Idea of the main difference between newer video cards.

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Post by Matt »

Ohhhhh and dont get conned into buying a 9200SE buy the 9200 Vanilla.
How about, don't get conned into buying a 9200
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Post by InvisixIsLeet »

RAM = better texture quality. I should also mention that FSAA, and Anisotropic Filtering play a role in needing more RAM. RAM has nothing to do with the speed of the card, though.

The speed of the card has to do with FSAA, anisoptropic filtering, polygon counts, physics engines, effects, etc.

Just so you know, games are just now starting to take advantage of GeForce 256, and GeForce 2 features. So upgrading isn't really neccessary at this time. :)
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Post by zickfun »

Um...Geforce2 and Geforce 256 are Direct X 7....
Direct X 7 got phased out ages ago....
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Post by Veggita2099 »

This one looked pretty decent till I seen it is a PCI express card? Is that just a basic PCI slot or is it something even newer then AGP? In any case I would much rather have AGP, but still at that price it seems pretty cheap for a 6600?

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductde ... 149&DEPA=1
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Post by Matt »

Its the new PCI and its faster than AGP basically
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Post by InvisixIsLeet »

zickfun wrote:Um...Geforce2 and Geforce 256 are Direct X 7....
Direct X 7 got phased out ages ago....
So? Anything can be done in software code, and it is. :)

Do you think half the effects the PS2 uses are in hardware? Same for Xbox and Gamecube. a lot of the effects that are not in hardware are done in software.

:)
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Post by InvisixIsLeet »

@Veggita2099

PCI Express is a new PCI bus, which is faster than AGP. AGP is phasing out, from what I gather. :)
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Post by neoak »

Actually, anything less of a Radeon 8500 or a Geforce 4 (not MX) is not good for gaming.
Nauzi wrote:@Veggita2099

PCI Express is a new PCI bus, which is faster than AGP. AGP is phasing out, from what I gather. :)
True, PCI-E is the next step. Yeah, AGP is phasing out... like in 2 or 3 years... I don't see many people buying 915/925 Mobos with a LGA775 Prescott and DDR2...
Nauzi wrote:Just so you know, games are just now starting to take advantage of GeForce 256, and GeForce 2 features. So upgrading isn't really neccessary at this time. :)
Games are just starting to use DX7.0? Games are actually starting to use Pixel Shader 3.0 and 9.0c Hardware features. Some games won't even run w/o a DX 8.1+ Video Card (Splinter Cell for example)
Nauzi wrote:So? Anything can be done in software code, and it is. :)

Do you think half the effects the PS2 uses are in hardware? Same for Xbox and Gamecube. a lot of the effects that are not in hardware are done in software.

:)

Don't use consoles as an example. They have limited resources compared to a PC, and effects in software are very CPU expensive. They use maybe one software feature in the PS2 (AntiAliasing), but the GC and Xbox don't.

If everything could be done as you say, then Halo 2 would be possible in the PS2 with all the graphics? No, Right? It would be low Frames Per Second, w/o most of the textures and a lot out.

If you don't support it in hardware, what you do is an EMULATION of the feature using the CPU. And the CPU is not designed to do that.

Take for example Halo for PC. If you use, say, a Geforce 2 since the features it has are only begining to be used (according to you), what do you see?

You would see this: (DirectX 7.0 w/ Fixed Function)
Image

Now, look at it with a Radeon 9800 Pro or any DX 9.0c card. What do you see?

You would see this: (DirectX 9.0c w/ Pixel Shaders 2.0)
Image

Do you think the effects achieved with a 9.0c card can be done with a DX 7.0 card? And no, i didn't edit the images besides the resize. I got them with FRAPS.

What you say its like saying that the PowerVR2 or a Voodoo 4/5 can do Pixel Shader 3.0 because it is all software? Can? I don't think so... And if it does... at what speed? and at what image quality?
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Post by megaman8x »

noone answered my question :(
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Post by BlackAura »

Do you think the effects achieved with a 9.0c card can be done with a DX 7.0 card? And no, i didn't edit the images besides the resize. I got them with FRAPS.
I see higher resolution textures, the odd bumpmap, and more special effects turned on. Not one of those effects should require any kind of programmable video hardware. A fixed pipeline video card would be able to deal with Halo absolutely fine, and with full graphics settings, as long as it was fast enough to do so. Need I remind you that Halo was originally intended to run on hardware that lacked that capability entirely?

I haven't yet seen a single game that actually uses vertex or fragment programs to do anything that can't be done with a fixed pipeline video card. I have seen some games that use fragment programs to simulate cel shading, or that use vertex programs to do animation, but both of those things can be done without.

At the moment, the closest would be Doom 3. It can run without using programmable video hardware. It doesn't run very well, but it does run. Even it doesn't really use all of the capabilities of modern video cards, because it wouldn't run at all on 95% of machines if it did. Give it a few years, and games will be doing stuff that's impossible on a fixed pipeline architecture. But they aren't doing it yet.

Oh, and both Gamecube and Xbox games use some software rendered effects. The Xbox uses a few more than the Gamecube, but neither use anywhere near as much as PS2 games.
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Post by mariobro »

You gotta remember the mindset of video-card freaks. They measure everything by numbers and benchmarks, even in the face of evidence.

It's a pretty high-profit market, since you're buying an expensive piece of hardware just to play games on it. It really has no other purpose. 3D software like 3D Studio needs a high end card like Nvidia's Pro line to really benefit form it.
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Post by Quzar »

neoak wrote:Take for example Halo for PC. If you use, say, a Geforce 2 since the features it has are only begining to be used (according to you), what do you see?
wow, thats amazing how you took one shot from right before shooting your gun then one right after. and how you swapped out the gf2 and swapped in the 9800 with the power running AND the game not freezing. absolutely stunning.
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Post by megaman8x »

noone still answered my question :'(
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Post by Quzar »

in short it still depends on the rest of your computer. if you are going to buy the game regardless just do it and see how it runs. if you find it unsatisfactory, then upgrade.

depending on the rest of your system you should be able to run HL2, but Doom3 might have problems.
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Post by megaman8x »

the system is a amd athlonxp 1500+ with 512 ddr ram
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Post by Quzar »

i would say your processor will be a bigger bottleneck than your video card, but i dont know if any upgrading from that will help...
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Post by BlackAura »

That should be OK, assuming you have a decent graphics card.

On my machine (Athlon XP 2100+, 512MB RAM, GeForce FX5200) Doom 3 is bloody slow. That's mostly because the graphics card isn't all that great. No big deal - I don't much care anyway. On my brother's machine (Sempron 2200+, 256MB RAM, GeForce 3) it's playable, if you play around with the settings. It's actually not that bad, and it's pretty much good enough to play. Having a lower CPU will cause Doom 3 to slow down quite a lot, unless you turn off virtually everything. And that will kinda kill the game, because you need some of those graphical features, especially the real-time lighting. Chances are it'll run, but you might not like the result.

Same deal with Half Life 2. However, HL2's engine is a lot more conventional than Doom 3, so it tends to run faster. Where Doom 3 uses four or more textures on every single surface, multiple blending effects, full real-time lighting across all surfaces and all kinds of other technical gizmos, HL2 simply uses high resolution textures, and the odd bump map. Older graphics cards (and low-end current graphics cards, for that matter) can handle that much better. Again, chances are it'll run, but you might not like the result. It will probably run faster than Doom 3 though.
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Post by neoak »

megaman8x wrote:the system is a amd athlonxp 1500+ with 512 ddr ram
The fastest CPU for that line w/ 200 FSB is the 2000+ IIRC. For 266 FSB it is the 2400+ and for 333 is the 3000+.

The source engine is more CPU intensive than Doom 3.
quzar wrote:wow, thats amazing how you took one shot from right before shooting your gun then one right after. and how you swapped out the gf2 and swapped in the 9800 with the power running AND the game not freezing. absolutely stunning.
:lol:

Actually, i just forced Halo to use Fixed Function. But i have seen the game running in a Nforce IGP and in a Geforce2 MX 200, and it looks exactly as the image i took.

And is for the resolution i used, i used 1280x1024. I just forced the game to use the effects avaliable in FF, PS1.1 and in PS 2.0.
mariobro wrote:You gotta remember the mindset of video-card freaks. They measure everything by numbers and benchmarks, even in the face of evidence.

It's a pretty high-profit market, since you're buying an expensive piece of hardware just to play games on it. It really has no other purpose. 3D software like 3D Studio needs a high end card like Nvidia's Pro line to really benefit form it.
Yeah. They measure everything. If i was one of them i would have an X800 or a 6800 GT. Take into account that the 9800 Pro i have was bought in a CompUSA store opening here in PR. The price was $100 dls. I would have bought a 9600XT instead. I measure just for how nice it looks and if it doesn't hurt my eyes, i play it.

3D Studio doesn't need a nVidia Quadro or a ATi FireGL or a 3DLabs Wildcat as the optimized drivers those cards use. Even a $200 FireGL 8800 does better than say, a 9700 Pro, because of the drivers that allow the use of the hardware. With the 9700, it will always use the CPU. Even though the FireGL and Quadro lines are just the consumer versions with some changes, the drivers are what makes them expensive.
BlackAura wrote:I see higher resolution textures, the odd bumpmap, and more special effects turned on. Not one of those effects should require any kind of programmable video hardware. A fixed pipeline video card would be able to deal with Halo absolutely fine, and with full graphics settings, as long as it was fast enough to do so. Need I remind you that Halo was originally intended to run on hardware that lacked that capability entirely?
If you mean the Mac, yeah. But i mean the PC version. Gearbox added more effects to Halo PC, that are only seen in Halo 2 because of the use of PS1.1.

My statement was not that you need bleeding edge DirectX 9.0 cards. It was that programmers are using the Direct3d features in that version. He meant that they are only using the D3d 7.0 features. DirectX 7.0 features are common today, even the 8.1 features are common today.

As for the XBox, it has Pixel Shader 1.1 capabilities and a Programmable T&L unit, required for DX 8.0 (8.1 requires PS1.3/1.4).

There are effects like "Specular" that can't be done in a fixed T&L unit. You need a programmable T&L to do it. And the game runs fine using DX 7.0 features, but there are things that need a programmable T&L unit.

The transparency effect in Halo PC or in Halo 2 uses PS1.1. In Halo 1 for Xbox its not the same. Yeah, it doesnt use Pixel Shaders.

Just look at Half Life 2. Look at how the Source engine handles the different versions of DirectX.

Halo for the XBox looks like this (DirectX 8.0 w/ Pixel Shaders 1.1):
Image
BlackAura wrote:Oh, and both Gamecube and Xbox games use some software rendered effects. The Xbox uses a few more than the Gamecube, but neither use anywhere near as much as PS2 games.
True.
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Post by InvisixIsLeet »

@neoak

I did not say ALL software includes special effects in software now did I? What I am saying is some programs do include it, in software.

Now, as for video game coding houses, they pretty much have to make games "backward compatible" due to the fact that people DO still use Voodoo3, GeForce 256, GeForce 2 GTS, etc video cards, because they don't want to upgrade. So coding houses do take this into consideration. :)

If the effects are enabled or not doesn't matter to a true gamer anyways, as it's the gameplay that matters. Some people don't care about the eyecandy, just as long as the game plays on their hardware/older video cards. :D
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Post by BlackAura »

The transparency effect in Halo PC or in Halo 2 uses PS1.1.
Why? It doesn't need it. It seems that they were using those features more because they felt like it. Have a look, for example, at Unreal Tournament 2004 running on an old video card (say, a GeForce 2). Ignoring the fact that you'll get terrible framerate if you crank the detail settings up to full and that there's not really enough video RAM to store all the textures, it actually looks the same (although lower quality textures) as it does on a card with a fully programmable pipeline. It certainly looks better than Halo PC does on similar hardware.

Granted, UT2004 doesn't really use bump mapping, and certainly doesn't use any of the stuff that Doom 3 does. But still, it manages to pull all that stuff off without using programmable video hardware. As a result, it even works fine on video hardware that's considered antique by modern standards, and doesn't look too bad.
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