enable pixel & vertex shader in nv dx7 cards

[joenet365]

hi

my friend who is good in RE told me,he can enable pixel and vertex shaders in nvidia's dx7 cards,he told me its only working on gf2 ti(upto gf3) and gf4 mx,it can be enabled in drivers by REing and slight mod in bios.

he also said he can enable some hidden techs in gf fx 5600 of fx 5900,like bla bla compressions,bla bla shadow tech.

[Star_Hunter]

Thoese cards dont support it. The only way he could get them to work is through software emulation......but that is much slower (mostly for the pixel shaders the vertex shaders dont take a huge hit when emulated but the hit for them is still very much there)

[joenet365]

i know we can emulate vertex shader in cpu,but these dx7 cards actually has dx8 functions they are off by drivers and bios stuffs.

[saturnotaku]

Originally posted by joenet365
my friend who is good in RE told me,he can enable pixel and vertex shaders in nvidia's dx7 cards,he told me its only working on gf2 ti(upto gf3) and gf4 mx,it can be enabled in drivers by REing and slight mod in bios.

he also said he can enable some hidden techs in gf fx 5600 of fx 5900,like bla bla compressions,bla bla shadow tech.

Your friend is full of it. The GeForce3 does support pixel and vertex shaders because it's a DirectX 8 card. But there is absolutely no way to somehow "unlock" hardware support for these features in the GF4 MX and GF2 if there's no hardware support to begin with.

And what magical "hidden techs" could he unlock in the GeForce FX? Again, your friend is full of it.

[saturnotaku]

Originally posted by joenet365
but these dx7 cards actually has dx8 functions they are off by drivers and bios stuffs.

Have you actually seen these features in action?

[Edge]

That is total BS. The GF3 was the FIRST card to support pixel and vertex shaders. The standards for it wasn't even around when the GF2 was made, even DX8 was still a ways off. And it's not something activated in drivers, it's an actual piece of hardware on the card, and there's no way to make it work aside from total emulation. That would be like saying you can run PS2 games on a PS1 with a firmware update.

He's probably just talking about using DX8/9 with DX7 cards, which you can do, but you won't get any of the DX8/9 specific features (such as pixel shaders). As far as the "hidden techs" on an FX card, you could theoreticly enable things like HDR with it (which are currently not present in drivers), but they would need to fix the issues they have with the hardware right now to get it to work right.

[joenet365]

internally these dx7 cards have the hardware function of dx8,

so DX8 registries asks the hardware driver for support like "D3DTEXOPCAPS_BUMPENVMAP" *note it does'nt asks the card directly.
the drivers know what are the capability of the card,for eg if D3DTEXOPCAPS_BUMPENVMAP is present or not.REing the drivers can revile
the secrets.;)
do they make separete core of each nv batch(gf4 series)??
do they make separate core for each p4s(for HT 800fsb)??

chips are physically same??

[joenet365]

gf2 ti came with gf3 ti

[saturnotaku]

Originally posted by joenet365
gf2 ti came with gf3 ti

But they are completely different chips. The GeForce2 Ti and GeForce4 MX are based on the NV15, the GF3 Ti is based on the NV20. Cards that are NVx0 (NV10, 20, 30) are completely new architectures with hardware support for the advanced features of DirectX, NV10 was DX7, NV20 DX8, NV30 DX9 (at least in theory on the NV30 but that's discussion for another day). The NV15, NV25, NV35 and the other iterations (NV17=GF4 MX, NV28=GF4 Ti w/8x AGP) are simply refreshes of the NVx5 chips that offer more speed, more efficient anti-aliasing, etc. They don't support any major new features that are exposed in later DirectX versions.

Now talking about running DirectX9 with a GF4 MX, I do that on my laptop. It runs perfectly fine. But because I have DX9 with a GF4 MX, doesn't mean I can all of a sudden run 3dmark2003 Mother Nature test.

Once again, what you are saying about enabling shaders on a GF2/GF4 MX is impossible. End of story.

[NickSpolec]

The GeForce2 chipset is a DX7 compliant hardware. It is NOT DX8 comliant, and features ABSOLUTELY NO SUPPORT FOR DX8 FEATURES IN HARDWARE.

NONE WHATSOEVER.

This is not hard to understand.

GeForce2 level hardware feautres no DX8 hardware support. Simple as that.

Need I say it again?

Listen carefully..

GeForce2 level hardware feautres no DX8 hardware support.

Need I say it some more? Because obviously, having three other people tell you isn't enough.

Listen....

You're friend is bullsh*tting you.

Ok?

You are gullible.

Ok?

Doesn't it register some alarm in your head when he seems to be the only one who knows about this "Magic" registry setting?

Either you are over-the-top nieve, or just completely dense.

[ragejg]

C'mon guys, keep this discussion level-headed, mmmmkay?

:p

I think this could only be resolved by posting a nature screenshot being done on an nv1X card...

[Uttar]

And then I'm ready to bet we'll have someone claiming NSR is really as good as VS/PS and it's fundamentally the same thing :rolleyes:


Uttar

[euan]

Actually the Ati Radeon was the first card to support Pixel Shaders.

The only problem was that MS and NV shafted ATI (much like MS DX9 and NV30) by doing a last minute change.

The Radeon 64 (or 7200) can do partial pixel shading, so called V0.5 compared to the official V1.0. There was a few demos and screensavers that showed the partial shaders in action.

What goes around comes around. :p

Note it's PS 1.1 not 1.0. :D

[theultimo]

Originally posted by euan
Actually the Ati Radeon was the first card to support Pixel Shaders.

The only problem was that MS and NV shafted ATI (much like MS DX9 and NV30) by doing a last minute change.

The Radeon 64 (or 7200) can do partial pixel shading, so called V0.5 compared to the official V1.0. There was a few demos and screensavers that showed the partial shaders in action.

What goes around comes around. :p
Never heard that before? Care to post some details on this?

[Edge]

I agree, I'd like to hear more about the Radeon's partial pixel shaders. From what I understood, Pixel Shaders and DX8 were still in their early planning stages when the Radeon was released, but I never though they could have partial support for it. In fact wasn't the Radeon released a year before the GF3, the first true pixel shader card, was release? Also, I thought pixel shaders required full hardware support, if they couldn't get pixel shaders totally working and usable on the Radeon I'd think they would just remove any traces of it to reduce cost. Quite an interesting predicament it seems.

[particleman]

euan is correct, the Radeon did have some pixel shading ability. Here is a quote from the inqwell (I've read the same thing in some other old articles but it would be too difficult to dig up the links).

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=5329

"By Fuad Abazovic: Tuesday 10 September 2002, 01:24

ALTHOUGH MICROSOFT STILL still hasn't launched DirectX 9, which perhaps it's reserving for November and Comdex, news reaches us of an upcoming change to the application programming interface.
We wrote about this API at Cebit time in March 2002 but without as many details as we now have, from a very reliable source close to one of the top two graphics companies. So it's either ATI or Nvidia. Guess away.

DirectX 9.1 will not bring the new shaders that should be implemented in hardware that will be launched at the end of next year.

Just to remind you, Microsoft decided at the last minute to accept Pixel Shader 1.1 as a standard for DirectX 8. This was a win for Nvidia since ATI's Radeon, later called Radeon 7200, had support for pixel shader 1.0 but not for 1.1.

ATI did a similar thing as Nvidia with DirectX 8.1, when it introduced Pixel shader 1.4 with more instructions and improvements meaning the Nvidia Geforce 3 card supported just DirectX 8.0 but not DirectX 8.1.

This time DirectX 9 hardware will have full support for all DirectX 9.1 feature. To clarify things for you, Radeon 9700 Pro and NV30 when it comes out will be DirectX 9.1 hardware. You won’t see any new pixel shader supported in hardware than version 2.0, which is used by Radeon 9700 PRO.

Apart from bug fixes and improvement of existing things in DirectX 9, Microsoft will introduce brand new Pixel shader 3.0.

So the new Shader 3.0 will not be supported by any hardware available in first half of 2003. We have good reason to assume that R350 and NV30 or the Spring refresh codenamed NV35 will not have support in hardware for the shaders.

You can just imagine how realistic this shader model will be if NV30 and Radeon 9700 PRO cinematic breakthrough VPU’ won't have support for it.

Best thing of all if you go out and buy Radeon 9700 Pro, NV 30 or any future DirectX 9.0 card you will be able to call it DirectX 9.1 hardware. Nice isn’t it.

If you ask why Microsoft wants to introduce Pixel Shader 3.0 before hardware supports it, it is to give time for programmers to learn about this new shader model before hardware and possible speed up its acceptation and transition process which is indeed a painful path."

[euan]

:meh:

Yeah, As far as I can remember, the "Pixel shaders" on the radeon where more of a funky multi-texturing tricks kind of thing, a lot different than what pixel shading is today. The 1.1 spec NV and MS went for was vastly different to the stuff already worked out for the previous incarnation. So the radeon's stuff never saw the light, except for a couple of niffty demos. I think one was called ocean. :confused: :angel2:

[Gaal Dornik]

Both GeForce2 and Radeon cards have vertex and pixel shader capabilities. The problem is - they are not DX8 compatible, or better to say not so advanced as DX8 shaders which are set as standard. Call it PS 0.5
It has nothing to do with nV or MS.
Suprised to hear such things on nVIDIA forum, like Radeon had shaders and nVidia cards not :rolleyes: ..

EDIT: GeForce2 GTS- Gigatexel Shader ;)

[euan]

Originally posted by Gaal Dornik
Both GeForce2 and Radeon cards have vertex and pixel shader capabilities. The problem is - they are not DX8 compatible, or better to say not so advanced as DX8 shaders which are set as standard. Call it PS 0.5
It has nothing to do with nV or MS.
Suprised to hear such things on nVIDIA forum, like Radeon had shaders and nVidia cards not :rolleyes: ..

So now the Geforce 2 has both as well! News to me, and I knew news, that others didn't know! :p Got any documentary evidence of this?

[Gaal Dornik]

Sure, 1min link
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/geforce2gts-preview.html


NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS Preview

-NSR engine provides Pixel Shaders hardware support via D3D8

Now it was a complete joke later, but the feature is still in

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by joenet365
do they make separete core of each nv batch(gf4 series)??

chips are physically same??

They are not physically the same. For example, the gfTi4200 has the same core as the gf4Ti4400 and gf4Ti4600 but uses a different PCB with fewer layers. gf4mx has a different core than gf4Ti. gf4mx has a different core than gf2.

For you to say that the gf2, gf2mx, gf3, gf4mx are all the same hardware is utterly ridiculous :rolleyes: They are not the same hardware. They don't even have the same transistor count, how can they possibly be the same board.

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by Gaal Dornik
Sure, 1min link
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/geforce2gts-preview.html


NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS Preview

-NSR engine provides Pixel Shaders hardware support via D3D8

Now it was a complete joke later, but the feature is still in

I don't think the NSR is programmable, thus it is not a true pixel shader in the sense that we have come to know what PS are. Secondly, it probably uses hardware T&L to do the effects, since the original GeForce actually has the NSR too(this wasn't publicized by NVIDIA though!).

[NickSpolec]

NSR and GTS are both complete fluff and BS, and you know it. They can hardly be called features. More like Vender-hype/PR Feature.

Sorta like ATI's Truform... But at least Truform has served a purpose.

[tEd]

Originally posted by NickSpolec
NSR and GTS are both complete fluff and BS, and you know it. They can hardly be called features. More like Vender-hype/PR Feature.

Sorta like ATI's Truform... But at least Truform has served a purpose.

it's what the doom3 tech is based on actually

[theultimo]

Originally posted by NickSpolec
NSR and GTS are both complete fluff and BS, and you know it. They can hardly be called features. More like Vender-hype/PR Feature.

Sorta like ATI's Truform... But at least Truform has served a purpose.

GTS/NSR was pretty much a T+L thing, as I understood it. Had developers used this feature, maybe we wouldn't use the PS spec we use today..