ok, somebody give me a straight answer here....

[jordo256]

I've searched all over the net ,and haven't gotten a good answer yet, I understand that the parhelia is a GPU and so far all gpu's are understood to have hardware t&l, but nowhere have I found any ads for like "3rd generation t&l engine" or something along those lines, So does it , or not, have HARDWARE TRANSFORM & LIGHTING?


Thanks, Jordo

[R.Carter]

From everything that i have read the Parhelia does have a vertex shader.

[MrGaribaldi]

And it would seem it has incorporated a pixel shader too...

[R.Carter]

Hehe.

Basically, with a vertex shader (introduced with DirectX8) you don't really use the Transform & Lighting pipeline anymore. A vertex shader is a lot more flexible and is done all in hardware.

There is something aboutFundamentals of Vertex Shaders if you are at all interested in this topic.

[jordo256]

so basically you're saying that all gpu's hardware t&l ever consisted of were pixel shaders and vertex shaders?... hmm...
this doesn't seem right... and why isn't matrox using the term t&l....

I know it sounds picky but I do want to know...

[103er-Fan]

Originally posted by jordo256
so basically you're saying that all gpu's hardware t&l ever consisted of were pixel shaders and vertex shaders?... hmm...
this doesn't seem right... and why isn't matrox using the term t&l....

I know it sounds picky but I do want to know...

I guess you mean the crappy old DX7 T&L which has been used by Max Payne and 3dMark 2001 for example...
I don't think that Matrox included one, because it is just outdated. Today the CPUs are so fast, that there is no need to keep included DX7 T&L units for games which are at least one year old. Also the most T&L games didn't get a huge performance boost, Max Payne for example isn't much faster when you enable T&L.... if the CPU is fast enough (>1 GHz)
The Parhelia of course has programmable DX8 T&L, which would be pixel and vertex shaders, they are being used in Aquanox and 3dMark 2002 for example.

[Kruzin]

T&L is an old term. Matrox's programmable shaders do everything that T&L did and more.
When running apps that require hardware T&L, it is detected and works with Parhelia.

[R.Carter]

Originally posted by jordo256
so basically you're saying that all gpu's hardware t&l ever consisted of were pixel shaders and vertex shaders?... hmm...
this doesn't seem right... and why isn't matrox using the term t&l....

Not at all. A hardware T&L pipeline like that of the GeForce 256 that was first supported with DirectX7 only supports a fixed set of operations.

Those exact same operations can be done using Vertex Shaders (VS). VS support appeared with the GeForce 3 and DirectX8.0.

You no longer need a dedicated hardware T&L pipeline if you have VS support. You can program the VS to do everything a hardware T&L pipeline can do and a whole lot more.

I call one the first method hardware T&L and the other which uses vertex shaders as programmable T&L.

Thats just me, I'm not sure if others use the same terminology or not.

[MetalCartman]

I remember someone asking this question to Haig over there at Moatrox' support forums. Don't know the exact words now, but I think you get the idea, and please (as always) correct me, if I'm wrong

Question: What about games that require H/W DirectX 7 T&L?
Answer: They will be fine.

That's exactly what Kruzin stated here, so I wouldn't worry.

[az]

Like Kruzin said, Vertex & Pixel shaders are like a (very) advanced form of hardware t&l - standard hardwired t&l is WAY outdated, and is emulated (in hardware, of course) by all modern GPUs.

No need to worry

AZ

[jordo256]

thanks, guys, and kruzin for clearing that up... I'm still running my radeon 64 ddr vivo that I got 2 years ago this july.. I still play all my games fine right now, so I haven't kept up on the T&l thing....

[moreau]

Originally posted by jordo256
I'm still running my radeon 64 ddr vivo that I got 2 years ago this july.. I still play all my games fine right now....

There is an assessment that is all too missing in the world these days...

"my card isn't the latest and greatest, but it meets my current needs..."

Three cheers for jordo!



CEM

[HaloFX]

Keep in mind GPU is a bogus marketing term coined by nVidia. It is just another name for the little piece of silicon that does all the work. Calling something a GPU does not imply any particular features.

[az]

Well, with graphic chips being more complex than CPUs these days, I think it's only fair to call them GPUs, although this indeed was an nVidia marketing term when it was invented. The general consensus is that any graphics chip with TnL is called a GPU.

AZ

[Wombat]

<B>Well, with graphic chips being more complex than CPUs these days</B>, I think it's only fair to call them GPUs, although this indeed was an nVidia marketing term when it was invented. The general consensus is that any graphics chip with TnL is called a GPU.

Whoa! Hold up!!! That's a load of crap!