Interesting NV3X tidbits

[Ante P]

I had some questions that I wanted to invistigate so I sent them to nVidia and I got the answers today. =)

Question 1. Do you support high precision INT and FP render targets? (Say INT12 or FP32 eg.)

Answer #1 The GeForce FX family of GPUs supports a variety of high precision render targets, including 32bpp (8 bits each for R,G,B and Alpha), 16bpp, special "HILO" textures that include two 16-bit INT values in a 32-bit space, and floating point textures with 64bpp (fp16 each for R,G,B and Alpha) or 128bpp (fp32 each for R,G,B and Alpha).


Question 2. Do you support multiple render targets?

Answer #2 The GeForce FX hardware supports multiple element Textures
(MET) instead of multiple render targets. Currently, MET is not exposed in
the driver.


Question 3. Do you support floating point textures?

Answer #3 Absolutely, the GeForce FX family supports floating point
textures with 64bpp (fp16 each for R,G,B and Alpha) or 128bpp (fp32 each for R,G,B and Alpha).


Question 4. Do you support floating point cube maps?

Answer #4 The GeForce FX hardware supports floating point cube maps, but the capability is not currently exposed in the driver.


Question 5. Do you support floating point volumetric textures?

Answer #5 The GeForce FX hardware supports floating point volumetric
textures, but the capability is not currently exposed in the driver.


Question 6. Do you support multiple element textures?

Answer #6. The GeForce FX hardware supports multiple element textures, but the capability is not currently exposed in the driver.


I also had some questions bout 3DMark03s lack of overbright lightning effects but they replied that they weren't aware of any issues.

 

[jjayb]

Why is all that stuff not currently supported in drivers? Are they holding back for a "super det" release or is this stuff just not necessary yet? Will they ever be supported in the drivers? Do they need to be supported?

 

[Arun]

Why is all that stuff not currently supported in drivers? Are they holding back for a "super det" release or is this stuff just not necessary yet?

Wouldn't be surprised if nVidia was too lazy to release any drivers until the DetFX AKA Detonator 50, so even if they already had it implemened, I'd be surprised if they would release it before the DetFX

Uttar

 

[Ante P]

Do they need to be supported?

METs are pretty interesting but none of the features here are used by any games in any forseable future..

 

[Tahir2]

Is MRT a prerequisite for DX9 compliance?
What is the difference between MRT and MET?

 

[Hyp-X]

FP cubemaps and volumemaps are interesting as IIRC none of those are supported in their OpenGL driver.

 

[Geeforcer]

Wouldn't be surprised if nVidia was too lazy to release any drivers until the DetFX AKA Detonator 50, so even if they already had it implemened, I'd be surprised if they would release it before the DetFX

Uttar

No Uttar... Don't you see how the game is played? These will be "all-new, revolutionary features" for NV35.

 

[Ante P]

Wouldn't be surprised if nVidia was too lazy to release any drivers until the DetFX AKA Detonator 50, so even if they already had it implemened, I'd be surprised if they would release it before the DetFX

Uttar

No Uttar... Don't you see how the game is played? These will be "all-new, revolutionary features" for NV35.

Actually I have a feeling about this too.
Sorta like they did with the GF3 Ti series, fixed a few driver things and calle dthem new features.

 

[DemoCoder]

Both GF1 and GF2 had register combiners, but NVidia chose to promote NSR on the GF2.

The GF3 hardware always supported dot-product depth replace (PS1.3) but they didn't expose it for along time.

 

[Tahir2]

Both GF1 and GF2 had register combiners, but NVidia chose to promote NSR on the GF2.

I was going to mention that too but glad you did instead as I'm tired.

 

[Tahir2]

Anyway, are MRT's a REQUIREMENT for DX9 compliance or not? I thought they were :?

 

[Dave Baumann]

Shaders determine the "Compliancy".

 

[Hyp-X]

The feature they introduced with GF3Ti was shadow buffers.
Of course the GF3 classic supports it too.

 

[Humus]

Ehm ... so now all of a sudden the GFFX support floating point cubemaps and 3d textures? :?

 

[Ostsol]

The feature they introduced with GF3Ti was shadow buffers.
Of course the GF3 classic supports it too.

I thought it was volume textures, which were actually broken in the orignal Geforce 3. . .

 

[Hyp-X]

I thought it was volume textures, which were actually broken in the orignal Geforce 3. . .

No, it works happily.
But you are right that was first exposed in DetXP (at least in D3D).
(along with non-power-of-2 textures)

 

[ram]

I thought it was volume textures, which were actually broken in the orignal Geforce 3. . .

No, it works happily.

... on mass production A5 steppings, yes.