Video card advances are stagnant without 3dfx

[spanky]

i bought a v5 becuz i was very impressed with my v3 (the way it handles smoke in CS). v5 is an awesome card for CS

 

[Tominator]

The only time I have ever seen anyone recommend a V5 was for people who didn't have an AGP slot. You could get a V5 PCI and slap that baby in there....

All I can say is that if you never had one, or will, you'll never know.

 

[spanky]

Originally posted by: Tominator

The only time I have ever seen anyone recommend a V5 was for people who didn't have an AGP slot. You could get a V5 PCI and slap that baby in there....

All I can say is that if you never had one, or will, you'll never know.

agreed

 

[HowDoesItWork]

I still have one in one of my kid's boxes. I owned 2 at one point in time (picked up the second after 3DFX went under for around $100). The card was decent, but really not head and shoulders above the competition even with superior image quality figured in (really non-competitive actually at the price point 3dfx set before going under). But it didn't knock my socks off then, and it certainly isn't anything special today.
Anyway, my only point is that piles of unsold inventory is not a sign of high demand or success. If they were then DeLorean would have been the most successful auto manufacturer ever.

 

[merlocka]

All I can say is that if you never had one, or will, you'll never know.

I've owned an AGP 5500 and a PCI Mac version which I flashed to PC.

Basically they are a pair of TnT2's with nice FSAA, working S3TC, but without trilinear. Now that they are gone, some people act like it was the holy grail of videocards. The 5500 was mediocre at best.

The PCB is neat looking with the dual chips and all, I wonder if that's the real reason some people like them.

 

[onelin]

I'm not so sure it's the cards that lack the power right now either...
now that I have a higher end system I want to replay through games like Max Payne with all the options I can. not enough polys in PC games vs consoles? have you seen Soldier of Fortune II yet? THat's getting pretty high... I think the box alone says 3,000+ polys per enemy, full skeletal animation...the works. and it's playable in max detail @ 1024x768 >60fps before my system is tweaked out. 3dmark nature demo? I'm impressed with the latest gen consoles (picked up a GC for Super Smash Bros alone, Resident Evil soon), but I'm not so sure I believe PCs are really behind. All these new hardware features help an incredible amount, even though the Q3 engine is old people can still do amazing things with it a la SoFII and JKII...both of which are amazing IMO. I'd still like to see more, I want games that immerse me...but then again, when companies like Bethesda (sp?) release a game like Morrowind it's almost too much freedom I don't know what to do.

Now am I upset at driver issues? hell yes. nv4_disp.dll infinite loop? WTF? this is still around? it's things like this that upset me more than not enough games w/ my budget. I'm looking forward to more hardware-based solutions (with the software to utilize it) in the next year or so...Truform sounds great if they fix how it works with shotguns and stuff...Nvidia needs a similar solution. Parhelia sounds powerful but also expensive

 

[BFG10K]

Video cards already perform far beyond what most games and monitors can handle anyway, whats the point?

Utter rubbish. Try playing RTCW or JK2 at 1600 x 1200 x 32 with 8x anisotropic filtering and watch even a Ti4600 crawl in some places. Also the likes of Doom3 and Unreal2 will kill a Ti4600 at high resolutions.

I think games look very nice

After you look at a GF3/GF4 you'll be amazed at how much better it looks in 3D games, especially with trilinear and anisotropic filtering.

losing the jagged edges would be nice in games

The best cure for aliasing is higher resolutions, attainable by faster GPUs.

...better curves and less box appearances would be nice..

Cured by higher polygon counts, again attainable with faster GPUs.

All this talk about features really ignores the point that speed is the main goal of GPUs because speed directly translates into higher levels of eye candy. And the beauty is that any game benefits from extra speed because in most cases you can crank up the resolution and eye candy levels independent of the game's settings.

There isn't a game or program that really taxes any newer video card.

That is completely false. Try playing some new games (ie not Quake3 but something made in the last year) and watch the likes of 1600 x 1200 with maximum anisotropic crawl on even a Ti4600 in some places. There is no such thing as "fast enough" and even today's games would immediately benefit from the likes of an NV30 or R300. If you've got one I'll take it immediately as an upgrade over my Ti4600 just for today's games, totally ignoring future games if you'd like me to.

 

[JeremiahTheGreat]

...better curves and less box appearances would be nice..

it would be good if more games actually started using TruForm.. properly too. Not like the bloated things cominhg out of CS..