Technical video card question.

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LawGiver

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Oct 16, 2005
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Why is it that....

Why is it that pixel fill rate has increased by "only" a factor of 30 since the the days of the Voodoo 3, yet geometry (polygons) rate has increased by around a factor of 150!

*im using V3 vs x1800 xt here.
 
Because once you get over 100 FPS at 1600x1280 res...fill rate is not the limiting factor for performance.
 
Because multiple lights cut into your polygon thoroughput.

Man, I feel old. I remember the Nvidia tree demo, and how much slower the complex mode was (multiple lights, more polygons).
 
LawGiver said:
I dont get it.
Click to expand...

People want more polygons. Games today only have about 100-200k polygons per scene. We can do much better than that, and it wil make a hell of a difference.

Also, as I said above, if you add more lights to a scene, you reduce the polygon rate of the video card.

WHO HERE DOESN'T LIKE *TONS* OF REAL-TIME LIGHTS?

Thus, they add more peak polygon processing.

This is the same reason why we have ridiculous amounts of fill rate. Technically, a card should be able to do high-resolution with only a few hundred megapixels fillrate...but when you throw in inefficiency due to overdraw, and overhead due to things like AA, you end up with much less EFFECTIVE fillrate.
 
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