AMD Tesselation SDK for Windows, Linux support coming soon

kick · Post by **kick** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 7:27 am

AMD has released a SDK (software development kit) for real time tesselation on the GPU. Tesselation on GPU makes it possible to increase polygon density in real time, adding much more realism to the final scene.
The SDK comes with 2 demos and works with the latest DX9.0c on WinXP.

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I.S.T. · Post by **I.S.T.** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 7:43 am

Awesome!

h4tred · Post by **h4tred** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 1:47 pm

Meh.

Reminds me of TruForm, and that was a utter flop.

gllt · Post by **gllt** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 1:50 pm

tell me more, h4tred

diminish · Post by **diminish** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 2:03 pm

h4tred wrote:Meh.

Reminds me of TruForm, and that was a utter flop.

Indeed.

h4tred · Post by **h4tred** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 2:23 pm

tell me more, h4tred

TruForm was a rendering tech done by ATI that does pretty much the same they are trying to do now with "GPU tesselation". It was never really used for anything and didn't make that much of a difference, if any at all.

It was quickly dropped by ATI, same with those SmartShaders.....

kick · Post by **kick** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 3:00 pm

But unlike Truform,the future is brighter with this one.
This time the tesselator is more open - it can be accessed through OpenGL as well (even under Linux)

Another thing that will boost the popularity of tessellation: Windows 7 comes with DirectX 11 and DX11 will make tesselation (and tesselation hardware) a mandatory feature for DX11 compliance.That means nVidia DX11 cards will also have it as a standard feature.

The simpler tesselation engine present in current DirectX10(.1) ATI cards can still be used with DirectX 9/10/11 although it will not have all the features of the enhanced DX11 compatible one.

I'd love to see this used in Open source games

h4tred · Post by **h4tred** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 12:56 am

This time the tesselator is more open - it can be accessed through OpenGL as well (even under Linux)

Is it a ATI only tech?

I bet it could work under Nvidia cards, though it would make sense to lock out the competition in regards to that.

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 1:53 am

If tessellation support is required for direct x 11 compliance and Nvidia are releasing direct x 11 compliant vid cards, then Nvidia must obviously also have support for this tessellation.

Nvidia are releasing direct x 11 cards either at the end of this year or first quarter next year.

kick · Post by **kick** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 2:12 pm

h4tred wrote: Is it a ATI only tech?

I bet it could work under Nvidia cards, though it would make sense to lock out the competition in regards to that.

This is just for the current (DX10 / DX10.1) generation of ATI cards: the HD2000, HD3000 and HD4000 series.

h4tred · Post by **h4tred** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 1:32 pm

In that case, its a definite reminder to me of TruForm.

I wonder honestly how well its adopted compared to that. o.o

I.S.T. · Post by **I.S.T.** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 4:20 pm

I believe this is just supposed to be a temporary solution/get people used to the idea of actually using RT Tesselation, given Tesselation is going to be required in DX11.

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:14 pm

nvidia still hasn't made dx10.1 cards yet.

granted 11 will more than likely be a much bigger deal than 10.1, but still. i also think it's because nvidia is more than happy to reuse the 8800 architecture for as long as humanly possible.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:19 pm

Redesigning the core hardware costs money... it won't be as significant if something minor is added, but it's money spent on R&D nonetheless.

It happens all the time though....

gllt · Post by **gllt** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 12:55 am

sweener2001 wrote:nvidia still hasn't made dx10.1 cards yet.

granted 11 will more than likely be a much bigger deal than 10.1, but still. i also think it's because nvidia is more than happy to reuse the 8800 architecture for as long as humanly possible.

ATI just made IntelligentAutoMagicGeometry, Nvidia expected to catch up with dx14.2