DOOM 3: Ultra Shadow For FX series?

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce Drivers Section' started by khohne, Aug 23, 2004.

  1. khohne

    khohne Master Guru

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    What about the Ultra Shadow Technology that the Geforce FX 5700 series, 5900 Series and 5950 Series support. How do we enable that in DOOM 3 for us people owning these series of cards?

    Remember every one that has these cards, we have Ultra Shadow v1.0 so we should be able to make use of it somehow right.

    Your thoughts Guru's?
     
  2. Pridekiller

    Pridekiller Guest

    I was wondering the same thing, couse now all gf6 users are reclaiming the "ultrashadow 2". We have the same right, don't we?
     
  3. Zeco

    Zeco New Member

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    Me too. I thought the same. Why buying a card with some cool features which I can't use in games? Could anybody from the guru3d.com team answer the question. Please give us an instruction for this.
     
  4. Shataan

    Shataan Maha Guru

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    I added the same commandline to my config, and as far as I know it is working. They say that it does work for the 5900/5950s.


    seta com_fixedTic "-1" removes 60 fsp cap

    ""You may remember I had posted details last week that UltraShadow II wasn’t being utilized for Doom 3, like most of you had expected it would. John Carmack mentioned that it can be enabled, but it may require unreleased drivers.

    I emailed Brian Burke at NVIDIA about this, to see if the latest 61.77 drivers supported UltraShadow II, and whether the technology can be used in Doom 3. Here’s what he had to say:

    "The NVIDIA Forceware graphics driver version 61.77
    and the GeForce FX and 6 Series of GPUs provide
    superior performance in Doom 3 thanks in part to
    NVIDIA’s UltraShadow technology. The retail box
    version of Doom 3 transparently benefits from
    UltraShadow II’s efficient Stencil Shadowing Engine.

    Doom 3 also directly supports UltraShadow II’s depth
    bounds test for accelerating shadow volume rendering,
    but this feature must be explicitly enabled with
    the r_useDepthBoundsTest console variable."


    How UltraShadow II Affects Doom 3

    Turning up multisampling (FSAA) and turning down anisotropic filtering and texture detail is a way to see benefits of UltraShadow II at work. Essentially those on low-end computers can benefit it the most. Here’s a technical explanation by an unnamed NVIDIA employee about how UltraShadow II works in Doom 3 and how to benefit from its technology:


    The benefit from “r_useDepthBoundsTest 1” will be greatest when you turn up multisampling and increase your screen resolution and turn down (or simply leave alone) things that affect shading speed (aniso, texture detail).

    This is because “r_useDepthBoundsTest 1” improves the stenciled shadow volume rendering performance portion of Doom3’s rendering workload (but can’t help the shading portion).

    You can SEE the benefit of “r_useDepthBoundsTest 1” by also enabling “r_showShadows 1” (that renders the shadow volumes in wireframe to visualize the shadow volumes that are otherwise rendered invisibly). If you toggle betweeen “r_useDepthBoundsTest” on an off, you’ll see less wireframe shadow stuff is rendered. This is indicative of the kind of pixel update savings going on when “r_useDepthBoundsTest” is enabled.

    The wireframe shadow volume pixels you no longer see being rendered when “r_useDepthBoundsTest” is on are for pixels that are NOT going to be in shadow for a particular occluder. UltraShadow is effectively saving this pixel update work.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    He also gave more technical details about UltraShadow II.

    UltraShadow II is a collection of a number of technologies including the following:

    Stencil Shadowing Engine which includes:
    two-sided stencil
    fast z/stencil-only rendering
    fast z/stencil culling
    programmable depth bounds test

    To enable UltraShadow II in Doom 3,
    bring down the console by holding down
    CTRL+ALT and hitting the ~ key. Type
    in r_useDepthBoundsTest 1 and hit enter.
    Then type vid_restart and hit enter. UltraShadow II
    should be enabled if you’re using the
    latest ForceWare and 6800 series card."

    UltraShadow II was included as a feature in the NV35=5900/5950 cards as well."
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2004

  5. foofi

    foofi Master Guru

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    No, i havent ultra shadows effects.
     
  6. ViperXtreme

    ViperXtreme Ancient Guru

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    eh? FX5900/5950/5700 only has UltraShadow I right?
     
  7. Zeco

    Zeco New Member

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    I also thought that the NV35 includes "only" Ultra Shadow I.
     
  8. Pridekiller

    Pridekiller Guest

    All FX5700 series and upper (i'm talking about fx5900xt,5900,5900se,5900ultra,5950ultra) have US support. GF6 series support US2.
     
  9. sookes

    sookes Master Guru

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    how does the game perform with the 60fps cap removed? thats what i want to know.
     
  10. What is it ment to do though? Does it make Doom3 look better? How?

    Thanks
     

  11. Darkfalz

    Darkfalz Guest

    I belive that most features of UltraShadow (I and II) are automatically utilised by the engine.

    r_useDepthBoundsTest 1 seems to work for me too. I got a small improvement in the timedemo (about 0.5 FPS) but I believe the performance increase is more in-game, as there aren't really many that shadows in the demo. Also when I used r_showShadows and then enabled/disabled r_useDepthBoundsTest I did notice that there were less lines, especially in the dark area and the FPS increased slightly with it on.

    So most likely it's fully supported by FX 5700/5900 cards, it's probably just faster with UltraShadow II.
     
  12. foofi

    foofi Master Guru

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  13. Darkfalz

    Darkfalz Guest

    5200/5600/5800 doesn't have any form of UltraShadow. It's only for 5700/5900 and 6800.
     
  14. Shataan

    Shataan Maha Guru

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    "how does the game perform with the 60fps cap removed? thats what i want to know."

    Very nice.
     
  15. Victor Morales

    Victor Morales Guest

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    cool i am going to try this when i get home from work
     

  16. jbscotchman

    jbscotchman Guest

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    Shouldn't Ultra Shadow automatically be enabled for anyone with an FX/6800 series card?
     
  17. Mchart

    Mchart Master Guru

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    Like I said, and i will say it again, ANY card that uses ANY form of ultrashadow, and you are using forceware 61.77+, will be auto-enabled in all games.
     
  18. Darkfalz

    Darkfalz Guest

    It's not auto enabled in all games, it has to be SPECIFICALLY SUPPORTED by the game. But Doom 3 does support it.

    r_useDepthBoundsTest 1 enables one feature of UltraShadow that isn't automatically utilised.
     
  19. Darkfalz

    Darkfalz Guest

    It doesn't do what's expected. I believe the physics is still at 60 FPS, and thus frames over that, while they will be renderered, are simply "dupes" of previous frames (ie. in areas I had it running at 85 FPS @ 85 Hz, it wasn't smooth, it looked just like at 60 FPS).
     
  20. sookes

    sookes Master Guru

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    thats the answer i was looking for thanx dark...
     

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