FYI for those that don't know: Truform II adds more triangles to the polygons for 3D rendering AND it is NOT supported 100% in <b>hardware</b> in the 9700 Pro (which to me states in the 9500 Pro and 9800 Pro either).
I imagine that the new Cat 3.8's will probably kick in with a way to fully use Truform II, thus making tessellation smooth as strawberry icecream. Until then, you all were correct in thinking that there needed to be a patch or driver to fully use it. The reason being that there is no fixed Integer based tessellation levels in Truform II as there is in Truform I. So, it is a better choice both in expense (they'd need to add more chips if they hardware enabled it) for the user and production expense...as well as a better choice for performance.
Is it possible with a driver to 'enable' it? I would think so...otherwise, ATI was lying to us saying it could fully utilize Truform II. The main reason it wasn't enabled in the first place being...it is new technology and is reserved strictly for DX9. That said, I would look for drivers to enable it when DX9 becomes a standard in games.
The 8500 has 100% Truform <i>I</i> enabled...which made things a bit more smooth when it came out...but there should be a massive improvement on the DX9 standard when truform II kicks in. Remember that the farther away an object gets with Truform II, the less tessellation it will recieve...it isn't a FIXED level of tessellation like in Truform I...so when this kicks in, it will increase Framerates as well WITHOUT ANY VISUAL QUALITY SACRIFICE@!@# Like I said, perhaps this is what ATI has planned for the Cat 3.8's and why there is such a hype with them....if so, it would improve performance EVEN MORE over Nvidia AND it would look much, much better as well. I hope I'm right.
To give you a preview of the kind of performance increase we can expect with DX9 and Truform II...compare it to how Truform improved quality in an older game...HL: CS. Imagine HL CS with an older GF3..then take a look at it with an 8500. Notice how blocky the heads are with the GF? The 8500 (w/ Truform I) used a hardware encoded tessellation process to smooth out the rough edges. Now imagine what's going to happen when Truform II kicks in with the 9X00 series. The thing that tantalizes me is that the cat 3.8's are scheduled for release about the same time HL2 is going to come out....coincidence?
😛 I think they're going to enable full truform II and open up a can of TruWhoopArse!
PS: To get back to the original post...I don't know if the 9X00 series will be able to utilize Truform I in leiu of Truform II or in addition to...or whatever. So are they backwards compatible? Probably would be a good question for some ATI guru or driver beta tester.
<b><i>Nvidia,</i> the way it's meant to be benchmarked.</b>
TKS<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by TKS on 09/23/03 08:13 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
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