Silicon cocktail



    On the eve of GDC Europe , new graphic examples for developers have been made available to help you get the best gaming performance on Intel HD Graphics systems. Some of them are already familiar to game developers, and some are new technologies developed by Intel. All these examples could be seen at the Intel booth at the conference in Cologne; now they are available on our website .

    One example is Shadow Explorer, which combines several commonly used shadow rendering techniques in one example. Four shadowing algorithms are built into this example:
    1. Simple cascaded shadow map
    2. Percentage closer filtered (PCF)
    3. Variance shadow map (VSM)
    4. Exponential variance shadow map (EVSM)




    Shadow Explorer is an application that allows game developers to try out some lighting techniques and compare their quality / performance score, thereby determining the most suitable computer game or other 3D product. Two scenes will allow the creator of the picture to visually control the processing of objects with different geometries.

    Developers can change the type of algorithm, adjust the quality of each of them and see the result on the same 3D scene (in the example, several scene options are available), which allows you to select the desired combination for implementation in their programs. Moreover, this is a fairly flexible tool that allows you to change the parameters of the scene in real time in order to assess changes by eye. The source for the link .

    The single Sandy Bridge architecture, combining CPU + GPU modules, makes it possible to use the Onloaded Shadows technique, which asynchronously calculates shadows, distributing the load between the two cores. This solution is suitable for performing graphic tasks of any level - from model processing to rendering each frame in a heavy computer game.

    Another example of Intel's know-how is the example of MLAA (morphological antialiasing), showing a technique developed in the Intel Research laboratory about which we already wrote in detail on Habré. This technique allows you to significantly improve the quality of 3D images, using both the power of the graphics core and the central processor, and works perfectly on the latest generation of Intel HD Graphics, as well as GPUs from other manufacturers. One of the main advantages of this technology is the independence of the number of polygons displayed on the screen, a factor that most affects performance when using the standard MSAA smoothing method for GPUs.

    All examples are available with source code, which will allow developers to quickly integrate new techniques in their products and get high-performance games on integrated graphics. Indeed, in Sandy Bridge it is significantly different from its predecessors. The power of the GPU module has increased 25 times compared to the previous generation, the maximum number of cores is four, the pipelines are six, and the shader processors are twelve. Maximum frequency: 1500 MHz, the video core uses a common L3 cache. Extreme power overclocking is possible both manually and with the help of Intel Turbo Boost, which “softly” increases the performance of the entire system. The nanoschematic, located on one chip and connected by a ring bus, evenly distributing the load between the two cores, can present many pleasant surprises. You will find a complete list of them.here .

    Soon, a manual on compatibility with the new generation of Sandy Bridge processors will be published in Russian, which will improve the quality of graphics on any computer. Now it is only in English . Brief information on the support of various technologies by both generations of Intel Core (the last of which is Sandy Bridge) here .

    Also popular now: