GPU gimmicks

Anyone else getting kinda tried of all the marketing when it comes to gpus? The sad thing is most people don't even know what these things are. I remember people saying over the wii u rumors of its gpu " wii u will use dx 11 anything else would be stupid" Why would a nintendo machine use dx 11? Have they ever heard of any other api?

An older one not long after ps3 coming out people were saying we need "ray tracing"

Nvidia has phyx!!! you cant get that on amd! what does it do? well...um.. it makes things move a bit different....

Anyone else getting kinda tried of all the marketing when it comes to gpus? The sad thing is most people don't even know what these things are. I remember people saying over the wii u rumors of its gpu " wii u will use dx 11 anything else would be stupid" Why would a nintendo machine use dx 11? Have they ever heard of any other api?

An older one not long after ps3 coming out people were saying we need "ray tracing"

Nvidia has phyx!!! you cant get that on amd! what does it do? well...um.. it makes things move a bit different....

Those guys can market any sort of vague silliness all they want, and it doesn't bother me one bit. I just look at the numbers, then I slap some green down.

divX 11 has to do with the graphics. it has better graphics than the last one. graphics cards come out with a new every few years.

Nvidia phyx is the technology of objects moving. instead of making the object move by script, it moves by phyx engine.

It all goes way back to Geneis with "Blast processing" making shit up or saying it has stuff that even if it does, don't mean jack shit. How many games out now use DX10 even?

@iam3green said:

divX 11 has to do with the graphics. it has better graphics than the last one. graphics cards come out with a new every few years.

Nvidia phyx is the technology of objects moving. instead of making the object move by script, it moves by phyx engine.

Where the hell did you pull divx from?

While I concede it doesn't matter for the most part I do like to know what technology is being used. Obviously, any Nintendo or Sony product won't be using DirectX which is a known quantity, but the games still look good as long as developers know how to leverage what they do have to work with.

PhysX was a great concept that could have made for some interesting gameplay if used correctly, but I don't think any developer will fully take advantage of technology like that unless it can be used over all platforms(and really, since PhysX became a part of existing hardware instead of a discreet, dedicated card, there's no reason for that not to be a reality). PhysX, I would like to think, could've been more than a gimmick if it gotten to being used to simulate physics in major games, but since it failed to gain a wide enough foothold at the outset, it's reduced to just making physics simulation a bit faster and nicer on nVidia cards.

DirectX 11 isn't a gimmick, it's an updated version of an API that supports a wider range of features and performance enhancements. DirectX 9.0c by comparison is hopelessly outdated, hell even the Xbox's custom API support more advanced features than that dinosaur (unified shaders for example).

As mentioned above, what you've mentioned aren't really gimmicks as much as they are technical specs, but I get your point.

Either way, I don't really care about what companies say their products can or can't do VS. what other's say they can. What I care about is performance. I want to see real and synthetic benchmarks, and I'll go with what has better performance given the price.

The transition from directx 8 to 9 was pretty big imo. Really, directx 10 and 11 are still running alot of 9 in it with added more-ness. I'am no tech expert, but the highlighted bullet point of DX11 is tessellation, which is what normal mapping was trying to strive for years ago. The UE4 really helped illustrate what tessellation can do, also pointing out how lighting is affected against particulate such as fog, smoke, dust etc. While I can see the argument that it may appear that DX10-11 might be a gimmick it's the "little" things that aren't mentioned we're starting to see with the upcoming engines, and as Korwin said, lot's performance improvements with more added bling. (Can't complain about that)

Dumb people on the internet will be dumb people on the internet. Stay off reddit and its shitty meme recycler websites and you can avoid a good bit of it.

As far as the Wii U GPU thing, it obviously won't have dx11 because that's a Microsoft thing (hence *x*box), but it could have a more modern version of OpenGL. The GPUs in the PS3 and the Xbox 360 are garbage, very early models of that type not really built the way modern GPUs are. There are something like 24 stream processors in the PS3's "REALITEESYNTHASYZER X" compared to 1000+ in mid range cards today.

PhyX is cool, but almost nothing uses it, so its not super exciting.

This is what tessellation can give if developers utilized it (You'll need to check the full size)

SM5.0 in DX11 is far more important that tessellation from a development standpoint, although it is pretty neat when used correctly ;)

@Slaegar: What is that image from?

GOTTA GET THAT DIRECTX 2012 YO!

@clstirens: Metro 2033 very early on while you are still at the first station.

@banishedsoul1 said:

Anyone else getting kinda tried of all the marketing when it comes to gpus? The sad thing is most people don't even know what these things are. I remember people saying over the wii u rumors of its gpu " wii u will use dx 11 anything else would be stupid" Why would a nintendo machine use dx 11? Have they ever heard of any other api?

An older one not long after ps3 coming out people were saying we need "ray tracing"

Nvidia has phyx!!! you cant get that on amd! what does it do? well...um.. it makes things move a bit different....

I can't really speak for dx11 and physX, but I can say that ray tracing is a real graphics thing and not just a made up catchphrase. It's a rendering process that takes (or at least it can take) a ton of computing power, but it makes (or again, can potentially make) things look reeeaal nice.