is 3dfx video's amd? and the big bad overpriced nvidia intel of video card?

[mikelou26]

ic

 

[BenSkywalker]

Robo-

Missed that you had replied to this thread...

"Ben defends it just because I attack it, naturally.

for perspective, I didn't think the GTS was fast enough for 32-bit once you turn TC off. So the TNT2U sure as hell isn't/wasn't/will never be."

Like I said, the TNTU was plenty fast enough to play Quake3 in 32bit color(GF2 too slow in 32bit everyone, remember his standards). You may need to drop down to 6400x480, but it was and is plenty fast enough. Minimum FPS? Is there something broken with Intel's mobos and AGP texturing? I keep seeing these comments but can't reproduce them no matter what I try. How do you get these wildly fluctuating FPS?

BTW- I'm CPU limited running 640x480 UHQ 32bit, dropping everything down to ultra low quality settings(everything set to max for you V3 users) doesn't get me jack.

Oh yeah, no reason to disable TC anymore on 32MB nV boards, looking very nice with the DXT5 mod

 

[mikelou26]

what is TC?

and um...
u know i really cant see the difference between 32 bit and 16 bit color
u know that?

 

[RoboTECH]

Ben, I"m not going down to 640x480 for ANYTHING, be it 32-bit color nor FSAA
however, I saw that the DXT# fix was out, saw a few screenies, and I am impressed!

 

[mikelou26]

what is dxt?

 

[pen^2]

<< what is TC?

and um...
u know i really cant see the difference between 32 bit and 16 bit color
u know that? >>



maybe you sure cant... what games do you play? glquake? why not try quake3 for a change? i am not exactly sure what your intents for keep on posting on this thread when most questions you asked are answered. do you absolutely see a need to defend the sinking 3dfx? just leave them alone. these BBS are already full of those meaningless flame threads. i do like the video card discussion with valid points, not the ones with false claims or subjective opinions like these.

 

[mikelou26]

yo brother man
if u stop posting and everything will be fine ra?
so stop posting then
geese

 

[pen^2]

sorry if i am mistaken, but somehow i get this notion all you trying to do is find some clue to provoke 'nvidiots'. as far as i know we dont have a dedicated forum for flaming. too bad huh?

 

[Theslowone]

Just looking at this, you have responded what looks to be half of the responses. I almost regret writing this becuase i know it will just make you (mike) respond more. But you complain about nvidia, and radeon, and anything else, but you have or say you have a geforce 2 ultra. This card retails for aprox. $500. If you dislike nvidia so much then just sale your card on anandtech or some other place, and buy your much charished 3dfx card. As for your simple two to three word questions, they are better left unasked.

 

[DarkMajiq]

Personnally, I think that the reason that the people who dislike 3dfx dislike it is becuase 3dfx doesn't give consumers what they want, instead trying to tell us what's best for us. I stil own a Voodoo2 (never use it anymore though), and it was pretty good when it came out, but when I decided that I was going to upgrade again, I had the choice between a V3, which had worse performance and drivers and didn't support 32-bit colour, or the TNT2. I went with a Diamond Viper V770 Ultra, and I'm glad I did. I spent a little more, but it's a great card, and still can play almost any game these days at a respectable frame rate, without all of the fancy features turned on and at lower resolutions, of course, but still... And I'll attest that Q3 is playable in 32-bit colour on a TNT2U. Yes, at 640x480, but it can be done. It's marginal at 800x600, sometimes it runs fine, other times it's slow. As for overpricing, I think that it's the 3dfx cards that are overpriced. Up here in Canada, I can get a GF2 32MB DDR card for almost $120 less than a V5 5500, a Radeon 32MB DDR for $100 less, and some less expensive GF2 64MB DDR cards for around the same price, and a Radeon 64MB DDR for around $80 more. Maybe it's just because it's Canada.

 

[BFG10K]

Mikelou26, whenever you feel like posting how about waiting until you have two other things to say? Then combine those three little posts into one bigger post and post that.

BFG, just out of curiosity, why do you find it necessary to defend a TNT2U? you never owned one, and you're not going to be buying one anytime soon, so explain?

I defend it because my friend has a normal TNT2. After owning a V3 and then going over to his place and watching his video card run Quake 3 in 32 bit colour at 640 x 480, there was no doubt in my mind which was the better video card of the two.

Now he only has a Celeron 300 so he is very CPU limited, but Quake 3 didn't run too badly (not good enough for online play of course). But if he upgraded to a Celeron 600 or something he would easily get very smooth framerates.

Sorry guys. You're wrong. 32-bit was NOT playable in Quake3 with a TNT2U, unless you don't mind getting your ass handed to you.

You don't consider 70 fps at 640 x 480 playable? I mean most serious fps players play at 640 x 480 anyway. I'm not talking about 800 x 600 or higher.

And what CPU did you have? If you had a crap CPU you can't blame the video card for poor performance. Those linked benchmarks have Celeron 400 - 500 CPUs and they seem to be doing allright at 640 x 480.

C'mon people, wise up. If my framerate is equally divided between 120 fps and 10 fps, guess what, I'll still get a respectable 65 fps. But guess what? 10 fps SUCKS!!!!!! and it is NOT PLAYABLE.

I'm a little concerned by the constant posting of this. Granted the Radeon has smoother framerates, but this doesn't mean that the rest of the video cards experience such wild fluctuations as claimed. Even my Voodoo 3 running at 55 fps doesn't do that. Sure it gets jerky but it certainly never hits 10 fps.

You may need to drop down to 6400x480, but it was and is plenty fast enough.

Exactly BenSkywalker. I don't know any hardcore fps players who don't run at 640 x 480 anyway.

 

[RoboTECH]

BFG:

<< I defend it because my friend has a normal TNT2. After owning a V3 and then going over to his place and watching his video card run Quake 3 in 32 bit colour at 640 x 480, there was no doubt in my mind which was the better video card of the two. >>

okay. to each his/her own. I ran the TNT2U @ 960x720x16, r_picmip 2, unless I was doing 1v1's, in which case I dropped to 8x6 (tourney4 jacked up my framerates bigtime). The TNT2U was definitely a better Q3 card than the V3. Just out of curisoity, do you have a V3-2000? What is it clocked @?

<< You don't consider 70 fps at 640 x 480 playable? I mean most serious fps players play at 640 x 480 anyway. I'm not talking about 800 x 600 or higher. >>

WHY THE HELL WOULD ANYONE USE 32-BIT COLOR ONLY TO DROP TO THE UGLY-A$$ RESOLUTION OF 640?????

This is mindblowing to me. The difference between 16 and 32-bit is noticeable, but 640x480 IS FUGGIN' UGLY AS HELL!!!!!

You guys are just trying to screw with me, right? I cannot, for the LIFE of me, understand how you can rationalize playing at such a smallass resolution so you can enable 32-bit color.

You MUST be yankin' my chain.

<< And what CPU did you have? If you had a crap CPU you can't blame the video card for poor performance. Those linked benchmarks have Celeron 400 - 500 CPUs and they seem to be doing allright at 640 x 480. >>

Dual Celeron 366 @ 583 on a BP6 w/256MB PC100

<< I'm a little concerned by the constant posting of this. Granted the Radeon has smoother framerates, but this doesn't mean that the rest of the video cards experience such wild fluctuations as claimed. >>

My point is that average framerates are nice, but when you play in 32-bit color, your lows are MUCH MUCH lower the more overdraw becomes a factor. So although you may &quot;average&quot; ~60 or 70 fps (which is too slow in Q3 by a long shot), your lows are going to dip down very low when there are a few opponents on the screen.

<< . I don't know any hardcore fps players who don't run at 640 x 480 anyway >>

how many play @ 32-bit color? None? Thought so. That's not what I'm talking about. These are the guys that use vertex lighting and r_picmip 5 (blech!!!!)

BTW, Makiavelli uses a V3-3000, according to a autoexec.cfg he posted up to.....rats, one of those gaming boards. and yeah, 640, vertex, r_picmip 5, etc.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Robo-

&quot;WHY THE HELL WOULD ANYONE USE 32-BIT COLOR ONLY TO DROP TO THE UGLY-A$$ RESOLUTION OF 640?????&quot;

Just picked up the ToyStory2 double pack on DVD for my kids. I'll be d@mned if it doesn't make every game I've ever played look like sh!t, even though it only runs at 640x480.

&quot;You guys are just trying to screw with me, right? I cannot, for the LIFE of me, understand how you can rationalize playing at such a smallass resolution so you can enable 32-bit color.&quot;

What bothers you more, jaggies or dithering? Clearly both, res and color, are better, but I will drop my res to leave every single feature on, or formerly disable TC, to avoid color flaws. Does it truly matter in Quake3? Absolutely, without the eye candy Quake2 and for that matter Quake1 are better games.

&quot;My point is that average framerates are nice, but when you play in 32-bit color, your lows are MUCH MUCH lower the more overdraw becomes a factor. So although you may &quot;average&quot; ~60 or 70 fps (which is too slow in Q3 by a long shot), your lows are going to dip down very low when there are a few opponents on the screen.&quot;

640x480 32bit or 1024x768 16bit, both have nearly the same overdraw penalties and take the same FPS hit.

BTW- Do you have Q3 patched yet? If you need an exe file, I got the highest quality ones(seriously, I used DXT5 instead of 3 like everyone else) I can email them to you(need a different one depending on the build you are running, I have 1.11, 1.16n, 1.17, 1.25 and 1.25y done, anyone shows me some other patches and I'll get them running also).

mikelou26-

&quot;what is TC?&quot;

Texture Compression.

&quot;what is dxt?&quot;

DirectX Texture Compression. There are five different types DXT1, DXT2, DXT3, DXT4 and DXT5. Quake3 uses S3TC, which in terms of hardware is identical to DXTC, but it used DXT1 which is by far the lowest quality and doesn't support transparancies. The DXT# Quake3 fix/hack/patch alters the setting to one of the other methods, 2-5. IMHO 5 is the best(it IS the highest quality, but slightly slower then the others), but most people are using 3.

 

[TAsunder]

And where do we get the texture compression updates?

I used to run q3 at 800x600 on a v3 and a 56k modem, and except for the first time I played, I don't think I ever had &quot;my ass handed to me&quot;. I was always at least in the fight (although those q3 gurus knew the levels much better than I did). A good player can acclimate themself to unfavorable conditions. If you always lag when in a room with a lot of people, go in with a rocket launcher blazing and then back out immediately.

Maybe your standards are different. I play Q3 to have fun, and I have fun even when I get 15 fps for a few seconds. Sure, it's frustrating now and again but if you were THAT obsessed with winning then why did you run it on a celeron?

 

[BenSkywalker]

&quot;And where do we get the texture compression updates?&quot;

Email me and include the version number you are running and I can send them out to you. I'm not sure where others are dling their files from, it isn't to difficult to do yourself if you have a Hex editor.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Forget my above post, click on the link in my sig, the Q3 TC article has the patches I whipped up for download

 

[pen^2]

This is what we call trolling here at anandtech, mikelou26

 

[Dark4ng3l]

He also claims to have a GeForce ultra and in another thread he says he o/c'd his geforce 2 to 180/390(or something like that dont quite remember) the thing is what video card do you have?????

 

[mikelou26]

everyone just shut up
end this
and um
any of you keep saying it is my fault
just shut up then and stop replying u morons

 

[BFG10K]

Just out of curisoity, do you have a V3-2000? What is it clocked @?

I have a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI (which will be replaced by a GF2 MX sometime this week, yippeeee!) at stock settings. I never overclock any of my components.

WHY THE HELL WOULD ANYONE USE 32-BIT COLOR ONLY TO DROP TO THE UGLY-A$$ RESOLUTION OF 640?????

That's interesting you should take this point of view. When I play 3D games I like to turn up the eye candy and drop back the resolution (but no lower than 640 x 480 though). I would much rather run 640 x 480 full detail and 32 bit colour than 1024 x 768 ugly detail and 16 bit colour.

When I play Quake 3 for example, I don't really notice the jaggies while I play because my constant movement is actually blurring it. But I do notice the ugly banding in the sky/smoke/gibs/blood that comes from 16 bit colours. I also notice the blurry and smeared textures that comes from being limited to small textures.

how many play @ 32-bit color? None? Thought so.

Well that's true I guess. But you know that I prefer eye candy to high resolutions. It also seems that BenSkywalker agrees with me which is a good sign.

everyone just shut up

mikelou26 you are officially the worst kind of troller: a troller who posts spam to get his/her post count up.

 

[mikelou26]

yo look i dont even CARE ABOUT GETTING my &quot;post&quot; up or something aiights
i am just asking questions learning about comp and stuff
so just stop saying i am this type of person or that AIIGHTS?
i am serious
i just dont get it
you dont even know me
if u want this to stop
then dont answer
cuz i am just mad now aiights
seriously
just STOP IT!
stop replying
for goodness sake
wellS
i bet someone else gonna give his comments again
gEESE

 

[Weyoun]

mikelou26, what i think everyone was referring to was that you post way too many individual and empty posts. When you feel like posting a new message, just edit your latest message and we'll all get it without the 'boosting your posts' arguments...

Brother, I think you jumped the gun a little, mikelou26 sounds like an OK guy and is probably new to forums, so just cut him a little slack yeah?

As for your 256KB full speed post, have you heard of the term 'on-die' cache before? What this cache does is actually reside in the chip itself, and runs at the speed of the core, in the NV20's case, 300MHz. This also gives the core some very handy RAM to play with, as the latency for the RAM is very low. IMHO anyway If anyone has a different story, please air it, as I'm probably wrong with this cache thing, I'd like to learn more about it too

About your 32bit colour remark, it only adds another 8 bits to each colour, but adds an alpha channel to the colour, which is used for things like transperancies: water, smoke, etc. Another I think, but I think it also forces the Z-buffer to 24-bits rather than 16. This really improves the detail of far away objects and the like, as you probably have noticed objects in the distance shimmering under 16-bit colour. Again, please tell me if I'm wrong, I don't wanna be up here lookin like an @ss

 

[RoboTECH]

Okay, BFG and Ben officially proclaim that they would rather play 640x480x32 than up the resolution.

Fine. Fair enough. To each his/her own.

No more bitching about a lack of anisotropic or trilinear filtering, because you're going to have an ugly-ass pixellated mess anyway, @ 640x480. Anisotropic and trilinear filtering are almost a complete waste if you are running at such a silly-ass low resolution. Of course, to each his/her own, but no more hypocritical BS, okay?

Oh, just out of curisoity BFG, not a criticism, but why don't you overclock? You're missing out on a whole world of performance! Hell, I had a V3-2000 AGP @ 180ish (can't remember) and I could get some pretty respectable framerates, and 1024 was *almost* as playable as on the TNT2U, but obviously, not quite.

As far as mikelou is concerned, I'm quite confident that he is younger than even Doomguy. So in other words, he still counts his pubic hair each morning when he goes to the potty. <g>

 

[BenSkywalker]

Robo-

&quot;No more bitching about a lack of anisotropic or trilinear filtering, because you're going to have an ugly-ass pixellated mess anyway, @ 640x480. Anisotropic and trilinear filtering are almost a complete waste if you are running at such a silly-ass low resolution. Of course, to each his/her own, but no more hypocritical BS, okay?&quot;

As soon as you can list one game that can come close to Toy Story, Toy Story2, A Bug's Life, or Dinosaur on DVD in visual quality.

That is the level of image quality available at 640x480, higher res is a hack for extremely low polygons and lack of advanced rendering techniques. I would take &quot;Dinosaur&quot; caliber graphics at 640x480 any day over Quake3 at 3200x2400 with 16x FSAA.

 

[Ahriman6]

You know, if you have to justify 32-bit support on a TnT2 by citing 640x480 frame rates, that's just pathetically sad. But of course that resolution with 4-tap FSAA and identical settings is just to be avoided like the Black Plague these days.

Face it, Ben, you're overwhelmingly biased for Nvidia and are using ridiculous arguments to justify your preferred company.