I have a GeForce 4 440Mx and I''ve been learning Direct3D 8.1. I was wondering will my lack of a DirectX 8 Graphics card limit me from utilising some of the features of DirectX 8, or will they work but just run slower?

Well, as the GeForce4 mx440 lacks Vertex and Pixel shader technology, you will not be able to use those features. Technically I believe DirectX will attempt to emulate the features with your processor, but with such advanced features such as Vertex and Pixel shaders the emulation would be unbearably slow.

[edited by - MikeMJH on July 2, 2003 4:45:47 AM]

DirectXXX has it right. If you make sure to use the HARDWARE_VERTEXPROCESSING and SOFTWARE_VERTEXPROCESSING flags well, you can make your program use Vertex Shaders in software when they aren''t supported in hardware. It''s not as good as doing it in hardware, but the program should generally still run at a decent rate.

However, pixel shaders are a different thing. They require calculations per-pixel which the CPU can''t emulate well unless it ignores the hardware acceleration completely. In order to get pixel shader emulation, you''ll have to enable the Reference Rasterizer...but prepare to watch your framerate crumble and fall!

Oops, sorry if I was wrong about the vertex shadar support. I just checked NVidia''s website vis-a-vis the mx440 and it didn''t list the usual nfiniteFX Engine stuff, like it does for the GeForce4 Tis so I assumed it didn''t support them.