What do these tech terms mean?

[Quall999]

ok, here is what I can say...I could be wong on some parts though.

Bilinear filtering = a texture filter for games. It makes it so that a texture on a wall looks good when it is blown up, instead of blocky. Trilinear is alot better.

software mode = My guess is that the software does everything. instead of hardware. More memory is needed. Thing\k of an snes emulator, no snes hardware is actually used.

volumetric FX = ??? My guess is that it has something to do with texture showing volume, like a shader or something. I have no idea.

low res = crappy textures...add a blur effect 500 million times and a couple smudge marks. There is your picture.

hardware acceleration = processes are done on hardware (as in your graphics card), cpu usage (and memory?) isn't used as much.

direct3D HAL = direct3d hardware abstraction layer. Basically a layer between hardware and software. My guess is that it reads from a file on how to display things, like from a graphics driver. Not completely sure. (yes, i googled it)

RGBA = basically it's color display

hatch compat = ???

hid compat = Human interface device campat(ibility?). Game controllers, joysticks....

direct-show = google tells me it is a movie watching driver, for ingame and whatnot. I have never heard of it before.

directsound = well, you can hook your mobo to the cd-rom and get direct sound off of the disk, instead of having software read and do all that other stuff. You will probably not hear a difference. Maybe it saves memory and cpu power, i dunno.