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Shaders and Video Cards

Discussion in 'Shaders' started by PeterDahl, Jul 19, 2005.

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  1. PeterDahl

    PeterDahl

    Joined:
    Jun 13, 2005
    Posts:
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    Allmost all of the build in shaders work on the Mac Mini, including the bumped specular and cartoon shaders. But in the future when more advanced shaderes will be added, the 16 instructions pr. pass limit that Radeon 9200 has, will mean that those shaders wont run. One such effect that wont be able to run on these cards could be the Steep Paralax or other similar advanced bumpmapping techniques. If you want to write your own shader, you also must stay within 96 vertex instructions and 16 pixel shader instructions.
    Besides that Radeon 9200 does not support ARB Fragment program, so shaders written for this card must be written in ATI¥s fragment shader language, which is an assebmly type language.

    Its better with the Radeon 9700 and up. These cards all support Shadermodel 2.0 (same as Pixelshader 2.0 and DirectX 9.0 functionality), so you can use Cg for both vertex and fragment programs here. Depending on weather it is a 9700 or X800 you will have around 96 fragment instructions or up to 1024+
    This card will be able to run allmost all of the upcomming shaders that we release.

    If you want to top of the line, you need Geforce 6800, which as far as I know is the only shadermodel 3.0 card available. It supports functionalities that none of the other cards has, such as textures in vertex programs and blending of floating point buffers. This card will be able to run every shader imaginable for some years to come. But we will not support the full specs of shadermodel 3 in the near future, as this card does not exist on many macs. We might add support for it if the demand is there, but the shaders we realease in the upcomming year will all be able to run on 9700.

    My advice would be to get a mac with a Radeon 9700. If you are looking to create AAA titles for the PC where 6800 is more common, you could consider the geforce 6800 too. If the cost of the mac is the main concern, get the bettere of the minis, with one GB of RAM, that will still give you a lot of the shaders, but some of the upcomming new ones might not work.
    It is allways possible to create fallback shaders though.

    Was this all too confusing? If you have any further questions dont hessitate to ask, and I will try to elaborate :)

    - Peter, Otee Shader Programmer
     
  2. taumel

    taumel

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2005
    Posts:
    5,292
    Hi,

    is there really such a big difference between the 1.25 and the 1.43 miniMAC? How much do you get out of the 14% higher clockspeed - compiling/physics also running 14% faster then?

    Mostly the 9600er of the iMac revB will also do a fine job - featurewise it's the same as the 9700. If only the fan wouldn't run at such a annoying frequency. :O\


    Greetings,

    taumel
     
  3. NicholasFrancis

    NicholasFrancis

    Joined:
    Apr 8, 2005
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    Unity-wise, I'd say you'll be CPU bound, so if will give your better framerate when testing the games.

    Possibly faster compile times as well, but maybe there you'll get hurt by the HD performance
     
  4. robertseadog

    robertseadog

    Joined:
    Jul 23, 2005
    Posts:
    374
    Your talking about getting the 9700, but what about the new 9500 that is supplied with the new ibooks?

    I've heard it supports core-image so I just wondered what It wont support..
     
  5. Jonathan Czeck

    Jonathan Czeck

    Joined:
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    From what I understand, it is functionally equivalent to the 9600, but slower. It also has only 32 megabytes of ram, so I'd be surprised if Quartz 2D Extreme was enabled on it, but it should support it. I think the only reason it wouldn't be enabled is if it didn't help performance. :) It should support Core Image stuff just fine, too.

    -Jon
     
  6. NicholasFrancis

    NicholasFrancis

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    The R9500 has the same featureset as the bigger brothers. I don't know about speed, but getting full shader programmability in an iBook is great. Go for it...
     
  7. robertseadog

    robertseadog

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    Ah, ok- I just needed that little bit of reassurance from you guys, don't really want to buy obsolete hardware..
     
  8. Red Ocktober

    Red Ocktober

    Joined:
    Oct 28, 2005
    Posts:
    84
    what about the reflective water effects shown in the WWDC, Next Gen Environment demo (gallery)... that was done via shaders, right...

    ... will the 9200 be able to display that?

    thx

    --Mike
     
  9. Joachim_Ante

    Joachim_Ante

    Unity Technologies

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    Yes. The water even runs on an ati radeon 7500.
     
  10. Red Ocktober

    Red Ocktober

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    :) thx Joachim for the fast reply...

    --Mike
     
  11. Sora

    Sora

    Joined:
    Aug 27, 2005
    Posts:
    21
    Would my precious (GeForce 2 MX 220) be able to do that kind of trick? I seriously doubt it but it never hurts to ask :D .


    Sora.
     
  12. tsphillips

    tsphillips

    Joined:
    Jan 9, 2006
    Posts:
    359
    I've tried running shaders on an older dome iMac (see video specs below), and get the error:

    "No subshaders can run on this card."

    Code (csharp):
    1.  
    2. NVIDIA GeForce4 MX:
    3.  
    4.   Chipset Model:    GeForce4 MX
    5.   Type: Display
    6.   Bus:  AGP
    7.   VRAM (Total): 32 MB
    8.   Vendor:   nVIDIA (0x10de)
    9.   Device ID:    0x0174
    10.   Revision ID:  0x00a5
    11.   ROM Revision: 1510
    12.   Displays:
    13. iMac:
    14.   Display Type: LCD
    15.   Resolution:   1440 x 900
    16.   Depth:    32-bit Color
    17.   Built-In: Yes
    18.   Core Image:   Not Supported
    19.   Main Display: Yes
    20.   Mirror:   Off
    21.   Online:   Yes
    22.   Quartz Extreme:   Supported
    23. Display:
    24.   Online:   No
    25.   Status:   No display connected
    26.  
    Tom
     
  13. NicholasFrancis

    NicholasFrancis

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    Which shaders, please?

    And yes, it is Our Fault(TM). Lemme know which shaders
     
  14. tsphillips

    tsphillips

    Joined:
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    I'm about to head to work -- when I get home today I will inventory the shaders that generate the "no subshaders..." error.

    Tom
     
  15. tsphillips

    tsphillips

    Joined:
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    Shaders that are reporting "No subshaders can run on this card" include:

    Project Examples:

    Hidden/MotionBlur
    FX/Glass/Stained BumpDistorted Specular
    Toon/Lighted Outline
    Toon/Lighted
    Hidden/Grayscale Effect
    Hidden/Sepiatone Effect
    Hidden/Twist Effect Shader
    Hidden/Twist Effect
    Hidden/Edge Detect

    I don't know if this is related, but the Daylight Reflective Water object in Examples/Pro Standard Assets/Water is not rendering. Its default shader is FX/WaterPlane. It does render if the shader is changed to FX/Glass/Stained BumpDistort.

    Tom
     
  16. jeremyace

    jeremyace

    Joined:
    Oct 12, 2005
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    1,661
    I also get the "no subshaders can run on this card" when importing the toon asset package into a new project. So I don't import it anymore.

    I have also noticed that bumpmaps, parallax bump, detail textures, and per-pixel lighting don't seem to work at all.

    My card is a GeForce2 MX (I know :eek: ). Is this a limitation with my hardware, something stupid I am doing, or a bug in the shader code?

    Thanks,
    -Jeremy
     
  17. jeremyace

    jeremyace

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    UPDATE: specular maps don't work on my GeForce2 MX either :(

    I tested my scene on my dad's machine and it works fine so it's not something dumb I'm doing. I will post in support...

    -Jeremy
     
  18. NicholasFrancis

    NicholasFrancis

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    We do not support per-pixel lighting on GeForce2MX. The reason for this is that getting it to run reliable is nigh-on impossible. And even in the few cases where we got it to run reliably, it was so dog slow it just did not make sense.
     
  19. Joachim_Ante

    Joachim_Ante

    Unity Technologies

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    The Image effects shaders are ok to report that they dont have a fallback.
    The image filter script will check it and disable itself.

    The other shaders will be fixed with 1.2.1.
     
  20. jeremyace

    jeremyace

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    So I am assuming bump and spec maps require per-pixel? Dang... Back to the bank again...

    Thanks for the reply, I will have to try to get another machine then. :eek: I'll see if my dad will give me his dual G5...lol I doubt it.

    Thanks,
    -Jeremy
     
  21. socksy

    socksy

    Joined:
    May 21, 2005
    Posts:
    244
    Is this the same release as the Intel release in a couple of months?
     
  22. Joachim_Ante

    Joachim_Ante

    Unity Technologies

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    1.2.1 is a hotfix due next week.

    The Intel release will be 1.3.
     
  23. gsnyder

    gsnyder

    Joined:
    Dec 14, 2005
    Posts:
    23
    Using 1.2.1 with a 6800 GT: Basic Outline and Lighted Outline don't appear to work properly.
     
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