Re: Quake performance SGI vs Sun

From: joe smith (rapu_at_ra73727uashduashfh.org)
Date: 04/05/04 

Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 18:49:29 +0300

> > That's my milk and bread you are talking about, fwiw, having a 60 hz
screen
> > refresh doesn't mean you would constantly crank out frames 30 hz if your
> > renderer can generate frames in 1/59 th part of a second. More likely is
> > that you will get variable intervals between different frames.
>
> Not on an SGI. No triple (or quad etc.) buffering.

Well, obviously you don't prefer single buffering because that means you
would be rendering directly to the visible portion of graphics memory and
would get much worse effect than tearing. ;-)

> > This is why triple buffer was invented, surely the Silicon Graphics,
Inc.
> > has heard of this amazing invention?
>
> Yes, Silicon Graphics has heard of it. And it introduces one extra frame
> of latency.

With double buffering, the graphics processor is forced to wait until the
"backbuffer" is available for rendering (has been swapped). Now, if we could
begin rendering next frame earlier, please explain to me, how this would
INCREASE the latency when it is obviously DECREASING it. Think McFly, think!

> And it's not supported on any of the SGI-designed GPU/display
> driver combinations.

That's their problem.

> Feel free to scream bloody murder and tell anyone no-one should be
> buying SGI's because they don't implement triple-buffering.

Now you are putting words into someone else's mouth, are you happy now? I
never said anything even remotely like that! This seems to be a very
emotional issue for you, why not take a vacation from anything SGI related
and come back refreshed and with objective thinking enabled?

> Not even when the installation of the drivers set this toggle button to
> avoid syncing swapbuffers with vertical retrace unless you go in the
driver
> configuarion panel to enable the tying of the two?

What drivers praytell are you thinking about? Mine (GeForce FX 5900) set
them to "application preference", the override to either force immediate
swap or force retrace is NOT the default. Application preference is how the
API works, it is driver feature to force either way and NOT default by any
criteria of the word, sorry Alexis, you're plain wrong.

> Man, you have a different definition of default than I have.

Seemingly you have any definition you like to have as long as you get the
better of mighty Joe Smith - the man who is never wrong!