You might want to check the Graphics Algorithms forum. There is a lot of info on shadows over there.

As far as what shadow technique is the best, that all depends on your particular app. If you want to cast detailed shadows on arbitrary surfaces, then you basically have to pick between two types: shadow mapping or shadow volumes. Here is a small run down of each.

Shadow Mapping - Render the scene from the position of your light source(s). This will be rendered into a seperate render target (i.e. not the back buffer). Instead of writing out a color for a pixel, you write out it''s depth. Then you render your scene as you normally would from your camera. Except that when you go to render the scene, you calculate each pixel''s depth value and use that to compare against that same pixel''s depth value that you stored when you rendered from the light. That comparison tells you if the pixel is in shadow or not.

Shadow Volume - For each light source, you calculate the area where the shadow falls for each mesh in your scene. This will create new geometry every frame for every mesh in your scene. Then you render your scene normally, then render the new computed shadow geometry to represent the shadows of your meshes.

I know my explanation isn''t the best in the world. Neither one is really as hard as I make it out to be, and each technique has its limitations. As far as which one is best, again it depends on your app. Shadow Mapping is very pixel intensive. Shadow Volumes are vertex intensive. If your app doesn''t do much pixel processing, then Shadow Mapping may be a good choice. Then again, if your app doesn''t push the geometry rate of the hardware too much, then Shadow Volumes may be the way to go. Both ATI and NVIDIA have white papers on shadow mapping and shadow volumes. Those papers should give you everything you need to know to implement either technique.

I believe the first NVIDIA card to support shadow volumes was probably the GeForce 3.

As far as FPS on the ShadowVolume sample, I get about 125-130. I''m running on a Pentium 3 800Mhz, 512MB RAM, Radeon 9600 Pro, with Win XP Pro.

It all depends on how much money you want to spend. If you want a good DX9 card without having to see a loan shark, there are two cards you should take a look at. One is the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra. The other is the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro. Both should sell for just under $200.00.

I also upgraded from a TNT2. I chose to go with the Radeon 9600 Pro because it renders a little faster when you enable things like anti-aliasing and ansiotropic filtering (don''t think that''s spelled right but oh well).

Also, when coding in DX9, the 9600 allows you to activate 4 render targets at the same time. Last time I checked, the 5600 only allowed you to activate 1. I don''t know if that was a hardware limitation or a driver problem but I had the chance to play with a 5600 Ultra back in May and found that I could only have one active render target and that the driver had disabled floating point textures because of a bug somewhere. I would imagine that NVIDIA has fixed the floating point texture issue by now but I was making this decision back in May so I went with the Radeon.

If the price is just too high, you can look at the GeForce FX 5200 Ultra. I think it''s the most inexpensive card out there that supports DX9. You should be able to find it for less than $150.

Sorry, but I don''t remember what kind of performance I got with the TNT2. Before I upgraded, I did all of my development work on my laptop, which has a GeForce2 Go.

I know international orders are more expensive. You might want to go to www.pricewatch.com and look under Video Cards. That site looks for the best price for a given part from a ton of different websites.

Another web site i buy stuff from is www.tigerdirect.com. I looked on there and they have a GeForce FX 5200 Ultra for $99. They also allow international orders. You can call them up and see how much it would be to send it to Brazil.

Good luck,
neneboricua