Could somebody give me an update on which cards are able to handle the shader thing? I currently have a geforce2go which is T&L capable but i suspect that this isn´t enough...

Would be very grateful to get saome info on this before i start coding something that i really can´t get working on my current config.

For pixel shaders,
Geforce3, radeon 8500 and up, since they are using programable shaders.
(I dont think the Gf4 mx cards have shaders)
For vertex shaders,
This can be emulated by the Cpu fast enough that it will work with even old cards (voodoo3 ect)


Zmatrix

i have radeon 9600 pro and its good, but i recognize that most of the nveffectsbrowser demos dont work, so maybe those are better...

well if i am sure that's like work:

has pixel shader 1.1
1.4 -> it's directx 8.1
2.0 -> it's directx 9 (have to be geforce fx, i don't know which ati card support this)

the Geforce TI (4xxx) works too but until 1.4

Not to start a holy war but the new ATI cards (9x00) appear to support shaders better then the GeForce cards.

I'm just going from my limited reading in the "Shader X" book (and some bias chats with an ATI rep ). So I may be totally wrong.

Cool. Thanks. That means i can fire away at vertex shading at least. (Or maybe i should say Dammit! now i have to start doing this too...;).

And here´s a really stupid follow up question: is the same type of effects possible with vertex shaders as with pixel shaders?
What i will be going for is reflection mapping, waterripples and such...

(I have actually tried to read the stuff at the shaderlink but right now its so far over my head i do need a telescope to grasp the concept.)

Doug: From what i heard its actually Amiga that handles shading best...;)

That is about the truth - the problem comes in when attempting to use the "nVidia" shaders with ATI cards.

A lot of the ones in the library which nVidia provides will have problems with ATI video cards. However, if you learn what is actually going on and write the shaders with what is needed - you will find that the majority of them will run best on ATI cards (one of the reasons nVidia cards perform so piss poor with HL2). There are a number of tweaks which are included in the ones provided by nVidia to make them run on their cards which mess it up for cards which actually have full support for the new shaders.

BTW - I do highly recomend ShaderX - very good book for anyone who is planning on using shaders extensively - and chances are really good you will be able to snag one from a discount book store now. Or check the Wordware website - as they often have package deals on books and ShaderX is a very popular title for the package deals.

I have a laptop with ATI M6 which supports Vertex Shaders but not Pixel Shaders. I could be thinking about getting a new Toshiba laptop with ATI M9...

Are VS in software mode now supported by A6 ? I remember that it didn't run on my GF2MX with the first beta.

well, my problem on this is that the effectbrowser doesn't even show the script at all cause the effect could not be initialized