Home
Blogs
Forums
News
Portfolios
Projects
Tutorials
42 users logged in
New? Learn about game development.
Before posting, review our community guidelines.
Follow Us
Chat in the GameDev.net Discord!
Mastodon
Back to Graphics and GPU Programming

Do you recommend a SM 3.0 graphics card?

Started by
32 comments, last by lancekt 18 years, 4 months ago
Quote:

Correct me if I am wrong but is the current NVIDIA implementation anything more than just a checkmark on a features list? From what I've heard VTF on NVIDIA cards is almost impractical to use because of the slow speed and its pretty limited too (only point filtered? special texture formats?).



If you are a game player, then yes its of limited value. But as A DEVELOPER it is very interesting to prototype with new features, becuase you can tolerate less then stellar performance. There are some big things you can do with the texture read. you can do thing slike Morph target blending (industry standard way of doing high quality animation).

Additionally, I beleive it is much faster in the 7800 (though I haven't tested it personally).


EvilDecl81
Advertisement
Quote:Original post by EvilDecl81
Hardware may appear before Vista. Of course, you will have to upgrade OSs to use the DX10 features.

It might, but I suspect it won't. Given the major differences in the driver model and feature set between DX9 and DX10 I'd guess the DX10 cards won't get drivers for XP. Could be wrong though.

Game Programming Blog: www.mattnewport.com/blog

Quote:Original post by mattnewport
Quote:Original post by EvilDecl81
Hardware may appear before Vista. Of course, you will have to upgrade OSs to use the DX10 features.

It might, but I suspect it won't. Given the major differences in the driver model and feature set between DX9 and DX10 I'd guess the DX10 cards won't get drivers for XP. Could be wrong though.


The Dx10 parts still need to run dx9 games, so they are still perfectly valid dx9 parts with a potentially completly seperate dx9 driver.

EvilDecl81
Quote:Original post by EvilDecl81
The Dx10 parts still need to run dx9 games, so they are still perfectly valid dx9 parts with a potentially completly seperate dx9 driver.

Yes, DX10 functionality is a superset of DX9 but the driver model is still totally different. The question is whether nVIDIA and ATI will bother writing XP drivers for the new hardware when none of the new features will be available on XP. You'll still get improved performance so it will probably come down to a matter of how many sales they think they'll get to people with XP and whether the extra sales are worth the engineering effort. I don't know what they'll end up doing.

Game Programming Blog: www.mattnewport.com/blog

Quote:Original post by mattnewport
Quote:Original post by EvilDecl81
The Dx10 parts still need to run dx9 games, so they are still perfectly valid dx9 parts with a potentially completly seperate dx9 driver.

Yes, DX10 functionality is a superset of DX9 but the driver model is still totally different. The question is whether nVIDIA and ATI will bother writing XP drivers for the new hardware when none of the new features will be available on XP. You'll still get improved performance so it will probably come down to a matter of how many sales they think they'll get to people with XP and whether the extra sales are worth the engineering effort. I don't know what they'll end up doing.


To answer your question is, yes. For years to come.
EvilDecl81
Quote:Original post by EvilDecl81
To answer your question is, yes. For years to come.

I'm not so sure - it'll only make sense to buy one of these super-high-end cards if you have a very powerful PC to go with it. That PC is likely to be new and so have Vista installed. The only reason you'd be paying all this money for a top end PC is to play games and you're going to want to be able to play the latest whizz-bang D3D10 games if you've dropped all that cash on a D3D10 card so you're not likely to run XP and be content with running your old games at slightly higher resolutions and frame rates. No doubt nVIDIA and ATI will continue selling DX9 cards for some time to cater to the segment of the market who are still running XP but the hardcore gamers who buy the top end graphics cards are almost certainly going to be running Vista so they can get all the latest eye candy.

Anyway, there's not much point debating it much further - I'm happy to just wait and see what happens next year.

Game Programming Blog: www.mattnewport.com/blog

Sorry for thread hijacking but I was going to buy a Geforce 7800 GTX, should I buy something cheaper ? Do you really believe microsoft is going to release DX10 by the end of year (2006) ?. I want to learn shaders (I'm experienced with FFP) so I wanted to have a good card. What card would you recommend ?
Why don't you buy something more cheaper?
NVidia GeForceFX 6200 it's a good start. It does support SM3.
Also the ATI X300. Those don't cost more than $80

Also, the GefoceFX 5500 are a cheap solution. But I don't really know if it does support SM3; it actually does support CineFX and OpenGL2.0 with GLSL,pixel and vertex shader 2.0.
"Technocracy Rules With Supremacy" visit: http://gimpact.sourceforge.net
The best bang for the buck for an existing machine is likely a 6600 GT. If I were to build a machine today, I'd probably put a 7800 GT in it (GTX isn't worth the upgrade; I still don't trust ATI drivers after living on a Radeon 9700 Pro for almost two years!) My current machine has a 6800 GT.

If you want to keep up enough to develop productively on the leading edge of the world of graphics, you have to buy a new card every 18 months or so.
enum Bool { True, False, FileNotFound };
Haha I never taught there would be that much replies!

Thanks everyone, and lpease note that I'm currently running an nVidia GeForce 6600GT and i'm quite happy about it!

This topic is closed to new replies.

Advertisement

Popular Topics

Aybe One
How do you manage yourself and your time as years pass on? GDNet Lounge
Jikoob
Too many managers? General and Gameplay Programming
aigan
The promise of freedom in story games Game Design and Theory
robertrobert
Facebook Ads for sales on steam, does it work? Games Business and Law
Aybe One
Which design pattern to dodge the craziness of immediate mode? General and Gameplay Programming
pbivens67
AABB collision For Beginners
Advertisement

Recommended Tutorials

Myopic Rhino
The Cost of Insecurity - Griefing: from Anonymity to Accountability General and Gameplay Programming
Ruben Torres Bonet (The Gamedev Guru)
Is It Really Worth to Mesh-Bake Your Assets? I Asked Ian Deane (Interview) Graphics and GPU Programming
jsvcycling
Game Development with Win32 and DirectX 11 - Part 01: The Basic Framework General and Gameplay Programming
HellRaiZer
Useless Snippet #1: Transform Vec3f by Matrix4x4f General and Gameplay Programming
Squared'D
Programming By Example - Adding AngelScript to a Game Part 1 General and Gameplay Programming

Reticulating splines

About GameDev.net
Community Guidelines
Terms of Service
Privacy Policy
Contact Us
Copyright (c) 1999-2024 GameDev.net, LLC
Back to Top