[mdlug] Interesting information about Windows "7"

[Aaron Kulkis]

Jeff Hanson wrote:
> On Jan 25, 2008 12:26 PM, Ingles, Raymond <Raymond.Ingles at compuware.com> wrote:
>>  Well, actually, many games require particular hardware on the video card to
>> run. For example, Hardware T&L, or shaders, or texture compression, or
>> whatever.
>>
>>  Actually, modern games have multiple 'render paths' that optimize for
>> different graphics hardware. The Source engine (Half-Life 2 and all) has
>> at least three that I know of for different versions of DirectX.
> 
> That's exactly what I was referring to.  In addition, there are
> required CPU instructions also.  Quake 4 will not run on my Athlon
> 1.3GHz system at all because some of the enhanced instructions are not
> available.

Easily solved with a compiler flag, at the price of performance.

It's not that it CAN'T run on your Athlon... it's that they
chose to compile for optimum performance on the most up-to-date
CPUs, and they know that their primary market are FPS freaks
who don't even have to be told to upgrade to a CPU with the
latest VAX-11-like "humongous algorithm in an opcode" opcodes.

Recompiled without the flag to optimize for the latest
multimedia-algorithm opcodes, and Quake 4 *will* run on
your Athlon.  The question is whether the frame rate will
be acceptable to the majority of their customers, and the
answer is, probably not.

[And, there's probably a marketing thing here too...they
  DON'T WANT anyone to even see the frame rate produced
  by a CPU that is more than 12-18 months old, for fear
  that the code will be labelled as "slow", when the
  real problem is just a slow CPU and/or slow GPU.]