Crysis and CoD 4 rendered by the CPU

Some days ago, the software rasterizer Swiftshader from Transgaming was released as a demo. It's way than the software rasterizer from Microsoft itself. Currently, Swiftshader supports Shader Model 2.0 which means that a lot of DX9 games work solely on the main processor. The CPU does all the computation in this case like pixel shading, texture filtering and transform and lighting.

German website PCGH.de did some benchmarks (3DMark, Crysis) and shows the visual difference when rendered with the CPU compared to the GPU. So maybe this is a trend like raytracing? Who knows...

[Harry190]

better in the top images.
Can someone explain to me how this works,
i'm not a big techie.

[JsonHenry]

Maybe combine this WITH GPU acceleration and we got ourselves a winner folks!

[Marceles]

Usually a GPU (video card) is needed to render the game's graphics, but in this case because of Swiftshader, the CPU (processor) is able to render the graphics by itself without needed the help of the GPU. Of course the GPU's graphics are gonna look better than the CPU, that's its job, but the bottom image is still impressive considering that it's able to render Crysis and COD4 without aid since rendering graphics isn't normally the CPU's job. This just gives you an idea that if you had a Core 2 Quad processor without a video card, how well it could handle graphics without the aid of the GPU.

Supposedly the Cell processor on the PS3 can render graphics as well without needing the RSX.

[poopsack]

thank you marceles

[Richdad]

Be benifical for PC in the first place because in a year or 2 PC Cpu will be all 8 cores with very high processing speed and cache.

[JsonHenry]

Well, what I meant was that if you have extra cores laying around and you combined the software/CPU rendering with GPU aided effects it would make your machine more powerful automatically by simply adding support for the CPU to help render the frames.

And yeah, the CELL was made to render graphics. But apparently it was not that great at it in its current form or else Sony would have never bothered paying Nvidia a royalty fee for every PS3 sold.

[travelguy2k]

was originally supposed to have 2 cell processors and i think a) because of the cost of the cell at that point, B) the power consumption of that size of die was too high, and c) the heat produced by the cell used at that time was too high.

so with all these reasons against 2 cells in the PS3 we now have the RSX. If the PS3 was released today then we would get to cells and no RSX because all these issues have been fixed.

[Harry190]

koala.

[Marceles]

travelguy2k you're right about everything, Kutaragi said it was supposed to have 2 Cell processors but he overestimated how well it could handle graphics without a GPU. I only wish the RSX would've been based on the G80 Nvidia series, but if the graphics from future PS3 games truly look like how we've been seeing on previews I don't think it would make much of a difference

jsonhenry you're also right with combining the fact that the CPU + GPU together makes the machines much more powerful, and with the PS3 being able to do that, I think alot of people who don't understand are underestimating the PS3's graphics potential

[Solid_Malone]

GPU seems to be the best- you can tell from the lighting

[Richdad]

GPU rendered is easily looking better. But this give new tools to dev although this software needs more work.

[Daishi]

The main point of this demonstration isn't that they plan to run games on CPU alone but better cooperation between CPU and GPU. Imagine running Crysis at max with a 128mb video card...

[jackdoe]

GPU seems to be the better, though CPU rendering comes close. Anyway, those Crysis shots look like its running on medium settings.

[poopsack]

does that mean i can now run these on my computer? it can do everything except shaders (it has 00) so i dont know, not really i wiz on pc gaming. can someone please explain?

Is this all hardware?

[tweaker]

This is great! Imagine the fastest CPU working with a top of the line graphics card at the same time. Graphics would be dramatically superior from consoles. I'd get serious with PC gaming all over again.

[gEnKiE]

Thats crazy the CPU is doing that.

[ichimaru]

this is AMAZING, for a CPU alone.
PC FTW

[AllroundGamer]

did anyone look at the fps graph?? 4.6fps average at best, so even if the CPU rendered pics don't look bad, the game itself is unplayable...

[highps3]

So what is this exactly?

[thor]

Just a different system than the default software-based renderer. Of course it's never going to be as fast as a regular gpu, becuse modern cpus (cell excluded) aren't designed for manipulating vectors etc. Also things like rasterisation need to be hard-coded, where (I presume) there are actual circuits devoted to that on a gpu which can do it much faster.

[Ju]

Actually it would be interesting to see, where a cell based renderer would end up in those benchmarks.

[TurdStationPee]

This is stupid. A huge performance hit, and also, why does Crysis look like sh1t on both?

[Premonition]

Its things like this that make me happy about what the PS3 can do in the future, I remember back in E3 05 i believe, sony showed the cell renduring a mountian or something combined with ray tracing, and this is why when devs get the hang of this and combined it with the GPU, things will start looking real good.

[Avto]

this leaves a lot to be leaves a lot to be desired but the CPU rendering is getting better and better by the day so if this keeps up we will have one processing unit for 3D in games very good no more lazy dev b!tching.

[Alcaponedyou]

ps3 can do crysis and beyond
teh cell ftwind

[TheExecutive]

thats what I was thinking... the cell is a beast and the RSX isnt too shabby either.

[trancefreak]

cool info guys

[kingtigar]

ACHTUNG! i don't know duetscherland : (

[t-0_ot-]

Some of those pics look identical.. why is that, when others look astonishingly better??

[mistertwoturbo]

Did you not look at what's being compared? What is being done by the CPU alone, without the aid of the Graphics Card. The other, is with the graphics card. So obviously the one with the GPU will look better. But that's not that point. The point is, the CPU renders are astonishingly close considering the CPU's has other tasks to take care of as well as rendering the game the same time.

It just gives developers a glimpse of what they can do in the future with a powerful processor alone, without the use of a GPU. However, seeing as how a GPU plus Processor is available, it is mind blowing what they can come up with. It just proves that a powerful processor goes hand and hand with a GPU to create some crazy graphics.

[Dnarbeis]

I think it looks good!

[-SIXAXIS-]

Suprisingly, the CPU does pretty well although Crysis looks like when it's put in sketch mode in the editor.

[poopsack]

hmm it seems that for some reason the absence of lighting makes better aa.

[Bolts]

Yeah the CPU can render but if you look at the FPS you'll see that the GPU gave it a massive beat down of 30 fps to 4.6 fps so this tech's impact on the PC gaming will probably be limited even with all the quad cores PC out there.

But this is great news for PS3 fans who now have something to point to when they boast about their fancy Cell CPU.

[ChickeyCantor]

he?!
Gfx processing is a really tough job....thats why they actually made a GPU.......but nice job! wasnt sony's plan to do this with out the GPU?...

[liquidsnake]

Im glad they didn't. That would probably make the PS3 even more complicated.

[ChickeyCantor]

if i recall correctly sony wanted to do the PS3 without a GPU....? they wanted to do everything with the Cell....although its been a while i could be wrong