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Diabo|ik Grand Admiral
Joined: August 16, 2002 Posts: 327 From: Quebec, Canada
| Posted: 2005-09-22 03:25  
I still think he should've went for the gto2 x800 -> x 850 bios flash mod .
I can't say anything about these arguments other than : It just looks better on the "more trouble to program for" engine...
As for the heavier driver/cpu load on nvidia cards, I do agree it's an issue on dx9 titles ( with half the cpu usage being on the program/system/driver calls, remaining on actual polygon generation... which kinda sucks ). But right now and everytime before, raw power and speed ( the old voodoo way beating cpus, the nvidia cards beating the latest voodoos, etc etc ) always had the upper hand, be it in software or hardware. Also, I can see Nvidia using the multicores of the new cpus to it's advantage in this situation since game code is hard to recompile on the fly/precompile to take advantage of multiple cpus. But you'll have to correct me there if I'm wrong, you could use the second cpu only for driver calls regarding "software dx9 emu". It wouldn't hurt performance much for dual core compatible games either, as was shown earlier with the albeit few games that supported multiple cpus, only a 40% or so boost was shown, and the second cpu was clearly not at peak usage, leaving room for "something else". Altough I realise it isn't exactly future proof, since dedicated hardware ( sound or graphics dedicated ) will always be > than multi purpose hardware ( cpus ). Since multi cores are here to stay, it's most probable that the devs/graphics vendors will eventually adapt to best use the availlable power ( especially since the consoles heavy use of multiple cores layouts , devs will need to learn how to deal with them, as well as graphics vendors... ).
On the short term I see Nvidia holding it's own ( 1 to 2 years, enough time to come up with a solution ) if the aforementioned driver calls compartimentation on a seperate cpu is actually possible. *crosses fingers for them...* I just love competition.
[ This Message was edited by: Diabo|ik on 2005-09-22 03:34 ]
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