First post, by Kordanor
Hey there,
I already read the thread over here but didnt want to necro it:
Re: DirectDraw=software rendering only? Direct3D=hardware rendering only?
I just wanted to check and clarify if I understood everything correctly:
Software Rendering is a more "general term", basically meaning that no 3D hardware acceleration from the Hardware is used. Little or no Resources from the Graphics card are used. The majority of the work is done via the CPU.
DirectDraw is an API made for 2D rendering, which does access Graphics Card Resources like VRAM. DirectDraw can be "abused" for 3D rendering. However no 3D Hardware acceleration is used.
So you could say that DirectDraw is a "way" to do Software rendering (in Windows).
Did I understand that correctly?
My follow up question is then, how much influence CPU / Graphics card has (WITHOUT 3D features).
So lets say that your game stutters quite a bit in Software rendering (lets say some Dos Game like Screamer), and on the opposite side, you have a heavily stuttering game in DirectDraw on Windows.
What woud happen to each case if you throw 5 times the CPU power at it. And what happens if you use 5 times the power of the graphics card (more VRAM and whatever can influence speed on DirectDraw). Or what happens at the opposite if you reduce the power of the graphics card and use an old ISA card for DirectDraw?
I explicitly want to remove Direct3D and newer tech from the discussion and stay at older tech.
Could you generalize that "Software Rendering (Direct Draw or other) is mostly CPU based as long as you have decent Graphics Card for 2D Operations"?