Doom and Technology.

[Eldoen]

I was reading a post from back in Dec/Jan time frame about technology. Believe it was about 64 bit colour depth.

Just wanted to point out a few things. AGP pro or AGP 8x which are fairly new technologies may not see to much light of day. Primarily because the AGP port will be replaced with the 3gio spec. I hope we do see several MOBO's over the next year that do contain them but it will require a MOBO update to use them.

2003 will see several technolgies come to light. By the first half of 2003 we should start seeing MOBO's with 3gio support. We will also start seeing Mobo's with DDR2 support and Oct rate rdram support. Depending on your flavor.

IEEE 1394b should be fairly standard then, as well as USB 2(although that won't be as necessary in the graphics area and basic game input/output) SATA will be though the more information that is pumped from the drive to the system means increased performance for the system.

Another Big boost for the graphics industry will be the switch over from .15 technology to .15 or even .08 on SOI. Allowing the graphics card industry to make smaller silicon for one, but can clock it higher with lower heat concerns. Smaller silicon will also help with costs but we all know they will push more tranisters (quite possible 64 bit colour depth)

Now the question comes when to upgrade. :)

My system specs are not low by any means. athlon xp 1600+, 512 mb 2100 ddr, wimpy geforce 2 mx 200 which will change soon probably a geforce 4 ti 4200. 2 30 gig ata 100 drives. not top of the line but not bad either:)

Unfortantly I work in the semi industry, and I know what is coming or expected to come for the next 2 years. I know the transition to 64 bit will really start in 2003, 2004 being the most likly, (strong rumors that several companies want to fully transition by 2005, 2007 at the latest) so in the next year or 2, we are going to see
a transition from 32 bit processors to 64 bit processors.

we will also see transitions on Memory, ddr to ddr2, or quad rdram to oct rdram. transitions on the main busses. PCI/pci pro to pci 3.0(3gio) agp 4x/8x/pro to 3gio.
phasing out of the serial port to usb 2.x and IEEE 1394b.

Wonders what is next. Nvidia has already said that they expect the next GPU to be a FULLY programmable GPU. takeing all of graphics calculation load off of the cpu. (geforce 4 already does alot of that now)

what are your thoughts??

el

[Geerdy]

Very interesting .... but what has this to do with Doom 3...
don't take this personal, its a cool read :-)

[Geerdy]

By The Way Welcome to the forum.

[EsH]

Hi! This is certainly one of the most technical posts I've come across in these forums!

Unfortunately, I'm not computer literate enough to understand half of what you said.

What on earth is a "MOBO"?

I've heard of DDR2, which sounds like it would go a long way towards increased texture size, which means that 3D textures can really start to be used a core component of the graphics component of future game engines. And, from there, we can start looking at post-NovaLogic voxel based worlds. Using pre-fab components, I think that very soon it will be possible to create, at least in a limited way, volumetric based levels, which can be crumbled and chipped at realistically.

The fully programmable GPU is very interesting, because it makes me wonder what the "graphics" portion of a game engine is becoming-- a good many GPU programs simulate dynamic physics based interactions that are barely focused on the actual illumination component of the image. I suppose this is done all the time in things like RenderMan?

Again, I'm not that computer literate.

It kind of makes me wonder when we'll come out with dedicated "physics" accelerators, that have hard-coded collision detection, object sorting functions. This isn't as far-fetched as it seems. Whatever that machine that Turing used so long ago to decode those cyphers still out-performs the most advanced CPU of today, simply because it was hardwired to do one task very efficiently. And the hardware was largely centered around "sorting" stuff. I think that would be kind of cool, to have software developers just go in and work with a physics API, and be able to create amazing quantities of gameplay effects instead of just amazing quatities of rendering effects.

Anyway, thanks for writing up such an interesting overview of what lays ahead for all of us. I'll definately have to hit the web, and start learning what a lot of this new stuff is.

[Revenant!]

umm...well, interesting...yes.
What exactly are quad rdram and oct rdram ?
Whats 3gio ?

[Zoost]

MoBo = Mother Board

[Zoost]

"What is 3gio"

"the AGP port will be replaced with the 3gio spec"

Read his post...or use our beloved internet to find all answers in life.

[Zoost]

MoBo = Mother Board

"Whats 3gio ?" I quote our new forum visitor: "the AGP port will be replaced with the 3gio spec" or use google to find
http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/3giotech/

Long live the internet and the people who USE it!

[Lüt]

Technology sucks.

[Zoost]

Now you mention this, yes

[Eldoen]

Quad Rdram is current technolgy rambus mem. Oct is next gen rambus, should have a 800 mhz effective clock.

Ok, what did this post have to do with DOOM.

According to info that I have read, DOOM will effectively hamstring most of the graphics cards out there.

That is the point of the post. DOOM may be coming out when several transitions are occuring the Computer hardware industry.

If doom comes out in 2003, and you want to run the latest and greatest. there will be alot of choices to make. Primarily with forward looking events.

Such as buying a ultrafast (2.5 gig to 3.5 gig processors) 32 bit processors or a 64 Bit processor.

Playing a game is of course for fun. And I enjoy playing with hardware, So planning for the DOOM Beater is good fun for me. But the decisions are not as easy as they use to be. It is like when we went from 16 bit to 32 bit. with Isa, vesa local bus, EISA, Microchannel,

The main advantage appears that the Entire industry is backing 3gio, so we won't have alot of different incompatable buses in the computer.
just 3gio and pci and agp for the early time frame. SATA will be used for replacement of the pata as they are now calling the old version.

Finally we have a game company stepping up to the plate to push technology again. Origens and ID were the tops in the past. but there really hasn't been anything to press forward.

Unfortantly, as we move forward, there will be fewer and fewer mainstream aps that need to push technology forward. Who really needs much above a 600 mhz computer for simple internet access for example. It has always been us the hobbiest that have helped push graphics forward.


I look forward to that game that weighs down a dual 12 GHz 64 bit machine with a dual GPU. One can hope. As we move forward. 10 Ghz cpus should be around in 2007 12 by 2010.
now remember in the wholly grail was 1 Ghz only a few years ago and we went from 33 mhz to close to a 1 Ghz(don't have the numbers in front of me to remember which processor was out in 90 and 1999)

Who says hardware isn't fun, although it is funner to see what programmers can do to bring it to its knees. DVD streaming video, Real time video at high resolutions are the final holly grails.

just some thoughts el

ps and thanks for the welcome.

[Lüt]

Unfortantly, as we move forward, there will be fewer and fewer mainstream aps that need to push technology forward.

Oh don't worry, as long as Microsoft keeps adding completely and utterly useless bloat to their OS's, we'll soon need a 45.2GHz processor to boot Windows in a day and a half.

[Revenant!]

Read his post...or use our beloved internet to find all answers in life.

Ok, ok....but I just like most people of this forum and the way they're explaining all kinds of tech and so on...
Zaldron with his "lates Hallucinations"....Lüt with his almighty comments .....

I wish you all a nice day :)

[Amanichen]

Technology sucks.

Thanks grandpa, could you tell me another story from the jurassic age you backward fool? =)

[Phoenix]

Thanks grandpa, could you tell me another story from the jurassic age ....

Once upon a time there where floppy disks. You inserted them in the cpu and the screen started flicking ... Ok kiddo, it's past your bedtime. Sleep tight, don't the bed bugs bite. :)

[Vominus]

There was once a time when floppy disks were actually floppy. I still have Space Quest 2 and the original Kings Quest on 5.25 disks. Hooray for me!