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Pipelines Difference?

H

hauntedfury

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 4, 2005
Messages
77
Whats the difference between Programmable and non-Programmable pipelines? What difference does it make?
 
I think programmable pipelines can be assigned a specific purpose by game developers.
It is a good thing if you got it.
 
It's pretty hard to accurately compare two cards based just on that...programmable pipelines are a good thing for certain uses, but having ones dedicated to a specific task is also good...most cards probably have a number of both. It's like asking whether flour or sugar is better for making a cake.
 
hauntedfury said:
Whats the difference between Programmable and non-Programmable pipelines? What difference does it make?
Click to expand...

Fixed Function is limited, you can only run the effects that are supported by the video card. If you want new features and effects in games you have to wait until the hardware supports that feature.

With programmable shaders you can create any effect your heart desires, it's all up to the creativity of the game devs.

Unless you are referring to Unified pipelines, where a pipe can work on a pixel or vertex program.
 
Just out of curiosity. If a card is DirectX 9.0 compatible, wouldn't it be by definition, programmable?

I thought it just came down to the number of instructions passable to the Pixel and Vertex shaders when talking about the SM versions. (this of course is summarized, I know that there are other differences as well, but this tends to narrow it down).
 
HighTest said:
Just out of curiosity. If a card is DirectX 9.0 compatible, wouldn't it be by definition, programmable?
Click to expand...

Depends on what you mean by compatible. Strictly speaking DX9 requires a DX7 class driver or better. So even a TNT or V5000 will work with DX9 with limitations. However if you mean DX9 class hardware, then that means it is programmable and must support VS & PS 2.0 among other things.

edit: I only make the distinction between compatible and class because marketing types may not. Take for instance the first nVidia MX's cards which did not have complete hardware support for VS 1.1, they used a mixture of SWVS + HWVS.
 
Brent_Justice said:
With programmable shaders you can create any effect your heart desires, it's all up to the creativity of the game devs.
Click to expand...

In an ideal world yes, with ideal shaders :)
In practice, the programmable shaders have some limitations (they are not a generic programmable model like a CPU, they're not Turing-complete).
And ofcourse some effects are only possible at non-interactive speeds because of the amount of arithmetic they require.

But yes, programmable pipelines (aka shaders) will allow you to implement more effects, or implement effects more efficiently than before. Then again, the age of non-programmable pipelines is pretty much over now that even Intels onboard graphics supports ps2.0.
 
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