iXBT-Labs heeft een zeer uitgebreide en diepgaande preview geschreven over de Savage2000 van S3, die 30 augustus was aangekondigd. De belangrijkste feature van deze Savage zal S3TL zijn, de onboard geometry engine van S3:
With the advent of hardware geometry, 3D cards are now capable of rendering entire scenes with little or no CPU intervention, which will revolutionize the 3D applications industry. Instead of spending 50-95% of its time moving and transforming data, static geometry can be prepositioned in AGP or video memory, and fetched directly by the 3D engine with massive bandwidth. As well as saving CPU cycles, this technique significantly reduces system memory bus traffic, which reduces competition for the same memory being accessed through AGP. Even if the static geometry (such as walls, floor, labyrinth ceiling in the game levels) is calculated in AGP memory, system memory bandwidth requirements are reduced by a minimum of two times, and may even reach four times or more. Finally, dynamic geometry (for instance the monsters or heroes moving) still gets the transformation benefits, without the bandwidth improvements, for a 40-50% speed enhancement.This is very important for game developers in particular, who are urgently seeking more CPU time for the powerful, CPU-hungry artificial intelligence (AI) and physics engines currently in development.
Check iXBT-Labs voor de rest!
