Quote Originally Posted by SKYMTL View Post
Left is a GPU rendering the scene. At the right is the software renderer which my its very nature doesn't have ANY optimizations.
It's a reference renderer which defines what exactly the scene should look like?

Software rasterization by it's very nature does use the same optimizations as hardware rasterization does - depending on the method used of course. The only difference between the two is that the CPU does exactly the same as the ROPs and TMUs do hardwired, and at the same time the CPU emulates the shaders.