Spanky Deluxe
Jun 24, 2006, 10:20 PM
Ok, does anyone remember nVidia's Tech Demo at Siggraph in 2001 where they rendered some scenes from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within in real time with their latest Quadro graphics chip, the Quadro DCC, which is basically a GeForce 3.
Here's nVidia's take on the event: http://www.nvidia.com/object/final_fantasy.html
The rendering was only at about 10 frames per second with a relatively low resolution and was a lower quality (obviously) than the film. Nevertheless, it was very impressive.
Now, that was a few years ago. GeForce 7900 GTXs have a fill rate five times that of the GeForce 3 although they are of course many many times more powerful than just 5 times as fast. Couple that with dual or quad SLI and you're talking something that's incredibly more powerful than the Quadro DCC used in the Final Fantasy tech demo.
Now I wonder what nVidia could do with that kind of power if they were making that tech demo now. Would it be enough to render the entire film at a close quality at a decent frame rate? I've always believed that a lot of potential performance is lost due to applications and operating systems having to cater to every hardware setup there is on the market. What could they do with a specific, highly optimised system?
Here's nVidia's take on the event: http://www.nvidia.com/object/final_fantasy.html
The rendering was only at about 10 frames per second with a relatively low resolution and was a lower quality (obviously) than the film. Nevertheless, it was very impressive.
Now, that was a few years ago. GeForce 7900 GTXs have a fill rate five times that of the GeForce 3 although they are of course many many times more powerful than just 5 times as fast. Couple that with dual or quad SLI and you're talking something that's incredibly more powerful than the Quadro DCC used in the Final Fantasy tech demo.
Now I wonder what nVidia could do with that kind of power if they were making that tech demo now. Would it be enough to render the entire film at a close quality at a decent frame rate? I've always believed that a lot of potential performance is lost due to applications and operating systems having to cater to every hardware setup there is on the market. What could they do with a specific, highly optimised system?
