Q: I have an ATI Radeon 8500, which should draw the water surface in the Advanced Pixel Shader test in a single pass, compared to my friend's system with DX8 hardware that should draw it in two passes. Still I don't see much performance difference. Shouldn't my system be twice as fast?
A: The Advance Pixel Shader test is what we call a Feature Test, which means that we, above all, want to present some new technology. It was decided that a fall-back was to be included in addition to the 1.4 pixel shader, since the same looking effect can be achieved using pixel shader 1.0 hardware. These two different modes of that same test work a bit differently and should, therefore, not be directly compared. Both modes could be optimized to show more performance either way, but now the test is just optimized for maximum compatibility. Vertex shader performance also affects the score, somewhat, due to this compatibility optimization.
I am wondering what you guys make of this cus I am puzzled somebody suggested that this means that the guys who made this benchmark are kissing up to NVIDIA. Your opinions needed please.
A: The Advance Pixel Shader test is what we call a Feature Test, which means that we, above all, want to present some new technology. It was decided that a fall-back was to be included in addition to the 1.4 pixel shader, since the same looking effect can be achieved using pixel shader 1.0 hardware. These two different modes of that same test work a bit differently and should, therefore, not be directly compared. Both modes could be optimized to show more performance either way, but now the test is just optimized for maximum compatibility. Vertex shader performance also affects the score, somewhat, due to this compatibility optimization.
I am wondering what you guys make of this cus I am puzzled somebody suggested that this means that the guys who made this benchmark are kissing up to NVIDIA. Your opinions needed please.