Vista, Directx 10 and unified shaders

[Decoman]

Ati have afaik 2 different graphic cards, Radeon line and FireGL line. The new FireGL cards make use of directx 10 and shader model 4 and seem to be not that different from Radeon cards (im no expert though).

Now, I understand that with Directx 10 you now have unified shaders. I think i read that firegl was optimized for vertex shaders and radeon for pixel shaders.

Unified shader model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So, I cant help wonder if there will be or could be a single driver that could work with either firegl or radeon.

Would it be too much to hope for you think?

[ChaosMinionX]

Radeons are specifically geared toward Gaming, where FireGL is aimed at graphic artists, rendering, and other GPU intensive content creation.

As far as Unified shaders go, thats a new feature of DX10 yes, and it has to be built into the video cards, that is why only the R600+ (ATI) and G80+ (Nvidia) will support DX10. No older card can run this because of hardware limitations, not drivers.

[Decoman]

After buying new hardware it seems my worries about driver issues towards certain applications were unnecessary, and I feel abit silly having made this thread.

Apparantly, my new gfx card Radeon hd3870 (directx 10.1 capable) with regular catalyst drivers seem to work flawlessly with my favourite 3d application. And this in Vista.

[Dyre Straits]

Glad to know! (I really have my own heart set on a 3970, too!)