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**Mafia 2 Benchmark thread**

Cheers arcane for testing that - possibly 400 series being more powerful doesn't run into same bottlenecks as 200 series.
 
Freddie1980 said:
No it's not using the ATI video chip the Physx engine is running on older x87 code which means it's using the CPU and being x87 it's a massive drag because x87 is antiquated and about as streamlined as John Prescott in a shell suit.
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To put this in perspective - theres some parts of the code that run approx. 4x slower being x87 instead of using SSE, etc. these parts of the code account for under 10% of the time it takes to process 1 physics simulation step. If opptimized the API would on average run a whole 2% faster.
 
Right, I've given this game/demo a bit of time tonight and this is what I've found (we don't really need more benchmarks). I've been playing the PC version and the PS3 version.

  • Playing the PC version, I will turn Physx off. It might be a nice touch but it's not worth the performance hit on my system. I get the best overall visual experience from this.
  • It is upscaled. Not sure about the whole game but car models and fencing etc is NOT rendering at my 1920x1200. Just look at the telegraph lines!! I don't actually think upscaling is that bad a thing.
  • The stuttering seems to calm down after a minute so maybe that's what's causing the low minimum frame-rates in peoples benchmarks. Just playing the game with Physx off, it runs fine.
  • The PC version does look notably better than the PS3 version. You might laugh at this but plenty of modern games don't actually look that much different between the 2 versions. It's good to see and compare a game and happily choose the PC version and see that you have the best version.
from what I've seen tonight, I would buy and play the PC version at 1920x1200 with max settings but with Physx turned off. It's the first game in a while where I would say you would lose out in playing the PS3 version. Again, don't laugh at this. You would be surprised how little difference there is in some modern 'hard to run' games.

One thing I'll add is that the PS3 version says that it has Nvidia Physx. Not sure what this adds but I suppose it has plenty of CPU cores to throw at it.
 
RavenXXX2 said:
A decent comparison between physx effects off, medium and high, let's see the CPU do blood physx.:p

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SEe the problem is you say its way more than debrie, the difference I see in that video between non physx clothes movement, and high physx clothes movement, is its slower and less realistic. Yes, if you actually watch it for no apparent reason what would be a quite stiff jacket just magically rolls up and floats down as if its the thinest lightest piece of silk possible, apart from that, certainly not looking more realistic, its barely noticeable, and games for YEARS have had that level of clothes moving about a bit when the character moves.

So no its NOT adding more things, its removing normal things and replacing them with often worse effects at a higher performance cost.

See Rroff showed a video, said it was night and day in difference, then was called out on the fact that each and every effect was WORSE, unrealistic, bodged in, certainly wasn't realtime anything(all the glass explosion effects were IDENTICAL, delayed, the original glass removed and a new effect and fragments come out of nowhere, thats a pre-rendered effect, done for over a decade, that is incredibly performance light, and they did it WORSE than I've seen for years. A delay and physically seeing the glass removed, before new fragments, that aren't realistic, appear? Sorry but thats shocking, you're right though its not just debrie, its WORSE debrie, and therein lies the fault.

Did you notice the old persons clothes in a fight movement, neither did in, physx high, the guys wearing a suit, and you barely see any of it move.

Thats the amount of video I watched, because its slow and I have no idea where the blood effects are, and really been limiting what I've seen of the game, I can point out more bad effects that have been done before that shouldn't cost so much performance on the 27th if you want.

The problem is, that everyone someone posts a video of the "great" effects, when you actually look at them, they are less realistic, worse, and quite obviously not a major performance hog.

Frankly I can sum up the difference between no physx and high physx in that video, the cloth seems to have essentially lower gravity, it moves back down, slower, thats it, the actual movement, the left right up down, mostly, is no different, and again as its been in multiple games, is not all the cloth, is minimal at best, and is barely noticeable, I'll say Physx is a joke in this game.

Until theres a video showing an effect another game can't do, thats MORE realistic for the performance cost, physx will continue to be a joke.

EDIT:- I think the universal problem is that people just want to max out the settings and assume its better. Look at Metro 2033, DOF made the IQ worse, it was a horrible effect, and absolutely raped performance, yet people enabled it and just lived with it, thinking its "max" so its better. Same with tesselation, well it didn't reduce IQ, but it certainly didn't improve it without pausing, screenshotting very specific bits, leaving the game opening the thing and zooming in, for the performance hit it offered nothing.

I remember Fear back ages ago, the soft shadows killllled performance, and looked completely awful, but people wouldn't just disable them, they went on and on about poor performance, rather than disable an option that made the game look worse.

These physx effects(in some games some of the effects really are better) are just worse, the glass shattering is awful and completely unrealistic, the wood shattering is unrealistic but lets you see a few bits of wood on the floor, in the wrong place? The clothing isn't better, its worse and less realistic, but moves a bit more so it must be better? The car damage, frankly, seems the same as from the last Mafia which had awesome car model damage, its also something done in most driving games fine for well over a decade.
 
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drunkenmaster said:
EDIT:- I think the universal problem is that people just want to max out the settings and assume its better. Look at Metro 2033, DOF made the IQ worse, it was a horrible effect, and absolutely raped performance, yet people enabled it and just lived with it, thinking its "max" so its better. Same with tesselation, well it didn't reduce IQ, but it certainly didn't improve it without pausing, screenshotting very specific bits, leaving the game opening the thing and zooming in, for the performance hit it offered nothing.

I remember Fear back ages ago, the soft shadows killllled performance, and looked completely awful, but people wouldn't just disable them, they went on and on about poor performance, rather than disable an option that made the game look worse.
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I'm quite curios about your issues with "DOF" effects in games. Why do you dislike it so much and claim that it's not realistic? DOF is a realistic effect, I remember you claiming that it was there to mask poor draw distances or something of that effect.

What about DOF is unrealistic? If you focus on your finger at close range, the whole background will go out of focus, just like DOF, shift your eyes to something further away and your focus plane with shift, and your finger will go out of focus. I find it actually enhances image quality in games a lot, and I quite like the effect.

If it's killing performance, that's another issue, but for the most part, DOF doesn't kill peformance in games (Metro obviously being an exception).
 
drunkenmaster said:
See Rroff showed a video, said it was night and day in difference, then was called out on the fact that each and every effect was WORSE, unrealistic, bodged in, certainly wasn't realtime anything(all the glass explosion effects were IDENTICAL, delayed, the original glass removed and a new effect and fragments come out of nowhere, thats a pre-rendered effect, done for over a decade, that is incredibly performance light, and they did it WORSE than I've seen for years. A delay and physically seeing the glass removed, before new fragments, that aren't realistic, appear? Sorry but thats shocking, you're right though its not just debrie, its WORSE debrie, and therein lies the fault.
Click to expand...

It IS night and day compared to old fashioned, non-interactive particles that fade away almost instantly... design errors aside.

Having seen more of what they've done with PhysX in the game I'm a little dissapointed - but I can understand why they've done it that way because they won't want to alienate people/platforms who don't have GPU Physics capabilities - unfortunatly that takes away almost the entire point of having it in there.

kylew said:
I'm quite curios about your issues with "DOF" effects in games. Why do you dislike it so much and claim that it's not realistic? DOF is a realistic effect, I remember you claiming that it was there to mask poor draw distances or something of that effect.

What about DOF is unrealistic? If you focus on your finger at close range, the whole background will go out of focus, just like DOF, shift your eyes to something further away and your focus plane with shift, and your finger will go out of focus. I find it actually enhances image quality in games a lot, and I quite like the effect.

If it's killing performance, that's another issue, but for the most part, DOF doesn't kill peformance in games (Metro obviously being an exception).
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DOF in games is unrealistic in that it doesn't follow the player's eye, instead its just static on the screen depending on your crosshair viewpoint. Some games I can't stand it others its used better.
 
Can some-one help please.
I have a 5970 and I struggling with these physx mod's.

The hole clothes fix works quite well and improves the frames when going outside my house, but that was never really my problem anyway.

The problem being is te debris, the more there is the slower the framerate goes and never picks back up, its like a use of memory storeing it or something. Has this got some-thing to do with the Physx being run on the GPU istead of CPU or Vice versa? If so how do I change it on an ATI card.

I'm using 10.7 drivers with the latest Physx from NV, other than the debris is all run very smooth.
 
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