ATI and DX10

[thilanliyan]

click

 

[Elfear]

Good read. Cleared up a lot of things I've been pondering about. Big question is will ATI be able to make DX9 games run efficiently on the R600 or will we see a decrease in performance.

 

[thilanliyan]

Well apparently they did say before that R600 will be their fastest DX9 chip also.

i really wish they would increase the vertex pipes to about 20 then go wild on pixel shaders all they want, but I guess with unified architecture it doesn't matter.

 

[akugami]

I don't think the R600's will be a huge increase in performance over the R500's. The problem as I see it is the unified shaders will exact a performance hit in DX9 games, even in WinXP. In Vista there is also a performance hit due to DX10 being completely rewritten and having no native DX9 and below support. This means as the article suggests, and I've seen similar speculation elsewhere, that any DX9 and below games on Vista is running under some form of emulation mode. This accounts for the performance hit under Vista. All this will of course be offset by performance gains made in the R600 core vs R500. In the end it should provide a performance gain in DX9 games but I'm just not convinced it will be by any large margin.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: thilan29
Well apparently they did say before that R600 will be their fastest DX9 chip also.

i really wish they would increase the vertex pipes to about 20 then go wild on pixel shaders all they want, but I guess with unified architecture it doesn't matter.

I remember reading at Beyond3d about a year ago that there arent many games in the mix that are vertex limited which is probably why we have archs with 48 pixel pipelines but 8-10 vertex shaders.

 

[josh6079]

When Microsoft sinks so much money into chip development with ATi I'd be curious to know how much say they have in when the PC gets to benefit from all that development, if ever, and what it will cost.

Microsof shouln't have ever made a gaming console for this reason. I already know that my computer is going to perform better than a console (it should, it costed 3 times as much). But when we start to see more and more games developed that deny PC users certain features, it becomes all the more clear if those features are available on the suxbox 360.

I also like the fact that the CPU is getting yet another job taken away from it. Their goal is to make the GPU more efficient and to do that they must take away its dependency on the CPU. I can understand that, but with Physics starting to be assigned to "specail" cores, and visual processing out of its way, all I can see my CPU being good for is booting up things. Why even have as badass of a processor as Conroe if your GPU for DX10 is going to be doing all of the work anyway?

 

[Bull Dog]

You forgot about AI processes didn't you?

 

[imported_Questar]

This means as the article suggests, and I've seen similar speculation elsewhere, that any DX9 and below games on Vista is running under some form of emulation mode.

Vista will have both DX9 and DX10 libraries. DX9 will run native.

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: Questar

This means as the article suggests, and I've seen similar speculation elsewhere, that any DX9 and below games on Vista is running under some form of emulation mode.

Vista will have both DX9 and DX10 libraries. DX9 will run native.

I've read differently but I'm not a programmer and won't pretend to be. Can you please point out the link to that. Maybe Ronin can chime in.

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: Questar

This means as the article suggests, and I've seen similar speculation elsewhere, that any DX9 and below games on Vista is running under some form of emulation mode.

Vista will have both DX9 and DX10 libraries. DX9 will run native.

WTF? I'm also a little hesitant to believe that. Everywhere I've heard says that DX10 is like a cutoff point for compatible DX versions. Its a new slate, and is embeded with Vista, why would they throw DX9 into its heart if it is going to be obselete for 3/4's its lifetime?

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: Bull Dog
You forgot about AI processes didn't you?

No, I didn't. Are you telling me the results Anandtech gave us on the Conroe was respective to its AI processing? I'm not saying that the CPU doesn't do anything? But as far as gaming goes it does do very little from what I've seen.

EDIT: Sorry for the double post, I'm turning into dramaqueen.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Vista will have both DX9 and DX10 libraries. DX9 will run native.

The WinXP version of DX9 wouldn't be able to access any resources or make any hardware calls under Vista. If DX9 is gong to run native, it is going to be a ground up rebuild of the API.