Advanced settings - Part 1

Intel recently introduced graphic driver versions for Windows Vista and Windows XP that enable Shader Model 4.0 (including support for hardware vertex shader and HW TnL on the Mobile Intel® GM965 & GL960 Express Chipsets.)

Intel also added the capability to switch between HWVP (Hardware Vertex Processing) and SWVP (Software Vertex Processing) depending on the 3D application running on the Intel integrated graphics engines.

While Intel engineers were in the process of designing and enabling a driver that supports Vertex Processing and TnL, they found that some applications, mainly 3D games, performed better with vertex processing done on the processor rather than on the graphics engine.

As aforementioned, the architecture uses the same programmable engines to process all shaders. By off-loading some of the vertex shader processing to the processor, the graphics engine is able to process more pixel shader data and do additional work like anisotropic filtering.

This is because it has been found out that most often, vertex traffic occurred at the beginning of each scene, accounting for 1/3 of the processing requirements, while pixel traffic often accounted for 2/3 of the scene and thus required more processing power.

Results showed that some 3D applications perform best with HWVP, which is the default configuration. In other instances, results showed that some 3D applications perform best with SWVP. Intel’s goal is to provide the best user experience possible for 3D applications while leveraging the performance of the processor where it makes sense.

Basically you have to experiment to get optimal performance.

Originally, I wanted to put the registry tweaks in, providing screenshots as to where to place certain DWORDS and such, but then, I came across a wall - I can show you what, how and where to place these, but I'm unable to show you WHY.

Now I've googled for the relevant information, but it seems that people just copy from one another and just do the tweak without knowing what each added dword does and how it affects the system. What I want to do is not to give you the proverbial fish, but to teach you HOW to fish in order for you to be confident about what you are going to do.

Part 2 will give you the basic instructions on what, where to do place the tweaks, while I'll try to contact Intel and see if they can give me details on each tweak and dword.