X600/300 can support SM2.0B and R3x0 cant?

E

engall

Newcomer
Lets have a look at the patch that "never quite was". To get the full benefits of the patch you would have required an X800\X600 or X300 class graphics card, DirectX9.0b, FarCry 1.2 and Catalyst build 8.041 or above. If you have these you’ll get the full feature set: SM 2.0b and Geometry Instancing

The 2nd option is to have a R3xx or above graphics card (9500,9600,9700,9800) DirectX 9.0b, FarCry 1.2 and Catalyst 8.041. With this setup Geometry Instancing support is possible.
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http://www.driverheaven.net/index.p...49fa57758a176c26567dcaf94&articleid=15593

Who can tell me why?
X600/X300 and R300 have the same shader capability ---SmartShade 2.0.
Why X600/300 can support SM2.0B and R3x0 cant?
 
The impression that X600/X300 shares the same pixel shading ability with R3xx is probably wrong in the first place. Yeah, I know the confirmation of SM2.0 in X600/X300 comes straight from ATi, but they also didn't say R3xx/R420 supports instancing, did they? ;) There were dicussion here a while ago saying that R3xx have additional temp registers in the chip, just some of them are disabled. If they also had 512 slots and vFace register, supporting ps2.b isn't impossible. We just don't know yet.

Besides, with Cat4.7, R420 already supports ps2.0b, I don't know why a special driver is required for the "SM2.0b" stuff.
 
991060 said:
If they also had 512 slots and vFace register
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I pray to god. :) Actually, it would be quite a nice surprise, ie, even bigger then TAA or instancing if SM2b works on R300 cards. ATI would make alot of people happy.
 
991060 said:
The impression that X600/X300 shares the same pixel shading ability with R3xx is probably wrong in the first place. Yeah, I know the confirmation of SM2.0 in X600/X300 comes straight from ATi, but they also didn't say R3xx/R420 supports instancing, did they? ;) There were dicussion here a while ago saying that R3xx have additional temp registers in the chip, just some of them are disabled. If they also had 512 slots and vFace register, supporting ps2.b isn't impossible. We just don't know yet.

Besides, with Cat4.7, R420 already supports ps2.0b, I don't know why a special driver is required for the "SM2.0b" stuff.
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Oh , the special driver is required for instancing instead of SM2.0B.
I still cant imagine that X600/300 can be Sm2.0b and R300 cant.
 
Well, X300/X600 is basically a 1 quad chip, they can borrow the design from either r3xx or R420, it won't make much difference IMHO. And X300/X600 is using 0.11u, maybe it's easier to design the chip from a 0.13 basis, rathen than from the out-dated 0.15? :p
 
991060 said:
Well, X300/X600 is basically a 1 quad chip, they can borrow the design from either r3xx or R420, it won't make much difference IMHO. And X300/X600 is using 0.11u, maybe it's easier to design the chip from a 0.13 basis, rathen than from the out-dated 0.15? :p
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Firstly,X600 is using 0.13u+low K instead of 0.11u.
Secondly ,AFAIK X600/X300 dont support anything new from X800 such as 3Dc, SmartShader HD,SmartVISION HD ect.
 
So Dave all the radeons from the 9500 and up (r3x0 , rv3x0 , r42x) cards have instancing but only those based off the r42x have sm2.0 b correct ?
 
Well, couldn't SM2b just be an undocumented, unexposed feature of the R300 chip sets? Maybe its not working, hardware bugs or something.
 
991060 said:
DaveBaumann said:
engall said:
No.
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/far_cry_ps2.0b/page5.asp
That looks like confirmed X600 support SM2.0B
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Not sure how they got that - that could just be instancing.

RV370/380 are based on RV360 and have the same featureset support.
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Research is an indoor scene, instancing won't help a lot.
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It will help nothing at all because in this demo run no instancing is used.

I am not sure but if IIRC the 2.B shaders used in this demos are not beyond the 2.0 limits. If you fake the D3D caps to enable the 2B Path in Farcry it should run. In any case you can run the new Paths with faked caps but if the shaders did not work on the hardware you will get strange light effects.
 
digitalwanderer said:
Whoever has a X600/X300 can confirm that they support SM2.0B?
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How would I check my 9700 pro to see if it supports sm2.0b with the beta 4.8s? :|[/quote]


x800 demo?
 
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