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Talking about Shader Model 3

If you program or play computer games or even recently attempted to purchase a video card, then you will have no doubt heard the terms "Vertex Shader" and "Pixel Shader". The step from 2.0 to 3.0 was a small one and most Shader Model 2.0 games can easily be upgraded to Model 3.0, which can bring more performance to that gaming experience. DirectX 9 was recently updated and we are going to see more and more support for 3.0 Shaders.

Is SM 3.0 technology a huge visual advantage over 2.0? Nope, not even the slightest bit. Yet any technological advantage is always welcome and preferred over a previous generation's development. What you need to remember about Shaders 3.0 is that it can and will be used only in several critical places where it can give a performance boost and graphics cards are all about performance my friends. Both ATI and NVIDIA now offer Shader Model 3 support in their new products. GeForce Series 6 and newer models and for ATI their X1000 series and newer models.

Talking about HDR

Another big trendy implementation that will bring games closer to a movie like quality experience is HDR.

Both ATI and NVIDIA

Valve recently released a new HL2 level in the form of Half Life 2: Lost Coast. Go download it as it'll show and amaze you what HDR can do. The difference is obvious. HDR means High Dynamic Range. HDR facilitates the use of color values way beyond the normal range of the color palette in an effort to produce a more extreme form of lighting rendering. Typically this trick is used to contrast really dark scenery. Extreme sunlight, over-saturation or over exposure is a good example of what exactly is possible. The most simple way to describe it would be controlling the amount of light used present in a certain position in a 3D scene.

Half Life 2 - Lost Coast level. If you bought the game, available for free on Steam.

HDR is already present in Far Cry, 3DMark06, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Age of Empires IV, Serious Sam 2 and in Half Life 2: Lost Coast & Episode One. It will be available in Unreal 3 and likely a large number of other games soon. Let the screenshots do the talking as it really is a cool technology.

Power Supply - Watt Did You Say?
 

The dreaded word in the industry: power consumption. The GeForce 7300GT requires obviously a stable 12-volt power source for best performance, reliability and most of all that gaming experience of yours.

What we always do with new graphics' cards, we measure the wattage peak with the help of a wattage meter. Slight side note, you are looking at the overall usage of the entire PC. The meter is placed between the power connector and the PSU. So please understand that using a Wattage meter is not the most reliable way of measuring power consumption. You basically look at how much power is the power circuit from your house pulling from the PSU. So you need to look at the results as being an indication and not an exact science.

Let's have a look at some Series 7 products

The methodology: we simply look at the peak Wattage during a 3DMark05 session to verify power consumption. You are not looking at the power consumption of the graphics card, but the consumption of the entire PC. The 7300 GT graphics card consumes way less than 75 Watts at peak during 3D gaming.

I suggest

What would happen if your PSU can't cope with the load?:

• bad 3D performance
• crashing games
• spontaneous resetting PC
• freezes during gameplay
• PSU overload can cause it to break down

So many things can happen, the 7300 GT however is hardly consuming anything.