Graphics card

[Duane]

Is there any cross-platform way of getting the graphics card?

[OneSadCookie]

no, but why do you need to?

[Duane]

for if the computer has a lower end graphics card, it will render less polygons, and only 16 bpp.

[OneSadCookie]

well, there's no cross-platform way to find that out, but you can do a decent job based on extensions, for example --

no ARB_texture_env_dot3 -- Rage 128 or TNT 2
no NV_texture_shader, ATI_fragment_shader, ATI_text_fragment_shader, or ARB_fragment_program -- Radeon or GeForce
no ARB_fragment_program -- Radeon 8500 or GeForce 3
no ARB_texture_non_power_of_two -- Radeon 9x00 or Xx00 or GeForce FX
ARB_texture_non_power_of_two -- GeForce 6 or better

[phydeaux]

GLEW (http://glew.sourceforge.net/) is I think the easiest way to see what extensions are available and to set them up. I have personally used this software and always use it whenever I use OpenGL extensions. If you use SDL you can find out what parameters your device has (like how many colors, etc.)

[arekkusu]

You should test what you're interested in testing, not some random group of extensions. If you want to know how many polygons per second the card can draw (via your particular rendering method), DRAW THEM. Time the result. Then act accordingly.

With the pixel formats, there is no cross platform way to determine what the card can display. You have to build a context to ask it how many R,G,B,A bits the drawable ended up with. All of the cards supported by OS X can render in 32bpp, whether changing to 16bpp speeds things up "enough" is something you can only determine by drawing a bunch of polygons again.