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Lowest nvidia and ati TGEA1.0.1 compatible video card?

by DodongoXP · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 04/16/2007 (2:24 am) · 7 replies

Hi

i would like to know whats the lowest and oldest video card generation capable of running TGEA 1.0.1.. both nvidia and ati models

because i currently have an ati radeon x1900 xtx and TGEA 1.0.1 built with the april 2007 directx 9.0c sdk and the windows 2003 sp1 platfomr sdk.. works just excelent

and nothing surprising in that.. because it should run in that kind of modern card...

but i have just tested the same TGEA1.0.1 on a machine with an ati 9600 xt 256 mb.. and there wasnt any success..

TGEA ran .. but in the demo.. when you enter to the interactive demo where space kork enters running.. that part and all the next steps.. all the screen was yellow.. a screen full of yellow hehehehe..

and with the water demo .. it ran also.. but the water looked like a flat blue polygon and the terrain was of multiple colors changing while i approach them.. and tons of graphical glitches...

so i suppose the ati radeon 9600 xt generation doesnt have the appropiate shader support...

so what would be the first video cards generation that were able to run the shader technology that TGEA is based on?


just for the record...

to know who is my public,

to know who im targeting a game.. if i use TGEA for some project

for now it doesnt seem too reliable to use TGEA because the major part of the gamers doesnt have the latest technology on gaming.. mostly of them have cards of about 2 years ago.. unless you are targeting the elite group of hardcore gamers with always top notch pc's .. that way its sure .. but if not.. better go with normal TGE for the moment.. maybe in 1 year.. the situation will correct itself abit .. time cures everything



Cheers
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Torque Owner DodongoXP
#1
04/16/2007 (6:49 pm)
Problem solved..

it uses shader model 2 generation video cards

but they need to have its drivers updated and using the latest directx runtime to run..

so the video card range is from ati radeon 9550 and geforce FX 5 series to the latest radeon x1950 and geforce 8 series ...


nothing below that i suppose will be able to run TGEA properly


Cheers

Torque Owner Vashner
#2
04/16/2007 (10:49 pm)
Well really it was just "transitional" hardware. Before good shader 2.0 standards where out. Also with .65 and .45 nm production.

Let's put it this way. ATI hopes to ship 1 million shader 4.0 GPU chips by end of this year.

That's not counting the Nvidia 8000 series.

So if it's 1.x it's an antique...

If you want to develop with TGEA then i'll assume you want what we all want...

What is that at the end of the rainbow?

Fast cinematic grapic action without lag. More realism to tell the stories and make adventures.

So target the newest hardware not the oldest and your a step further to Game Nirvana..

lol..

Associate Manoel Neto
Default Studio Name
#3
04/17/2007 (6:10 pm)
Try downloading an older DirectX SDK version (like August 2006 or older) and use that instead of the newest ones. They'll allow your game to run in older drivers.

Torque 3D Owner Guimo
#4
04/18/2007 (9:06 am)
Radeon 9600 does support 2.0 shaders so it should work. I used it for one of my games and we targeted SM2.0. Maybe its a driver issue in your case.

ATI series 9000 (was it the R300 chipset?) came out along with the nVidia 5000 series. ATI sold the 9800, 9600 and 9200 boards. Of those three the 9200 only had support for SM1.4 while the 9600 and 9800 had support for SM2.0. About 6 months later ATI upgreded their cards with a new version (small updates like higher clock or adjusted memory) and labeled them 9750, 9550 and 9150 respectively. Again the 9150 only has support for SM1.4.

nVidia offer was different. Series 5000 came out as 5800, 5600 and 5200. All of them had SM2.0 support.

While SM1.4 support and previous is a little blurry (i.e. nVidia Geforce 3Ti was the only card with SM 1.1 support and no cards came out with SM1.0 support) all of them came into a basic standar with the SM2.0. Of course ATI and nVidia came with new tricks (better shadowmap support in one case, better normal compression in the other and so on) but the SM2.0 is a unification point.

Luck!
Guimo

Torque Owner David Jauregui
Curiosity Killed the Cat Productions
#5
05/15/2007 (8:30 am)
Related question: Anyone know what early laptop chipsets support SM2.0?

Torque 3D Owner Marc Dreamora Schaerer
Gayasoft
#6
05/15/2007 (8:34 am)
The same as the desktop chipsets

9600 mobile upwards
Geforce 5 mobile upwards

Torque Owner Jacobin
#7
05/15/2007 (9:03 am)
I would be careful using just SM2.0 as a baseline. For example I have one machine with a FX5600. Yes it's SM2.0 compliant. However it runs TGEA like an old lady crossing the street. Spends 80% of it's time in swap_buffer even on the simplest scenes. Tops out at 40fps in terrain_water_demo if I happen to position the camera just right. 9-20fps on average.