Video cards

[euge04]

I'm new to Lightwave. I'm going through Dan Ablan's book slowly but surely. My first question of the day is what can better video card do for me? I have a dual 450mhz G4 running OS X and the basic video card setup that was possible at the time. Does the video card speed up rendering or just the Open GL display? From what I understand it only speeds up my display so when I'm working in Modeler or Layout it helps me work faster but when it comes to the final output it doesn't matter because the computer usese the CPU for that. Is this true?

[mattclary]

Your statement is true. It will only help you when working, not rendering.

[euge04]

Do cards exist that speed up rendering?

[mattclary]

Not for LightWave yet. In the future I think you will see more applications that use hardware accelerated rendering. Below is a link to a pertinent article.


http://www.tech-report.com/etc/2002q3/nextgen-gpus/index.x?pg=1

and


http://www.csee.umbc.edu/~olano/s2002c36/ch07.pdf