Someone should put this in the FAQ its been asked so often. About 20k - 50k per frame? I never remember what people say.

I wanrned you! Didn't I warn you?! That colored chalk was forged by Lucifer himself!

If you are using direcX expect to do about 4000+ if your 3d engine can really cut it, and if you optimise the crap out of it.

There are a number of factors to take into account.

You render objects by state then polygons (triangles)

By state I mean (to simplify) texture.

Generally you want to to draw polygons with the same texture together. Changing state uses GPU bandwidth.

Just to make things complicated, 3DFX cards have no state change penalties to talk of.

Oh, did I mention that if you feed 40K polygons in one time to the GFX card its going to create a bottle neck that makes bleeding constipation seem like a sexual fantasy.

I won''t even mention back culling.

Bottom line, the engine is as fast as you make it.

25MHz 486SX with Virge S2 - 10K polygons - about a day and a half for one frame

12 Cray MP2s - 10K polygons - instant while juggling chainsaws with both hands tied behind its back.


You get the idea


D.V.

--------------------------
Carpe Diem