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[Rosur]

I mean doesn't this almost seems like a stealth release to you guys ?
There is no marketing whatsoever, no hype at all.

Yea that's what I'm thinking the stealth release and probably they couldn't do marketing in 2015 due to their MS deal and they'd want it on another platform quickly so 1st Friday works for them (also not seen anything about a physical PC release yet).

Also think they will save their marketing budge for the PS4 version in the fall.

I think what they mean is that the bundle of GPU+game will go on sale on the 7th, not the game itself. You will just get a key that you can use to "pre-order" the game on steam. This site probably misinterpreted the e-mail.

Ah yea that makes more sense than the date of the game.

 

[Kezen]

Square releasing the game on Steam without MS knowing about it.

That makes no sense. Square Enix obviously made their plans very clear regarding the PC version.

Maybe Microsoft will market it better considering it's one of the earliest AAA stuff on their Windows Store.
I wonder who is going to buy it there, I don't see the incentive at all. Perhaps pre-order bonuses or Live achievements.

 

[NIN90]

Is the Nvidia promo start date the only reason why people believe the game is gonna release on January 7th? If so, are you guys conveniently forgetting that these promos usually start weeks before the actual release?

 

[fantomena]

That makes no sense. Square Enix obviously made their plans very clear regarding the PC version.

Maybe Microsoft will market it better considering it's one of the earliest AAA stuff on their Windows Store.
I wonder who is going to buy it there, I don't see the incentive at all. Perhaps pre-order bonuses or Live achievements.

It was a joke to all those "stealth" release posts.

I bet the game is releasing on Steam and Win10 Store the last week of january. I would love to be wrong though and having the game release sooner.

 

[Kezen]

It was a joke to all those "stealth" release posts.

I bet the game is releasing on Steam and Win10 Store the last week of january. I would love to be wrong though and having the game release sooner.

Oh sorry about the misunderstanding, I'm a bit rusty.

Yeah I think end of January is definitely more plausible.

 

[Bronetta]

WTB Rise of the Tomb Raider Nvidia Key - $30

 

[KojiKnight]

Is the Nvidia promo start date the only reason why people believe the game is gonna release on January 7th? If so, are you guys conveniently forgetting that these promos usually start weeks before the actual release?

This. I got an AMD code for Tomb Raider 2013 with my 7870 before the game came out, had to wait around like a chump for it to unlock.

 

[NeoRaider]

They said that embargo lift off is on January 7 in that email from Latin America.
Could it be just date when promo starts? And game being released between January 7 and February 23 or 26 i think?

I mean if promotion starts on January 7, it doesn't need to be release date for the game right?

 

[JaseC]

I mean if promotion starts on January 7, it doesn't need to be release date for the game right?

Yes. As in, "Yes, that's correct" and not "Yes, it does."

 

[Kezen]

It just hit me that if this is an Nvidia sponsored release that means Andy should have one of his awesome guide.

 

[roytheone]

It just hit me that if this is an Nvidia sponsored release that means Andy should have one of his awesome guide.

I don't really care about nvidia sponsored VS AMD sponsored, but it is always a shame if a game doesn't get an Andy guide, those things are godlike for determining which setting to turn down and which to keep up.

 

[Kezen]

I don't really care about nvidia sponsored VS AMD sponsored, but it is always a shame if a game doesn't get an Andy guide, those things are godlike for determining which setting to turn down and which to keep up.

I agree. Very in depth and informative, but remember that tests will be made on a 980ti.

Regarding the deal, it's still strange to me. 2016 Square Enix releases like Deus Ex MD and Hitman are branded by AMD. Why would ROTTR be the exception ?

Anyway, it remains to be seen what kind of partnership we are talking about here : purely marketing or both technical and marketing. I would not mind Nvidia collaborating on some good visual effects, without any Gameworks features.

 

[Self_Destructive]

I don't really care about nvidia sponsored VS AMD sponsored, but it is always a shame if a game doesn't get an Andy guide, those things are godlike for determining which setting to turn down and which to keep up.

Absolutely. Andy goes crazy on those guides sometimes.

Many people likely can't appreciate just exactly how much time and effort goes into making a guide like that. Though I'm sure he has the process fairly streamlined nowadays, there's just a ton of work.

I would love a RotTR guide. Hope we get one.

 

[PLASTICA-MAN]

The funny thing is that The Rise Of Tomb raider doesn't use NVidia HairWorks tech but uses AMD TressFX 3.0 tech and will surely have the AMD logo when starting the game !

 

[Kezen]

The funny thing is that The Rise Of Tomb raider doesn't use NVidia HairWorks tech but uses AMD TressFX 3.0 tech and will surely have the AMD logo when starting the game !

But Tressfx runs on Nvidia cards, and well at that. It does not matter it is the result of an AMD-Crystal Dynamics collaboration.

As to the AMD logo during startup I strongly doubt it.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/03/20/tomb_raider_video_card_performance_iq_review/6

Remember, the GK104 is "weak" at compute, or so I've heard.

 

[hodgy100]

Remember, the GK104 is "weak" at compute, or so I've heard.

It's not weak at compute. It's weak rapidly switching between compute and graphics.something that wont really rear its head till dx12 is standard.

 

[AerialAir]

Didn't know the game had bomba so much.

 

[Kezen]

It's not weak at compute. It's weak rapidly switching between compute and graphics.something that wont really rear its head till dx12 is standard.

But don't all Nvidia GPUs rely on context switching ? Or are some Nvidia GPUs equipped with a mechanism destined to lesser the cost of context switching ?

 

[Locuza]

It's not weak at compute. It's weak rapidly switching between compute and graphics.something that wont really rear its head till dx12 is standard.

It's weak at compute.
http://techreport.com/review/28513/amd-radeon-r9-fury-x-graphics-card-reviewed/4

Keplers Shader-Array is really not the best.
The register-file bandwidth is not even enough to feed all 192 ALUs at maximum occupancy.
You could even say Kepler is broken by design in this case.

One paper comparison
http://www.realworldtech.com/kepler-brief/

But don't all Nvidia GPUs rely on context switching ? Or are some Nvidia GPUs equipped with a mechanism destined to lesser the cost of context switching ?

Every GPU has somekind of context switching going on.
And every GPU driver optimize behind the scenes the workload and what and how concurrent work is executed.

But I really don't know how good or bad each Vendors Architectures are right now.

 

[Kezen]

It's weak at compute.
http://techreport.com/review/28513/amd-radeon-r9-fury-x-graphics-card-reviewed/4

Keplers Shader-Array is really not the best.
The register-file bandwidth is not even enough to feed all 192 ALUs at maximum occupancy.
You could even say Kepler is broken by design in this case.

One paper comparison
http://www.realworldtech.com/kepler-brief/


Every GPU has somekind of context switching going on.
And every GPU driver optimize behind the scenes the workload and what and how concurrent work is executed.

But I really don't know how good or bad each Vendors Architectures are right now.

My admittedly superficial understanding is that Nvidia's Kepler and Maxwell are not quite as good as AMD's GCN when it comes to compute workloads, and are more tuned towards geometry/rasterization. I believe Maxwell is a significant improvement regarding compute though hence why it should age much better than Kepler cards which to be honest do well in modern AAA games.
Continuing, I've read that most compute workloads are bandwidth limited and this is AMD's territory. It should be noted that I got that "knowledge" from AMD biased outlets and blogs. Maybe Nvidia are better than some make them out to be, and this could be backed by the most demanding games of today which do not run bad at all on Kepler GPUs, although GCN (even 1.0) does better overall.

 

[MAX PAYMENT]

Awesome.

Now I have to decide if the upgrade from a 670 to a 970 is worth it.

 

[Locuza]

My admittedly superficial understanding is that Nvidia's Kepler and Maxwell are not quite as good as AMD's GCN when it comes to compute workloads, and are more tuned towards geometry/rasterization. I believe Maxwell is a significant improvement regarding compute though hence why it should age much better than Kepler cards which to be honest do well in modern AAA games.
Continuing, I've read that most compute workloads are bandwidth limited and this is AMD's territory. It should be noted that I got that "knowledge" from AMD biased outlets and blogs. Maybe Nvidia are better than some make them out to be, and this could be backed by the most demanding games of today which do not run bad at all on Kepler GPUs, although GCN (even 1.0) does better overall.

Since Fermi Nvidia has a really solid and robust Front-End.
It scales very well and outputs good triangle throughput and of course Tessellation is strong.

Maxwell is an big improvement.
They reduced the ALU--Cluster-Size from 192 ALUs to 128.
Now the balance is right.

From the techreport benchmarks you also see that the throughput got better and the latency went down from Kepler to Maxwell.

 

[Kezen]

Since Fermi Nvidia has a really solid and robust Front-End.
It scales very well and outputs good triangle throughput and of course Tessellation is strong.

Maxwell is an big improvement.
They reduced the ALU--Cluster-Size from 192 ALUs to 128.
Now the balance is right.

From the techreport benchmarks you also see that the throughput got better and the latency went down from Kepler to Maxwell.

Powerful geometry engines are never a bad thing but aren't most of today's AAA games more compute limited than geometry limited ? I suppose this explains why Maxwell fares better.

We can project Pascal to be even more compute focused.

For those wondering I don't think our little discussion is off topic, far from it as it is directly related to Rise of the Tomb Raider which uses compute for many things.
This has the profile of a game favoring AMD, I'm not going to be shocked if it performs noticeably better on "corresponding" AMD hardware (7970 vs 680, 290 vs 780, 390 vs 970, 390X vs 980 etc..).

 

[roytheone]

I agree. Very in depth and informative, but remember that tests will be made on a 980ti.

Regarding the deal, it's still strange to me. 2016 Square Enix releases like Deus Ex MD and Hitman are branded by AMD. Why would ROTTR be the exception ?

Anyway, it remains to be seen what kind of partnership we are talking about here : purely marketing or both technical and marketing. I would not mind Nvidia collaborating on some good visual effects, without any Gameworks features.

Yeah, I actually ran into that issue today with assassins creed: syndicate. The guide said that PCSS shadows only costs 3 fps extra over high, but lowering that setting to high actually gave me a 10 fps increase. So they aren't always the most accurate for me.

 

[kuYuri]

To clarify, January 7th is the start of the promo and not necessarily the release date for the PC version.

 

[Nyteshade517]

To clarify, January 7th is the start of the promo and not necessarily the release date for the PC version.

I'm gonna guess the launch date will be what was leaked by Amazon France...

January 29 (or that date for Europe and January 26 for NA)

 

[Kezen]

To clarify, January 7th is the start of the promo and not necessarily the release date for the PC version.

Are any specific effects mentioned in the promo ?

Regarding compute, they definitely thought about it after shipping TR2013.

 

[Mindman]

To clarify, January 7th is the start of the promo and not necessarily the release date for the PC version.

Yep. The game will come out in January sometime. The marketing hasn't started for the game because of the embargo.

 

[kuYuri]

Are any specific effects mentioned in the promo ?

Pretty much everything that's in the OP other than the promotion having an end date of February 23rd.

My source does not have any other information regarding the game itself or the PC version. It's purely about the promo.

 

[Dictator93]

This makes me wonder if the game will have both NV and AMD effects work, like other games such as Crysis 3.

 

[Self_Destructive]

This makes me wonder if the game will have both NV and AMD effects work, like other games such as Crysis 3.

Apparently it will feature Gameworks effects and Hairworks.

https://translate.google.com/transl...z.com/youxi/2016-01-02/599677.html&edit-text=

I believe that many players already know, "Tomb Raider: The Rise (Rise of the Tomb Raider)" PC version coming this month to meet with us, but for the game has also collaborated with N card. NVIDIA now on the use of "Tomb Raider: The Rise" to do publicity for their own cards, they announced N card will be bundled with "Tomb Raider: The Rise of the" big promotion is about to begin.

According to Russian media reports, N card bundled with "Tomb Raider: The Rise of" promotion from January 7, 2016 start for the card include GTX970, GTX980, GTX980Ti etc. Desktop GPU, as well as equipped with GTX 970M, GTX 980M and GTX 980 graphics card laptop.

At present, "Tomb Raider: The Rise," the PC version has not been released configuration requirements, taking into account the GTX 970 graphics card is bundled started, so PC version of the game will not fall below the recommended configuration GTX 970.

NVIDIA GTX 970 big promotion! Buy a graphics card to send "Tomb Raider: The Rise of" PC version
N card because it is optimized, "Tomb Raider: The Rise" will have NVIDIA GameWorks features, including NV of hairwors etc. hair technology. Prior to AMD's Head & Shoulders 3.0 official said the game is not affected.

Buy now NVIDIA has not released N card to send "Tomb Raider: The Rise of" promotion in which countries and regions will be, but according to the "traditional" players little chance mainland.

"Tomb Raider: The Rise of" PC version will be available in January 2016.

Of course this isn't 100% confirmation and is translated from Russian, but who knows..

 

[Locuza]

Powerful geometry engines are never a bad thing but aren't most of today's AAA games more compute limited than geometry limited ? I suppose this explains why Maxwell fares better.

We can project Pascal to be even more compute focused.

For those wondering I don't think our little discussion is off topic, far from it as it is directly related to Rise of the Tomb Raider which uses compute for many things.
This has the profile of a game favoring AMD, I'm not going to be shocked if it performs noticeably better on "corresponding" AMD hardware (7970 vs 680, 290 vs 780, 390 vs 970, 390X vs 980 etc..).

I believe the amount of compute-shader usage is fairly small in many games for the whole rendering-time.
Only now we have this more heavily transition towards compute, since we left the last generation consoles.

In contrast to simple compute-shaders, where "simply" the shader-array is important and GCN is very strong we have pixel- and vertex-shader stuff and sometimes even geometry-shaders.
Here are many different things important, the Rasterizer, the ROPs and how the architecture eats the different Data-Input.
Many stages where Nvidia is quite good at.

The first TressFX Version for examples uses compute for the hair simulation, but it also needs to render those hair and uses geometry-shaders for some steps, where GCN really sucks at, because of the wide thread-group-size of 64 vs. 32 from Nvidia.
The parallelism of geometry-shaders is really small as I understood, so you loose more performance the wider the machine is.
One reason why you don't really see that GCN is much better than Kepler.
TressFX 2.0 changed the execution model a bit, now it uses vertex-shader where previously geometry-shaders were used.
Now in theory AMD should scale better.

On a side-note, HairWorks uses Geometry-Shaders and Tessellation, it uses all Shader-Stages available on DX11.
Not quite the best technical solution, for any architecture.

For Tomb Raider we have adaptive Tessellation for the snow, I'm curious to see how well Nvidia and AMD performs at it.

 

[Nyteshade517]

Apparently it will feature Gameworks effects and Hairworks.

https://translate.google.com/transl...z.com/youxi/2016-01-02/599677.html&edit-text=



Of course this isn't 100% confirmation and is translated from Russian, but who knows..

GameWorks and HairWorks?

ugh

I will stay away from this until it's out to see how it will actually run on AMD cards

 

[Kezen]

Apparently it will feature Gameworks effects and Hairworks.

https://translate.google.com/transl...z.com/youxi/2016-01-02/599677.html&edit-text=



Of course this isn't 100% confirmation and is translated from Russian, but who knows..

I don't see the point of implementing Hairworks when Tressfx (at least the first iteration) runs well enough on Nvidia cards.
So I'm not hyped about Hairworks at all, if Gameworks features have to made the cut I want HBAO+ and tessellation.

I believe the amount of compute-shader usage is fairly small in many games for the whole rendering-time.
Only now we have this more heavily transition towards compute, since we left the last generation consoles.

In contrast to simple compute-shaders, where "simply" the shader-array is important and GCN is very strong we have pixel- and vertex-shader stuff and sometimes even geometry-shaders.
Here are many different things important, the Rasterizer, the ROPs and how the architecture eats the different Data-Input.
Many stages where Nvidia is quite good at.

The first TressFX Version for examples uses compute for the hair simulation, but it also needs to render those hair and uses geometry-shaders for some steps, where GCN really sucks at, because of the wide thread-group-size of 64 vs. 32 from Nvidia.
The parallelism of geometry-shaders is really small as I understood, so you loose more performance the wider the machine is.
One reason why you don't really see that GCN is much better than Kepler.
TressFX 2.0 changed the execution model a bit, now it uses vertex-shader where previously geometry-shaders were used.
Now in theory AMD should scale better.

On a side-note, HairWorks uses Geometry-Shaders and Tessellation, it uses all Shader-Stages available on DX11.
Not quite the best technical solution, for any architecture.

For Tomb Raider we have adaptive Tessellation for the snow, I'm curious to see how well Nvidia and AMD performs at it.

Ok thanks for this complementary information, I don't think the adaptive tessellation is going to be demanding at all, unless there is a prest to enhance it greatly.
I suppose the tessellation factor must be very low so Nvidia-AMD should be equal.

Tessellation in the previous Tomb Raider did not run faster on Nvidia hardware.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/03/20/tomb_raider_video_card_performance_iq_review/6#.VogEnxU82Uk

I am hitting the limit with my 670.. Is a 970 a good upgrade or better to wait until mid-late 2016?

Depends on your definition of "good", but objectively it is a very significant upgrade.
The next round of card is not expected soon so you can bite right now.

However, for the price the R9 390 from AMD is also to consider. It is very strong in today's games and Gameworks stuff runs on AMD hardware in the majority of cases, including HBAO+.

 

[7DollarHagane]

I am hitting the limit with my 670.. Is a 970 a good upgrade or better to wait until mid-late 2016?

 

[MAX PAYMENT]

I am hitting the limit with my 670.. Is a 970 a good upgrade or better to wait until mid-late 2016?

You're in the same boat as me!

Let me know what conclusion you come to.

 

[Locuza]

I don't see the point of implementing Hairworks when Tressfx (at least the first iteration) runs well enough on Nvidia cards.
So I'm not hyped about Hairworks at all, if Gameworks features have to made the cut I want HBAO+ and tessellation.
[]
Ok thanks for this complementary information, I don't think the adaptive tessellation is going to be demanding at all, unless there is a prest to enhance it greatly.
I suppose the tessellation factor must be very low so Nvidia-AMD should be equal.

Tessellation in the previous Tomb Raider did not run faster on Nvidia hardware.

It would extremely surprise me if they really implement HairWorks.
But it would be very awesome to compare both solutions.
Although we don't really know how Tomb Raider solves the Hair-Rendering.
Is it TressFX 3.0? Is it a custom solution? Is it something in between?

The adaptive Tessellation looks really rough in the title, I really hope there is a preset with higher quality.
But when they don't do anything I also don't think that it will affect performance much on both sides.

 

[Kezen]

It would extremely surprise me if they really implement HairWorks.
But it would be very awesome to compare both solutions.
Although we don't really know how Tomb Raider solves the Hair-Rendering.
Is it TressFX 3.0? Is it a custom solution? Is it something in between?

The adaptive Tessellation looks really rough in the title, I really hope there is a preset with higher quality.
But when they don't do anything I also don't think that it will affect performance much on both sides.

For comparison's purposes it would be interesting, but is it not a waste of one's time ? The game is already equipped with a robust hair simulation solution, I'd rather have a higher quality preset for hair rendering (above the one used on console) or Tressfx used on other assets than Hairworks. I don't hate Hairworks at all by the way, the only reason I left it off in The Witcher 3 is simply because my 980 really can't handle it, even the "low" Hairworks preset makes my game stutter.

So frankly if I was working at developer relation Hairworks would not even be a proposition, it's better to focus on what the game lacks and a visually convincing hair rendering solution it does not.
I've mentioned it several times already but the AA is really inconsistent on console, I would certainly not mind a much improved post process solution.
HBAO+, some additional tessellation here and here, better LOD, higher quality textures, POM also (the mud looks really flat), among other more or less minor things.

ROTTR uses Tressfx 3.0 :
http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/matthew-wilson/rise-of-the-tomb-raider-will-have-improved-tressfx/

 

[Teletraan1]

You're in the same boat as me!

Add me to that boat as well. I have already decided to wait until the next round of cards. The prices here on the 970 aren't really dropping at all, and the 980 versions are still priced out of my range. My hope is that I can get ~980 performance at the ~970s price when the new cards launch. Plus I have to find something without the ridiculous coil whine I have on my current 670. Those loud PS4 threads make me laugh compared to how loud my 670 is.

 

[MAX PAYMENT]

Add me to that boat as well. I have already decided to wait until the next round of cards. The prices here on the 970 aren't really dropping at all, and the 980 versions are still priced out of my range. My hope is that I can get ~980 performance at the ~970s price when the new cards launch. Plus I have to find something without the ridiculous coil whine I have on my current 670. Those loud PS4 threads make me laugh compared to how loud my 670 is.

I was thinking a out waiting a year for some decent 4k card in the 350 price range to appear.

 

[Flandy]

I have a 970 but if I had a 670 I'd just wait it out and play games at 30fps in the meantime. 970 is a great card but I feel like I'm already limited by it when I try to play newer games at 60fps.

 

[MAX PAYMENT]

I have a 970 but if I had a 670 I'd just wait it out and play games at 30fps in the meantime. 970 is a great card but I feel like I'm already limited by it when I try to play newer games at 60fps.

At 1080p?

 

[7DollarHagane]

I have a 970 but if I had a 670 I'd just wait it out and play games at 30fps in the meantime. 970 is a great card but I feel like I'm already limited by it when I try to play newer games at 60fps.

Yeah witcher 3 looked great still but at 30fps, and just cause 3 works fine. Hopefully this means cheap copies of rott are available.

 

[Ricerocket]

If the intro splash screen is AMD, it will be hilarious. Nvidia paying for bundle, MS paid just to add to the list of X1's best games of Xbox History 2015 and nothing else, SE is just straight up selling this game for short term gains thinking it won't do well on it's own. Now it seems they can't even promote the game unless it involves X1.

 

[Ricerocket]

I have a 970 but if I had a 670 I'd just wait it out and play games at 30fps in the meantime. 970 is a great card but I feel like I'm already limited by it when I try to play newer games at 60fps.

That's nonsense, not sure what new game is limiting your 970, it's certainly not on mines. This is at 1080P though so if you're higher res (1440p) then perhaps it can be limited.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

Rise of the Tomb Raider is £21 at CDKeys.

...it begins.

(also lists 29th Jan)

 

[Kezen]

Rise of the Tomb Raider is £21 at CDKeys.

...it begins.

(also lists 29th Jan)

Very tempting, but I refrain from purchasing from those sites because I want the publisher/developper to get my money.

 

[Mifec]

Rise of the Tomb Raider is £21 at CDKeys.

...it begins.

(also lists 29th Jan)

Yep just checked $31.01

Very tempting, but I refrain from purchasing from those sites because I want the publisher/developper to get my money.

CDkeys buys boxed copies from tier 2 regions in bulk, then sells the code. So the pub gets the money, obv less since tier 2, but it's not like they are scamming them.

 

[yatesl]

Rise of the Tomb Raider is £21 at CDKeys.

...it begins.

(also lists 29th Jan)

 

[Garrett Hawke]

Very tempting, but I refrain from purchasing from those sites because I want the publisher/developper to get my money.

Same. I already bought it off the XBL store so I'll see how my finances are closer to launch

Thanks for the translator's note.