Rating: 
Summary: Encylclopedic
Review: This book is amazing. It includes all of Abrash's _Zen of_ books (in part in the book and in entirety on the CD-ROM). While I'm a Mac person, I still found huge portions of the book useful. It also works pretty well as a workout prop
Rating: 
Summary: Good book only somewhat outdated
Review: This book is an exellent reference and good info book. it has tons of info about MODE X (somewhat outdated) 3d stuff and optimizing. but at the beginning of the IA 64 age this book is quite old in optimization tricks.... The 3D part whoever about poly and calculus is not. it easy to read and the examples support the book very well a real recommendation if your new to this but you know your programming way.
Rating:
Summary: what a rush!
Review: This book is SUPERB. He goes into great detail about hardware and links it directly to optimizing your code. I never knew there were so many cracks you can squeeze your code through to make it perform! Abrash is the master of high performance code, I STRONGLY recommend you buy this book if you are serious about programming. C and some Assembler knowledge is required. Also, it's a shame one person gave this book such a crappy review and brought his score down a star, it's really an awesome reference.
Rating: 
Summary: A true reference book.
Review: This book is written in both C and Assembler. Although most of it is written in .asm format (about 70%-80% in Assembler), so if you dont know any Assembler, I truly dont recommend this book. Although it has some tutorials written in C you do miss alot of the optimizing and VGA sections by not knowing Assembler, but even if you dont know Assembler, this book does go over some of pretty useful information in a relatively easy to understand format. The more useful section would be the Pentium Optimizing (about 4 or 5 chapters, written in .asm) and the Quake rendering chapters (last few chapters, written in C). So to sum it all up, if you know Assembler and C pretty well, get this book, if you don't know Assembler but you do know C, get this book for the last chapters (Quake rendering) and just as a reference, if you know Assembler but you don't know C (not the case for most people) get this book just for the optimizing and VGA chapters, if you dont know any languages, get a beginner's book.If anyone knows of any other useful Computer Graphics and/or Rendering books written in C/C++, please contact me at Ac0831@ix.netcom.com
Rating:
Summary: Killer Book!
Review: This book rocks! It is filled with info on high performance 3D programming. This is for experts only though, and unless you are a die hard graphics programmer, I would not recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Killer Book!
Review: This book rocks! It is filled with info on high performance 3D programming. This is for experts only though, and unless you are a die hard graphics programmer, I would not recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: A Textbook of 3d theory
Review: This book, or tome, as i discovered when it arrived in the mail, is really a textbook of graphics in general. The first half is more of a history book, detailing earlier, now obselete video modes, which makes it interesting but at the same time feels like a few hundred pages of filler. HOWEVER, any gripes or ill-feelings are instanty made up for and then some when you get to the 3d stuff. He goes into all the 3d math you won't be taught in context otherwise, he goes into virtually every aspect of scene rendering and csg, including such advanced topics as overdraw and bsps. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: 10 out of 5 stars!!!
Review: This is a wonderfully interesting book that goes deep into not only the hard code of optimization but also the abstract concepts of it. The first 30 chapters are spent explaining that asm should be used only as a last resort since most C/C++ compilers generate generally fast code. Abrash explains that choosing the right algorithom can have a more profound effect on a programs speed than how it is coded. All in all, the information itself is going out of date, but the concepts and ideas that Abrash presents will still be worth knowing and understanding for decades to come. This book is a great reminder that it is good to step back and think outside the box.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth the money.
Review: This is only of interest to "experienced" graphics programmers. And by that I mean old. If you were around in the 80's programming, this is interesting. Otherwise, more than half the book is useless. No one uses DOS these days... no one even makes their own libraries these days. This book is more of a curiosity than anything. It is fun to read though, but heed the warning and don't buy it unless you know your stuff and want to hone your skills.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth the money.
Review: This is only of interest to "experienced" graphics programmers. And by that I mean old. If you were around in the 80's programming, this is interesting. Otherwise, more than half the book is useless. No one uses DOS these days... no one even makes their own libraries these days. This book is more of a curiosity than anything. It is fun to read though, but heed the warning and don't buy it unless you know your stuff and want to hone your skills.
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