John Carmack's graphics engines have pushed gamers' expectations of graphics quality ever since he developed the first 3D engine, Quake, 15 years ago and until the id Tech 4 engine (used in Doom 3 and Quake 4).
Now Carmack's latest graphics engine is a few months from release along with Rage and - according to game reviewers - it is set to redefine graphics quality once more. But what graphics card does Carmack prefer and recommend to enjoy his latest creation to the fullest?
Answering that question, Carmack admitted that he has a personal inclination towards Nvidia's products - partially because they have a great developers support program where developers such as Carmack can get answers for their most obscure questions directly from the GPU creators.
Still, Carmack believes that "you almost can't make a bad decision with graphics cards nowadays. Any of the add-in cards from AMD or Nvidia are all insanely powerful. The only thing that's still lacking-and it's changing-is the integrated graphics parts. Rage executes on an Intel integrated graphics part, but it isn't something you'd want to run it on right now. But even that's going to be changing with the upcoming generations of things."
"I mean, the latest integrated graphics parts probably are more powerful in many ways than the consoles. If they gave us the same low-level of access, coupled with the much more powerful CPUs, we could do good stuff there. Of course, that's the worrisome large-scale industry dynamic there, where as integrated parts become "good enough," it's got to make life really scary for Nvidia on there. If it went that way to its logical conclusion, where Intel parts were good enough and Nvidia was pinched enough not to be able to do the continuous R&D, that would be an unfortunate thing for the industry."
"To some degree, it seems almost inevitable where the world of multi-hundred-dollar add-in cards are doing something that's being done pretty well by an on-die chip. Not right now, maybe not next year, but it's hard to imagine a world five years from now where you don't have competent graphics on every CPU die," Carmack concluded.
Comments
Card deaths
I've had both ATI and nVidia cards die on me. More nVidia because I've owned more nVidia. So, in reality, the best check for anyone to make is to just check what the current drivers look like. Sometimes ATI has better drivers, sometime nVidia. In reality: the hardware will make very little difference: the drivers are what will make/break the card.
I've never had a Nvidia video
I've never had a Nvidia video card die on me and I've been using them for around a decade now. From what I can remember, I've owned: Geforce 2 MX400, Geforce 4 MX420, FX5200, FX5700LE, 6600GT, 7600GT, 8800GTS, 9600GT and currently GTX580. Awesome considering I always overclock. I've never had an Ati card die on me either and I've owned quite a few of those, too. Are you people frying sausages on your video cards or something?
Nvidiots may have slightly
Nvidiots may have slightly more power than that of Ati but bang for buck ATI destroys nvidia everytime, I use to love nvidia but after 3 highend nvidia GPU deaths early in their life Im sticking with ATI.
Third paragraph
To quote the article. "Answering that question, Carmack admitted that he has a personal inclination towards Nvidia’s products – partially because they have a great developers support program where developers such as Carmack can get answers for their most obscure questions directly from the GPU creators."
Personally, as long as it works well and has good support, I don't care about brand.
Biased much?
Why do you guys lie, you say in the beginning of the article that he likes Nvidia more, but nowhere is he quoted saying that, are you guys that insanely biased or what?
I for one, am very impressed with my Intel i5 Sandy Bridge 2500k's integrated on die cpu/gpu. And it's only gonna get better with the ivy bridge later this year (30% more powerful than mine). I run Mirror's edge almost maxed out, I run L4D maxed out, I'm able to run NFS:Shift 2 on medium-ish, I run gta4 like shit but that's rockstar's fault I guess, and I run Minecraft like a champ, whether I use regular textures or hd textures or the GLSL shader mod.
For integrated graphics, that's impressive.
carmack is a dumbass
carmack is a dumbass. The Unreal engine is way better than his piece of crap engine.
QUAKE was the first 3D
QUAKE was the first 3D ENGINE, ENVIRONMENT,OBJECTS and CHARACTERS!!!!! ;)
All 3d games had that (as
All 3d games had that (as simple as they may have been). The difference lies in 3D game x 3D engine.
Wow! A sensible and honest
Wow! A sensible and honest developer! Who would have known? Many people seem to recommend ATi cards because of the prices but I've yet to have an nVidia card die on me so I'm happy to stay with nVidia.
The only bad thing about this article was the error at the start - Wolfenstein 3D was the first FPS, even before that there were other 3D engines.
Meanwhile: Tom Hall waits for the intellectual property rights for Commander Keen so he can finish the series :( ... WHY ID, WHY!?
I just had my second Nvidia
I just had my second Nvidia dying in least than 3 years.. However I never had any failure with ati cards.
not an error
Quake engine was the first 3d engine created by Carmack (and adopted by other mainstream games). Wofenstein 3D did not have an engine that could be separated from the rest of the game.
Yea
If that image is from one of their programming sessions to create RAGE it's going to be so good...
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