@\NightandtheShape/@

Short answer, NO! Not that it's impossible, just that to be able to do it... would require alot of effort.

OpenGL refers to what is called an Application Programming Interface, or API. DirectX and OpenGL are both API's. "

VSync (had to check this coz I wasn't 100% certain, but it's what I thought it was), it's basically to do with monitor refresh rates & the buffer swap chain. Basically lets say you're getting 100 frames per second, and your monitor is running at 60Hz a second, you're wasting power on those extra 40 frames. Thus it syncronizes the frames to the monitor refresh rate. The buffer swap chain is to do with what is called the "Backbuffer" and the screen you're seeing, when a game renders an image it firstly goes to the backbuffer, then it's swaped with the screen, you then see the image which was on the backbuffer and now the screen, the screen which you was looking at becomes the backbuffer. The screen itself is a matricies of numbers refering to pixels. You can have several backbuffers, but usually you just have the one. What does this mean? simply, that all those people earlier who claimed that 1600x1024x32bit image took 6.2Mb I think it was are utterly incorrect in the terms of a game. Depending upon how many buffers the program is using, it varies on average you're talking about double that, so it's really 12.4Mb. Hope this answers your questions, and a bit more .

I'm a professional geek, I can talk shop for days and never get bored... Heck I can even tell you how they make water shiney! LOL

Yeah I'd say it's nearly out. Series 6 was the last bunch of AGP compatible cards... As for a new system, I'd say wait for Windows Vista. The ground is still a bit funky, but the whole new OS and new version of Direct X will probably mean the latest technology at the time is always gunna be the safest and best option. I hope I've been somewhat helpful to you, but for someone who says they're not a techie, you seem to know a fair bit of stuff.

Okay, well if you are going to upgrade your card I'd do it pretty sharpish, AGP is old hat - PCI-E is pretty much the standard now. If like me you didn't like the idea of a mobo upgrade as well I hope you can see it's good advice. WoW will just look better, you'll probably see some speed improvements on DSII, been playing that myself of late inbetween coding it's loads better than DSI IMHO. Seems your setup is great for digital photographic manipulation, that stuff is all about RAM, but you knew that . The thing about the latest cards is the shader technology, I'm gunna take a guess at the likes of NWN2 needing shader tech 2.0 or greater, based upon the whole graphical improvements they've been harping on about.

May I ask what games your playing at the moment? Depends what you want from your card, in terms of the Geforce series the first number is the generation, we're currently on generation 7 for example, the number after that is usually more to do with the chip the higher the better, anything after that GT or ULTRA is generally good news, any L's pop up expect it to be a trimmed down version of the standard card. From what I can tell, I don't know if you're running an AGP based or PCI-E based motherboard, but series 6 cards are generally produced for both and you can usually find them cheap. Geforce 6200 with 256mb of ram shouldn't be too expensive. Nah, it's just ATI generally has poor driver implementation, hence the drivers are unreliable. NVIDIA patch the drivers way way more often than ATI. ATI's are generally that little bit faster.

Doesn't matter how fast your RAM is, still takes a lifetime to get from A to B, in computing terms atleast. 128meg is kinda tiny... But nothing worth worrying about, depends what games you play etc... TBH I've never bothered playing anything in 1600x1024x32 there isnt much point to doing so. as for buying a video card it is simple. Get the latest NVIDIA card you can afford that is compatible with your system, be it AGP or PCI-E, and buy a brand name such as PNY or ASUS. That way you never go wrong . Some folks like ATI, personally I think they're unreliable. As for the brand name well, just because it says Geforce whatnot on the tin doesn't mean that'll it'll have been made with gaming in mind, or performance, or general compatibility.

EVOKEN - Withering Indignation Open wide and tell me your tales. Of secrecy found within wisdom but no man shall learn. Leaving your pale dying legs frowning upon fragments of life. Ages on ages have passed over,some have fallen for you. Poured from the throat,need I ask to be perverse? Untouched by heart,hand or sight. This crown if for her. Awake from sleep...frightening. Awake to life...faithless. Bathe her in springs of serpents only to rise at will... You're mine now,woven from hypocrisy. Touch the sick hope that mankind instills in me. A beauty meshed within the spider's web. A momnet of irony,a year of reflection. You're mine now, the slime of the garden. A rose withered a voice from the past. Nothing more Un-PC known to me than the likes of... Anal C*nt! Anal C*nt - Kill Women Kill Women kill women - die kill women - die kill women - die bitch ^ Clearly they have issues with mommy.

<_< Winner my arse.

The reason you take a performace hit is the screen buffers alone are flooding the VRAM, so it's likely most things such as textures are being stored in your system RAM. Now depending upon the speed of your system ram and if the programs memory management is quality or not, bundled with the fact that it takes a life age to fetch everything from the system ram in general then it is expected you'd have a HUGE performance hit. The main reason to upgrade GFX cards at the moment is due to shader technology, which makes a huge differance to how things look.

Normally I don't like watching anti vampire films but Blade 2 and 3 are pretty good. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> blade 2 and 3 are a joke, the cg is poor, the story is cheesey. END GAME.

I sure have, and it is indeed very impressive I really like it! It's certainly possible to create some interesting things, it comes off to me as a doubley useful package.

You're a person? I thought you was just a troll rising to the concious level of the internet and a totally ficticious character.

(w00t)

Weiser_Cain fancy making me some models I can use in a game? IM me if so, I assume you can model from what I have seen sketching over this thread, the concept art is also nice...

uh huh, you speaking from experience I assume .

How so, what is so exclusive about code?

Oh come on... That's fallacious, Fallout isn't TES, so why would they approch it as if it was. I find the arguement that something will suck because company X is developing it absolutely retarded. KOTOR & KOTOR2 were made by different companies? Yet, while they're different in some ways I found them pretty damn similar. Fallout 3 will be whatever it is, saying we'll get Morrowind with guns, is just stupid. What I reckon most of you rabid fallout fans actually mean is "Fallout 3 won't be the game I want it to be" and as you all have different opinions on how it should be, well I guess you're gunna be disappointed. Ya really can't say that Trokia would have made it better, Trokia's dead, I liked what they produced but they died because they made buggy software, Fallout 3 by Trokia would have most likely have had issues, purely based on the track record. heh Fallout fans always make me chuckle, they're never pleased. You guys would have bitched even if BIS had released the version they were working on. It's pretty pathetic.

Far Cry - For Terrain engine research purposes, I actually think it's a decent FPS aswell, I didn't know what I'd think of it, but I'm liking it. Mount & Blade - Awesomeness DRIVEN The Movies - Just Coz. B&W + B&W2 - Again Terrain engine research

Surprisingly decent game!

Interesting, so why do I get a CTD with HG2, I agree though, superb game!

Bit of both, DX10 is a programmers tool, the tool is better so the codes result looks better... so it's a bit of both, I'd say the result is just the beginning of what will be possible with DX10.

You can say that again. Wasn

No but the addition of programmable vertex and pixel shaders through the use of HLSL in the DX pipeline did make the whole process of implementing shiney water and such effects quicker and easier to implement. So as microsoft gave programmers better tools to create such effects you can't help but be forced to give them kudos for it. Direct X really changed the way games are developed on the PC.