Kevin Wampler wrote:

> I'd think that memory wouldn't be a problem here, as 256MB is enough to 
> store a reasonably large histogram.

The *only* reason I increased the RAM in my system from 1 GB to 3 GB was 
to handle rendering high resolution IFS images. ;-)

OTOH, I'm talking about resolutions high enough for Zazzle...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> The "other" fun thing is that shaders were introduced in OpenGL 2.0, for 
> which no language spec is available online. You have to buy the book for 
> that. But having a look at the Haskell OpenGL bindings, I think I see 
> how it's supposed to work...

That's not true, you can download the spec for both GL2 and the GLSL for 
free (they're separate documents, though).

...Chambers

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> (Also... I get the impression you need Vista for the GeForce 8 to work.)

I have a 8600 GT. Used to use it on Windows XP. Now running Linux.

(and many Compiz effects involving shaders, like transparency blur, indeed
get WAY more framerate than on my previous machine with a... GeForce 4?)

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> (Also... I get the impression you need Vista for the GeForce 8 to work.)
> 
> I have a 8600 GT. Used to use it on Windows XP. Now running Linux.

Oh, OK then.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> (Also... I get the impression you need Vista for the GeForce 8 to work.)
>>
>> I have a 8600 GT. Used to use it on Windows XP. Now running Linux.
> 
> Oh, OK then.
> 

You need Vista to run DirectX 10.

You can still access all the functionality of the card through OpenGL, 
though, on XP, Linux, and MacOS.

In fact, I saw a demo that tricked XP into installing DX10, so you could 
still run almost everything that claimed it required Vista.

...Chambers

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Chambers wrote:

> You need Vista to run DirectX 10.
> 
> You can still access all the functionality of the card through OpenGL, 
> though, on XP, Linux, and MacOS.

Oh right. I'll have to check to see whether CUDA works. >:-D

Basically there's a couple of graphics demos I've seen out there that 
require a GeForce 8 or higher. How much do you want to bet that's really 
because they want DirectX 10?

> In fact, I saw a demo that tricked XP into installing DX10, so you could 
> still run almost everything that claimed it required Vista.

I find that a little surprising - AFAIK, Vista uses a radically 
different internal graphics pipeline, so you'd think it wouldn't be 
possible to make it work on XP at all.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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> I find that a little surprising - AFAIK, Vista uses a radically different 
> internal graphics pipeline, so you'd think it wouldn't be possible to make 
> it work on XP at all.

I imagine they've hacked the DX9 drivers to use some of the hardware 
functionality that is only exposed under DX10 (and thus only in Vista).  I 
would highly doubt that they have managed to replicate the Vista graphics 
system on XP, so there is no way all applications designed for DX10 are 
going to work.  To do that they would have had to pretty much rewrite the 
whole Vista graphics system and parts of the OS GUI to run on XP, which 
seems a bit unlikely.

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scott wrote:
>> I find that a little surprising - AFAIK, Vista uses a radically 
>> different internal graphics pipeline, so you'd think it wouldn't be 
>> possible to make it work on XP at all.
> 
> I imagine they've hacked the DX9 drivers to use some of the hardware 
> functionality that is only exposed under DX10 (and thus only in Vista).  
> I would highly doubt that they have managed to replicate the Vista 
> graphics system on XP, so there is no way all applications designed for 
> DX10 are going to work.  To do that they would have had to pretty much 
> rewrite the whole Vista graphics system and parts of the OS GUI to run 
> on XP, which seems a bit unlikely.

They don't hack the DX9 drivers, and they don't replicate DX10 - they 
actually trick DX10 into installing on XP, so you get full functionality.

Such an act, of course, is against the EULA, and I wasn't willing to 
risk hosing my system enough to try it out - but it seemed interesting, 
at least :)

...Chambers

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Invisible wrote:
> Basically there's a couple of graphics demos I've seen out there that 
> require a GeForce 8 or higher. How much do you want to bet that's really 
> because they want DirectX 10?

Rather, they want certain functionality in the cards that's only 
provided in the GF8 series and above, and that functionality is only 
exposed by DX10.  So it's not that they want DX10, it's that they want 
the card, and to use it to its fullest you need DX10 (or GL, but that's 
another matter).

...Chambers

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> They don't hack the DX9 drivers, and they don't replicate DX10 - they 
> actually trick DX10 into installing on XP, so you get full functionality.

But that's impossible to keep full functionality, DX10 has many new function 
calls that talk to the new window manager in Vista.  Such things simply will 
not work in XP.  I suspect that at the moment very few programs actually use 
those calls (to make developing DX9 and DX10 versions simultaneously 
easier), so most programs probably will still work ok.  One example is how 
Vista handles the mouse pointer compared to XP.

Of course a limited functionality of DX10 would be useful on XP, but I 
imagine it's very buggy in places, which is why MS never bothered spending 
the effort to really tidy it up and get it working properly.

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