I’ve got a GeForce2 GTS and it has the NV_VERTEX_PROGRAM extension.But I though that vertex and pixel shaders were a GeForce3+ thing.Is it doing it in software or is there something I’m missing?
Originally posted by TheGecko:
I’ve got a GeForce2 GTS and it has the NV_VERTEX_PROGRAM extension.But I though that vertex and pixel shaders were a GeForce3+ thing.Is it doing it in software or is there something I’m missing?
Software emulation. Be glad, that’s a great opportunity to try out the stuff. Speed won’t be quite like a hardware implementation but it’s still a nice toy to play with.
The thing that is nice about vertex programs is that they are still pretty fast even in software. Of course not AS fast as hardware but still very acceptable. Unfortuantly the programmable pixel pipeline is not quite so lucky in software. Well register combiners is not problem as long as you only stay within the gf2’s 2 general combiner limit. Past that it slows down quite a bit, unless you have a gf3 or higher. 
Texture shaders on the other hand is EXTREMELY slow in software. But it kinda makes sence, you are doing calcs with TONS of texels, a lot more than the number of vertices you have.
If you plan to check out texture shaders anyway, you need to enable the geforce 3 emulation in the registry.
-SirKnight