Pixel shaders

grahf · Jun 24, 2003

Hi

I'm not a ps2 programmer or technical in ps2 programming in general, but I'm assuming that ps2 emulators will need pixel shaders in some compacity. This is based upon my observation that alot of ps2 games uses pixel shaders-like effect, such as reflecting water. Now the question I have is which version of pixel shaders will ps2 emulators need? I ask this is because I'm currently an owner of a nvidia geforcefx graphic card and I know it supports the latest pixel shader 2.0. However, I'm considering trading this in for a geforce4ti4200, which only supports pixel shader up to 1.3 iirc.

Please inform me as to whether ps2 emulation will eventually need pixel shaders and what version will be needed. Thanks.

fivefeet8 · Jun 24, 2003

I might once hardware excelleration in D3d or Ogl is needed. Those effects could be emulated in software as well though.

Phoenix Flame · Jun 25, 2003

Does the PS2 have shader units or is it all done in software? I don't recall the PS2 having any pixel or vertex shaders ...

And why would you want to trade a Geforce FX for a GF4TIi200?

fivefeet8 · Jun 25, 2003

Phoenix Flame said:
Does the PS2 have shader units or is it all done in software? I don't recall the PS2 having any pixel or vertex shaders ...

And why would you want to trade a Geforce FX for a GF4TIi200?

No the ps2 doesn't have pixel shaders. It's all done in Software, but ps2's powerful Risc cpu does it quite fast.

Demigod · Jun 25, 2003

Phoenix Flame said:
Does the PS2 have shader units or is it all done in software? I don't recall the PS2 having any pixel or vertex shaders ...

And why would you want to trade a Geforce FX for a GF4TIi200?

Pixel shaders would be required for accelerating PS2 graphics features that are not supported by PC 3D accelerators. It's not so much that the PS2 has pixel shaders but that its GPU can do things that PC GPUs can't.

Perhaps he has one of the slow FX 5200s with 64-bit RAM in which case a GF4 Ti 4200 would be faster.

N1ghtw0lf · Jun 25, 2003

yea...those 64 bit ones are only goin for 70 bucks now

...and i have a G4Ti4200 128MB and i couldn't be happier with it...except for the fact its the only thing in my computer that's hot when on...but thats to be expected...even though it does worry me a bit considering its the most expensive part of my computer

EDIT: Yea...the pixel shadin in morrowind (dunno what version that is) was perfectly fine with this card so i dont think you'd have a problem

Exophase · Jun 25, 2003

Demigod said:
Pixel shaders would be required for accelerating PS2 graphics features that are not supported by PC 3D accelerators. It's not so much that the PS2 has pixel shaders but that its GPU can do things that PC GPUs can't.

Perhaps he has one of the slow FX 5200s with 64-bit RAM in which case a GF4 Ti 4200 would be faster.

It can't necessarily do anything that a PC 3D accelerator can't, they're just limited by the generalized APIs that are Direct3D and OpenGL. OGL 2 looks considerably more flexible IMO. As for pixel shaders, I very strongly doubt right now that anyone's going to be using pixel shaders for anything related to emulation any time soon except for XBox.

- Exo

Mohz · Jun 25, 2003

why go to geforce 4? get Geforce FX 5600 Ultra..it has Direct X 9 support ^^ and it beats the 9500 Radeon and 4600 pretty much.

Demigod · Jun 25, 2003

Exophase said:
It can't necessarily do anything that a PC 3D accelerator can't, they're just limited by the generalized APIs that are Direct3D and OpenGL.

Yeah, that's what I mean. I don't mean that PC 3D hardware can't literally do them (otherwise what would be the point in pixel shaders?) but that they currently do not have function calls for them.

MaZa · Jun 30, 2003

why go to geforce 4? get Geforce FX 5600 Ultra..it has Direct X 9 support ^^ and it beats the 9500 Radeon and 4600 pretty much.

One thing might be is that FX5600Ultra is EXTREMELY NOISY! Fan makes so horrible noise that you can kiss good gaming atmosphere good-bye. Think about playing something scary game like resident evil, when computer is humming almost as loud as F/A 18 afterburner near you.

Also DX9 support is just useless. It won´t be used in many years...

Kane · Jun 30, 2003

Actualy, that's the 5800U which was discontinued.

Demigod · Jul 1, 2003

MaZa said:
Also DX9 support is just useless. It won´t be used in many years...

And what exactly are you basing that on? Most experts expect DX9 to catch on quickly and DX9 games to pour into the market in a little as 6 months. DX8 took quite a long time to take off (and still hasn't really caught on), as it was difficult to program for and had very short instruction capacity. Not only will DX9 extend instruction lengths by a great deal but it will also have HLSL (high-level shading language) to facilitate development.

MaZa · Jul 2, 2003

All games that require DX9 to work works perfectly on older cards too. Special effects like pixelshader v.2 won´t be supported for years (game developers want to make games that works perfectly on all popular cards), cuz most people doesn´t even have a card that supports it.
Maybe only DX9 card that i would recommend would be Radeon9700Pro. Very fast and quite cheap already.

To Lord Kane:

Whoops. accident...

Demigod · Jul 2, 2003

MaZa said:
All games that require DX9 to work works perfectly on older cards too.

And what are you basing that on again? DX9 games would require the use of vertex shader and pixel shader v2.0, otherwise would have to have certain effects nullified. I wouldn't call that working perfectly, just adequately.

MaZa said:
Special effects like pixelshader v.2 won´t be supported for years (game developers want to make games that works perfectly on all popular cards), cuz most people doesn´t even have a card that supports it.

Why do you think Nvidia's made their entire GeForce FX line of GPUs fully DX9-compliant? It's to saturate the market with DX9 products for faster market acceptance and development. The failure of DX8 is due, in part to the GeForce 4 MX. While the GF4 Ti supported DX8 the MX didn't (and most people bought the MX). This was also the reason why people praised the Radeon 9000 Pro when it came out, as it supported DX 8.1. Developers have been asking for programmability for years and to many of them DX9 is the answer. With both Nvidia and ATI backing it up why wouldn't developers want to use it?

MaZa said:
Maybe only DX9 card that i would recommend would be Radeon9700Pro. Very fast and quite cheap already.

Why would that be the only card you recommend? There are others like the Radeon 9600 Pro, GeForce FX 5600 Ultra and even the GeForce FX 5200 Ultra (which replaces the old GF4 MX). DX9 is very affordable technology right now and people will be using it soon.

Oh, and in case you didn't know upcoming games like Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 will feature the use of DX9/ARB2, and as soon as Doom 3 is out many games will follow that use its engine.

Exophase · Jul 2, 2003

Demigod said:
And what are you basing that on again? DX9 games would require the use of vertex shader and pixel shader v2.0, otherwise would have to have certain effects nullified. I wouldn't call that working perfectly, just adequately.

Why do you think Nvidia's made their entire GeForce FX line of GPUs fully DX9-compliant? It's to saturate the market with DX9 products for faster market acceptance and development. The failure of DX8 is due, in part to the GeForce 4 MX. While the GF4 Ti supported DX8 the MX didn't (and most people bought the MX). This was also the reason why people praised the Radeon 9000 Pro when it came out, as it supported DX 8.1. Developers have been asking for programmability for years and to many of them DX9 is the answer. With both Nvidia and ATI backing it up why wouldn't developers want to use it?

Why would that be the only card you recommend? There are others like the Radeon 9600 Pro, GeForce FX 5600 Ultra and even the GeForce FX 5200 Ultra (which replaces the old GF4 MX). DX9 is very affordable technology right now and people will be using it soon.

Oh, and in case you didn't know upcoming games like Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 will feature the use of DX9/ARB2, and as soon as Doom 3 is out many games will follow that use its engine.

There will be several games that use DX9, sure. But rely on it? There will be few, if any, for a while.. and because of that it probably won't be used very heavily. For what it's worth, while nVidia certainly has good intentions in bringing out an entire spectrum of DX9 cards the lower end ones are kinda a joke right now. They don't really pack a lot of power at all, and it's going to take more than simply having the ability to run DX9 code to actually play games well. GFFX 5200 will probably never catch on because it's just not very good, and 5600 will only sell marginally. You have to understand that even a good GFFX 5200 Ultra (the plain 5200 is a total joke, a GF4 MX could beat it) still sells for well over $100 and 5600 is all the more more expensive. At the high end we've got loads of $300-$500 cards... games simply aren't going to rely on something until there are a variety of decent sub $100 cards that support it well.

- Exo

MaZa · Jul 2, 2003

At least here in finland 5600Ultra is quite expensive, so that is why i recommend 9700Pro (you may get one for good price). Also 5200Ultra is **** (It is slower than Ti4200). 9500Pro is very good, but it has some problems with choking on big and heavy textures (not a big deal now, but maybe in future). I don´t know anything about 9600Pro.

Dx8 has also Vertex Shader (even if its not so advanced as in Dx9). Doom3 might be jsut a exception cuz they admitted that they want to make game that wants to show what computers are capable of (this means, some people are not capable of playing it with full graphics). Yeah, there are already games out that require DX9 to run, but (maybe) none that would actually use special effects DX9 has...

*edit* correction. I just looked current prices of 5600Ultra and it has come down quite a lot. It costs about same as 9700Pro, somewhere bit less.

Demigod · Jul 3, 2003

Exophase said:
There will be several games that use DX9, sure. But rely on it? There will be few, if any, for a while.. and because of that it probably won't be used very heavily.

Hey, they have to start somewhere. Of course no one relies on new technology off the bat but with MS's backing I'm sure DX9 will find a place in developer's homes quickly

.

Exophase said:
For what it's worth, while nVidia certainly has good intentions in bringing out an entire spectrum of DX9 cards the lower end ones are kinda a joke right now. They don't really pack a lot of power at all, and it's going to take more than simply having the ability to run DX9 code to actually play games well.

No one said anything about playing games well. Even if the FX 5200 is slow it has DX9 support. A slow DX9 card is better than nothing at all, right? Developers can still create their games with the effects they want that'll run on that hardware, despite the speed. In the world of developers it doesn't really matter how slow or fast something is, as long as it can support the things you want to do then you develop for it. I mean why create games using the DX8 SDK when there's plenty of DX9 cards around? Why limit yourself to fixed functions or messy assembly programming when you have a high-level shading language you can use and cards that can support them? With the GeForce 4 MX a lot of people couldn't use DX8, thus limiting its appeal to developers. If developers used DX8 they'd have to use fixed-function routines to substitute for shader effects for MX users, wasting development time and money. This clearly isn't the case with DX9. Besides, they can always create the option to tone down the effects

.

Pixel shaders

grahf

fivefeet8

Phoenix Flame

fivefeet8

Demigod

N1ghtw0lf

Exophase

Mohz

Demigod

MaZa

Kane

Demigod

MaZa

Demigod

Exophase

MaZa

Demigod

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