Subscribe to one of our news e-mail lists . He sees a clear distinction between the needs of gamers and 3-D pros. Compared with models used in movie scenes or CAD drawings, models in 3-D games use relatively few polygons and require high texture fill rates. But instead of emphasizing texture fills, the pro cards aim to boost the speed of real-time lighting effects and geometry throughput.
Designers can thus create, manipulate and preview complex scenes and models in real time.
News Radio Fusion audio primers Computerworld Minute Trevett said that 3D labs is considering a Mac version of its Oxygen line of professional 3-D accelerators. But he suggested that there may be a convergence as the gaming cards adopt more advanced features. Additionally, the games themselves are beginning to use high-end functions. For example, Unreal Tournament uses relatively complex polygons to get a desired look. Nvidia's GeForce2 GTS 3D graphics processing unit includes hardware-accelerated lighting and transform functions that are not traditionally handled by gaming graphics boards.