Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
their software to take advantage of the feature. Although various 3D standards exist
(OpenGL and DirectX), video card makers provide drivers that make their games play
with the leading standards. Because some cards do play better with certain games, you
should read the reviews in publications and websites to see how your favorite graphics
card performs with them. Typically, it can take several months or longer after a new ver-
sion of DirectX or OpenGL is introduced before 3D games take full advantage of the 3D
rendering features provided by the new application programming interface (API).
Some video cards allow you to perform additional optimization by adjusting settings for
OpenGL, Direct 3D, RAMDAC, and bus clock speeds, as well as other options. Note that
the bare-bones 3D graphics card drivers provided as part of Microsoft Windows usually
don't provide these dialog boxes. Be sure to use the drivers provided with the graphics
card or download updated versions from the graphics card or GPU vendor's website.
APIs
APIs provide hardware and software vendors a means to create drivers and programs that
can work quickly and reliably across a variety of platforms. When APIs exist, drivers can
be written to interface with the API rather than directly with the OS and its underlying
hardware.
Currently, the leading game APIs include SGI's OpenGL and Microsoft's Direct3D (part
of DirectX). OpenGL and Direct3D are available for virtually all leading graphics cards.
At one time, a third popular game API was Glide, an enhanced version of OpenGL that is
restricted to graphics cards that use 3dfx chipsets, which are no longer on the market.
OpenGL
The latest version of OpenGL is version 4.1, released on July 26, 2010. OpenGL 4.1
is based on OpenGL 3.x, and adds 64-bit double-precision floating point support, new
shader stages and subroutines for faster and better quality of 3D rendering, and better per-
formance. OpenGL 4.1 is backwards-compatible with OpenGL 3.x.
Although OpenGL is a popular gaming API, it is also widely used in 3D rendering for
specialized business applications, including mapping, life sciences, and other fields. Win-
dows XP and newer can support OpenGL either through software or through hardware
acceleration. For a particular graphics card to support hardware acceleration of OpenGL,
thedriverdevelopermustincludeaninstallableclientdriver(ICD).TheICDisdistributed
as part of the driver package that the video card or GPU vendor provides. Thus, driver
updates can improve OpenGL performance as well as DirectX (Direct3D) performance.
To learn more about OpenGL, see the OpenGL website at
www.opengl.org
.
