Captron <439087*@gmail.com (remove *)> wrote:
> Then why do they sell the math intensive cards (Expensive: see above) ?

  Newer graphics cards are faster and have more features (such as more
advanced shaders). These can be used by games to make them look prettier
(compare, for example, Crysis to Quake).

  Quite curiously, these features are seldom very useful for rendering
programs. That's because all these features are very limited and confined
to the limitations of the graphics card. There's just so much you can do
with a hardware shader, for example, and it's quite difficult to be able
to use them in any way in a freeform software renderer (in other words,
it's difficult to use what you can from hardware shaders *and* mix the
results with the extra features a software renderer has to offer).

  The only thing graphics cards are good for in a software renderer is
showing a preview of the scene, which is much simpler than the final
rendered image.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message