Everything achieved with SM3.0 can also be done with SM2.0
- Thread starter engall
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http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/nvidia/nv40/index.php?p=5#over
It basically increases all the numbers. However, the advantages PS3.0 contains probably won't truely be utilized in games for at least another year.
It basically increases all the numbers. However, the advantages PS3.0 contains probably won't truely be utilized in games for at least another year.
For PS3.0 the answer is yes, BUT I'm talking on the theoretical level here. PS3.0 exposes features that you'd have to emulate in the shader if using PS2.0 (such as gradients) making things extremely slow and difficult to code.
For VS3.0 however you can't emulate the texture lookup, so the answer is no.
For VS3.0 however you can't emulate the texture lookup, so the answer is no.
For the PS, I would say yes. There are things that cannot be done practically with shadermodel 2.0, but many of these same things I still have reservations about being practical under 3.0 as well. It might depend on the implementation.
We start to get into several interesting and famous questions such as 'Does this program ever terminate'. Back off from that a bit and consider a program that could take 1 cycle or 30000 cycles on a GPU: feed in a million-polygon primitive and you're gonna be sat there a while...
We start to get into several interesting and famous questions such as 'Does this program ever terminate'. Back off from that a bit and consider a program that could take 1 cycle or 30000 cycles on a GPU: feed in a million-polygon primitive and you're gonna be sat there a while...
The first thing came into my mind when reading this thread is that two-sided lighting is much more efficient in PS3.0 although it can also be done in PS2.0 with 2 geometry passes. Someone corret me if necessarily. 
Oops, just figure out 2 geometry passes is not necessary in PS2.0 either.
Oops, just figure out 2 geometry passes is not necessary in PS2.0 either.
So in the end everything that can be achieved with PS3.0 can be done with PS2.0, but the performance hit can be to big so developers might reduce the graphics for PS2.0 hardware?
What about the texture lookup thing in VS3.0, will this give some visual improvements that is not possible with SM2.0?
What about the texture lookup thing in VS3.0, will this give some visual improvements that is not possible with SM2.0?
