Epic's UE3-Powered Samaritan Demo Showcased Running on NVIDIA Kepler Card

[Cristian_25H]

One year after its debut, Epic Games' Samaritan Tech Demo is back at the GDC (Game Developers Conference) and it's there to tease the power of NVIDIA's Kepler 28 nm GPU. At last year's GDC Samaritan, which is based on Unreal Engine 3, was running in real-time on three GeForce GTX 580 cards set in SLI. This year Epic is showing off the demo running on a single NVIDIA Kepler graphics card.





NVIDIA still isn't talking Kepler so instead it focused on the use of FXAA (Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing) in Samaritan.

"Without anti-aliasing, Samaritan's lighting pass uses about 120 MB of GPU memory. Enabling 4x MSAA consumes close to 500 MB, or a third of what's available on the GTX 580. This increased memory pressure makes it more challenging to fit the demo's highly detailed textures into the GPU's available VRAM, and led to increased paging and GPU memory thrashing, which can sometimes decrease framerates," said Ignacio Llamas, a Senior Research Scientist at NVIDIA.

"FXAA is a shader-based anti-aliasing technique," however, and as such "doesn't require additional memory so it's much more performance friendly for deferred renderers such as Samaritan." By freeing up this additional memory developers will have the option of reinvesting it in additional textures or other niceties, increasing graphical fidelity even further."

To see a comparison between Samaritan with 4x MSAA and with FXAA 3 check out this page. The GTX 580-powered Samaritan can be viewed below.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Benetanegia]

FXAA has improved a lot since the first version (and it always looked better than MLAA to me, it's sharper where it needs to be), but I still don't like the fact that it still screws up all the shading and texturing "subtleties". It makes lighting look dull and not as detailed as it is with no AA or MSAA. Considering the sheer amount of resources spent in lighting the scene to such a great detail I think it's a complete waste.

I think it's a great feature to have, so as to have the option to use it when performance is a concern, but I'd rather them focus on making MSAA or even SSAA more "affordable".

 

[theonedub]

Wow, from a TriSLI 580 setup to a single Kepler- looks like its time to send my 580 out to pasture before its worthless

 

[Crap Daddy]

There's another interesting bit apart from the obvious marketing stunt. Here's what Epic's Mark Rein says:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-03-08-gdc-epic-aiming-to-get-samaritan-into-flash

I will quote what caught my eye:

Speaking of the "Samaritan" demo, Rein noted that when they showed it off last year, it took three Nvidia cards and a massive power supply to run. However, now they were able to show it again running on a new, not yet released Nvidia card and one 200 watt power supply.

What's with this 200W PSU?

 

[LiveOrDie]

I want a kepler and that game looks sweet

 

[dj-electric]

(Stupid) people might read it and think that kepler is 3 times faster then a GTX580.

 

[crow1001]

wow kepler up there with 3x580 SLI, do want. AMD bend over and prepare to be raped hard.

 

[Kaynar]

wow kepler up there with 3x580 SLI, do want. AMD bend over and prepare to be raped hard.

Too bad cause the GTX680 will be up to 10% faster and down to 10% slower than the 7970 in games, according to a TPU recent thread.

http://www.techpowerup.com/161972/G...Speed-Boost-Arrives-This-Month-etc.-etc..html

The samaritan demo has simply been optimized to run better now, I bet than 2 GTX580 will run it smooth as silk too. The fact that a year ago they put 3x GTX580 to run it doesnt mean that it couldnt run just as well on 1 or 2 cards. Its all marketing.

 

[LiveOrDie]

Too bad cause the GTX680 will be up to 10% faster and down to 10% slower than the 7970 in games, according to a TPU recent thread.

http://www.techpowerup.com/161972/G...Speed-Boost-Arrives-This-Month-etc.-etc..html

The samaritan demo has simply been optimized to run better now, I bet than 2 GTX580 will run it smooth as silk too. The fact that a year ago they put 3x GTX580 to run it doesnt mean that it couldnt run just as well on 1 or 2 cards. Its all marketing.

And how do they know this can they predict the future i think not, Those are only rumors no hard info there, Just wait and see nvidia wont just turn a blind eye to the 7970

 

[Rapidfire48]

A lot of BS about Nvidia. I want to see it and not here about it. Talk is cheap and so far that is all they have produced is Bull Shit. It is typical Nvidia to wait until AMD releases there new card and then stall for months to optimize there offering to better themselves. By the time Kepler comes out AMD will be almost done with there 8+ Series .

 

[LiveOrDie]

A lot of BS about Nvidia. I want to see it and not here about it. Talk is cheap and so far that is all they have produced is Bull Shit. It is typical Nvidia to wait until AMD releases there new card and then stall for months to optimize there offering to better themselves. By the time Kepler comes out AMD will be almost done with there 8+ Series .

Did you forget what nvidia 6 series is its only a gap filler thats why this mid range GTX 680 is only a GK104.

 

[Bjorn_Of_Iceland]

yeah... not 3x faster GTX580. Doubt it. Would probably be equal to a GTX590.

 

[nemesis.ie]

What's with all the protagonists smoking in these game intros these days? My guess is it's product placement.

 

[ZoneDymo]

What's with all the protagonists smoking in these game intros these days? My guess is it's product placement.

Does not really work if you do not see the brand, might as well say the clothing is product placement.

 

[douglatins]

The GtX680 is not kepler fanboys.

 

[the54thvoid]

What's with all the protagonists smoking in these game intros these days? My guess is it's product placement.

Synthafag.

The protagonist also suffers from a severe skin allergy and has obvious issues with authority.

I believe Unreals next tech engine showcase is set on Lake Geneva in Summer with dandelions and sandals.

 

[Fluffmeister]

nV take my money!

 

[D4S4]

(Stupid) people might read it and think that kepler is 3 times faster then a GTX580.

@the post under this one