ATI and Instancing

[Per Hansson]

DriverHeaven has a writeup on Shader Model 2.0b compatibility with ATI graphics cards. They look at the the instancing feature by which large numbers of the same object can be calculated together instead of independently, thereby increasing performance. An example of this would be the trees in Far Cry.

It might surprise you as much as it surprised me because this is one feature Nvidia has talked much about in the new line-up of graphics cards but what I did not know was that ATI supported it also. See this news post on Driver Heaven or go directly to this forum thread.

 

[olefarte]

Tricks up their sleeves - ATI, nVidia and Far Cry 1.2
Here is a very detailed write-up at Elite Bastard website. Maybe all is not lost for us ATi owners.

All in all though, yet again the winner in this battle between the two big IHVs is the customer - Anyone who has bought themselves a current generation high-end card of either 'flavour' is going to find themselves benefiting from this new patch, which leaves little room for complaint. No doubt when the 1.3 patch becomes available many of these debates will open up again but, for now, we can just enjoy what we have with a grin and a few extra frames per second.

 

[Federelli]

What's funny is that ATI gains more than nvidia out of Instancing

 

[TS | Thomas]

ATI are using partial-precision instancing. Hehe