ATI Radeon 256 Preview

Just as with the GeForce, this allows the host CPU to handle other operations since its time is freed up by the Charisma Engine.  A potential downside to this feature is that, as CPUs get faster and unless a game specifically takes advantage of the features supported by the Charisma Engine, the host CPU may be able to handle these tasks in a faster manner than the Charisma Engine. 

ATI is betting on the most popular games coming out this Christmas taking advantage of these specific features so that their Charisma Engine will actually have some purpose to it, which hasn’t been the case thus far with NVIDIA’s Hardware T&L since very few currently available games take advantage of hardware T&L. 

Luckily for ATI (and for NVIDIA), it seems like they put their money on the right feature since there will be quite a bit of support for hardware T&L in games that will be available towards the end of this year.  And since NVIDIA has already done quite a bit of promotion for their hardware T&L engine, ATI should have a much easier time promoting the Charisma Engine since they can just point to NVIDIA’s GeForce/GeForce 2 and basically say “we’re following their lead.”  This also weakens 3dfx’s argument that hardware T&L isn’t necessary; then again, by the time the Radeon 256 is actually available, 3dfx’s next-generation product (Rampage) should be available, and it may boast a hardware T&L engine of its own.

ATI basically took it upon themselves to add as many DirectX 8 features as possible without having a hard copy of the specification to go by.  In doing so, they are betting quite a bit on their Radeon 256 and its Charisma Engine.

Exactly how powerful is this Charisma Engine? 

ATI claims that the Radeon 256 is the “most advanced GPU [Graphics Processing Unit] ever designed” and its 30 million transistor count will lead you to believe that they aren’t lying. 

Capable of processing 30 Million Triangles per Second (compared to ~10 million triangles per second for the GeForce and about double that for the GeForce 2 GTS), the Charisma Engine will be more powerful than the GeForce’s T&L engine and the GeForce 2 GTS’ T&L engine.  While the same can’t be said about NVIDIA’s forthcoming NV20, which should be due out sometime in September, for now and when it’s officially available, the Radeon 256 will have the most powerful T&L engine available on the market.

One of the major advantages ATI is claiming that their Charisma Engine holds over NVIDIA’s T&L solution is that it can retain close to 25% more of its original performance as more light sources are added than the GeForce’s T&L engine.