OpenGL / GPU

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Original post by Anonymous Poster I'm on an Acer 5670 laptop with an x1600 on it. It plays Half-Life 2 at 60fps flawlessly. I don't know where you get your info but I suspect it's 100% incorrect. 2fps would mean ATI would be out of business.

Well, right on this forum:

nr.1
nr.2

X800's are still pretty good and will most likely run anything you throw at it.

Edit: After reading those links I'm not so sure, why not just get an nVidia with the possibility to go SLI ?

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Original post by SilentKiller X800's are still pretty good and will most likely run anything you throw at it. Edit: Hmm, reading those links...

All the cards i mentioned are well within budget, would an x800 be better than an X1600? (if not why are they more expensive?)

Hmm I'm not entirely sure...

Heres a benchmark http://firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_x1600_xt_x1300_pro/page9.asp

It has both X1600 and X800 in the results.. the X1600 seems to score a little higher FPS

Thanks for the info guys, i think i'll be going for the 1600. The benchmark site was really the confimation i needed.

I do use linux, but i've got a dedicated computer for that, the computer i'm going to buy will be windows only. But i didn't know ati and linux aren't exactly a perfect match, thanks for that. As long as the new drivers for windows are OK.

Greetings.

i don't know if this is relevant anymore, for you already seemed to have decided to buy a 1600, but just to mention: I think ATI X800 doesn't support shader model 3.0 but only 2.0, which means it's not capable of real loops and branching in shader programs. I think only ATIs X1000er and higher support shader model 3.0, therefore it's a good idea that you choosed the X1600, if you want to work with shader programming.

greetz
rapunzel

I think it's the 1900 that is SM 3.0 capable.
You can do loops and conditional branches in fragment shaders.
Read textures from vertex shaders.

SM 2 supports loops in vertex shaderss but I think the driver unrolls them.

IMO, the best choice is nVidia, although I have a ATI at the moment

ATI's SM3.0 cards DONT support texture reading in vertex programs. This is because the D3D spec made this an optional part of SM3.0 and ATI decided not to impliment it, instead prefering the 'render to vertex buffer' way of doing things.

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Original post by phantom ATI's SM3.0 cards DONT support texture reading in vertex programs. This is because the D3D spec made this an optional part of SM3.0 and ATI decided not to impliment it, instead prefering the 'render to vertex buffer' way of doing things.

Let me see if i get this straight. Note that i will be using OpenGL shading language. If it says it supports openGL 2.0 it should allow you to pass a sampler2d to read from right?

BTW, i am still going for ATI because i feel that crossfire is superior to SLI, and i am going crossfire as soon as possible.

Would you guys advice to save up for a bit and buy x1900xt or go for x1600. I will not be using it to play a lot of games, just to create my own using OpenGL 2.0 + GLSL

Greetings.

Of course you can access textures in a fragment shader, but ATI cards do NOT support vertex texturing (meaning you can't access textures in the vertex shader).

Crossfire superior to SLI? No way. SLI is "older" and thus has the by far better drivers, as far as I've heard (I can only tell what I've heard, because personally I don't think anyone needs SLI/Crossfire). Crossfire only works if ATI updates their drivers or by .exe-renaming (if you're lucky). nVidia allows you to customize the SLI settings, and it works better out of the box. But let's not start an ATI/nVidia flame war here.

Anyway, if you're using OpenGL and if you're serious about shader programming, I'd definitely look for a Shader Model 3 card (GeForce 6/7 and X1x000 NOT X800!) ... and probably nVidia would be a better choice (they have better OpenGL drivers).

By the way, why do you need SLI/Crossfire if you're not playing a lot of games? And you know that a X1900XTX non-crossfire is a better choice than two X1600 (X1300 is not a good choice for gaming).

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Original post by Expandable Of course you can access textures in a fragment shader, but ATI cards do NOT support vertex texturing (meaning you can't access textures in the vertex shader). Crossfire superior to SLI? No way. SLI is "older" and thus has the by far better drivers, as far as I've heard (I can only tell what I've heard, because personally I don't think anyone needs SLI/Crossfire). Crossfire only works if ATI updates their drivers or by .exe-renaming (if you're lucky). nVidia allows you to customize the SLI settings, and it works better out of the box. But let's not start an ATI/nVidia flame war here. Anyway, if you're using OpenGL and if you're serious about shader programming, I'd definitely look for a Shader Model 3 card (GeForce 6/7 and X1x000 NOT X800!) ... and probably nVidia would be a better choice (they have better OpenGL drivers). By the way, why do you need SLI/Crossfire if you're not playing a lot of games? And you know that a X1900XTX non-crossfire is a better choice than two X1600 (X1300 is not a good choice for gaming).

Hmm, i thought i read in my OpenGL Shader book that it would be possible to pass a uniform sampler2d into your vertex shader, i would be using this for terrain generation via the shader and using textures to encode mathematic functions. I will look into this, but if it can't be done on an ATI, i certainly will not incorporate it into my game, since i want compatibility over all.

This is just my opinion so don't hold it against me, but i feel that SLI was first because nVidia rushed development to be first, and ATI actually took the time to create something that works properly. In the beginning you needed a driver update for every new game that came out to make use of SLI, whereas Crossfire handles this internally. Furthermore i especially like that Crossfire has checkerboard rendering, which is very efficient, super antialiasing, physics dedicated card, etc.

Thanks for the info, i may go for a single 1900 after all.

Edit: ow and i will need crossfire, because i'm making a retail worthy engine for my planned game, which i expect to be finished in about 2 years time, and if i use cutting edge technology now, it will be mainstream before my game hits the market :) thats why :)

Edit 2:

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Original post by Expandable But let's not start an ATI/nVidia flame war here.

Ow yeah, sorry, let's not :)

I just looked it up in my opengl book, and the minimum allowed for gl_MaxVertexTextureImageUnits is 0, which is quite a disapointment, especially if ATI doesn't support it.