What exactly is Matrox up to .... get the <facts>

[TdB]

TdB

in 5-6 years from now, i would exspect 3d-performance to be were 2d-performance is now:

that is, being unimpotant, because it is just fast enough for everything.

i can´t renember last time i ran a 2d-benchmark, i really can´t.

5-6 years ago, we couldnt run in the res/colors we wanted, because of the graphic-card, now the monitor/eyesight is the bottleneck.

im only talking about speed, offcause

[borat]

tdb you have a valid point i mean who can really honestly say that they require 2Ghz of processing power from their computer apart from number crunching professionals?
the fact is hawever that despite this processors are getting faster and selling still so may be graphics cards will also get faster even when we dont need the speed.

[Novdid]

No I don't agree.

Say that in 5-6 years most of us run our games in 2048x1536. Then let's say that monitors doesn't run any higher resolutions, then the importance of FSAA becomes apparent. Remember 4x FSAA requires 4x the fillrate (todays technology), and in 5-6 years we will probably have 16x FSAA as a minimum setting (just a guess).

My friends, 3D performance is not like 2D performance. If the future chips are soooo fast that they are limited by our monitors, then the programmers will add various ways of bump mapping, enable FSAA as a default setting in the games just as all of the games today use Bilinear filtering, and use obscene amounts of polygons (wich will need a very beefy CPU) to create more or less lifelike games. You see were I'm getting at. 3D graphics can evolve endlessly.

2D graphics haven't reached the top just yet either, just look how the various effects in WinXP slow all the cards out today...

[TdB]

TdB

even with fsaa, there is a maximum number of pixels that needs to be rendered, and that maximum is dictated by the monitor, and if the the 3d-engine uses more onscreen-polygons than pixels, then it is just poorly programmed LOD(Level Of Detail).

basically: if a monitor has N pixels, then the time it takes to render a frame is proportional to N, because each pixel takes a finite time to render.

and 16xfsaa doesn´t need 16xspeed, the newest rumors say that on tiler, fsaa can be done for free(almost).

[Indiana]

Besides I'm not a number crunching professional, but I still could use something faster than my current CPU (AthlonXP@1.65 GHz ~ XP2000+). If you do lots of mp3 encoding and vidcapturing with editing and recompression (MPEG-2 or DivX) afterwards you need one hell of a fast CPU and a hell of a large and fast HD. I wouldn't mind having an AthlonXP@10GHz combined with a 100GB+ RAM-based "harddrive"...

2D-speed: I can see a difference between some of todays cards (no, not only with XPs fancy [crazy?!?] effects) and I think it's quite a pity that 2D-speed has become that forgotten. Since some cards (Kyro, G450) are dogs with hires and large windows but especially when using overlays.

[Guru]

2D graphics haven't reached the top just yet either, just look how the various effects in WinXP slow all the cards out today...

Like I have asked before why use a OS that looks like a fvcking Picasso?

[leech]

Get it straight, WindowsXP looks like a Fisher Price toy. At least the default theme. I use the Aqua theme. go to http://www.themexp.org for all that fun stuff. I can't stand the default theme. Looks, like I said, like a fisher price toy.

Leech

[mdhome]

and 16xfsaa doesn´t need 16xspeed, the newest rumors say that on tiler, fsaa can be done for free(almost).

TDB

Show me a card that can do FSAA 4 for free. Because I dont think any of the current tilers can


regards MD

[Novdid]

TDB, you get me wrong here, I was saying IF our future monitors can't run resolutions above 2048. Which they will do...

16x will never come for free, but will maybe not use 16x fillrate though. I do get your point on the pixels vs polygon thingy, but as I said, you can almost do anything in 3d graphics. I can mention one thing: enormous textures, only that would slow down everything tremendously while providing a significant boost to imagequality, and here memory bandwidth will be important.

Perpixel realtime rendered lighting, would be cool, fog and explosion effects done in awesome detail...I could go on forever.

We will have faster graphics weather we like it or not.

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

MD,

The Gigapixel chip could do FSAA for free using Multisampling as it generated free sub-samples for every clock cycle. It was demoed in closed doors with a G400Max; both cards had roughly the sample FPS on the counter, but the GP card with 4x MSAA enabled.

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

Having any resolution above 2048 is rather pointless for the common consumer. The visible difference between 640x480 [TV, which looks rather *photorealistic*] and 1024x768 is HUGE, but how many people can honestly appeciate a increaes from 2048 to 4096?

Our *eyes* are the limiting fact now.

What we need is 3D-holographic displays...say byebye to texture filtering.

[Novdid]

The screens will get bigger, then the sudden need of higher resolutions become apparent.

Example. 800x600 looks better on a 17" than on a 21" monitor.

[superfly]

I honestly do believe that within 4~5 years we'll reach the point where cards will be capable to rendering photorealistic images in real time.

I mean think about it,4 years ago we had the first consumer 3d cards on the market(voodoo 1) and in such a short period of time we're all the way up to GF3's and radion 8500's which are 25~30 times more powerfull than the original voodoo and that's just considering in terms of fill rate and to top it off have integrated 2d cores and hardware DVD decoding engines as well.


If the card makers continue on the very same pace,i can't even imagine how powerfull cards will become even in 2 years time ,let alone 4.

for example,there was a tech conference in taiwan some months ago in which the ceo of nvidia gave a general broad outline of where they intend to go in the next few years and while he didn't discuss any specifics on upcoming products,he did state the following ...

By the end of next year,it will be possible to build graphics chips with over 100 million transistors at over 300 mhz at 0.10 micron desing rules.

But here is where it gets interesting...

By 2005,there will be chips on the market with over 300 million transistors running in excess of 750 mhz.

gf3's and radion 8500 have 60 million transistors,can anyone here honestly imagine what 300 million can be used for?...

The word word that come to mind,at least for me,is EVERYTHING......

[TdB]

TdB

The screens will get bigger, then the sudden need of higher resolutions become apparent.

why would we want bigger monitors???

a bigger monitor on a workstation would be impractical and useless, if the monitor is so big then we would need a seperate table for the monitor, because otherwise you would be to close to it.

i can see the point with a big TV, because you don´t sit right next to it.

multiple monitors however, is a good idea.

[orangejulius]

"The <a href="http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/accessories/monitors/index.html">IBM T221</a> monitor delivers outstanding visual performance. Packing over 9.2 million pixels into its 22.2in/564mm viewing image area, the T221 monitor displays exceptionally high-quality images for users in the medical, scientific and many other fields, anywhere the clarity of images is critical."

That's why. And it ships with a Matrox G200 MMS.