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New 3D Graphics Card Features in 2006

Posted by Zonk on from the love-the-shiny dept.

Ant writes "This Tom's Hardware article says that in the latest generation of graphics cards, PixelShader has become mainstream. Version 3 features 3D effects like HDR rendering for bright light sources, and parallax mapping for even more vivid features in walls and stones. The brand-new ATI Radeon X1000 series and the NVIDIA GeForce 6 and 7 master these improved graphics features. It looks at today's newest computer games (e.g., F.E.A.R.) and compare the 3D effects."

10 of 297 comments (clear)

  1. Unreal Engine 3 by nacturation · · Score: 4, Informative

    Take a look at the next Unreal engine. Many of these advanced features are already there. The demo video is quite incredible. There's also Project Offset which I'm eagerly awaiting as well.

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  2. Re:2006? by Nightspark · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yep. The "brand-new" Radeon X1k series was launched in October, and the GeForce 7 series was launched in August.

  3. DOOM3 mod with parallax by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    No idea if this is the one you mean exactly, but the results match. They call it relief mapping.

    On a side note, it is fun to see how demo images can have error (bricks do not match in the corner of the burning barrel image). Please, if you want to show how cool is hot air distortion... make sure other graphic details are fine too.

  4. Re:Games? What about the basic OS? by mclaincausey · · Score: 2, Informative
    Core Image in OS X offloads a lot of the GUI stuff to the graphics processor. To get all the eye candy (sorry, usability improvements) you can't have a particularly old card. Vista is doing the same thing.
    That's not exactly true. Core Image provides the real-time framework for certain filters to execute on pixels. This includes, for a GUI example, the ripple when a widget is added to Dashboard, but it could also include filters in a Cocoa image manipulation program. Developers can trivially add the built-in effects to video and image manipulation packages. Similarly, Core Audio can easily be incorporated by developers into their own apps.

    What you're describing sounds more like Quartz Extreme, which renders 2D screen elements as OpenGL textures. The idea is to offload as much of the drawing process to the graphics card as possible by using the often idle 3D hardware.

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  5. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  6. Cool! by Eightyford · · Score: 2, Informative

    I just upgraded to the new intel Extreme graphics thingy. The Bestbuy guy said it was the best on the market. Is that true??? I mean EXTREME!!!

    He did say something about them breaking easy though. So I bought the extended warranty, of course.

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  7. Yes, but maybe not for long. by ardor · · Score: 5, Informative

    Right now, OpenGL is on-par with Direct3D 9, now that the framebuffer object extension is out. Direct3D 10 is a wholly different issue, however. It has support for geometry shaders, constant buffers, superbuffers... OpenGL needs to catch up with new extensions or else it will fall behind, again. And this time, it may not survive.

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  8. Re:2006? by sysrpl · · Score: 2, Informative

    I believe this is the link you were looking for:
    http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/Forum3 /HTML/011292.html

    IIRC this was the first public discussion of the technique.

  9. Re:h.264 accelleration in geforce 6, 7 gpus by NVP_Radical_Dreamer · · Score: 2, Informative

    Oh are you talking about Pure Video? You mean the same Pure Video that took 8 months to actually "work" after it was advertised as being a key feature? Surely you cant be talking about this http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2305

    OR THIS http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20515

    Yes I am bitter since I was one of those GF 6800 Ultra owners

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  10. Re:I don't care, until by Fweeky · · Score: 2, Informative

    Apparantly nVidia are awaiting Page Attribute Table support before they can release a FreeBSD/amd64 driver.