purpose of tile-based rendering

[amk]

SHHHHH!! You'll wake up Teasy

Does anybody know if a TBR will work better than an IMR on a 3D graphics workstation?

AFAIK workstations spend a lot of their time with wireframe images, and in those circumstances there's not a lot of fillrate or bandwidth demands for TBR to save.

They also tend to have very high geometry detail, which is allegedly TBR's Achilles heal, hitting both memory usage and bandwidth.

I suppose TBR could still have advantages with displaying accurate and antialiased images without a big strain on bandwidth.

 

[Teasy]

SHHHHH!! You'll wake up Teasy.

Well I see that negative PowerVR talk certainly woke you up anyway. And as much as you obviously want me to argue here.. I can't be bothered. So you can go back to sleep now

 

[BenSkywalker]

Does anybody know if a TBR will work better than an IMR on a 3D graphics workstation?

Two major problems, one is that PVR's drivers don't handle high end 3D apps. This shouldn't be considered a slam as that has been the case with all consumer level 3D hardware outside nVidia(though ATi is getting better, they still have a ways to go). I haven't tested a Kyro board in a while but I had serious issues with stability and rather massive image corruption last time I attempted to get one to work with anything more taxing then Simply3D(which runs perfectly in software anyway even on older Pentiums).

The other is that you are going to be close to never limited with fill or fill related bandwith limited running 3D Viz/CAD apps. The AGP bus can be a limiting factor if your geometry gets too high, but not anything fill related(most high end 3D workstation cards that aren't nV/ATi have significantly lower fill then any consumer offering as they don't need it). Transformation power is almost always the limiting factor and in that aspect every TBR we have seen to date is noteably inferior even to non hard T&L equipped IMRs. Running in software mode through ViewPerf an old 8MB TNT1 OEM board was putting up scores roughly twice as fast as a Kyro2, and it was doing it with solid image quality(for a consumer board) while the K2 was suffering from serious artifacts(Z fighting in scenes with high levels of geometric density was the biggest issue).

 

[PC-Engine]

So from the replies, I guess it doesn't make any sense for someone to release a highend TBR for 3D graphic workstations then

 

[Armunn]

SHHHHH!! You'll wake up Teasy.

Well I see that negative PowerVR talk certainly woke you up anyway. And as much as you obviously want me to argue here.. I can't be bothered. So you can go back to sleep now

Teasy isn't the date for your little dinner coming around soon ?

I wish PVR or would release a highend card, hell I wish they'd actually get the KyroIISE out before the end of the year.