Understanding Rendering Techniques  It's been years since I've
had to describe the differences in rendering techniques but
given the hardware we're talking about today it's about time for
a quick refresher. Despite the complexities involved in CPU and
GPU design, both processors work in a manner that's pretty easy
to understand. The GPU fundamentally has one function: to
determine the color of each pixel displayed on the screen for a
given frame. The input the GPU receives however is very
different from a list of pixel coordinates and colors.  A 3D
application or game will first provide the GPU with a list of
vertex coordinates. Each set includes the coordinates for three
vertices in space, these describe the size, shape and position
of a triangle. A single frame is composed of hundreds to
millions of these triangles. Literally everything you see on
screen is composed of triangles:  Having more triangles
(polygons) can produce more realistic scenes but it requires a
lot more processing on the front end. The t