Hi All,
1 more item I would like to add to this thread to help others out when considering running the Beta (or even the finished product) & especially concerning using any of the Beta's post processing settings:
The new AHIII, Alpha, Beta....take your pick, is coded to use the Shader 3.x rendering code. This type of coding is what most big box games are using to achieve the high res graphics that most have come to see & expect (most of these games are using Shader 4-5 modeling which is improved shader coding over 3.x and is better suited to use w/ Dx 10-11 API.....Beta is still written in Dx 9.x API so the Shader 3.x rendering code is the HTC preferred coding to use). This shader coding was developed to offload the GPU of some of the back end graphics rendering work that can be done using the shader cores (or Nvidia called Cuda Cores) instead of the GPU so that the GPU can be used to do other tasks and to be more efficient in those tasks. So along w/ the amount of vid card mem onboard, the size of the vid card mem pipe (bandwidth as Bustr points out) & mem frequency (mem speed) the
amount of shader cores present on a vid card is another factor to consider when looking to run the Beta, especially if considering to use the post lighting effects & FXAA as all this back end graphics rendering work is passed to the shader cores to do (color work, texture fill work, anti-aliasing, lighting effects and possibly the reflection work which involves lighting....and may be doing even more work if HTC decides to code it to be done within the Shader 3.x modeling code if it can be done w\ the shaders instead of the GPU).
The general rule is, the higher the shader core count the better the vid card can handle the post lighting\AA work in the Beta as this work can be spread across more shader cores lessening the load on any single shader core and can have different aspects of this backend graphics work assigned to specific shader CU's (compute units) so all this work can be done in parallel increasing the vid card's efficiency while outputting very rich, deep & colorful graphics frames.
Now AHIII is still in Beta stage so a minimum number of shader cores needed to run the game w/ post lighting effects & FXAA enabled may change in the coming days, but you folks who have been testing this game for a while using older vid cards should have a better feel for what this number range most likely would be at this time.
I will offer a minimum number of at least 800 shader cores onboard to get "playable" FPS in the Beta w/ all post lighting effects\FXAA enabled as a "specification" for the time being........maybe Skuzzy can elaborate on this some as well to help out. If the shader core counts are less than this number you might consider turning all this post lighting effects and\or FXAA off in the Beta as a performance tip.
My 2 cents given.
The Beta post lighting effects & FXAA
