Technical data

u l a r l y.We’ll talk about this some more later on in
this guide. For now, we ’d just like to mention that
while most DirectX 8 compliant cards will be suffi-
cient for current games, t h e y wo n ’t do as well in the
most recent and soon-to-come hit games, such as
Doom III, S t a l ker and Half-Life 2.
If you’re looking to replace your motherboard as
well as your graphics cards, integrated graphics
solutions may be an option for you. Beware, how-
ever, that the 3D performance of these solutions is,
at best, comparable to that of the slowest add-in
cards. As a result, these motherboards are only of
limited use to PC gamers. If your focus lies more in
the areas of office work and video editing, then
they will usually be quite sufficient.
Recently, many companies have begun campaigns
to secure a foothold for the PC in the living room.
The primary selling point of such a solution is the
PC’s inherent suitability for video and audio play-
back. Again, special attention is given to the graph-
ics card here as well. In principle, any graphics card
is capable of displaying any video format, but there
are major differences between cards in the resulting
CPU load on the PC, and the output image quality.
If the CPU load is too high when playing high-res-
olution HDTV videos (for example), there will be
noticeable stuttering during playback. Graphics
processors also differ in their offered color fidelity,
and features such as de-interlacing and scaling.We’ll
look at this in more detail in section #2.
#2: Technology
(Future Proofing)
O
ver the past few ye a r s graphics pro c e s s o rs
h ave evo l ved from pure 3D accelerators that
could only perform pre - d e t e r m i n e d , s p e c i a l -
ized tasks, into real pro c e s s o rs that are pro-
gr a m m a b le to a certain extent.This deve l o p m e n t
has allowed game designers to create their own 3D
e f f e c t s , in the same way as the cre a t o rs of pro f e s-
sional 3D re n d e r ing applications.These applications
use their own programs for 3D effects, called s h a d e r s .
Simply put, a shader is a specified mathematical
definition or description of an effect. For example,
if a stone in a game is supposed to look wet, then a
shader can be written for this purpose, which
would define the sheen effect, reflections, incidence
of light, and so on.The graphics processor then uses
the shader to calculate this effect in real time.
In the past, the solution might have been taking
the texture of the stone and overlaying it with a
second texture that incorporates pseudo reflections,
thereby creating the illusion of shininess. Of course,
this wouldn’t exactly have looked realistic.Today,
these effects can be rendered with a high level of
realism. In short, shaders add a great deal of realism
to any game, though due to the topic's complexity,
we will only be able to cover the most important
aspects of how they work.
As we discussed earlier, a ve ry important factor to
consider when choosing a graphics card is which
D i rectX generation the graphics processor support s .
The DirectX support of a card has important impli-
cations for its ability to make use of shaders , b e c a u s e
each generation of DirectX increases the complexity
of what calculations can be done by shaders . S o, l e t ’s
get back to the matter of DirectX generations.
DirectX Technology
DirectX 7 Class
The 3D engine of the game Battlefield 1942 sits
solidly on a DirectX 7 foundation. Through the
clever use of textures, the developers really squeeze
THG Graphics Card
Buyers Guide
3