T&L

Anyone else thinking compulsory T&L support for modern games is a way to make people upgrade their GFX cards?

[JetLinus]

Yes!

Well, if it's a good way you have to decide on your own. Dunno really

Maybe think back to good old 3DFX-Times, and compare your suggestion to their "3D accelerator needed" strategy...

[Structural Integrity]

T&L? Transform and Lighting. What does it exactly do?

Anyway, I don't believe game makers have somesort of contract with GFX makers to implement as much special graphics features as possible.
Hardware T&L has been around for quite a while according to google. The GF3 had this feature, probably some older cards aswell.
Game developers aim for a specific framerate on a specific target machine, and if this machine happens to have hardware T&L it's just as easy for the devs to use it. Taking older cards into account will increase development time and costs while they don't really get anything for in return. Also simply turning HW T&L off might not be such a simple solution if it's deeply integrated into the game, and perhaps even a key-feature. They might have to write their own software-version of T&L, which might be slow and not usable with anything less than a big ass processor.

So, no. It's probably a calculated move from the devs. If they believe that 95% of their target audience has T&L support, and they believe they can do without those 5%, then why put development time and cost in a feature they can mis?

Originally Posted by Structural Integrity

T&L? Transform and Lighting. What does it exactly do?

Anyway, I don't believe game makers have somesort of contract with GFX makers to implement as much special graphics features as possible.
Hardware T&L has been around for quite a while according to google. The GF3 had this feature, probably some older cards aswell.
Game developers aim for a specific framerate on a specific target machine, and if this machine happens to have hardware T&L it's just as easy for the devs to use it. Taking older cards into account will increase development time and costs while they don't really get anything for in return. Also simply turning HW T&L off might not be such a simple solution if it's deeply integrated into the game, and perhaps even a key-feature. They might have to write their own software-version of T&L, which might be slow and not usable with anything less than a big ass processor.

So, no. It's probably a calculated move from the devs. If they believe that 95% of their target audience has T&L support, and they believe they can do without those 5%, then why put development time and cost in a feature they can mis?

No voodoo cards have T&L nor does the riva tnt or all savage cards which are the standard cards in most pc's > 1 yr old

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by JTheGayC

No voodoo cards have T&L nor does the riva tnt or all savage cards which are the standard cards in most pc's > 1 yr old

I doubt Voodoo cards are, as 3DFX was bought by nVidia about 3 or 4 years ago, and that was also the time the GeForce 2 was released, which spelt the end for the riva tnt's.

Most of the (retail) PC's I've seen in the last two years either have GeForces or Radeons (increasingly the latter)

In essense, what you're appearing to say is 'my four year old graphics card won't run the latest games '.

Well, yes.

[CjC]

Doesnt T&L on the GFX card remove the need for the CPU to do the work, thus improving the ability for games to run on slower processor systems? Seeing as it is generally cheaper to upgrade the graphics card compared to a new CPU, Memory, Mobo etc.. therefore expanding the number of consumers a game can reach. I notice that some of the specs for new games seem to run on lower systems again (eg 450mhz as opposed to 800mhz+ as a minimum - presumably on the assumption the GPU will do the hard work.)

[Luckeh!!!!]

T&L GPU offloads "some" work from the CPU not all.

As for T&L itself. Even my old GF2MX has Hardware T&L, this came with my comp 3 years ago, even then it was a "budget" type computer, voodoo cards/TNT/savage have not been standard in comps for a long time now.

[flapjack]

my aged tnt2 of a lot of years old didn't have Hardware T&L, but it had trouble running UT2k3 at high resolutions (luckily i then replaced my CPU with a much more powerfull 1, which made the problems go away).

now i've got a new 3d card and i can actaully run games with hardware T&L support.

not to mention that when they finally switch to 64bit programs, everyone will be forced to get a 64 bit cpu or have terrible performance, but that'll wait a few more years whereas 64 bit cpu's are availble already

[SyPh0n]

It will be a few years I would have thought for 64-bit to become standard. 64-bit Windows XP is yet to materialise (I think, in shops anyway).

In the meantime we have a new form-factor to embrace (which will take ages to become mainstream like ATX did).

BTX, DDR2, PCI-X...

Add to that a slew of new GFX cards from nVidia, ATI, 64-bit from Intel, updated 64-bit from AMD...

It will be a while before anyone with a half-decent PC will be "out-of-touch" and forced to upgrade. My 2100+, GF4Ti etc is still running UT2K3 at high detail and resolution fairly quickly.

I won't be rushing myself to upgrade for Doom 3 either - the only likely reason for most gamers to.

[meglamaniac]

Originally Posted by JTheGayC

No voodoo cards have T&L nor does the riva tnt or all savage cards which are the standard cards in most pc's > 1 yr old

Er, I'm not entirely sure what you base that assumption on, especially since 3DFX (the producers of Voodoo cards) were bought out by nVidia quite a while ago.
Firstly, ATI and nVidia cards are seen as the defacto standard these days (and have been for several years, especially nVidia). nVidia cards have had hardware T&L for several years, even the low end ones.
The first PC I built myself, on a VERY low budget, had hardware T&L and that was provided by whatever crappy graphics chipset was built onto the motherboard (if it helps you date it, it was an Intel Celeron 333).

Hardware T&L is not some super modern feature that people are trying to push you into buying - if you DON'T have this feature, your graphics card is
a) Not even DirectX 8 compatable or certifiable, never mind DirectX 9
b) Crippled

It's like DVD playback. All modern graphics cards that are meant to be taken seriously (ie. not something you've picked up for £10 from a computer fair, that fell off the back of a lorry) have features such as hardware motion compensation, hardware video deinterlacing, hardware NTSC to PAL and PAL to NTSC conversion etc. Why use half your CPU time rendering video when your graphics card can do it? That way your CPU only has to decode the MPEG compression and maybe process the audio if you have a crap non-hardware accelerated soundcard.
Result: smoother, more reliable playback.

It's not some weird conspiracy, these features are there for a reason.
Have a nice day.

[flapjack]

Syphon, in fact, a 64-bit windows version is i believe already in development, whereas the next pentium CPU will NOT be 64-bit, instead there will probably be a 64-bit pentium cpu about a year after the release of the new version, so everyone's computer will be outdated instantly.

AMD does already have 2 64-bit CPU versions (amd athlong 64 and amd athlon FX).

in other words, within a couple of years, we'll all be running 64-bit windows (project longhorn i believe), have 64-bit CPU's (hopefully AMD's, i still think pentium CPU's are way to expensive and slow) and be expecting the first 64-bit games, which will probably come out not long after the 64-bit windows version.

Linux will probably be the first 64-bit OS, since it is certain that someone will convert linux to be 64-bit the moment they get a 64-bit CPU, which means a 64-bit Linux could already be in the make.

[Luckeh!!!!]

Originally Posted by flapjack

Syphon, in fact, a 64-bit windows version is i believe already in development, whereas the next pentium CPU will NOT be 64-bit, instead there will probably be a 64-bit pentium cpu about a year after the release of the new version, so everyone's computer will be outdated instantly.

AMD does already have 2 64-bit CPU versions (amd athlong 64 and amd athlon FX).

in other words, within a couple of years, we'll all be running 64-bit windows (project longhorn i believe), have 64-bit CPU's (hopefully AMD's, i still think pentium CPU's are way to expensive and slow) and be expecting the first 64-bit games, which will probably come out not long after the 64-bit windows version.

Linux will probably be the first 64-bit OS, since it is certain that someone will convert linux to be 64-bit the moment they get a 64-bit CPU, which means a 64-bit Linux could already be in the make.

WinXP 64bit (or Win2k3 64bit, i forget which) is already out for the beta testers, and the other is still in development. Apparently Longhorn will only support AMD's 64bit extensions, the only other 64bit OS by MS is for Itanium which is definitely not a desktop solution. So Intel have to use AMD's extensions or stick with 32bit.

AMD only has 1 64bit CPU actually, since they all have the same 64bit extensions, going by your description, you missed one, the Opteron

[meglamaniac]

Not quite, flapjack.
Both AMD's and Intel's desktop 64bit processors will have 32bit backward compatability, just as todays processors have 16bit backward compatability so you can (theoretically) run anything that was written on the original 8086 platform. So nothing will be obselete - just an upgrade path that's there when you want it. Indeed, you could still theoretically run a program compiled for an 8086 on one of these 64bit processors.
Also, the new Intel chips coming out now are more or less their desktop 64bit ones with the 64bit circuits turned off.

There is already a Windows XP 64bit edition for 64bit only processors - there was talk at one point of releasing one for AMD's desktop 64bit processor but that may now be so late it's been scrapped.

There are also already several versions of 64bit linux for various systems such as SPARC, but again, not for the desktop 64bit processors just yet.

One thing to note.
64bit does not mean faster, and it does not mean better. All it means is more - a 64bit processor can address a lot more memory than a 32bit one, and can process much larger numbers without having to break the number down into chunks to do so.
However, 32 bits allows 4,294,967,296 combinations, which I think you'll agree is a quite large number anyway. This means a current processor can handle numbers from 0 to 4,294,967,296 without having to split them up, and can address up to 4Gb of RAM.
It'll be a little while before the large numerical range of 64bit computing is needed on the desktop environment.

Incidentally, the only way 64bit processing would affect a game is if it
a) needed to calculate numbers over 4,294,967,296. In this case, yes it would be a bit faster.
b) it needed stupid amounts of memory (in which case it wouldn't be able to run on a 32bit machine anyway)

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by meglamaniac

Both AMD's and Intel's desktop 64bit processors will have 32bit backward compatability

I thought only the AMD was able to run both 32- and 64-bit applications simultaneously, whereas the Itanium could only do either.

[Luckeh!!!!]

Originally Posted by Leshy

I thought only the AMD was able to run both 32- and 64-bit applications simultaneously, whereas the Itanium could only do either.

yes, the A64 can do both at full speed.

Itanium could only do 64bit at full speed, and 32bit at a snails pace. No idea if its the same with Itanium 2 though.

Also, WinXP 64bit edition for the A64 is officially in beta stages.

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

In essense, what you're appearing to say is 'my four year old graphics card won't run the latest games '.

Well, yes.

No, my 1 year old laptop card won't

[Luckeh!!!!]

laptops will always be behind in the gfx department, mostly because they are expensive and power consuming.

[JetLinus]

Originally Posted by meglamaniac

Incidentally, the only way 64bit processing would affect a game is if it
a) needed to calculate numbers over 4,294,967,296. In this case, yes it would be a bit faster.

You mean integers ofc. But if people were to use floats, well... FPUs nowadays are well tuned, and someone I know who does professional assembler programming said that already a while ago it wasn't worth using fixed point anymore, because of the increased floating point performance (keywords like 3Dnow etc, all that 3D stuff anyway basically).
OFC you're right, I was just going to mention...

Originally Posted by meglamaniac

b) it needed stupid amounts of memory (in which case it wouldn't be able to run on a 32bit machine anyway)

You can do paging and mapping and stuff, no? Anywhy, you're right again.

And for the sake of it, this post was JUST to mention c) again, as I've done before.

c) Vastly increased performance for chess AIs (strictly speaking, chess is a game ^^). For chess AIs, you obviously need number crunchers. Well, as it happens to be, the chess board has 8 x 8 = 64 fields. \o/. Create "bit-maps" of all pieces (pawns etc). And then you can also create maps for possible moves and so on. Using 64bit-power, combining those maps (AND, OR, ADD, whatever) will be quite fast. Yey.




Oh, and I'm just thinking of my Nintendo64. Why did that have to have 64bits actually? I don't really see the advantage now. Especially where it does have a tiny amoun of RAM..

[SyPh0n]

Originally Posted by JetLinus

Oh, and I'm just thinking of my Nintendo64. Why did that have to have 64bits actually? I don't really see the advantage now. Especially where it does have a tiny amoun of RAM..

Consoles are (were see: Xbox etc) a lot different to PC's, in their dedication which you probably know (I don't want to sound offensive!)

I remember reading about the time of the PSX release that the SNES or Megadrive could do 3D at 16bit if they were made for 3D, it's just the focus of the CPU etc within the console. If I remember rightly, most modern consoles are 64bit, the last 32bit console was the Dreamcast - which incidently was 2x32bit CPU's, so I suppose 64bit anyway.

Like I said, it's just the manufacturers focus of what it wants the console to do. I think the N64 ran at a ridiculously low clock speed of like 66mhz or 99mhz, yet still pasted it's PC counterparts graphics wise (AA for example). They released a RAM upgrade didn't they? They must have known it's weakness on release, but probably wanted to keep costs down - consoles are still cheaper All-in games solutions, less than top end graphics cards.

Or I might be wrong.

[JetLinus]

Yeah, sure, but WHY exactly did they need 64bit? I mean, if as you say even 16bit would have been enough... Well, honestly, 32bit was fine, wasn't it? Enough to address all RAM, enough to handle 24bit RGB or 32bit RGBA colors. Everything you want. 16bit seems a bit small and cheap, but 32 is alright.
So why 64? Coz it sounds great, yeah well...

I agree with you, the RAM extension (or too less RAM in the beginning) was probably mainly price politics.

And you can't really compare clock speed from a highly specialized RISC processor in an integrated console system (having build-in co-processors for SFX, sound and GFX ofc) to an "independent" x86-cpu...

[SyPh0n]

Originally Posted by JetLinus

And you can't really compare clock speed from a highly specialized RISC processor in an integrated console system (having build-in co-processors for SFX, sound and GFX ofc) to an "independent" x86-cpu...

Maybe thats why they wanted 64bit? More ooomph on CPU?

I dunno, but it's probably a truth that 32bit could do it all for them - if it ran a more PC archictecture. But then we're back to price politics, size etc. Nintendo spent the money developing a 64bit CPU for a reason, and it has to be more than just for the:

"PSX = 32bit, N64 = 64bit. We 0wnz" argument.

I suppose with the console talk at the time less focused on RAM and MHz, and more on 'bits', 64bit was the logical step. To be honest, I expected the next batch of consoles (ie the PS2) to be 128bit, not 400MHz or whatever, before I owned a PC.

[meglamaniac]

I'm sure there was some logical reason behind the N64 being a 64bit machine, but you have to admit that the "hey we've got 64bits, they've only got 32 - they suck!" advertising ploy is quite a sucessful one, and if you're going to build a specialised system such as a console from scratch (it's not like it had to be backward compatible like the PS2) it doesn't take that much more effort to slap a 64bit CPU in it.

This is pretty much the line of argument I expect to see from major PC retailers (especially the wonderful PC World, who just like to prey on people who're computer illiterate) when 64bit finally becomes desktop mainstream. "Hey, consumers! Our PCs are better because they have 64Bit POWAR (TM)!!". No explanation of the (very few, for your average joe pc user) advantages of 64bit, just "it's better cos it's a higher number".

It's a very similar tactic to what they do today when they sell a 3Ghz PC for a stupidly low price. How do they do it? They get a top of the range PC and then pair it with a GeForce4 MX. It's rather like putting the engine from a 1970's skoda into a BMW 5 series. Sure, it might look good on paper, but as soon as you try and have a bit of fun with it just look how dissapointed you're going to be.
And the best bit, when customers pop back in to complain thier PC has the gaming performance of a dead trout, is that they can just do it all over again. "Ahh well, 3Ghz is outdated now. If Sir would just follow me over here, allow me to show you our 3.2Ghz lineup. Uh, hang on a minute while I just move the graphics specifications out of your line of sight...."

[SyPh0n]

Originally Posted by meglamaniac

This is pretty much the line of argument I expect to see from major PC retailers (especially the wonderful PC World, who just like to prey on people who're computer illiterate) when 64bit finally becomes desktop mainstream. "Hey, consumers! Our PCs are better because they have 64Bit POWAR (TM)!!". No explanation of the (very few, for your average joe pc user) advantages of 64bit, just "it's better cos it's a higher number".

It's a very similar tactic to what they do today when they sell a 3Ghz PC for a stupidly low price. How do they do it? They get a top of the range PC and then pair it with a GeForce4 MX. It's rather like putting the engine from a 1970's skoda into a BMW 5 series. Sure, it might look good on paper, but as soon as you try and have a bit of fun with it just look how dissapointed you're going to be.

See: Dell etc etc etc.

It's the world we live in. It's why now I keep thinking how poo my PC is, despite building it myself, when really its a fair bit higher than current recommended specifications. It's just there's a new CPU out, oh, and that graphics card is nice, oh and I'd love a 10k WD Raptor...
I must say a thank you to all these people who buy technology before it's needed - you move the market on, but make it cheaper for me/us when we NEED it 6+ months down the line

(Though i've just made a promise to myself that as soon as I can afford it, my PC will be top of the range and get ridiculous benchmarks :eek:

[Madina]

Originally Posted by SyPh0n

(Though i've just made a promise to myself that as soon as I can afford it, my PC will be top of the range and get ridiculous benchmarks :eek:

not on your student loan mate

[spanker]

Originally Posted by meglamaniac

Also, the new Intel chips coming out now are more or less their desktop 64bit ones with the 64bit circuits turned off.

I doubt that very much. there was some rumours about 64bit extensions in intels comming prescott P4's and that they are turned off but they aint even compatible with AMD’s 64-bit extensions (also a rumour).

There is already a Windows XP 64bit edition for 64bit only processors - there was talk at one point of releasing one for AMD's desktop 64bit processor but that may now be so late it's been scrapped.

There is a beta version out for amd-64
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/p...on64BetaPR.asp

There are also already several versions of 64bit linux for various systems such as SPARC, but again, not for the desktop 64bit processors just yet.

http://www.suse.com/us/private/produ...386/64bit.html
was available the same day amd launched there opteron

One thing to note.
64bit does not mean faster, and it does not mean better. All it means is more - a 64bit processor can address a lot more memory than a 32bit one

True, but the thing is that amd's x86-64 adds more things then just the abbility to address more memory, it adds more registers that will account for the speed increase over x86-32

[meglamaniac]

The Opteron is not what I'd class as a desktop processor - a desktop processor generally meaning one in the x86 family, which opteron isn't (well most of them aren't. The new series will be if they ever settle on a name and stop buggering about with Althon XP FX's and things).
While more registers does indeed mean faster calculations, it doesn't mean anything of the sort for existing 32bit apps as there's no way to make them use the new registers. Also, the difference won't be particularly noticable except for cetain specialist 64bit apps (ie. chess, mentioned earlier) as with the sheer amount of physics calculations games shuffle in and out of the processor, the bottleneck is more the L2 cache and the FSB, not the chip itself.

[Luckeh!!!!]

extra cache doesn't seem to benefit the A64 with the current software.

the A64 3000+ and 3200+ are running @ the exact same Mhz i.e. 2000Mhz, the former has 512kb L2 cache and the latter 1mb L2 cache.

the 3000+ is so close to the 3200+ that it should really be labelled as a 3100+.

[Intrepid00]

I wanted to play Planetarion again, but it required T&L support and I can't play now.

[Luckeh!!!!]

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