Which card?

1) I believe the hardware is (mostly) compatible. But there are no drivers that support it. the 6800 series is the closest card to OGL2.0.

2) Yes. Cg 1.3 supports vp40 and fp40 profiles, which are sm3.0 compatible.

3) There are 3 flavors of the 6800.
6800 ~ $300
6800GT ~ $400
6800Ultra ~ $500.

The best performace vs price card is the 6800GT. It is basically a 6800Ultra underclocked. Most people have found they can over clock the GT to Ultra speeds no problem. I suggest looking at BFG's 6800GT. It comes overclocked out of the box and has a lifetime waranty. http://www.bfgtech.com/

Now, if money is no issue, I've seen some companies overclocking the 6800Ultra. usually it comes with a water cooling block and other fancy stuff. Or you can just get 2 6800GTs or Ultras in the PCI-E version, and connect them using SLI. You'll gain about 80% performance using SLI.

Thanks ;) Too bad money is an issue, that setup sounds real sweet :drooling:
Any ideas/predictions/speculations on when are we gonna see drivers that support most OGL2.0 features? What are the important ones missing now? And thank you for that suggestion, seems I will have to go with that BFG's 6800GT (this one, right? http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&var1=140&var2=0 )

I did some tests, and according to 3dlabs parsertest, 9800PRO with latest Catalyst drivers are far ahead of a 6800GT with latest nVidia-drivers.
My 9800PRO here at home scored 100% support of glsl, where as the 6800GT at work only got around 55%.
On the other hand, I noticed that nVidia have the built in matrix gl_ModelViewMatrixInverse in their glsl-implemententation, which ATI doesn't.
That's not an issue, since calculating the inverse modelview is fairly easy, but it's more the fact that you can't be sure that your glsl-code will compile.
I will definetly test my glsl-code at work from time to time, so see how things look/run/compile on a nvidia-cards.

Hmm, very interesting. By 100% glsl support, do you mean the 9800PRO also supports shader model 3.0 ? Thats the first time I hear about it... what didnt the 6800GT support?

Any more experiences?

Bouga: yes, thats the card I'm talking about.

As for the GLSL, I don't use GLSL so I can't say from experience if it's broken or whatever on nvidia cards. But the 6800 has more hardware features than the ati 9800pro. If GLSL turns out to be broken, then you can use CG and get the full set of features.

Ok then, one more follow-up question - does Cg support different outputs for different render targets? That was one of the things I was most looking for in OGL 2.0 and GLSL with PS 3.0.

currently the NV40 chipset supports more of the OGL2.0 spec in hardware, mostly because it supports more of the GLSL spec in hardware (once NV get the drivers updated so include support for branching and looping in fragment programs etc)

Personally, I'm looking forward to the R520 from ATI, from a couple of things I've seen its looking like a top card [grin]

Quote:

Original post by Bouga Hmm, very interesting. By 100% glsl support, do you mean the 9800PRO also supports shader model 3.0 ? Thats the first time I hear about it... what didnt the 6800GT support? Any more experiences?

No, I don't mean shader 3.0, since that wouldn't be possible with a 9800.
As far as I can tell, the parsertest from 3dlabs just compiles a bunch of shaderprograms (which follows the spec) on the hardware, and if they don't compile, then the implementation is not complete.
So, about 45% of these compiles failed on the 6800GT (which I have at work)... unfortunately forgot the logs at work, so I can't show until monday or so.

Actually... Here's how it went;
I had a FX5900 Ultra in my machine at work. I tried out some code that I did at home, and some of my matrix-calculations were all wrong all a sudden. It was like it was using transpose versions of the matrices.
So, I instantly started downloading the latest driver from nvidia. Uninstalled the old drivers, rebooted and then... Couldn't boot. Went to IT-dep and got a new gfx-card (hehe... even a nice 6800GT :), and I installed the new drivers.
Then I ran my code again, and everything looked just like back at home.

What I learned from this:
When you think your glsl-code is foo, then make sure that it isn't the implementation that's messin' with ya!
Sometimes, wasting your graphicscard at work can be a good thing ;)
I currently prefer ATI-cards based on my experiences with nVidia. Hope to see nVidia get some stuff done with their glsl-implementation!

Phew... How many times did I just write "implementation"?

Anyways - hope this was any use :)

Quote:

Original post by stein How many times did I just write "implementation"?

LOL... 3! Not that much actually!
Silly me. Just felt like more somehow :]

^^^
that was me.. forgot to log on.

haha.. interesting how 'Anonymous Poster' has a less than average user rating.


Oh yeah.. I'm not sure if OpenGL supports MRT's. I know DX, but I haven't seen anything for GL (although I could be not looking hard enough).