directx performance doubt

[OinkBoink]

the gf4mx was built for dx7,GF4Ti for 8.1 etc

now suppose i play a game like NFS-U or halo on an mx 440 at 1024*768,the game will run like a snail.but why??

the gf4 mx displays only DX7 graphical information no matter which directx game u play(dx8,9etc).so when i play halo@1024*768 isnt it displaying only dx7 info?
the card was designed to play dx 7 games at high resolutions like 1024*768/1280*1024 when it was released isn't it?

So when i play halo on an mx 440 it plays at dx 7 and it should be able to handle resolutions like 1024 or 1280,but it doesn't.what is the reason behind this?

 

[SrGuapo]

Because Halo (and all other current games) use large models, complicated environments, and many large textures the card cannot handle. It has to turn off all the goodies (shaders, multi-pass texturing, AA/AF,etc.) just to run. Just because it is DX7 card doesn't mean it can only use DX7. I program DX9.0c fine on my old 9200SE (which is a DX 8.1 card). Obviously I cannot use all the features (SM 2.0, etc.), but I can still use all the basics.

The card runs slow because it ias old and no games were that complicated when it came out. Just because my voodoo3 played Doom well, doesn't mean it will run Doom3 well...

 

[Fenuxx]

Simply put, those cards (i.e. GF4 MX) just don't have the "oomph" that is needed to run at high speeds and high resolutions. Yes, it can only display what the card can do (in this case, DX7), which means that there are no "shortcuts" in the form of shaders and whatnot. Everything has to be done the "old fashioned" way, meaning that the GPU must be told to do just about everything specifically. Meaning the GPU can't "figure it out" on its own for many things. Also, the amount of memory bandwidth available as well as the number of actual pipelines in the GPU (I believe the GF4 MX had 2 pipelines). This can create serious bottlenecks inside the processing pipeline, where the chip has to wait for itself to do other things to move on. This is why its better to have more pipelines. Boy, I'm glad I have 16 .