUFORM off.
This next shot is with TRUFORM on Maximum for all objects. Note his shoulders and arms and face, they are more rounded and less blocky. However, with a huge hit in FPS, is it worth it? That is something only you can answer, but we can tell you that it ain't working for us. Still, you have to admit that TRUFORM, when implemented properly, looks terrific and certainly will be a technology that we hope to see ATi expand on with subsequent technologies.
And it was not all good either. I found a few TRUFORM rendering problems in the game. This shot below is supposed to be a shotgun. However, with TRUFORM on Maximum it had a little problem, as you can see.
Also, these boxes are suppose to be rectangle. However, with TRUFORM on Maximum they are now bulged out.
Now I want to look at Anisotropic filtering with the Radeon 8500 and 3286 drivers in Serious Sam the Second Encounter. First let's take a look at the performance difference. With no anisotropy, the average frame rate is 89 FPS, but when we turned 16-Tap anisotropy on it went down to 68.5 FPS, a pretty big hit, but much better visuals.
The first image is with no anisotropic. Notice the floor textures in the distance.
Now look at it with 16-Tap anisotropic. Notice how much clearer the floor textures in the distance are.
Now let's look at what kind of performance SMOOTHVISION has.
Enabling SMOOTHVISION really does have a big performance decrease in the Serious Sam the Second Encounter demo. The most playable setting would only be Performance 2X in this situation. I am not going to go into SMOOTHVISION image quality and all that. There is just too much to cover, and it would be a whole article in itself. Instead, I am going to point you to Anand's big article totally examining SMOOTHVISION here.
Still, it comes down to a very simple choice at this point in time. Is the game you are playing able to absorb the frame rate loss at 2X, or possibly 4X, and still be playable? Another subjective call, and quite possibly one that can only be made by yourself.