20120414 - Engine Scaling on April 2012 GPUs

One possible vision for engine scaling on current 2012 GPUs might be the following. Where "x" factor is in relation to the Xbox360, and the same DX11/GL4 level engine runs across the full range of hardware by adjusting rendering resolution, geometry LOD, and frame rate (assume some up-scaling done to bring some of the low resolutions up to device native). This table goes down to 320x180 resolution which would be similar to a 16:9 letter-box version of the resolution of the NeoGeo from the 1990s.

x	GPU	@ 30 Hz	@ 60 Hz	@ 120 Hz
16x	PC high-end	3840x2160	2560x1440	1920x1080
8x	PC mid-range	2560x1440	1920x1080	1280x720
4x	PC/notebook	1920x1080	1280x720	960x540
2x	notebook	1280x720	960x540	640x360
1x	?	960x540	640x360	480x270
0.5x	?	640x360	480x270	320x180

Or for something really pushing tech,

x	GPU	@ 30 Hz	@ 60 Hz
16x	PC high-end	2560x1440	1920x1080
8x	PC mid-range	1920x1080	1280x720
4x	PC/notebook	1280x720	960x540
2x	notebook	960x540	640x360
1x	?	640x360	480x270

For notebook, the high-end GTX 675M is the best of the Fermi chipsets and is roughly 4x the Xbox360. The current Kepler options starting with GTX 660M is roughly 3x the Xbox360. Interesting to consider that next console rumors of 6x Xbox360 perf and 2013 launch, is slightly above a the 2012 notebook and at the low-end 2012 PC GPU.


Tangent on Retro Resolutions

The "right" way to up-sample is to simulate the traditional CRT including slot mask,

Aspect Ratios, Scanlines and Modern Displays
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