SwiftShader ?

[morrbido]

Hi guys. I found this on a torrent site:


Is this even possible, to have a 'crack' and all your performance problems are gone?? 
This is what the readme says:

''The Sims 3 Unsupported Graphics Card Workaround
---
in this economy, who the hell can afford to just go out and upgrade hundreds of dollars worth of hardware -
people who say "Oh just go buy a better PC or video card" need to try working to
make their own living, since having access to their rich parents' money makes them
think they know it all. What the hell are they doing downloading torrents! if it
were that easy to just up and buy all that hardware, you could have bought the
game just as easy.... shut up, assholes.....
---
DLL files Brought to you by Kajinkodda
---
The watermark that Swiftshader places is removed, so you can play games
without any problems.
---
To use this, just place the two dll files and the Swiftshader.ini file into
the same directory as the game.
C:\program files\electronic arts\the sims 3\game\bin

Then just run the game and you're off. ''


And this is what the SwitShader.ini says:

''[Caches]
VertexRoutineCacheSize=1024
PixelRoutineCacheSize=1024
SetupRoutineCacheSize=1024
VertexCacheSize=64

[Quality]
TextureSampleQuality=1
MipmapQuality=0
PerspectiveQuality=2
TranscendentalPrecision=2

[Processor]
ThreadCount=0
EnableSSE2=1
EnableSSE3=1
EnableSSSE3=1

[Testing]
DisableServer=0
KeepSystemCursor=1
ForceWindowed=0
DisableTexturing=0
ComplementaryDepthBuffer=0
QuadLayoutDepthBuffer=0
PostBlendSRGB=0''

[CaptaiNemo]

This does not fix your performance problems.. this makes the game playable executable (at all!) on a non-supported graphics card (e.g. one that does not support dx8), by running all the shaders on the CPU.

If you actually DO have a dx8 or 9 gfx card this will completely destroy your performance. E.g. in my case go from 100 fps max quality to 2 fps lowest quality.

EDIT: Oh, and this is not a crack (or patch). It just replaces the runtime libraries used for DirectX with custom ones.

[morrbido]

yeah i tried it out. ruined my laptop's performace during the game, completely.
but it would be awesome if there was something like a crack or something that improves performance without ruining the graphics :/

[J. M. Pescado]

Such a thing is impossible. You can't magically create performance out of obsolete hardware. You have to either sacrifice quality or performance, and often both. Sell your ass! Get a real computer! A decent graphics card is only about $100. That's maybe a month's worth of food. It takes longer than a month to starve to death. You can make it.

[wes_h]

Usable, game spec compliant cards, like the geforce 8400, cost maybe $35.
$100 will get you a very good one these days.
Do eet!

[morrbido]

hehe it will be the first thing after i get a decent job 

[morriganrant]

This was already listed in the technical issues and installing thread. My friend tried this. The game was originally telling her that it wouldn't run on her computer at all due to her card not supporting shaders 2.0. These files actually bypassed that and the game started up. Doesn't mean that it was playable though. Just running doesn't mean playable.

I suggest you visit NewEgg. You may catch something on sale or just a good deal.

[jolrei]

A decent graphics card is only about $100. That's maybe a month's worth of food. It takes longer than a month to starve to death. You can make it.

I eat more than that.  A new graphics care represents no more than 2 weeks worth of food (at most).  I can haz one.

[superstition]

Such a thing is impossible. You can't magically create performance out of obsolete hardware.

I just happened upon this torrent today.

The only scenario I can think of that would make something like this work is when a user has:

1. An oddball card like the Matrox Parhelia that supports vertex shader 2.0 but only pixel shader 1.x
2. A modern processor/RAM. In order to have that, one must have an oddball motherboard like the AsRock Dual 775 that supports Wolfdale 45nm processors at 3+ Ghz or 4 or so overclocked.
3. Software similar to this that does more:
    a) Bypasses pixel shader on card, and uses processor (taking full advantage of SSE 4.x, dual core parallelism, and so forth)
    b) while utilizing the card's ability to do vertex shading
    c) all while maintaining processing cohesion (good luck trying to balance that)

I am not a hardware or software engineer, so this is just speculative. I assume that such software would have to be designed specifically for a card like the Parhelia. I don't know if such a scheme would yield a playable frame rate.

[superstition]

Ok, I just found a tutorial for SwiftShader that says it can take advantage of dual and quad core chips. You have to change the thread count from 0 to 2 or 4.

But, I don't think it's possible to have it work in conjunction with a dedicated card like the Parhelia that supports vertex shader 2. It's purely a software CPU renderer.