AMD Optimized tessellation in Crysis 2: artifacts

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bhanja_Trinanjan

bhanja_Trinanjan

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Hello,

As soon as I let the application (Crysis 2) control tessellation, the artifacts go away. With AMD optimized tessellation, I see some weird color patches on the walls and windows of buildings. Using a 6970 with Catalyst 11.8 under Win 7 X64

I could not take a screenshot as I don’t have FRAPS installed yet.
 
So don't use that setting then. There are no AMD profiles for Tessellation at the moment anyway.
 
I thought the rule of thumb was if the app supported a given feature it was recommended to let the app handle it anyways. Only forcing through the CCC if the app didn't have native support.

So i don't see the problem.

Void4ever
 
The default setting is AMD optimized profiles are enabled. You have to uncheck the box to set it to application setting. Then you can also override to 8x or 16x. etc.
 
void4ever said:
I thought the rule of thumb was if the app supported a given feature it was recommended to let the app handle it anyways. Only forcing through the CCC if the app didn't have native support.

So i don't see the problem.

Void4ever
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The problem is that Crysis 2 uses heavy tessellation optimized for nV cards so there's a performance hit on AMD hardware. Manually setting 8x or 16x alleviates that issue but it could lead to image corruption.
 
acroig said:
The problem is that Crysis 2 uses heavy tessellation optimized for nV cards so there's a performance hit on AMD hardware. Manually setting 8x or 16x alleviates that issue but it could lead to image corruption.
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how do you optimize tessellation for a specific tessellator?
 
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I think this video really tells the story better. Therefore, it's my opinion that the tessellation slider in CCC is more of an optimization. :p
 
Hippo said:
how do you optimize tessellation for a specific tessellator?
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You don't, it's about utilization and processing power. NVIDIA have lots of smaller tessellators where AMD has a single unit (two in VLIW-4 Cayman). This works great for tessellation factors (the # of subdivision) between 4 and 16, but efficiency tails off above that. NVIDIA's does the same thing, but they have less of a hit relatively, and in absolute terms still have higher performance. The problem is, its makes no effing difference to visual quality, most especially in the way Crysis 2 implemented tessellation (non-visible architecture). So the little increase in graphics detail that was added by using tessellation has a massive performance hit because of how badly done it was. Read the techreport's article on it.

tl;dr - once tessellation makes triangles smaller than pixel level, or is used to create geometry that's never seen, it's visually useless but a performance hit.



edit - if you're reading this from a link on 'scalis blog' then I think he's the one that doesn't understand how modern GPU's work on quads of pixels in groups of four (quad quad processing) and tessellation below a certain factor (making triangles smaller than inside a single quad) stalls the pipeline as you have to rerun the quad over and over again, for no discernible increase in visual quality. Crysis 2 is the perfect example of this, despite having 3-pixel triangles, tessellation is used to make a smooth sided shape... smoother, with more complex internal geometry.
 
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acroig said:
Yes, quite the stirr about Crysis 2 tessellation but let's not forget who paid to get it into the game. ;)
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When it comes to the tessellation slider viewed as an optimization the term is justified. From what I recall that game didn't sell well on the PC and overall wasn't a top seller from all platforms. For all the resources put into the game that doesn't look well from my point of view for a PC title. ;)
 
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ECH1 said:
When it comes to the tessellation slider viewed as an optimization the term is justified. From what I recall that game didn't sell well on the PC and overall wasn't a top seller from all platforms. For all the resources put into the game that doesn't look well from my point of view for a PC title. ;)
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nV paid for it as a way to hype 500 series tessellation capabilities.

Can you share sales figures for Crysis 2?
 
ECH1 said:
Really? That's news to me. You have any figures showing that the game increase demand for that card?
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No, I do not but you can Google who paid Crytek to add DX11 features into Crysis 2, it's not hard.

Back at you now, please show me the sales figures you talked about earlier for Crysis 2.
 
acroig said:
No, I do not but you can Google who paid Crytek to add DX11 features into Crysis 2, it's not hard.

Back at you now, please show me the sales figures you talked about earlier for Crysis 2.
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So there is no real information that suggests that the game helped in selling their hardware. I do understand your speculation that it could. I simply thought you had information that suggest that it did impact sales of their hardware. Anyway, I highlighted the same sentiment for your question as well ;). A quick google search does provide information about the pc version of the game.
 
ECH1 said:
So there is no real information that suggests that the game helped in selling their hardware. I do understand your speculation that it could. I simply thought you had information that suggest that it did impact sales of their hardware. Anyway, I highlighted the same sentiment for your question as well ;). A quick google search does provide information about the pc version of the game.
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This exchange has been most childish. You stated something an whe I asked you for a source you tell me to Google it.

I stated a commonly known fact, that nv paid for the DX11 features and the devs clearly coded it for nv hardware. I never stated that it had actually helped sales, I stated it was designed to make 500 cards look better.

Thanks for the waste of time, have a good night.
 
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caveman-jim said:
You don't, it's about utilization and processing power. NVIDIA have lots of smaller tessellators where AMD has a single unit (two in VLIW-4 Cayman). This works great for tessellation factors (the # of subdivision) between 4 and 16, but efficiency tails off above that. NVIDIA's does the same thing, but they have less of a hit relatively, and in absolute terms still have higher performance. The problem is, its makes no effing difference to visual quality, most especially in the way Crysis 2 implemented tessellation (non-visible architecture). So the little increase in graphics detail that was added by using tessellation has a massive performance hit because of how badly done it was. Read the techreport's article on it.

tl;dr - once tessellation makes triangles smaller than pixel level, or is used to create geometry that's never seen, it's visually useless but a performance hit.
Click to expand...

lol thanks jim, but i was just trying to be a troll.
 
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