ATI SMARTSHADER Technology - Powering the next generation Radeon

Conclusion

SMARTSHADER, like NVIDIA's nfiniteFX engine, is ATI's implementation of pixel and vertex shaders. Both NVIDIA's solution as well as ATI's solution promise to bring new levels of detail to games, with ATI's SMARTSHADER offering more in terms of capability. What does this mean for games?

Well, unfortunately, we can't say right now. With the extremely long development time for games, it is hard to know when DirectX 8 games will finally hit the scene, if ever. The whole situation eerily reminds us of T&L technology that was implemented over a year ago. When announced, manufacturers promised that T&L would change the face of gaming, providing higher polygon counts and more realistic gaming. All T&L supporters claimed that games would quickly take advantage of this new technology, leaving those without a T&L engine in their graphics card in the dust. Over a year later, have we really seen that? Sure, there are games out there that are optimized for T&L cards, but nearly all of them will run almost the same on cards without a T&L engine. We are still waiting for the day when games require a T&L engine or look drastically better with T&L capabilities enabled. Could pixel and vertex shaders end up in the same way?

With the backing of Microsoft and the standardization they have created, we are fairly certain that games taking advantage of pixel and vertex shaders will eventually come out; but the question is when. ATI promises that by the time their card is available, there will be games out that take advantage of their SMARTSHADER technology. And since they claim that their next generation product will be ready by "the end of summer," we don't have much longer to wait. Naturally, we must remain skeptical until the first batch of DirectX 8 games come out and require pixel and vertex shaders for enhanced gameplay.

And sure, ATI's SMARTSHADER does offer a greater realm of possibilities since they support DirectX 8.1 and remain backwards compatible with DirectX 8.0, but how long will it be before DirectX 8.1 games come out? The effects do look good in demos, but until they are implemented in a game they offer little more than eye candy. Undoubtedly NVIDIA's next generation of graphics processors will feature DirectX 8.1 and pixel shader 1.4 support. If no games need support for these features until well after the Radeon 2 comes out, NVIDIA really will not be hurt by having a product out that is a step behind.

We are just going to have to wait and see what real world advantages SMARTSHADER technology offers over NVIDIA's nfiniteFX technology. There is no question that the product will be impressive; let's just hope that the advantages offered will actually be used.