LOSTCIRCUITS

Other Effects

We could continue and fill another 10 pages with effects and capabilities of the R300 or RADEON 9700 but it is getting a bit too much already so let's wrap this up with throwing out a few more buzz words like post processing effects that can be used for real-time rendering and filtering of video streams. In other words, the RADEON 9700 has real time Photoshop capabilities that are nothing short of stunning. Other effects include two sided stencil shadow volume meaning that in an environment with multiple light sources two shadows can be rendered per pass.

On the last few pages, we have shown multiple subdivided panels with different rendering levels. Ordinarily, this would require separate scenes, however, the R300 simplifies this kind of routine by allowing multiple render targets within up to four subdivided frame buffers as shown in the case of the bear on the last pages. A different example would be simultaneous color rendering

Different color schemes are applied to the cars within a subdivided frame buffer.

RenderMonkey

Any card can only be as good as the software it is used for and to facilitate the full talking advantage of the hardware features, ATi offers the RenderMonkey software to game developers which is very similar to the "Tool" introduced by nVidia with the launch of the GeForce3. In other words, we are looking at a high-level language with graphic interface a la Caligari and 3DSMax that is fairly intuitive to use and offers almost unlimited possibilities.

Performance and Beyond

Based on a handful of demos, it is not possible to make more than preliminary statements about the performance of the R300 / RADEON 9700. What we were presented with, did look extremely promising, some side-by-side comparisons between the RADEON 9700 and the "Fastest Competitor's Product" showed a compelling difference, that is, resolution-dependent performance deltas that were not just in the percentile range but between 2 x and 3.5 x. We didn't run these benchmarks, so we cannot comment on the accuracy but we would estimate that they are at least in the correct ballpark and nobody has challenged the performance level yet.

The take-home message is that nobody should have to run any game with any of the features turned off and with at least 2 x antialiasing, 4 x is almost a given that should result in almost no performance hit. What do I personally think about the RADEON 9700? I just wrote 11 pages about it but I could as well have said it in four words: "It blew me away"

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