--- Jason Clinton wrote:
On Tuesday 09 August 2005 13:30, Jack wrote: ... if games need to stop supporting such big and
powerful cards as Radeon 8500s and 9700s then you might want to take a look at what is wrong with
the
game software and not the hardware or OSS drivers. Sloppy coding is after all sloppy coding. GIGO.
But
It's not a matter of sloppy code but merely advances in hardware capabilities. The newer video cards feature pixel and vertex shaders and hardware transform and lighting -- all of the capabilities make for more realistic scenes; ...
Anyone doing any serious gaming or 3D modeling and design in Linux is using NVidia's high-end consumer cards or their Quatro workstation cards (very expensive).
As I said, if games require video cards with vertex shading then you, you might have an overcoded game. (aka sloppy) How realistic does a scene need to be before it doesn't make a difference any more. We are talking about games here not holodecks, right? If and when they come out with a holodeck game, then yes by all means throw in the vertex shading. However I suspect the vertex shading is being done by firmware and not hardware, and hence the difference in performance between Windows and Linux. Were it truly hardware then simply probing the card would locate the commands necessary to call the vertex shading and hence fully support that feature. I could be wrong, I have been known to be wrong before, but I don't think I am now. Not every serious designer is using those high-end cards. Note, however, that getting an $800 professional card for 3D CADD is only worthwhile if you're doing some really intense stuff professionally and can afford to pay it off with profits. For the serious home robotics/rocketeer/modelist/small-shop an ATi 8700 will be quite sufficient. I do however recommend a gig of RAM with that. And if you happen to have a dual processor all the better, but a decent modern desktop and an ATi 8700 work quite well. Even with that dual processor and an $800 professional video card you'll still be waiting for the design to render. My reasoning is you can easily and cheaply upgrade RAM more than you can a video card with the money you save on the video card you can upgrade the CPU and memory and wind up I think better off.
IMNSHO, Brian J.D.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com