Would DX9 cards benefit current games?

[imgod2u]

Since the internal processing of these cards are suppose to be using 128-bit (in the case of NV30) and 96-bit (in the case of the Radeon 9700), would they benefit current games? I know these games output colors using 32-bit integer values but when doing the math internally, they use a much more precise data type to calculate the color values. Does this mean they take the integer values that the game gives it and calculates it by converting the integer value to a FP value and doing the calculations using that? Only when the data must be outputed to the drawing buffers would the value need to be converted back to integers. Does this happen?

 

[AnAndAustin]

Well without looking in to precise specifics the short answer is NO, or more accurately NOT REALLY. Of course having DX9 hw functions is of no importance without sw (ie games) to take advantage of them. However as you rightly say these new DX9 cards (LOL only Rad9700 at the mo) do use FP calculations which should in both theory and practice produce 'nicer' results. I wouldn't expect this to be noticable though unless doing a side-by-side comparison. IIRC the Rad8500 and Rad9000 cards use higher precision values with their hw DVD decoding than for example a GF4MX, but anyway with any moderately powerful CPU (600mhz+) sw decoding is more than acceptable and once agian with all 3 types of this you really do need to do a side-by-side comparison to see any diffs.

So IMHO buy a Rad9700 for its outstanding 3D perf, ability to run with loads of AA and Aniso with VERY little slow down and for the future (1 year +) its full DX9 hw implimentation rather than for anything else. I would expect image quality and the accuracy (floating point precision) to be improved too, although I doubt these would be hugely better than the already excellent Rad8500.

 

[Mingon]

If you look at both the Kyro (32bit) and Voodoo (22bit) all had very good 16bit colour, so if the radeon does its internal rendering at a higher colour prescion you could hope for the same.