   Ati SDK vs. nVidia SDK???
  I have learned about the Platform SDK and the DirectX SDK.  I'm pretty comfortable with them.Now I found out there's an ATI and nVidia SDK??What are they for?  Can't I just use the DirectX SDK for all my hardware acceleration needs?   
  The ATI and NV SDKs are just a bunch of demos, utility code, shaders and all that jazz. They're not necessary by any means, but there's a ton of cool stuff in both.   ;  I believe these SDKs just highlight how to get the most out of the ATI/NVIDIA cards.  At least this http://www.ati.com/developer/radeonSDK.html one just has samples that are all written in DirectX or OpenGL.  So it appears you can and do just use the DirectX SDK (or OpenGL if you prefer).  The samples in the SDK might make use of some features that one vendor supports but others may or may not, however since its using DirectX/OpenGL the support should be pretty broad and I doubt there'd be that many card specific features, certianly none that couldn't be accessed via directx or opengl.Does this help?Scott   ;  Thanks all.  Cleared that up.Now, has anyone here used any vendor specific dev tools such as RenderMonkey?I read the description, but I'm still hazy as to what the advantage of it is.   ;  RenderMonkey allows you to quickly write and prototype shaders in an IDE-style environment, where you can see the results on your own geometry right away. The DirectX SDK doesn't really have a tool like that (although you can get close if "your own geometry" only is .x files).   ;  Lucky for us NVIDIA's got FX Composer :)http://developer.nvidia.com/object/fx_composer_home.html