question about game textures

[Pudgygiant]

This is borderline HT, so just tell me if I should move it.
Do textures for games require processing power from the CPU itself, or would only the gpu suffice? If no cpu power is required, would a straight dma line to the textures save a few cycles while playing CS? (I realize that even if this would work there's almost no chance it would get implemented in CS, that's just an example.)

 

[rjain]

A straight DMA line to the textures is what AGP sidebanding is all about.

 

[Pudgygiant]

Oh. I'm behind the times.

 

[uart]

And if the textures can fit entirely into local video memory (the 32MB or 64MB or 128MB etc that comes on your graphics card) then there is no memory bandwidth penalty on the main CPU/memory system either.