shader models

[Zwinmar]

Need some info:

My graphics card is a VisionTek RADEON 9200 series, now I dont know jack about shaders and what not, but lately Ive tried a couple games and it says I need a Shader 3.0 and mine only has a 1.1.

What exactly is a shader and do I need a new graphics card?

[Sarevok]

What exactly is a shader and do I need a new graphics card?

Being a noob I have almost zero clue about graphics. However shaders are little lines of extra code that programmers can write using proprietory programming language. CG is a http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cg_toolkit.html a common one used on nVidia cards. The shaders run on the GPU and can add a lot of extra details on the final rendered scene that the CPU may not be able to do.

My graphics card is a VisionTek RADEON 9200 series, now I dont know jack about shaders and what not, but lately Ive tried a couple games and it says I need a Shader 3.0 and mine only has a 1.1.

While it is true shaders can make a vast difference in graphics quality it is also possible to play games without shaders. Some games like Halo : CE, Hitman : Bloodmoney include a command line options for that. This allows them to be played on weaker cards.

I have same card as you do and either turn off shaders or use shader 1.1. Shader 1.1 is barely noticeable from 2.0 but offers a vast performence increase.

[Stark]

Yes, you do. If you want to play games that only support SM3.0, and you don't have a card that supports it, you're borked. Most let you drop to an older model, but games designed with shaders in mind often look like complete ass with them turned off.

[Sarevok]

Yes, you do. If you want to play games that only support SM3.0, and you don't have a card that supports it, you're borked. Most let you drop to an older model, but games designed with shaders in mind often look like complete ass with them turned off.

Well not on the wondercard that is the radeon 9200.

It's support of shader 2.0 is so sucky the Halo 1 game looks better with shaders turned off. Ok that was a hyperbole but seriously on the 5th level the sky is basicaly a white polygon with shaders turned on. With shaders off it looks ok except the shadows don't work.

[Stark]

Yeah, I've heard that ATi doesn't like implementing the shader models properly which causes problems like that.

[Dooey Jo]

What exactly is a shader

A shader is a small program that runs on the GPU and does funky stuff to a vertex, a fragment (that's a part of a piece of rendered geometry, like a point on a texture; DirectX likes to call it "pixels" but that is wrong), or geometry, before it is rendered.

If we simplify, a normal "fixed function" rendering pipeline might look like this:
- Send vertex colours, texture coordinates, vertex positions to GPU
- Apply per-vertex lighting
- Transform vertex positions into 2D space
- Apply textures
- Rasterize (calculate final pixel values and store it in frame buffer memory)
- Send output to screen

A pipeline that is programmable by shaders might instead look like this:
- Send vertex positions and stuff to shader program
- [Vertex shader does funky stuff to the vertex information, applies vertex lighting and performs appropriate transforms]
- [Fragment shader does funky stuff, like applying textures, per-fragment lighting and shading (which might have something to do with the name "shader")]
- Rasterize
- Send output to screen

and do I need a new graphics card?

Yes.