Tileing to speed 3D up ?

[Galvin]

Ok since no one has respondid to my shaders question, maybe no one knew what I was talking about or even I for that matter. We all see new cards coming out with a feature that only renders parts of a 3D scene that you can see, unlike what we have now with G400, you play quake3, course you can't see thru the walls and all of that, but the game is rendering even stuff you can't see stuff on the other side of a wall, or behind a corner. This is what slows things down a lot.

Now my question comes in what if the 3D drivers were modified to assist hardware to only render what is visible with 733 to 1ghz CPU's you think there would be enough processing power to do this. I think Nvidia already has done it to speed up their 3D.

To the experts is this something doable ?

[Pace]

Do you mean that the CPU shouldn't calculate vertices etc if they are hidden on the Z-axis?

I may be mistaken, but surely a CPU must have to find out what is hidden - which then supplies that info to the graphics card which does the rest of the rendering process. I think having the CPU do this would, therefore, be impossible.

I'm standing up tall - so knock me down

Paul.

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[Joel]

He's probably talking about tile rendering which right now only PowerVR does. But there will be other future products that will do it also. And NO nVidia does not use this method. They overinflate their benchmarks by doing GDI bypassing. www.matrox.com/mga/press_room/utilities/gdi_bypassing.htm

Joel

[Ali]

Thats called clipping, and Quake3 already does it.

I dont think it would be possible for the CPU to do it, because of information double up (ie, 2 z-buffers).

The G400 is about at its limit. We might get another 3 or 4 fps out of them, but dont expect drivers to make them as fast as a Geforce.

[Joel]

"The unique tile-based rendering approach of PowerVR breaks a 3D scene into tiles, processing only the visible surfaces on each before displaying them on the screen. Because of the smaller size of a tile compared to a full screen, this approach allows on-chip processing of large amounts of data, eliminating unnecessary accesses to external memory. Additionally the algorithms used require that only visible surfaces are processed by the 3D engine, further reducing the memory and bandwidth bottlenecks suffered by traditional 'brute force' technologies. Using patented tiling techniques PowerVR provides an elegant, scalable architecture that is truly efficient and achieves 3 times the fill rate of competitive technologies with the same clock speed and number of pipelines."

And if you have a pdf reader you can out more about it at www.powervr.com/WhitePapers/Whitepapers.htm

Joel

[This message has been edited by Joel (edited 24 November 2000).]

[Indiana]

Ah, c'mon! The GDI bypassing (of course being a very arguable thing) just helps in 2D, not in 3D. The NVidia chips are just plain faster without the need for hacks. Besides they have the best OGL drivers. Besides Matrox did the same thing back in the old Millennium times...


Matrox IMHO only has two strong points left, and even these are getting weaker day by day:
1. image-quality, but here the Radeon is not so bad, either. So only half a point
2. DualHead. But here, again, ATI will release their HydraVision products which even have advantages over DualHead (independent Win2k resolutions). However, no HydraVision board out from ATI at this time, so a lucky half point for Matrox.


This leaves another question: if it's possible to have independant resolutions in Win2k with HydraVision, why isn't Matrox able to finally support this?

[This message has been edited by Indiana (edited 24 November 2000).]

[Joel]

nVidia claims to be able to do that also with their twin-view but can't because it is a limitation of the OS.

Joel

[Indiana]

Just that HydraVision is around longer than Matrox' DualHead and apparently works in Win2k with different res on the Geronimo boards.

Of course it remains to be seen if this still works on the ATI.

[DosFreak]

The NV20 will have Hidden Surface Removal which should at the very least improve scores as much as the Radeon does with it's Hyper-Z tech. Hmmm, lemme find that Radeon bench with/without Hyper-Z.

[PC001]

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1281&p=5

PC

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[Galvin]

Problem with ATI is they can't do drivers correctly for win2K nor do they place it on top of their high priority list. So they can have the best card on the planet, but since the drivers suck in win2K, it's moot.

[Pace]

Joel: I knew he'd got mixed up what tile-rendering was but it seemed like he was referring to Z-buffer related questions - but had been mixed up with some tile based PR. I see you've sorted out the tile rendering for him!

Indiana: Yes, the Millennium may have done it. But I want stability with Win2k now - and my TNT2 does not give me it. Roll on G800 et al...

Oh yes, lovely OGL drivers - but I get little black specs all over the screen - not much good when the output is crap.

IMNSHO - NVIDIA has only strong point left, speed. But then I'd rather be driver a Toyota with clear windows, than an F1 car with frosted windows!

And finally, (Galvin) don't you just wonder what'll happen when everyone upgrades to Whistler? ATi will have a major fight on their hands, and as for Microsoft enforcing their digital signing even stronger, how many people are going to find their hardware don't work in WinNT. Microsoft I think, will need to try and sort this out, before the NT kernel is unleased on Joe Public.

Paul.

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[Oracle]

the radeon does have tile based rendering called hyper z , and yes it does affect the fps when it is disabled. im gonna be getting a power vr 3 based card for my back up system soon (hey its a steal @£115 for the perfromace u recive)

------------------
P3 600e @ 660 (6*110)
128mb 100mhz sdram
abit be6-2
Radeon 32ddr (biding time till the g800
voodoo 3 2000 pci (166)
soundblaster 16pci
4.3gb seagate udma 33
15.3 wd udma 66
creative modem blaster 56k ext
win me
ie5
direct x 8.0
4013.71

....................

[Galvin]

Pace: Whislter is just windows 2001, it's based on win2K kernal, any win2K drivers should work on it, it's like going from windows 98 to 98SE, just added features but nothing totally rewritten. I doubt i'll get whistler, it's mainly just another win2K but so endusers that know jack about how to use a computer can use it

I can't really comment on ATI win2K until I get my card tuesday and see for my self. BUt I am not going to wait month after month for a vaporware g800

[Pace]

Galvin: I do realise that Whistler is based on the NT kernel - that's what I was referring to. If there are so many problems with Win2k, what's going to happen when all PCs come with NT? ATi for one had better be working their socks off to get drivers ready for Whistler.

Maybe Matrox will rule the OEM deals 100%

Paul.