Real World DirectX 10 Performance: It Ain't Pretty
by Derek Wilson on July 5, 2007 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Company of Heroes
While Company of Heroes was first out of the gate with a DirectX 10 version, Relic didn't simply recompile their DX9 code for DX10; Company of Heroes was planned for DX10 from the start before there was any hardware available to test with. We are told that it's quite difficult to develop a game when going only by the specifications of the API. Apparently Relic was very aggressive in their use of DX10 specific features and had to scale back their effort to better fit the actual hardware that ended up hitting the street.
In spite of the fact that Microsoft requires support for specific features in order to be certified as a DX10 part, requiring a minimum level of performance for features is not part of the deal. This certainly made it hard for early adopters to produce workable code before the arrival of hardware, as developers had no idea which features would run fastest and most efficiently.
In the end, a lot of the DX10 specific features included in CoH had to be rewritten in a way that could have been implemented on DX9 as well. That's not to say that DX10 exclusive features aren't there (they do make use of geometry shaders in new effects); it's just that doing things in a way similar to how they are currently done offers better performance and consistency between hardware platforms. Let's take a look at some of what has been added in with the DX10 version.
The lighting model has been upgraded to be completely per pixel with softer and more shadows. All lights can cast shadows, making night scenes more detailed than on the DX9 version. These shadows are created by generating cube maps on the fly from each light source and using a combination of instancing and geometry shading to create the effect.
Company of Heroes DirectX 9
Company of Heroes DirectX 10
There is more debris and grass around levels to add detail to terrain. Rather than textures, actual geometry is used (through instancing and geometry shaders) to create procedurally generated "litter" like rocks and short grass.
Triple buffering is enabled by default, but has been disabled (along with vsync) for our tests.
We discovered that our cards with 256MB of RAM or less had trouble running with 4xAA and DirectX 10. Apparently this is a known issue with CoH on 32-bit Vista running out of addressable memory. Relic says the solution is to switch to the 64-bit version of the OS, which we haven't had time to test out quite yet.
DirectX 9 Tests
Company of Heroes DX9 Performance
Company of Heroes 4xAA DX9 Performance
Under DX9, the Radeon HD 2900 XT performs quite well when running Company of Heroes. The card is able to keep up with the 8800 GTX here. In spite of a little heavier hit from enabling 4xAA, the 2900 XT still manages to best it's 8800 GTS competition. But the story changes when we move to DX10.
DirectX 10 Tests
Company of Heroes DX10 Performance
Company of Heroes 4xAA DX10 Performance
When running with all the DX10 features enabled, the HD 2900 XT falls to just below the performance of the GeForce 8800 GTS. Once again, the low-end NVIDIA and AMD cards are unable to run at playable framerates under DX10, though the NVIDIA cards do lead AMD.
Enabling 4xAA further hurts the 2900 XT relative to the rest of the pack. We will try to stick with Windows Vista x64 in the future in order to run numbers with this game on hardware with less RAM.
While Company of Heroes was first out of the gate with a DirectX 10 version, Relic didn't simply recompile their DX9 code for DX10; Company of Heroes was planned for DX10 from the start before there was any hardware available to test with. We are told that it's quite difficult to develop a game when going only by the specifications of the API. Apparently Relic was very aggressive in their use of DX10 specific features and had to scale back their effort to better fit the actual hardware that ended up hitting the street.
In spite of the fact that Microsoft requires support for specific features in order to be certified as a DX10 part, requiring a minimum level of performance for features is not part of the deal. This certainly made it hard for early adopters to produce workable code before the arrival of hardware, as developers had no idea which features would run fastest and most efficiently.
In the end, a lot of the DX10 specific features included in CoH had to be rewritten in a way that could have been implemented on DX9 as well. That's not to say that DX10 exclusive features aren't there (they do make use of geometry shaders in new effects); it's just that doing things in a way similar to how they are currently done offers better performance and consistency between hardware platforms. Let's take a look at some of what has been added in with the DX10 version.
The lighting model has been upgraded to be completely per pixel with softer and more shadows. All lights can cast shadows, making night scenes more detailed than on the DX9 version. These shadows are created by generating cube maps on the fly from each light source and using a combination of instancing and geometry shading to create the effect.
Company of Heroes DirectX 9
Company of Heroes DirectX 10
There is more debris and grass around levels to add detail to terrain. Rather than textures, actual geometry is used (through instancing and geometry shaders) to create procedurally generated "litter" like rocks and short grass.
Triple buffering is enabled by default, but has been disabled (along with vsync) for our tests.
We discovered that our cards with 256MB of RAM or less had trouble running with 4xAA and DirectX 10. Apparently this is a known issue with CoH on 32-bit Vista running out of addressable memory. Relic says the solution is to switch to the 64-bit version of the OS, which we haven't had time to test out quite yet.
DirectX 9 Tests
Under DX9, the Radeon HD 2900 XT performs quite well when running Company of Heroes. The card is able to keep up with the 8800 GTX here. In spite of a little heavier hit from enabling 4xAA, the 2900 XT still manages to best it's 8800 GTS competition. But the story changes when we move to DX10.
DirectX 10 Tests
When running with all the DX10 features enabled, the HD 2900 XT falls to just below the performance of the GeForce 8800 GTS. Once again, the low-end NVIDIA and AMD cards are unable to run at playable framerates under DX10, though the NVIDIA cards do lead AMD.
Enabling 4xAA further hurts the 2900 XT relative to the rest of the pack. We will try to stick with Windows Vista x64 in the future in order to run numbers with this game on hardware with less RAM.
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slickr - Monday, July 9, 2007 - link
Great review, thats what we all need to get Nvidia and ATI stop bitchin around and stealing our money with slow hardware that can't even outperform last generations hardware. If you ask me the 8800Ultra should be the middle 150$ class here and top end should be some graphic card with 320 stream processors 1GB GDDR4 clocked at 2.4GHZ and 1000MHz core clock, same from amd they need the X2900XT to be middle 150$ class and top of the line should be some graphic card with 640stream processors 1GB GDDR4 2.4GHz and 1000MHz core clock!More of this kind of reviews please so we can put to ATI and Nvidia we won't buy their hardware if its not good!!!!!!!!
ielmox - Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - link
I really enjoyed this review. I have been agonizing over selecting an affordable graphics card that will give me the kind of value I enjoyed for years from my trusty and cheap GF5900xt (which runs Prey, Oblivion, and EQ2 at decent quality and frame rates) and I am just not seeing it.I'm avoiding ATI until they bring their power use under control and generally get their act together. I'm avoiding nVidia because they're gouging the hell out of the market. And the previous generation nVidia hardware is still quite costly because nVidia know very well that they've not provided much of an upgrade with the 8xxx family, unless you are willing to pay the high prices for the 8800 series (what possessed them to use a 128bit bus on everything below the 8800?? Did they WANT their hardware to be crippled?).
As a gamer who doesn't want to be a victim of the "latest and greatest" trends, I want affordable performance and quality and I don't really see that many viable options. I believe we have this half-baked DX10 and Vista introduction to thank for it - system requirements keep rocketing upwards unreasonably but the hardware economics do not seem to be keeping pace.
AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, July 7, 2007 - link
Thanks Derek for the great review. I appreciate the "%DX10 performance of DX9" charts, too.Aberforth - Thursday, July 5, 2007 - link
This article is ridiculous. Why would Nvidia and other dx10 developers want gamers to buy G80 card for high dx10 performance? DX10 is all about optimization, the performance factor depends on how well it is implemented and not by blindly using API's. Vista's driver model is different and dx10 is different. The present state of Nvidia drivers are horrible, we can't even think of dx10 performance at this stage.the dx10 version of lost planet runs horribly eventhough it is not graphically different from dx9 version. So this isn't dx10 or GPU's fault, it's all about the code and the drivers. Also the CEO of Crytek has confirmed that Nvidia 8800 (possibly 8800GTS) and E6600 CPU can max Crysis in Dx10 mode.
Long back when dx9 came out I remember reading an article about how it sucked badly. So I'm definetly not gonna buy this one.
titan7 - Thursday, July 12, 2007 - link
No, it's not about sucky code or sucky drivers. It's about shaders. Look at how much faster cards with more shader power are in d3d9. Now in d3d10 longer, richer, prettier shaders are used that take more power to process.It's not about optimization this time as the IHVs have already figured out how to write optimized drivers, it's about raw FLOPS for shader performance.
DerekWilson - Thursday, July 5, 2007 - link
DX9 performance did (and does) "suck badly" on early DX9 hardware.DX10 is a good thing, and pushing the limits of hardware is a good thing.
Yes drivers and game code can be rocky right now, but the 162 from NVIDIA are quite stable and NV is confident in their performance. Lost planet shows that NV's drivers are at least getting close to parity with DX9.
This isn't an article about DX10 not being good, it's an article about early DX10 hardware not being capable of delivering all that DX10 has to offer.
Which is as true now as it was about early DX9 hardware.
piroroadkill - Friday, July 6, 2007 - link
Wait, performance on the Radeon 9700 Pro sucked? I seem to remember games several years later that were DirectX 9 still being playable...DerekWilson - Saturday, July 7, 2007 - link
yeah, 9700 pro sucks ... when actually running real world DX9 code.Try running BF2 at any playable setting (100% view distance, high shadows and lighting). This is really where games started using DX9 (to my knowledge, BF2 was actually the first game to require DX9 support to run).
But many other games still include the ability to run 1.x shaders rather 2.0 ... Like Oblivion can turn the detail way down to the point where there aren't any DX9 heavy features running. But if you try to enable them on a 9700 Pro it will not run well at all. I actually haven't tested Oblivion at the lowest quality so I don't know if it can be playable on a 9700 Pro, but if it is, it wouldn't even be the same game (visually).
DerekWilson - Saturday, July 7, 2007 - link
BTW, BF2 was released less than 3 years after the 9700 Pro ... (aug 02 to june 05) ...Aberforth - Thursday, July 5, 2007 - link
Fine...Just want to know why a DX10 game called Crysis was running at 2048x1536 res with 60+ FPS equipped with Geforce 8800 GTX.
crysis-online.com/?id=172