HUGE 3dfx interview w/Gary Tarolli

[NFS4]

http://www.3dpulpit.com/Articles/tarolli_2000.html

 

[Cpntrips]

good read

 

[AndyHui]

Interesting....a good read and relatively well balanced.

 

[Remedy]

Makes you wonder if someone kidnapped alf!

 

[xtreme2k]

i must say this one is one of the best Q&A i have ever seen with 3dfx
i am impressed

 

[ApacheXMD]

what's the easter egg?

edit: nevermind, think i found it. mouseover the 3dfx logo by Gary Tarolli's pic

-patchy

 

[Czar]

See, 3dfx allways comes out good if that some inside develeoper handles the interview, if the PR idiots do it they end up bashing everyone else and make 3dfx look bad.

 

[networkguru]

3dfx...dead in the water hrm interesting thought!

Guru

 

[NFS4]

The most interesting part:


<< Reverend
Video card reviews on the Web evidently are very important to a company like 3dfx (or NVIDIA, ATI, etc. for the matter) - what's your personal opinion on the general quality of such reviews? Would you approach reviewing video cards differently if you were a reviewer? How so? On a related note, would you care to comment on this little rant of mine, which is essentially about me approaching reviewing video cards with the primary concern/emphasis on games instead of the hardware?

I am disappointed by the quality of journalism, including reviews, on the Web. The Web is great in that it allows everyone to be heard and communicate with each other - the ultimate free speech medium. But one of the problems it creates is that everyone can become an &quot;instant journalist&quot;, resulting in a tremendous amount of misinformation and sensationalism. Unfortunately, it seems that sensationalism sells and that truthfulness of information is often judged by how often it's repeated and linked to, rather than its contents. Thus, misinformation that is sensational has a tendency to become credible. The root problem is that there is no quality control.

Getting back to video card reviews, I don't mind our products getting bad reviews when the review is done fairly and objectively and diligently. However, there are many reviews that are just shoddy journalism. They are not diligent in their investigation, they are biased in their views, and they don't attempt to show both sides of the story. My favorite example is that when we get beat by 3 fps (frames/second) we &quot;get our clock cleaned&quot;, but when we lead by 3 fps in another benchmark, we &quot;just barely beat&quot; the competition. It's not so much the data that is inaccurate as the spin that is put on the data. We also go through great pains to request that reviewers benchmark certain modes that we feel are representative of actual game play - for example high-resolution with FSAA (full-scene-anti-aliasing) enabled, e.g. 1024x768 or 1280x1024. Yet many review still focus on 640x480 without FSAA. In general, I am very disappointed by how many reviews ignore FSAA or ignore the different types of FSAA. Even if a reviewer doesn't value FSAA himself/herself, they have a duty to report FSAA results to readers who do value FSAA, and trust me, there are many out there.

The primary job of a 3d video card in terms of 3d is to run games. Therefore, I think your emphasis on games is warranted. For example, instead of being concerned about whether a card supports a particular feature or not, e.g. hardware T&amp;L, just review the games. The final result should be judged by the overall user experience, not whether a function is performed in hardware or software. If software can perform a function faster than hardware, more power to it! In addition, some reviews focus only on one game or one benchmark, which isn't very thorough. It wouldn't be bad if this was pointed out in the review, but most times this is simply ignored and conclusions are drawn based on a fairly poor sampling of data. Driver and card stability, image quality, and smoothness of game play should also be taken into account. As you state, the overall experience is what matters, individual game benchmarks are just one part of that. >>


He DOES have a point.

 

[Wingznut]

He has an excellent point... One that RoboTECH and I have been trumpeting in the video forum for some time, now.

Add to his examples... Rarely do sites use Glide, because it's proprietary. Yet they don't hesitate to use features that the 3dfx cards don't have, such as T&amp;L.

 

[Czar]

Thats good not to use Glide but use T&amp;L, if some company made a card that doesnt have multitexturing, would it be unfair to use benchmarks that use multitexturing to bench this card?

T&amp;L is a feture that everyone can use, 3dfx choose not to, so their fall. Glide on the other hand has been rejected by the industry like Rambus has.

His best point is this though.

. My favorite example is that when we get beat by 3 fps (frames/second) we &quot;get our clock cleaned&quot;, but when we lead by 3 fps in another benchmark, we &quot;just barely beat&quot; the competition.

This is so true. when I have been reading reviews on the voodoo5 5500 I´v noticed so many times that many people say that the GeForce2 GTS beats the living crap out of the V5 5500 when it actually does and when the V5 5500 is about the same as the GeForce2 GTS these people somehow dont say much about that benchmark, just rather skip till the next part so they can hoot &quot;go nVidia&quot;

 

[Marty]

That was an extremely good interview. Much better than the &quot;Bubba-style&quot; pr bits we've been hearing for a while. It looks like, at least behind the scenes, things are going well. Can't wait for the Rampage to be released!

Marty

 

[Adul]

But that below quote does ring truth and he does point out something valid. 3dfx needs to fire their PR department, this guy is just so much better to interview.

 

[Dufusyte]

Previously somebody (at 3dfx, I think) had said that future 3dfx cards would be dropping glide support, but Gary says specifically that the future cards will be able to run glide, and if you read between the lines he seems to be saying that OpenGL will be layered on top of glide (but will still have good performance).

I'm happy to hear about the glide support (for some reason...maybe because of all those Unreal Engine games, some of which are still in the pipeline), and as for whether OpenGL, performance is the only thing that matters, so it is fine with me as long as the performance is there.



<< Future products still have the capability to run Glide, as they are not that fundamentally different than past products in terms of past-product features. By that I mean they will have many new features, while paying attention to backward compatibility. Hey - we're still rendering texture-mapped triangles and not voxels!

Whether OpenGL is layered on top of Glide or not, is really an implementation detail for 3dfx to worry about, and not reviewers or consumers. Consumers should care about performance, visual quality and stability. There are pros and cons to layering OpenGL on Glide, but that is for us to be concerned about, not consumers. >>

 

[Adul]

great interview. Lots of depth and substance to it. Highly recomend you read it.

 

[Wingznut]

&quot;Thats good not to use Glide but use T&amp;L&quot; -- Czar

Please explain to me just how it's &quot;good&quot; to compare pieces of hardware, yet only use one to it's fullest?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that reviewers shouldn't use T&amp;L. They should use whatever gets the best results for that piece of hardware. If using SSE, 3DNow!, Glide, T&amp;L, or whatever, gets that particular piece of hardware to perform better, by all means use it.

I just think it's silly to benchmark V5 cards using D3D (when Glide is an option.) I can't see anyone who uses a V5 choosing D3D over Glide, so why cripple it in reviews? When you buy the hardware, you are going to use it to the best of it's ability.

&quot;T&amp;L is a feture that everyone can use, 3dfx choose not to&quot;

Glide is open-sourced. nVidia, or anyone else, can choose to use it too.

 

[Dufusyte]

Speaking of which, why does Anand benchmark the V5 in UT using D3D instead of Glide? It's ok to benchmark it in D3D for those maniacs who think they need 32 bit color or something, but it would be good to include a Glide score also, for gamers who want to know the max performance of the card in their favorite game.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

I heard that 32 bit does not do a big diference in ut since th game was not based on 32 bit color from the beginning(quake 3 was based on 32 bit color)

 

[Geeforcer]

While I thought that the interview was a good read overall, but I didn't like his &quot;3 fps faster/slower&quot; rhetoric. It is indeed possible that in one case 3 fps is &quot;barely faster&quot; while in other case it is &quot;much faster&quot;. Example: if 5500 gets 163 fps in one test and other card gets 160, V5 is barely faster. If in other test, one card gets 10 fps and V5 gets 7 fps, the other card is much faster.

 

[Marty]

Percentagewise, the difference may be larger, but the fact is, either 7 or 10 fps is too slow. Differences of 3 fps are not significant, regardless what the total framerate is.

Marty

 

[ICyourNipple]

i hope Rampage is a great chip, but i wouldn't get my hopes up. with all the funding going into NV20 and it being the xbox chip, etc. i think it will be significantly faster. i wouldn't be surprised if &quot;Fear&quot; surprises us and comes out on top though.

 

[Stephen24]

When I look at 90% of the benchmarks in reviews the voodoo5 is down at the bottom and well below the competition. (refering to his views on reviews.)

 

[Hardware]

The interview is near crap not a single question about the V6000 (release date?) and the rampage (whats in and date?)
Every other stuff was old or not important!
Dave is working for 3dfx so its about 3dfx is asking 3dfx (I call this PR)

 

[BFG10K]

Whether OpenGL is layered on top of Glide or not, is really an implementation detail for 3dfx to worry about, and not reviewers or consumers. Consumers should care about performance, visual quality and stability. There are pros and cons to layering OpenGL on Glide, but that is for us to be concerned about, not consumers.

I disagree with this. As a consumer it's my business how I analyse a video card that I am considering buying. And it's the reviewers job to tell me about it. What are 3dfx trying to hide?

One of those guys should have asked Gary why they didn't use T&amp;L.

Not a bad interview though.

When you buy the hardware, you are going to use it to the best of it's ability.

Not this Glide crap again. Wingnut are you saying running small 16 bit textures is using your Voodoo &quot;to the best of its ability&quot;? It's a totally worthless comparison to stick Glide into the benchmarks.

I want to know how good the card is compared to the competition, not how well it runs some optimised Glide engine (ie Unreal).

Glide is open-sourced. nVidia, or anyone else, can choose to use it too.

What does that have to do with it? That API was designed exclusively for 3dfx boards and their limitations. If S3 open sourced Metal would you ask 3dfx to implement it on the Voodoos? Then would you ask for benchmarks of S3 boards vs 3dfx boards running Metal? I think not.

 

[DaveB3D]

To cure your ignorance Hardware, interviews don't happen overnight. Did you ever consider we sent Gary the questions *BEFORE* I worked for 3dfx? Da ding! Big light shines through.

As for the Glide layering thing, it really isn't a big deal at all. I can't go into details (at least I don't think I can ) but it really is no biggie at all.

As for T&amp;L, let me just leave it at this: Currently, we have T&amp;L engines (on the market.. not meaning from 3dfx) and to be entirely frank, they suck. In current games that support T&amp;L, as well as a *few* upcoming games, it will be a bit faster, but frankly, not much (really too, it depends on your CPU.. most everyone should have a more than fast enough CPU though). The thing is that there T&amp;L here does nothing to offer any real additional life to the product. They fail badly to meet anything near what MS requires for DX8. For 3dfx, it basically comes down to an issue of when we do things, we do them right. Take for example, 16-bit color. We do it, and we do it better than anyone else. We put the effort into it. Same with FSAA. We do it and we do it better than anyone else. We don't do hack jobs that in the scheme of things aren't going to give anyone any real benifit. That is a waste of R&amp;D and a waste of money for consumers. I mean if you look at everything on the market right now, it becomes very clear that nothing is close to needing T&amp;L. Even a few upcoming games that I've seen people mention as being big T&amp;L games don't need it, and you're 99% certain never to see the difference (I know from experiancing it myself). When we do T&amp;L, we will do it right.

Hope that helps

Dave