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3dfx Voodoo5 vs NVIDIA GeForce Preview
JellyBeans writes: "There's a hands-on preview of 3dfx' Napalm chip (the Voodoo5 5500), where it's compared to a GeForce 256 from NVIDIA. It seems that two chips are NOT better than one in this case (SLI of the Voodoo5 doesn't beat the GeForce)." Okay, these cards can be used for more than games, but who do I think I'm kidding?
why even bother with a graphics "co-processor" when it's kicking the ^@%$^ out of my so-called CPU? I mean, my wintel box is already just a dedicated QuakeX-playing machine...
Can your IM do this?
I prefer Thresh's [site] over Sharky's [site] since Sharky's started to split their reviews into 20 pages or so...
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I have the luxury of playing with computer systems while I work on them for my job, so over the years I've looked at some nice 3Dfx, Nvidia, Matrox, and ATI cards.
It's weird, and I know I'm biased because I have a Voodoo2 paired with a Matrox Millenium G200 in my current computer, but I really like the "look" I get from a good game programmed in Glide. I hate proprietary APIs in theory, but I have to admit that Tribes, for instance, is just damn fun on a Voodoo card. More fun than Unreal Tourney or the Daikatana demo on the Matrox, at least...
I think that sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the specs of different cards, frame rates, hardware T&L, full screen anti-aliasing, blah blah blah fricking blah, when the entire point is to sit down and play a game, and maybe (in the case of multiplayer) meet some people who play games to have fun and blow some stuff up.
I don't care whether the Voodoo5 is the fastest card around, I guess. I just hope it's a good, solid gaming card, as good as 3dfx can make. They pioneered the conusmer market for 3d accelerators, and I will always respect that.
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Yup, it's nice that Microsoft has released such a good gaming platform.
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"3dfx Voodoo5 5500 AGP beta board running 4.12.01.0532 drivers"
Most previews have stated that the 3dfx board they are reviewing is an alpha or beta board with alpha or beta drivers, yet most people don't seem to pay attention to that fact and begin drawing conclusions now. "3dfx is in trouble." "The Voodoo 5 sucks, look how slow it is!"
Why doesn't everybody just calm down and wait until the retail cards arrive, and THEN start comparing to the GeForce and/or any other card that's available on the market?
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Anandtech also has a Voodoo 4/5 preview up today. What's interesting is that, yes, at low resolutions, nVidia's GeForce beats it; however, at high resolution (1024x768 and higher) the Voodoo5 catches up and passes the GeForce for a good margin.
High resolution benchmarks often give a good indication of the raw power of the hardware itself. Anand believes the poor perform at low resolution is due to poor drivers, and I'm inclined to agree. As nVidia has shown with the Detonator drivers, it's quite possible that updated versions (like the final ones when it actually comes out) will give the V5 a boost. The important part is all the low resolutions, while slower, are certainly _PLENTY_ of FPS to play with, and, what's more, the V5 makes some of the higher resolutions playable as well.
And the last factor that matters more for Slashdotters... Like 'em or hate 'em, 3dfx has provided traditionally provided very good Linux driver support, unlike some companies (rhymes with binaryonlynoDRIvidia)...
Not exactly overclock savvy are we, here's the deal.
ISA runs at 8Mhz, PCI (Portable C++ Interpreter) at 33Mhz, AGP at 66Mhz. What does this mean? It means that you need to run your ISA bus at ~33Mhz to get it to run correctly with a PCI device. So what I'm gonna tell you is simple. You've only got ISA slots, right? So you've probably got a 386. What you'll need to do is take a soldering iron and replace the clock signal generating crystal and replace it with one that's faster. How do you do that? Simple, go buy an intel 44BX based motherboard. These motherboards run at either 66Mhz or 100Mhz. Find the northbridge chip (should be under a green heatsink) and remove it. Now find a chip of roughly the same size on the 386 motherboard and replace it with the northbrige chip. This should speed your system from 20 Mhz to 100 Mhz. Now your ISA bus is running at 40Mhz!!!! Nearly agp speed. Now to go the rest of the way. Flash your computer with the lateset bios. This will let you get the FSB (fourier series broadside) up to 133Mhz!!!! NOW YOUR ISA SLOTS ARE RUNNING AT a stomping 54Mhz. Well withing the AGP spec! Now insert your agp card into the ISA slot. Doesn't fit does it? Of course not. Remember the BX board? It has an agp slot. Remove it and solder it onto the 386 board in place of one of the ISA slots (which you just removed with a pair of pliers and a claw hammer) Now fire up your computer. Doesn't work does it. Of course not, AGP cards draw too much power for your power supply. You'll need to take your power cord and stip the end to expose the 3 wires. Now throw away your cheap P.S. and drop 120 volts of AC current dirrectly onto the motherboards power connectors. I guarantee you'll be shocked with the performance of your computer.
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But the human eye can tell the difference between 30 and 60 fps. Look closely at movie with lots of action and you will notice the individual frames. That is at 24 fps but US television at 30 fps would appear just as choppy if the resolution were higher. At high resolutions, it becomes more important to have more fps to make the action appear continuous and smooth. That is one reason why video cards are getting the gamer's money. The other reason is that when aiming at a fast moving target that is "far away" (smaller image on the screen) you don't want a choppy image or low resolution to cause you to miss out on a frag.
Of course, the human eye will "see" a continuous light when it is really a strobe light at just over 50 Hz (depending on the individual). Movies get around this limitation by "double-pumping" the projected image by flashing each frame twice giving a 48 Hz strobe effect that most adults don't even notice (children's eyes are more sensitive).
So, I predict that the video card market will stop its mad technological advances about the time it can push a steady 75 Hz or so at 1600x1200. Of course, if the average monitor gets bigger than 19 inches, I reserve the right to change that projection. :)
here (4/21/00)
Lesson? Stop arguing over which one is better, one size does not fit all, each person will different results from the next person, go do something better with your life.
Like post on slashdot...
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This might be slightly off topic but I believe that it has relevence to the issues between the cards (and ultimately the companies). In late 1997 I purchased a Riva 128 because I didn't want to buy a video card, then a Voodoo 2 when it finally came out, and the Riva 128 was supposed to be better than a Voodoo Graphics card. Although 3dfx dominated with the Voodoo series, many early Nvidia fans like myself saw promise in this little company. With the release of the TNT, TNT 2, and GeForce, they have seemed to surpass their longtime rival 3dfx.
However, Nvidia has done some things recently that pissed me off. Also in 1997 I found this cool little program (rather distro) called Debian 1.3. Almost two and a half years later I'm running Red Hat 6.2 while patiently awaiting Potato to be released as stable, sometime in the next millenium. For as long as I can remember, Nvidia and 3dfx both were commited to supporting, or eventually supporting Linux. Long before DRI showed up 3dfx released open source Linux drivers. Nvidia, however, has only released two hacked up drivers that run Quake 3 worse on my TNT 2 Ultra then a Voodoo Graphics would run it. Also, since then XFree86 4.0 has been released, 2.4 is in now 2.3.99-pre stage with DRI support, and 3dfx has continued to release drivers that take advantage of this support. However, not even a word (or updated drivers for XFree 3.3.6 or 4.0) has came from Nvidia about their driver situation. I'm also under the impression that when XFree 4.0 gets "more stable", or is included in distributions, and the 2.4 kernel is released, they will release their own closed source driver that will use a rendering interface similar to DRI, but not DRI. I remember having a discussion about Nvidia drivers back in December, but it has been four months and I think my Loki Quake 3 tin has recieved more use from me than the game itself. Does anyone know what's going on with the drivers?
-- BLarg!