Ninja programmer 'Chuck' lets PC outclass Xbox 360 in Oblivion visuals
A mysterious ATI driver developer known only to the world as 'Chuck' has hax0red teh drivar megahurtz to allow Radeon X1K boards to render Oblivion in 'HDR' rendering mode with multi-sample anti-aliasing on. A combination of features only found on the Xbox 360 version so far, 'HDR' with multi-sample AA is orthogonal on the latest Radeon hardware, so Chuck's madskillz made it happen.Geek bit: I'm fairly sure it's nothing much more than a change of backbuffer surface format so that MSAA resolve works and then scanout from that as normal. So the driver just allocates the 'right' surface format at runtime when the app requests the non MSAA-able format, and uses that for rendering.
The driver also enables Crossfire for Oblivion (AFR), making X1900 XT Crossfire probably the best Oblivion platform currently available.
As an aside, the email from Terry Makedon that let assorted hacks worldwide know about the upcoming driver to enable 'HDR' + MSAA and Crossfire support was caught by an email filter I use as 'possible sexual spam'. Here's the email.
From: Terry Makedon
Sent: 06 April 2006 20:18
To: FAT HACK
Subject: hot news
Guys I have something exciting coming very shortly today…. Feel free to write about it if you wish….
Game: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Situation: Game supports AA. Game supports HDR. Game don’t support both.
Introducing: later today…. The “Chuck” patch… supporting HDR AND AA…
Last week I got an email from a 3d Developer of ours (by the name of Chuck) saying if I was interested in checking out a proof of concept driver he whipped up that enables HDR plus AA at the same time. Well ya!!!
So fast forward to now, thanks to Chuck Ati users can enjoy this game at a brand new level of Image Quality. It will knock your socks off.
Plus the Chuck Patch also supports AFR Crossfire mode giving gains up to 80%. I urge you to benchmark this yourself but here is what Chuck measured.
Hurrah to Chuck!!!!
Let me know if you write about this story. I want Chuck to see it!
The email scanner I used classified the email as possible sex spam due to overuse of exclamation marks, all lowercase and the word 'hot' in the subject, and the words 'whipped' and 'urge' in the message body. Methinks Terry likes TES4 a bit more than is normal. Dirty man that he is.
Anyway, hurrah indeed! Get the driver here.
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