[rescue] OT: Games and workstations (was OT: Linux and USB on Intel)

[deanders at pcisys.net]

At 08:31 PM 4/21/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 deanders at pcisys.net wrote:
>
>> 16MB isn't much for a consumer video card (I haven't seen anything (new)
>> with less than 32MB in years); most current PC games seem to require at
>> least 32MB, sometimes 64MB (higher-resolution textures, etc.).
>
>Yes, but how much of that can be allocated as texture memory, and how
>much is for the framebuffer?  By the time you've allocated enough
>framebuffer for 1600x1200x32 double-buffered, you're already chewed up
>15MB.  That leaves you 17MB for textures, at -best-, assuming that the
>video memory isn't used as scratchspace for geometry calculations, and
>that textures are referenced, not copied, during intermediate
>calculations.

Fair enough. Even so, it's much easier (cheaper) for me to get (say) a
consumer card with 128MB of unified memory (which should still have plenty
of room for textures in current games) than to get a workstation with 16MB
of dedicated texture memory.

>16MB of TRAM (that is, raw TRAM, not multiple copies of texture and some
>framebuffer, but all TRAM) is quite a lot.  I think SGI RealityEngine2
>only has 16MB of TRAM, and it's certainly up to snuff for playing games.

It probably is--but that doesn't make it *practical* for gaming. I'm not
arguing that you *couldn't* use an SGI for gaming, just that it doesn't
make much sense to do so. 


Derek Andersen