MoroseTroll

So what? The XBO's DirectX differs enough from the Windows' one. PS4's GNM & GNMX are neither DirectX, nor OpenGL, nor Vulkan. Both game consoles are not still cracked in order to run their games right under Windows PC. So it doesn't matter whether they are built upon x86 or not - they are too different from Windows. Like I said, AMD won't risk by investing in and creating a chip that nobody else would support, because the first one has enough bitter experience in this: 3DNow!, E3DNow!, SSE4a, MaSSE, IBS, XOP, LWP, FMA4, TBM. How much do you applications that support these extensions? How much do they benefit from this support? lowenz: Got it. Frankly, I expected something... different - say, a universal application that can run on both CPU and GPU, compiled by some LLVM-based framework.

Details, please . Sure. But the current game consoles are a totally different ecosystems. While PS4 & XBO use AMD x86-CPUs and Radeon GPUs, they have a different OSes, libraries, etc. You can make your game console's architecture as weird as you want (ask anyone who coded for PS3, and you'll hear a lot swearing), but if you try to do something on the PC market, then be ready to lose.

I hope some day this will happen, maybe even with Zen-based APUs, but I personally wouldn't hold my breath. Some paradigms are too tough to be spreaded all over the world. AFAIK, Torrenza was a failure. HSA is a very good idea, but right now, AFAIK, this technology is working on AMD hardware only, if we speak about the x86 world. Will Intel and/or nVidia ever support HSA? I'm not sure, but if they won't, then HSA will be limited by mobile market and will very rarely be used in x86 (at least in client sector, not sure about server and workstation ones). Maybe, maybe not. How much do you know universal applications written on LLVM, that can run straight out of the box on many modern OSes (Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, iOS)? How fast do they perform on different hardware? How bug-less are they? I know - these questions perhaps are not the simple ones. Sure, LLVM is quite a cool thing, but that's just not enough to became a de facto standard. If this happens, it would be nice. About IR: the simpler IR, the simpler the reverse engineering of it. I know, there some obfuscation technologies exist, but I think that many big companies would prefer to stay with their old-fashioned x86-code just to make sure that nobody knows their algorithms.

There are at least two things that make CPU<->GPU conversation extremely difficult. First, every GPU generation even from one vendor has its own instruction set (ISA). For example, nVidia's Pascal is not equal to Maxwell, i.e. they are similar, but not the same. So if you write a low-level code for Maxwell, you'll have to adapt it for Pascal, too. And for Kepler. And for Fermi. Should I continue ? The same situation with AMD: GCN 4th gen, 3rd gen, 2nd gen, 1st gen, VLIW4, VLIW5... Second, when you communicate with GPU, you use PCI-e interface, i.e. you fill a structure with data you need in RAM and then call the driver to transfer it to GPU. It takes thousands CPU clocks just for a simple commands (say, glBegin) and dozens and even hundreds of thousands CPU clocks to upload a texture. You know why? Because PCI-e always works on a constant frequency declared by PCI-SIG (yes, PCI-e has different versions and number of channels, but these ones don't change the situation drastically). Of course, in case of integrated GPU, the latencies could be much lower, but just in case if the vendor has created a very fast channel between CPU and GPU on the same die. I'm not sure how fast those channels are in the modern AMD and Intel APUs (CPU + GPU), but I doubt that they are way faster than PCI-e. Why would those vendors bother to invent a fast channel for the integrated graphics ? Um... I was saying that Vulkan and DX12 are the best ways to make GPU run at full speed in current situation, with current hardware. Can Intel and/or AMD create a chip with half or totally new design, where GPU = FPU, and every program can use this feature? Yes, they can, but they never won't. The reason is simple: binary compatibility. Like I said earlier, every GPU generation has its own ISA, different from the previous ones. The differencies can be small or big, but they always are. If you freeze GPU ISA, you'll have to live with it for dozen years, which means that your rivals can optimize their GPU architectures, whereas you can't - it's a straight way to lose your market share and then Chapter 11.

I'm afraid you're confused a bit. Yes, GPUs are fantastically fast, in terms of calculations, but they have a different and very difficult-to-learn paradigm. Yes, you can make GPUs work for you, but you'll have to learn OpenCL/CUDA/DirectCompute or create a very specific shaders in GLSL/HLSL. Yes, there some specific frameworks exist that can make your program run on both CPU and GPU, but those ones are so named JIT (just-in-time) translators, not compilers. Also, GPU, even on the same die with CPU, has a very limited connection speed with CPU, so even if you write a code that can use GPU at full speed, you'll have a lot of lags when you try to move a chunk of information from CPU to GPU and vice versa. Actually, Direct3D 12 and Vulkan (did you see how amazingly it works in Doom 4?) can reduce these lags almost to zero, but again, you'll have to 1) learn these APIs, 2) persuade TDM gamers to migrate to DX12/Vulkan-capable graphics cards (i.e. GeForce 600+ and Radeon HD 7700+). About the nVidia's nForce DASP: it was just a cache prefetch system, no more. There were no instruction interceptions but just a several tables with memory addresses processed by smart enough analyzer inside the chipset. That's it. Every modern CPU already has something inside.

Ok.

That would be nice ! Agreed. I've found about 1500 TGA normals (*local*.tga) in the vanilla TDM 2.04, with ~2.2 GB in total. If you guys find a way to compress all of them into ATI2/BC5, you'll reduce them to ~0.55 GB in total. Disk space is pretty cheap these days, but loading (and downloading) time is of the essence. BTW guys, do you know why TGA and all other non-DXTC/S3TC formats (BMP, PNG, JPG, etc) are loaded so slow? It's not just because of their size (which is partially true), but AFAIK, also because of the graphics driver that converts them into DXTC/S3TC on the fly, transparently to the application, no matter whether you toggle "image_useNormalCompression" and/or "image_useCompression" options on or off. Now imagine what happens when the game loads, say, PNG or JPG (I've found a plenty of them - over 1700): the DevIL library decompresses it consuming CPU time, then the graphics driver recompresses it, consuming even more CPU time. Perhaps I'm wrong, but if those JPG and PNG files are used in TDM itself, not in the Dark Radiant, it would be nice to convert them into DDS or even CRN.

Nice . Guys, what do you think about the Crunch Texture Compression? In a nutshell, the format that compressor provides (CRN) is DDS-like but extremely LZ-encoded: DXT1 (4 bits/texel) and DXT5 (8 bit/texel) can be squeezed to 1-1.25 bits/texel (i.e. up to 4-8 times), and ATI2 (8 bit/texel) to 1.75-2 bits/texel (i.e. up to 4-5 times); the compression is so quality, so you won't even notice the difference. CRN-files are transcoded directly into DDS on the fly, without recompression (i.e. the quality of image doesn't suffer), with speed at 100-250 megatexels/second (that was in 2012, now it's definitely faster). To integrate this format into your engine, you'll need to include just one standalone header file. BTW, Unity 3D already uses this format, so you probably already played some games with it.

I'm afraid it's not that simple. Not sure who exactly did that, but someone (rebb?) told me many years ago that some TDM shaders should be rewritten in order to support ATI1/BC4 & ATI2/BC5 formats (In OpenGL, those are LATC/RGTC). Also, some people still have extremely old GPUs without the native support of those formats (almost all pre-DX10 ATI's, Intel's, and nVidia's, excluding Radeon X800 and higher), so there should be a workaround for them... Or not? BTW, I can't find the thread you've mentioned. Where is it? Can you move this message there, too?

Perhaps this is because TDM still uses monstrous 24-bit TGA format for normals and speculars, instead of 8-bit ATI2/BC5. Should TDM cease to use TGA (and all other formats, excluding DXTC/S3TC), it'll drastically reduce its loading time and VRAM requirement.

Heck, I forgot Q . Quake 4. It's an old but still a fun game. Q.U.B.E. A puzzle game, like Portal 1&2, but on the different basis.

M: Mafia 1 & 2 (and soon 3). M: Max Payne 1 & 2 & 3. M: Mirror's Edge 1 & Catalyst. P: Painkiller: Hell & Damnation (and all previous games). P: Payday 1 & 2. P: Pneuma. R: Remember Me. R: Risen 1, probably 2 & 3. R: Ryse: Son of Rome.

Yes, I was talking about the Definitive Editions of Dead Island and Dead Island: Riptide. About old games: an old game is not a bad game .

Who said that? According to FSI, Russian is simpler than several European languages (Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian). In return, if you know Russian, you'll be understood everywhere from the eastern borders of the EU to the western Pacific coast, except of course China, Japan, both Koreas, and everything to south. But I must agree with you that gamedev in CIS is rather weak. That Saber Interactive is now busy with... Halo remakes. Ok, enough of this. Let me continue my list: H: Hitman series. Need I speak more ? J: Just Cause series: nice visuals, a lot of freedom, guns and explosions! K: Kane & Lynch 1&2 - a pair of criminal games from the makers of Hitman. K: Kingdoms of Amalur - fantasy RPG. L: L.A.Noire L: Legend of Grimrock 1&2 - RPG. L: Lichdom: Battlemage - fantasy RPG with nice visuals (based on CryEngine 3). L: Lost Planet series - three fun 3rd person shooters. BTW, Bikerdude, why do you hate controls in Dead Space 1? I've played all three games on PC and never had any problems with it.

Anderson: What about the English localization of Pathologic? I heard it's awful - so if you want a real experience, learn Russian. BTW, wanna play another Russian games, not so art house? Here: Inversion (like Gears of War + fun with gravitation), TimeShift (like Half-life 2 + fun with time), Will Rock (like Serious Sam in the Ancient Greece). All three games were created in St.Petersburg, Russia, by Saber Interactive.

Bikerdude: Alpha Protocol is a Mass Effect-like game set in the modern world. Metacritic user score = 75% (PC). Arx Fatalis is the first game created by Arkane Studios. Metacritic user score = 83% (PC). Betrayer has been created by a few ex-Monolith developers (Blood 1&2, NOLF 1&2&J, AvP 2, Condemned 1&2, F.E.A.R. 1&2). Metacritic user score = 73% (PC). Borderlands 1&2&PreSequel are almost endless games. Call of Juarez 1-4 are stealth-oriented western-like games. Condemned 1&2 are old but still interesting games. Metacritic user score = 82% and 85% (360). Alas, Condemned 2 was never ported to PC, so you'll need 360 or PS3 to play it. The Darkness 1&2 are good enough games. Metacritic user score = 81% and 75% (360). Alas, The Darkness 1 was never ported to PC. Dead Island - the game and its DLC were recently ported onto the most modern Chrome Engine v6, the same version as in Dying Light. Yes, both games are about zombies, but they are different enough. Ok, I'll continue my list: D: Darksiders 1&2, Dark Souls 1&2&3 - lots of fighting in 3rd person. E: Enslaved - adventures in a strange world, like TLoU. F: Fable 1&2&3 - RPG. F: Far Cry 2 (two) - Africa and guns, weak story but a lot of unique and authentic places to explore, nice visuals for 2008, has no DRM at all since v1.03 (i.e. no Uplay). F: Fallout 3 & New Vegas - old but still fun games, especially NV. P.S. You have some typos in your list: "Arkam"->"Arkham", "Cryssis"->"Crysis", "Dishonoured"->"Dishonored" (I know, I know, you're British ), "Dyning"->"Dying", "Half life"->"Half-life", "Thief 2016"->"Thief 2014", "Wolfenstien: NO & NB"->"Wolfenstein: TNO & TOB".

A: Alpha Protocol, Arx Fatalis. B: Betrayer, Binary Domain, Borderlands, Bound by Flame, Bulletstorm. C: Call of Juarez, Castlevania, Condemned. D: Dark Messiah, The Darkness, Dead Island, Dragon Age. What about them?

I wonder, will DH2 support Vulkan? I just saw some tests of Vulkan in Doom 2016 on ComputerBase.de, and I must admit: it's just f*cking awesome - the speed boost is up to 66%!

I think, if the Void Engine is really based on the id Tech Six, then Arkane's higher-ups would definitely have mentioned "PBR". Perhaps I've missed something, but I never saw "PBR" in Harvey Smith's Twitter. Did you? Perhaps Arkane has made its own cool improvements to the Void Engine, but I doubt that these are revolutionary ones. It's incredibly hard to deeply modify the modern engine that has been created by someone else - actually, to do it you need a graphics genius like John Carmack/Tiago Sousa/Tim Sweeney as a lead for a whole tech team, and a few years. I totally respect Arkane, but doubt that it has so much human resources. That's why I still think that the Void Engine is the slightly modified id Tech Five.

Guys, I wouldn't be so sure. The development of Dishonored 2 has been started right after the Dishonored 1 release, at the end of 2012. Sure, Arkane has released three DLCs for the first game in 2013, but those ones were under development by a small enough team (about a half of the studio, mostly level designers and artists - see the Knife of Dunwall's and Brigmore Witches' credits), whereas the other team (mostly programmers) was working on the adaptation the id Tech engine for the second game. Now think about it: was id Tech Six ready to work outside of id Software at the end of 2012? I don't think so, because at that moment id Software has released its RAGE based on id Tech Five just a year before.

Alas, the whole AMD Bulldozer/Piledriver/Steamroller/Excavator lineup suffer a very weak IPC (Instructions Per Clock), both in integer and float operations - about two times lower than the current Intel CPUs. So please don't be surprised when you see a suspiciously weak results - it's kinda normal . Sure, the current AMD CPUs have a lot of cores, but those cores are very weak. Also, not every program can split up its workload evenly on all cores (it's often just two or even one core are/is busy), that's why the current AMD CPUs can show such a bad results. About Vulkan & D3D12: There was a request from DICE (Battlefield, Mirror's Edge, etc) - to create a low-level console-like graphics API for PC. Since AMD was responsible for the PS4 & XBO APUs, it's naturally that AMD answered "Ok" to DICE and then created Mantle (a Vulkan's prototype). Since the idea was excellent, then MS said, "Hey! What about us? We can do that, too!" That's how D3D12 (a.k.a. DX12) was born .

How about Jo Cox homicide? I guess you can tell me that Nemtsov was killed because of his anti-corruption affairs, etc. Well, I can tell that Jo Cox was killed especially by MI5 or MI6 just to make British people more "Remain" and less "Leave." I guess you'll say to me, "Bullshit!" Well, I can say the same. My point is, don't trust anyone who's saying that Russia is Mordor. Some NATO higher-ups want you to believe in this, but why? The reason is simple: as soon as you know that Russia is not your enemy, you'll understand that that higher-ups were lying to you all the way.

How's that? About 10% of Russia's foreign-exchange reserves is in British pounds, and more than 41% is in euros. How and what Russia can win when both pound and euro are getting lower? The same question: how's that? And who said that Putin is a totalitarian leader? I've participated almost in all presidential elections since 1992 as a member of the local election commission, and I can say that Putin has always been elected as the president by the vast majority of voters. Guys, no offence, but I would recommend you to visit Russia and live here for a while, instead of saying the Russophobia mantra that your mass media is translating. Russian rouble is about three times lower than it should be ("thanks" to Saudis and USA shale oil industry for raising the oil war), so it would be very inexpensive for you to visit my country .

AFAIK, the Void Engine is based on the id Tech 5, not 6.

Spooks: I suppose Valve is currently working on the Vulkan version of DotA 2 especially for SteamOS. lowenz: Yes, the engine is very fast and looks pretty.