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To: Steve Porter who wrote (22698)12/17/2000 4:05:41 PM
From: fyodor_Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 275872
 
Steve: nVidia likely couldn't get enough bandwidth into the GPU.

I really don't see (graphics) memory bandwidth being a serious problem in consoles - be they x86 based or otherwise. The reasoning being that they are intended to be run on ordinary television sets. NTSC TVs have a resolution of only 340x420, so the memory bandwidth requirements are extremely low, at least when compared with "regular" PCs. (The refresh rate of a TV is also severely limited).

The low resolution normally makes anti-aliasing much more important, but I'm not convinced that would necessarily be the case when the image is displayed on a TV. At least, this has been my experience when trying it out with my GeForce w. TV-Out.

If you look at NVIDIA's current technology, they have already implemented the foundation necessary to lower rendering and memory bandwidth requirements significantly. I am, of course, referring to the 'C' in TCL, Transform, Clipping and Lighting. The prerequisite is that the game or app fully uses the hardware Transform functions. If that is done, the polygons can be sorted and the non-visible ones cropped or dropped altogether.

I'm not privy to any X-Box specifications, programming guides or the like, but I assume Microsoft has instructed everyone to use DirectX's support of hardware T&L.

I don't know what NVIDIA has promised to deliver, but I just don't see it being all that much of a problem. Certainly not memory bandwidth.

-fyo