Saturday, April 29, 2000

Carmack: Give Me 64 Bits! -- 10:03 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Just when 3dfx finally catches up with the rest of the world and provides 32 bit rendering, id's John Carmack updates his .plan saying what we REALLY need is 64 bits. His arguments are compelling (and yes, I did follow his train of thought . . . mostly). As usual the update is lengthy and very deep. Prepare for your brain to hurt :)

The Master comments: The only argument I have AGAINST this one is how in heck are video card manufacturers going to keep framerates up with a doubling of required data transfer rates? I hope Intel can get AGP 4x SOLID real soon-that's the only way I can think to allow this improvement to fly.

A.T. Hun comments: Well, fillrates are now getting to the point of being completely ridiculous. The GeForce 2 GTS can do almost 60 fps in Q3A at 1600x1200x16. The main problem to be solved right now is the memory bandwidth bottleneck. Once some faster memory becomes available and economically viable, I think 64 bit rendering could become a reality. I would say that we will see it on a video card within two years, especially if Carmack pushes it as "the next big thing" like he championed OpenGL.

News for 04/29/2000

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