intel x3100 transforming and lighting?

ok so are there any drivers out yet that supports hardware transforming and lightning?

 

I do not think so.

 

damn i need it :S

 

sorry. Now that intel is working on the "future of innovation in technology", they've prettymuch disregarded writing drivers for the x3100 and older. Tough luck :-/

 

Honestly, something needs to be done about it. Intel advertised the card has having this feature...and it never happened. Isn't that called "false advertising?"

 

The x3100 DOES support hardware TnL. However, its awful support. Most of the hardware TnL games that the x3100 can run, do NOT function very well. Often they have graphical errors, and they just run like crap in general. With the x3100, software mode is usually faster and it will probably always be that way. The x3100 is a perfect example of compatibility without the performance to utilize that compatibility. Remember the Geforce 5 series?

Should we even call this Hardware TnL support?

 

Hardware TnL is there, just not as strong as it suppose to be. Heck I even had a hard time running Silent Hunter III!

 

but wen i tried to play a game , it gave me error that ur graphic card doesnot support tnl

 

Got the latest drivers?

 

well idk, i just got my xps 3 days ago... shudnt the lastest drivers already be installed??

 

No, Dell makes an OS image and almost never changes it. Don't use Dell's driver site either...use www.intel.com for drivers.

 

oh ok ill try that

 

No. Update them.

 

It does that for a lot of games, the x3100 is barely functional.

 

Prettymuch, its just "ability to run games that need Hardware TnL". It dosn't really give you any optimization of it.

It's kind of like registering your mini-van for a street race. You've got the requirements, but thats prettymuch it.

 

Sorry Greg, but I tried to install the latest intel drivers from their site and got BSODs with XP. Returned to the latest DELL drivers and no more BSODs. So I´m staying with the Dell drivers.

 

Try this program called "3D-Analyze". Not the best interface, but it may get you around any TnL issues. It basically emulates it in software, but your CPU should be enough to manage it.

http://www.tommti-systems.de/go.html?http://www.tommti-systems.com/main-Dateien/files.html

btw, the X3100 isn't half bad. Don't expect to play Crysis, but pretty much any other 2007 and prior game should run to some extent. Also, look for some DirectX 7 or 8 option if it exists as a command line option for any game you try to run with it.

After getting my Eee PC which has a Celeron 900, Intel GMA 900, 2GB RAM, I was pretty impressed with what it was able to run. And your CPU and X3100 in your laptop is definitely 10x better than this Eee's power.

 

Technically, hardware T&L does not exist on X3100. Hardware T&L is basically DX7 version of Vertex Shaders. X3100 runs "hardware T&L" entirely on its Vertex Shader pipeline and sends them off to the Execution Units for processing.

But, practically speaking, X3100 has hardware T&L because Vertex Shaders does basically the same thing as hardware T&L does.

The problem with the X3100 is this. Remember how Intel did not include hardware T&L/VS for their previous IGPs?? That's because having it on hardware increases the die size significantly, which increases power and cost. But on the X3100, it barely gets better. X3100 has "hardware T&L" and Vertex Shaders, but to save die size without sacrificing compatibility, the hardware is weak. Even then, X3100 has 3 times the amount of transistors that GMA 950 does.

Intel's Extreme Graphics 1 and 2 had one big problem aside T&L: It's one pixel pipeline meant that the fill rate tanked.

GMA 900 fixed that by having 4 pixel pipelines. But then they found out that fill rate is no longer the bottleneck. GMA 950 increased the performance of the setup engine(by 4 times), which basically is a controller for T&L. Basically it meant that the setup engine will scale better with future CPUs(since it acts as T&L engine).

Then the X3100 came along. Even though it has an advanced architecture, it only has basically 2 pixel pipelines which limit fillrate again. It has hardware T&L/VS support but the performance is poor. For older games, GMA 950 probably would be better.