THG Graphics Card Buyer's Guide

Technology (Future Proofing)

Over the past few years graphics processors have evolved from pure 3D accelerators that could only perform pre-determined, specialized tasks, into real processors that are programmable to a certain extent. This development has allowed game designers to create their own 3D effects, in the same way as the creators of professional 3D rendering applications. These applications use their own programs for 3D effects, called shaders .

Simply put, a shader is a specified mathematical definition or description of an effect. For example, if a stone in a game is supposed to look wet, then a shader can be written for this purpose, which would define the sheen effect, reflections, incidence of light, and so on. The graphics processor then uses the shader to calculate this effect in real time.

In the past, the solution might have been taking the texture of the stone and overlaying it with a second texture that incorporates pseudo reflections, thereby creating the illusion of shininess. Of course, this wouldn't exactly have looked realistic. Today, these effects can be rendered with a high level of realism. In short, shaders add a great deal of realism to any game, though due to the topic's complexity, we will only be able to cover the most important aspects of how they work.

As we discussed earlier, a very important factor to consider when choosing a graphics card is which DirectX generation the graphics processor supports. The DirectX support of a card has important implications for its ability to make use of shaders, because each generation of DirectX increases the complexity of what calculations can be done by shaders. So, let's get back to the matter of DirectX generations.