The New Graphics

A tale of Direct X 10, and rumors of the hardware to drive it. While the demand for Direct X 9 hardware is not slipping, and more graphics cards are constantly being launched, there is much interest in this new standard and the hardware that will support it.

A good article, hopefully both these cards stand up to the hype

Not true. Check out the game Rune. You could chop off heads and arms and beat your enemies with them.

These cards should work very well in OpenGL 2 on Linux.

DX10? What's that? Oh, yes - a fancy name for a GLSL interpretor on a system that finally dissociated objects, graphics hardware and main loop.

Seen under *nix with OpenGL, DRI, X11R6.8. Sooo innovative.

Mind you, these cards should really kick @$$.

>Run very well in OpenGL 2 for Linux

They probably will. Of course, you'll be running the nVidia drivers... which have security holes

>GLSL interpreter

Please, OpenGL != Direct3D. They are totally different 3D standards.

So, basically, you agree with what I said?

OpenGL and D3D are becoming different languages to address the same features. D3D is not an interpreted OpenGL.


>makes you wonder why Microsoft didn't just implement the OpenGL language from the get go

Because they're Microsoft!

>driver

Yeah, the benefit of the OSS community is that they can fix said problems. Sadly the nVidia drivers aren't OSS and Nouveau isn't *quite* there yet, but we shall see!


(incidentally, I'm not a Microsoft apologist, though I use XP for desktop, I am a Solaris sysadmin, I develop on a Kubuntu box, I have a Smoothwall firewall and my laptop runs... well, whatever is flavour of the month. I've had Knoppix / Kubuntu 5/6 / FC 3,4 and RH9.2 on it in the last 2 years)

Next project: MythTV... *shudder*

That was a mediocre article, all it said was "now we have geometry shaders." Two pages and that's all the info there is. I guess it isn't a terrible sum up of where things are, but anyone who even knows what a G80 is knows that already.

A little thing we like to call vendor lock-in. Apparently microsoft actually left the OpenGL review board in 2003. I would guess that that is probably right about the time they started developing DX10.

I would like to see them all get back together and agree on it and everyone use it, but it won't happen, because MS is making too much money to give up the DX now.

and I'm completing a full switch to Linux - because I like to spend my cash and time on stuff that deserve it.

Oh, it probably will - it's just that while Nvidia keeps going in the fixed role shader units (pixel OR shader), Ati will keep churning out mixed role shader units (pixel OR vertex depending on case). Now, since DX10 was developed in close collaboration with Ati, it would stand to reason to think that Ati would make 'real' DX10 cards, while Nvidia won't.
Considering that in fact, vertex shaders can be emulated by the CPU at little cost, graphics cards may in fact include only pixel shaders, and not waste cycles on emptying a shader unit's pipeline, change its role, then refill its pipeline to do it all over again.
Frankly, the DX10 'revolution' is done more at the driver level than at the hardware level - DX10 cards won't be fundamentally different from DX9 cards, merely add a handful of functions to justify the upgrade.

Remember when Nvidia released the 'ti' series in the Geforce 2 range - and they turned out to be the exact same cards with a better driver? Well, it's pretty much the same thing here.

You may not expect your DX9 cards to run DX10 games with all the eye candy, but I'll be damned if there's no gifted demo maker able to make a demo run so similar on both DX9 and DX10 hardware no one would notice the difference.

nice and concisely put article but from a forum perpective not too much new. however not everyone who reads toms reads the forums so i guess it was better for some than it was for me. i'll wait for the more in depth stuff when their is actualy hardware and software that makes use of these features.

well, like they said at the start of the article... they put as much meat as they could in there. Frankly, as stranger mentioned there is not much known beyond what we have all read on these forums already. Kinda like a calm before a storm. Once the hardware hits there will be tornados of reviews claiming the +27 1337 performance from the g600ultraXTX that blows the doors off of "last gen" hardware.

Not saying that those wont be valid claims, as those upcomming cards will be smokin. But just like previous generations of advancements it will be a while before a rockin dx10 game comes out that truely taxes it. Remember dx8 and the whole shader "revolution"? It took forever for games beyond tech-demo quality to surface. Watch and you will see that dx9 will still be predominant through 2007. So let it be written, so let it be done.

[consults magic 8-ball]

"Answer unclear Ask later"

[scratches head bewildered]

You guys are assuming windows will cost more, which is why your just going to go to Linux and "spend money on those who deserve".

Like most of you guys arnt pirates anyway. lol
Windows is ... ahem... free.

lol. Acutaly I own more then 8 copies of windows XP home (oem) and 2 copies of pro (1 oem). They just come with the computers.... i dont care. I think its BS they cant be transfered though, but its just as easy to download a copy of XP off the internet...

As far as rendering engines.... I cant remember the last game I played that had the D3D logo on it. I think it might have startwars rouge squadron... a fun game.

watch who you reply to. i ain't no pirate joking or not.

Ageia is gaining ground O_o I must have missed that I thought it was screwed.. (was going to put some analogy there but the only ones I could think up were a bit tasteless so I restrained myself )

hmm... if you actually believe that no-one here has read that then you are a bit narrow in the mindset... we have already seen that. Maybe if you were half as boned up on reading as you think you are then you would know that until the animal is actually seen in production instead of some grainy bigfoot pics then most of the info that comes around like that is FUD.

Nv and ati both spread dis-information on new products regularly. The non-unified aspect is from a more solid foundation but is no-where near 100%... that Nv has been touting that unified is not the way we need to go yet in their press releases lately only moves it closer. Ati has already made a unified part so that is partly why Nv talks it down, but based on history they will wait another gen before they jump to fully unified otherwise they are contradicting themselves;[/i] and that cant happen for another generation. (JMO of course)

Regardless, while dailytech can bring some good scoops they can also put out unreliable info. Everything on this subject is rumor, you just have to filter out the wheat from the tares. The truth will be fully known only when the card is revealed.

Myself and others on here have been wrong before, so don't take this as a "I know all" statement. And please, dont believe everything you read from the rumor-mill.

I owned 95,98,me and a copy of office 2000 enterprise. All still wrapped and never used. Of course i pirate software but for hte most part its a see if i even want it kind. When it comes to windows and ms software however i might own a real copy but i sure as hell am not using it. I think i have a copy of windows xp pro somewhere but i use the rtm cracked all to hell version that doesnt blow up when i change stuff in my computer. Personaly i dont care if MS or anyone has a problem with that i dont want to deal with the stupid reactivation bs since im constantly changeing out hardware upgrading and rebuilding my computer. Needless to say if i could just "plug and play" when it came to games i would be using something like linux. Since i like things like office and gaming ill stick with windows as long as im not requiered to use the real copy. Last game i got that plays on opengl though i think was half life :-/ i really miss opengl, Not sure if its the same anymore but back then running in d3d made everything look like crap distorted transparancys and reduced frames just by using d3d.

hehe ..so you are telling me dailytech is openly lying when they say they have the g80 in their hands?

We have only a few weeks to go now. You can bet this thread will be revisted.

Windows XP barebones activated install.

Linux dd Windows XP barebones activated install partition.

Copy .img to DVD

Customize Windows as I see fit.

New hardware, Re-install????

dd Windows XP barbones activated .img back to Windows partition.

You should be able to run Windows Recovery to adjust for the new hardware without having to re-activate but I haven't tested that yet.

On a similiar note, you could do the same thing with G4L but it wouldn't recognize my RAID when I had one so I went with the above method (TY linux_0). G4L would be much easier because it wouldn't require a Linux distro to be installed but since I use Linux for everything else and XP for games only it works out ok for me.

Congrats on your 3000th post. Have you yourself become unified with all those posts yet?

Wow 3000 posts... I just got past 400 and was kind of proud haha.

Actualy according to DaSickNinja, post count = computer knowledge. So at 3000, you are many times more informed then I am....


Time to get back on track.

Does this senario sound familer? Every new cool gadget that comes out we have this discusion. Someone says they get a demo product, and has ALL the specs and programs needed to test it. Nobody gonna get it untill its for sale... and then we will know for sure...


Reminds me of all the hype behind WindowsME... untill it was actualy availible that is.

DaSickNinja.... im j/p

FFS you little idiot. you have me flaminig, are you happy now. if you haven't noticed the same specs that they soke of have been floating around the internet for a few weeks now.


also read my god damn post. i asked how exactly you can test for unified shaders. you cannot just look at it ffs. since AFAIK there is no software, drivers or games that make use fo unified shaders and also geometary shaders are only part of dx10, how can you test for them the same as shader 4. yes you could PERHAPS test the clocks and memory interfaces but how do you know they have done all this. it doesn't sound like it to me. if you can tell me this fine but otherwise STFU.

Im thinking all of what were hearing/reading here.Maybe,yes maaaaybe its a sample,and maaayne its nowheres near a final product,BUT incorporates many of the final products hardware/abilities.I believe Annand,as I would something from Toms.nda is more from the final product end,and maaaybe since this isnt a final product they can write a lil about it.Sort of like an appitiser so to speak,NOT the main meal IMHO

they have to be leaked specs b/c how else would they know? you cannot looks at a chip and tell if it has x pipelines or y shaders let alone if those shaders are unified... so unless they had a test for it (which stranger pointed out is non-existant right now) then the specs must have been leaked.


seems to be straight forward logic to me... I am not condeming dailytech mind you (you can get some wrong just as you can get some right), just saying that as of now it is unsubstantiated rumor and nothing more.