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GPU Jungle / DirectX 9.0 Features
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chairmansteve
March 22, 2002 - 2:30:32pm1 of 7
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Main Features Overview:
Improved Higher Order Surface Support
Displacement Mapping
Vertex Shader 2.0
Pixel Shader 2.0
Gamma Correction

Higher Order Primitives:
Quads (maybe)
Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces
Improved float tessellation levels
Rational surface support
Adaptive tessellation (avoids cracks along shared polygon edges)

Two Displacement Mapping Methods:
Precomputed Displacement Mapping (better for objects)
Sampled Displacement Mapping (better for terrain)

DX9 API Object Model:
D3DDevice9
- D3DVDecl9 (DMA and Tessellation)
- D3DVertexShader9 (Vertex ALU)
- D3DPixelShader9 (Pixel ALU)

Japanese site with some diagrams from GDC 2002 on VertexShader 2.0 and PixelShader 2.0 registers:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/pc/docs/2002/0322/dx9.htm

It has some MPEG movies to check out too from Matrox demonstrating displacement-mapping on objects and terrain.
CriTioN
March 23, 2002 - 7:49:11pm2 of 7
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That some flashy features...Hey, they were using Matrox cards...Matrox is going to be the first to use DX9. COOL!

Glad to know R300 and NV30 will be supporting it, but it's to bad DX9 is only going to support 40-bit colors, well I guess that still is a plus. Hmmmm...so I guess Microsoft is pushing for all gaming processes to be done on the GPU.

Looks like most, if not all, the NV30 specs I had were false. That's depressing.
cd36
March 23, 2002 - 9:50:12pm3 of 7
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you probably shouldn't listen to any speculation of any card if your gonna be depressed to hear its wrong. You'll be depressed 24/7.
chairmansteve
August 24, 2002 - 4:26:13pm (edit: 8/24/02 - 4:26pm)4 of 7
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Some new DirectX 9 rumors are floating around. Supposedly, Microsoft has added Shaders 2.1 and 3.0 to have full support for the features of the upcoming VPUs.

3.0 is intended for CineFX (NV30), while 2.1 could be for an updated Matrox Parhelia chip coming in a few months. Also around Spring 2003, ATI's R350 and an updated 3Dlabs P10 may fit into one of these shader versions.

Hopefully, HLSL (High-Level Shader Language) can keep all these shader versions organized.
pat777
August 24, 2002 - 4:47:40pm5 of 7
To: CriTioNLogin
DX9 supports 128 bit color.
chairmansteve
August 24, 2002 - 5:06:53pm6 of 7
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Here's an updated list according to more recently known info:

Higher Order Surfaces
N-Patches (also in DX8)
Continuous Tesselation
Adaptive Tesselation
Displacement Mapping

Vertex Shader 2.0
1024 Max. Instructions
256 Max. Static Instructions
256 Max. Constants
Flow Control (a.k.a. branching)

Pixel Shader 2.0
16 Texture Inputs
32 Max. Address Instructions
64 Max. Color Instructions
128-bit Floating-Point Color
4 Render Targets

Enhanced 32-bit Frame Buffer Format
1024 levels of brightness per RGB channel (30-bit color)
RGBA (10-10-10-2)
xjames19
August 28, 2002 - 10:20:27pm7 of 7
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I am using a geforce 4 ti 4600 and I will not change the card until probably directx 10. This is a trick and I am not seeing any benefit of having top end technology.

I have right now the xbox that cost me 300bucks and I had seeing a lot of better graphics that what I had gotten from my geforce 4 ti 4600 and my 2.53GHz pentium 4. There are really few games out there that can use the power of a geforce 3 and much lesser of a geforce 4. And I don't see any convincing in the computer games field, with the exception of Doom 3. All the good games are going to console instead, Grand Theft Auto is an example of this, and other games for xbox.

1 greeting amigo.
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GPU Jungle / DirectX 9.0 Features
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