How strong GPU is needed for SB PRO PE?

[Tsahi]

How strong GPU is needed for SB PRO PE with 1600*1200 or 1920*1200 with maximum settings? 6600? 6600GT? 6800GT?
2 * 6800GT (SLI)?

Is there a limit to screen resolution by the software?

* put a side the CPU issue for now.

Thank You,
T.

[NEpi]

define "needed".
what's your minimum fps ratio?

[Hell_Hound]

A Radeon 9800 Pro gave satisfactory frame rates at 1600x1200x32; presumably any other card with eight rendering pipelines would do comparably well.

"Satisfactory" = frame rates at least in the teens, even under high load.

"High load" = looking into a forest with the high-magnification daysight, preferably while moving parallel to the forest edge, and traversing.

Edit: This was with a year-old build of the game, but the environmental graphics haven't changed very much since then. I'm afraid I don't know if the above test was done with any anti-aliasing or filtering.

[Ssnake]

I have never entertained myself with testing these resolutions. Given the usual distance of a human operator from the monitor screen, even a measly 1152 - resolution on a 17" screen is sufficient simply because each pixel matches the resolution of the human eye then. OK, so for a 20" monitor you'd want a 38% increase in pixel resolution (that'd be around 1280 x 960 then). Since 20" is the practical upper limit for monitors, you'd need several monitors then, and render to them simultaneously. At that point you'd probably consider the use of several graphics cards right away which, with PCI Express, might just be possible (if you are successful in the thermal management of your PC case then).

For all practical reasons, there is no need to plan beyond such a resolution, so I don't.

[Hell_Hound]

How is the eye's resolution measured? A solid angle, or two plane angles? I'd be curious to know the numbers for that.

[Ssnake]

Did you try Google?

[Hell_Hound]

Sometimes I think you've completely forgotten that your function on this forum is to indulge my every whim.

Fine, I'll go look it up.

[Kingtiger]

LOL! sounds like brother and sister having an argue... :-D

[Hell_Hound]

One source said a pixel spacing of 0.3 minutes of arc. Another said 17,000 point sources per (square?) inch.

Using the first number, and a 30-inch distance from screen to eye, the diameter of a pixel would be 30" x pi/10800 = 0.008727 inches.

If a screen is 14.6" x 12.2" (making it a 19-inch) and runs at 1024x768, the pixels end up being about twice that big...so we cannot rest until we have machines that run at 2048x1536. :)

The above ignores the fact that on a 19-inch monitor, only about 18 inches are "viewable". When I am king, whoever came up with the standards for the CRT industry will be flogged.

[ShotMagnet]

http://www.4colorvision.com/standeye.htm#signal

Nominal energy threshold of first Activa in photoreceptor adaptation amplifiers >2.0 Electron-volts equiv. to 600 nm. Not over 2.34 EV based on Sliney data

This would seem to be a little more relevant, as it's based on activation energies and equates that to a linear distance, which I'm assuming represents a predetermined number of emitted photons per second. The link will correctly my poor, cursory interpretations.


Shot

[PazamBamba]

Hi I'm new here

I just bought a new pc a couple of weeks ago maily to play sb pro PE,
and it's top of the class, except for the gpu, a geforce 5700 LE 256 MB (I know it sucks, I didn't agree to this).
Will I be able to run sb pro PE with AA and high resolution? Far cry and HL2 run flawlessly at the highest settings...

[Dewman]

Don't know about the GPU but if you can get those games to run good I say you have a good chance to get SB pro to run well.. But then the GPU may kill allof it..

[NEpi]

<NEpi comes out of his lair>

fee-fi-fo-fum, i smell the blood of a psychophysician (i know, i know, psychophysicist. better have a ticket from the spelling police than taken care of by the rythm goons).

measuring the "absolute threashold" of the eye is more complicated than this:
1. the "real" absolute threshold is of the "night vision" system (the rods are taking care of this), and is completely useless when light is strong enough (the minimum light to differentiate colors)
2. it ddepends on the spectral length. as humans, we have an ultra-sophisticated tri-color visual system, plus night vision. each color has a different set of threshold.
3. it depends on the position on the retina: the distribution of the 4 kinds of photo-receptors is not unified (best vision in the few degrees in the center, blind spot, etc.), and it might be changed for different persons.
4. resolution seems to change with age. the photoreceptors on the retina disassemble wit age, the eye lense loses lucidness (sp?), and the focus of the eye is less effective (reading glasses, anyone?). sometimes, the lense also distorts (astigmatism).
5. resolution changes with time. from my brief experience with both younger and older subjects, it seems that people born in 1975 and on have a much quicker perception and degraded concentration. my guess is it has something to do with erratic TV in infancy and childhood.
6. we have built-in anti-aliasing. object identification is a marvelous feat our brains do increadiblly quickly. we also seem to disregard "glitches" from what we perceive as "what it should have been". that means that small enough dots give us the same phenomenologic expereince as a real smooth picture.
6a. because of that, we can have noticeable pixelization, and it won't affect our performance one bit.

saying all that, i'd say that rather aiming for the ability of the eye to percieve such resolution, we should check the screens to see if they show us such resolutions. if not, then what difference does it make?
in any case, i'd go for the puding test.

HH, 30" distance is a little too far away. people use approx. 60cm, which is ~25". not that it makes such a difference :)

Bamba, first, welcome. i'd say that if your PC can have farcry and HL2 without a burp, then it isn't such a crappy GPU afterall.

[Skip]

My current system has an Nvidia GeForce FX Go5600. Where does this fit on the scale vis-a-vis a GeForce 3? (My guess would be that it isn't even on the scale but I'm not up on current video hardware so I thought I might as well ask.)

[Hell_Hound]

I think the 5600 is an increment above the GF3, but not a huge difference.

Have a look at http://www.tomshardware.com and you should be able to find how it stacks up to its contemporaries.

My FX5700 is fair-to-good for SB Pro, so I would guess a 5600 is borderline. If you have a gutsy processor it might save the day, though. :)

[ShotMagnet]

measuring the "absolute threashold" of the eye is more complicated than this...

Assuredly. I grabbed what I thought looked relevant, after a cursory and admittedly un-critical look. There were a dozen or so pages of data to look at, I wanted to include them here and was saved from doing so by the way the site was constructed.


Shot