[Agen]

Games nowadays have good graphics, but we can make better, but the hardware that pepole would need to run them would cost too much. For example the movie that starts when you first open up World of Warcraft hase way better gaphics than the game itslafe. Now I ask you, what are the best graphics that we can make on computers nowadays, that would only work on supercomputers and are used in films. Any pics, videos?

[rockytriton]

how about watching the movie "Final Fantasy"?

The startup of World of Warcraft is probably a video, it's a list of images where a 3d game is not just a list of images, it's a ton of polygons rendered with textures, very complex for a video card to handle and requires a lot of memory and a fast graphics processor. Any old computer can play a video since it's just a list of images with audio overlayed.

[UncleAl]

Gamer computers allow installation of multiple graphics cards. Stick in a couple of XFX nVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX 256MB GDDR3 256-Bit TV-Out/Dual DVI PCI-Express, run an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2 x 1MB) L2 Socket 939 Dual Core CPU or an FX-57, add a couple or four GB Corsair XMS Extreme 1GB (2 x 512MB) DDR400 PC3200. Yeah, that'll run DOOM3 at hi-res in real time.

http://www.abspc.com/app/ult_specs.asp
http://www.abspc.com/spotlights/athlon64fx.asp

An AMD Athlon FX-55 with cheap DDR memory will wax the fanny of an Intel Xeon (Pentiums are a sour joke) of the same frequency with expensive DDR2 memory. The Athlon will run 20 C cooler while doing, too. 32-bit Pentiums top off at 4 GB RAM at motherboard bus frequency. 64-bit Athlons handle 1000 GB of installed RAM at CPU frequency (on-CPU memory controller). Athlons cost less than Pentiums. Live with it.

[alexander]

I dont think that 200 bucks is worth the improvement you get with SLI, even if there was a 20% improvement, you are still way off mark with the price...

And even my 3400+ with 2 gigs of ram and a Extreeme n6600gt would play Doom 3 at the highest res even through cedega (dont ask why you'd wanna play a game available for Linux through Cedega, but the fact is it would!)

I'm reinstalling the system on there today, i have had small issues with Raid, if i cant figure out wth is up, i'll stick with 2 deives.... i need the system running...

[Agen]

Found something called "Photon Mapping", looks really nice!

http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/images/

[alexander]

it sure looks nice, but you do understand what kind of crazy hardware is behind those pictures right?

[Southtown]

Ya, the problem doesn't lie in rendering those photon maps. The problem lies in rendering 60+ of them per second.

[alexander]

yeah, even 40 would present a huge problem, so unless you have a quad 64 bit system with 8 gigs of ram and an industrial quality graphics card with 512 megs of DDR3 or so (goes for around 5000 dollars, thats just the graphics card)....

[Southtown]

The first Shrek movie was rendered on 800+ networked Linux boxes, I heard once. The crew would script scenes during the day, and then go home and let the scenes render afterhours.

[alexander]

yeah, there are projects like that... ever heard of electricsheep? that is pretty crazy and it isnt even anything speciffic. and it was rendered on 800+ linux boxes over knight...