What is the maximum poly count Direct X can handle?
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What is the maximum poly count Direct X can handle?
Depends on your card, and sometimes your CPU speed. On older cards, all transformation is done in software, so the CPU gets all of the work. On faster processors, you can push more polygons. On my Rage Pro, I could get 100k polygons/second at about 15fps, on a p3~500. On the newer Geforce3/4 cards, all transformation is done in hardware, so you can push several million polygons/second at 40-50 fps, fairly easily. The number also varies on how you are rendering in the geometry, and how efficient it is (static geometry is faster then dynamic, for instance).
Also, you have to take into account fill rate on the video card. You might be able to tho throw a million polygons at the card, with multi-texturing and alpha blending, and, though the transformations themselves will be quite fast, actually drawing to the screen will really pummel the frame rate (this happens a lot in particle systems).
Z.
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Though, to answer the original question, the number is limited only by memory, though on most cards, the amount that can be rendered AT ONCE is usually 2^16 (~32000).
Okay, should be no prob on mine, I'm running 64megs DDR.