What an instant T&L and pixel shader upgrade for your G400?

[Nuno]

http://www.tommti-systems.com/main-Dateien/TOOLS/3danalyzer-v14beta.zip

You must select:
- emulate cube maps caps.
- emulate pixel shader caps.
- emulate bump map caps
As DDL Path select "e2driver" subfolder.
As EXE file select "3DMark2001SE.exe"

Bingo. 3Dmark nature test now runs on KYRO´s! LOL

Here´s a link to prove it http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=3649199 and here´s why Madonion folks aren´t terribly happy with it (I wonder why ) http://discuss.madonion.com/forum/sh...&fpart=11&vc=1

So it should work for those G400´s and Geforce 2 out there

[TdB]

well, I tried it and yes, I can now run the 3dmark2001se nature (gametest 4) on my kyro2(gave me a 300 3dmark increase), but it doesn´t render the pixelshaders.
It tricks the app into believing it can render pixelshaders, and then don´t draw them, but tells the app it has been rendered.

It is a nice little utillity to make games, with outrageous dx8 requirements, work, but it doesn´t do magic.

However, the next version might provide software emulation for various dx8 features, so there is still hope, that we (with dx7 hardware) might actually see pixelshaders in action.

p.s. 3dmark scores with this program is considered cheating, so don´t submit the scores, you can still enjoy most of the nature scene, but the advanced pixelshader test crashes, and the EMBM test looks funny.

[Gurm]

Yeah, we've been seeing programs like this pop up every time a version of DX ups the ante for years now.

First one I saw was for DX3, that pretended to have all the features, and was supposed to actually emulate them in "the next version" which of course never came.

Then DX5. Then DX7. Now DX8.

I'll buy it when I see it. In theory it should be EASY to emulate unsupported features of either DX or OGL. In practice it must be damn near impossible, since nobody ever has.

- Gurm

[TdB]

I thought DX3 was designed to have a full featured software renderer, it wasn´t designed to be fast or easy to code for, but to give developers a chance to ignore the "card x doesn´t have feature Y" problem.

the result was, of course, a crappy api.

[Drizzt]

Even a DX3 card can run DX9 apps with all the features activated.

In every DX version there is something called "HEL", that stand for Hardware Emulation Layer.
And it's Microsoft itself that code that layer, so that a programmer can make use of an effect even if the card doesn't support it.


But, sometimes programmers are hard to understand and not make use of this function...

[TdB]

I'll buy it when I see it. In theory it should be EASY to emulate unsupported features of either DX or OGL. In practice it must be damn near impossible, since nobody ever has.

well, if you download the full dx8.1 sdk, it comes with a "reference rasterizer" that emulates EVERY dx8.1 feature in software, it works and it is slow as hell.

software emulation, is not possible in fast realtime applications, but it can be usefull for a game-developer, that wants to use a not-yet-implemented-in-hardware feature.

p.s. it doesn´t work with existing games, you need the sourcecode for the game to make it work.

[TdB]

Originally posted by Drizzt
Even a DX3 card can run DX9 apps with all the features activated.

In every DX version there is something called "HEL", that stand for Hardware Emulation Layer.
And it's Microsoft itself that code that layer, so that a programmer can make use of an effect even if the card doesn't support it.


But, sometimes programmers are hard to understand and not make use of this function...

the HEL is used for the "reference rasterizer", and it isn´t usefull for realtime rendering.

[Drizzt]

I know, I've used it a few times to do some testing. I remember, however, that the reference rasterizer has something in the code that is slower than the HEL itself...

However, what I wanted to make notice to others it's that the guy it's selling something that already exists.