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GeForce 3 Demoed - Running DOOM 3
green pizza writes "Yesterday at Macworld Tokyo, Steve Jobs and John Carmack demoed the new nVidia GeForce 3 (73 GIGAFLOPS of power)... on a G4... running DOOM 3. Please excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor. You can get more details
from MacNN." [michael adds: VoodooExtreme has screenshots of Doom 3 running on the new GeForce card; Shugashack has more. Looks like Doom 3 will be another game where the color palette is "shades of black". Sigh.]
as it has crates. yeah lots of crates.
ooh, and barrels.
Mac OS X, no less. With GeForce 3 and drivers already sorta working, it looks like we won't have to worry much about OpenGL acceleration under Apple's new OS.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-201-4881105-0.htm l?tag=cd_mh
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I guess it's soon time to get a new video card. I'm hoping Deus Ex 2 is gonna use that engine... that'd lend itself to sweet cinematics...
Yes, DOOM3 is dark, but probably not as dark as what you are seeing in the screenshots-- look at those shots on a Mac or SGI instead of a PC and you'll be surprised how bright they are.
magic
a realplayer version of the video is available at CNet, so the rest of us can watch it...
Walter H. Trent "Muad'Dib"
Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe, IMHO
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Shutup, ATI Sucks, Matrox blows, 3dfx is dead and until Mircosoft comes out with a video card that renders the BSOD in realtime with fancy lighting effects , im not buying from the competition!
Just a few things here. The article was pulled. NVIDIA is becoming more and more childish with it's business practices. Is this a result of being so closely tied to Microsoft? Also, a few things I've read indicate that their latest consumer chipset is DX8 optimized - and doesn't produce equal performance results with OpenGL. Obviously, they're running on MacOS X - which means OpenGL... but are they currently working to appease the company currently lining their pockets? I've got a bad feeling about this. I really hope NVIDIA doesn't become a big evil corporate entity made arrogant and stupid by its massive success.
God forbid people using technology to have fun.
Well I guess this will be a nice workout of the new FreeBSD server. For the curious the screens.x script is PHP that works off a bunch of f_checks based on file and directory names to generate those screenshot pages. No database hits involved in serving up those DOOM images.
Oh yeah, and DOOM looks amazing. Too bad NVidia cant make up their mind about releasing more info on the GeForce3. They have changed their mind 3 times in the past 24hours.
-Steve Gibson
-Steve Gibson
Shacknews.com
Well, it certainly speeds up the renderer if you just assign half the screen pixels to black ;-)
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"I find your lack of faith disturbing." -- Darth Vader
Quake 3
Doom 3
Wolfenstein 3 (return to castle wolfenstein)
Geforce 3
I'd say Pentium 3 but 4's already out.
Does Duron count as the 3rd Athlon? (vanilla, thunderbird, Duron?)
Who else has a 3 coming out soon?
Is this the year of 3?
There's nothing wrong with a product that dominates the market because it's just better than everything else. There are no artificial barriers to entry in this market; a competitor just needs to build a better card.
For a nice example of something similar, take a look at Photoshop. It totally owns its market, but only because nobody else can make anything as good.
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This space unintentionally left unblank.
I mean, is this supposed to be meaningful in any way?: http://216.105.168.97/cgi-bin/image-o-matic.cgi?d
So close, but yet so far!...hehe...But this video clip is kinda cool.
2) Anyone know any concrete scheduling info. on Doom3?
3) So, how much do people think that Apple paid nVidia for the whole "out on Apple first" deal?
In other words, shield the competitors from the feedback of the marketplace, letting them produce inferior products without suffering the consequences for so doing. Even if enough people were willing to do this, it wouldn't produce a 'more equal' market. It would simply keep second-rate products coming. Only by allowing the market to signal an organization that it's putting out stuff that people won't buy will the situation improve.
is the fault of the artists, of course, not the engine. I mean, look at Alice -- nice bright colors, very pretty and vivid.
The contrast is not the issue, as others have argued. No matter how I turn up the contrast on my monitor or video card, I suspect I will only see dark blue, brown, and black.
IMHO, it's probably because American McGee left. I seem to remember Doom being a lot more colorful without losing any moodiness, and it wasn't because the levels were lit like bad 80s disco clubs either...
I agree with the first part of your argument... but the second part is rather circular in it's logic.
What software was designed for hardware accellerated 3d before there was hardware accellerated 3d cards?
I could very easily see games taking full advantage of full 3d sound once it was available. Although I was under the impression that it already was...
Yes, DOOM3 is dark, but probably not as dark as what you are seeing in the screenshots-- look at those shots on a Mac or SGI instead of a PC and you'll be surprised how bright they are.
Cranking the Gamma on this monitor improved the movie no-end, so I expect the game will be the same. Think of the Quake3TeamArena demo level - with the gamma slider at the lowest setting you could barely see anything.
I'm amazed at the number of people who seem to think that DOOM3 should be some multicoloured bright-light party. Thats what Nintendo games are for. Doom's legacy demands dark rooms, illuminated by flickering flourescent lights, monsters which appear out of the shadows or drop on the player from the ceiling.
And seriously, looking at the video footage of Doom 3, this is going to be a game to give you nightmares. The characters are going to be closer to realistic images than ever before - those Maya-produced animations are pushing several thousand polys when up close (I assume that the meshes will have Level-Of-Detail) - playing this is going to be like starring in a good (or maybe even a bad :-) ) horror movie. I fully expect to see some Army Of Darkness mods based on this engine :-)
Don't expect Doom3 to be a game for kids. This one will earn a 'Mature' rating almost straight off the bat.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Doom3 just looks amazing. Even these early tech demo scenes make it clear that they have reached the photorealistic level. Say whatever you want about NVidia, but Carmack made that card fly...
-magic
You know, there's another term for that; color calibration, monitor calibration, gamma correction. All Apple machines automatically do that, it's built into the software. The monitors are also shipped calibrated. The video cards all support it as well. On the PC world it wasn't really a feature until a few years ago, and a lot of people have no idea that it exists. There are reasons why Apple still sells big in the publishing industry, because they want this feature; what they see in a brochure is identical to what they scan is identical to what they print is identical to what they email to their partners in the UK is identical to what is printed at the bookshop in Singapore is identical to what they see in their heads.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Living in a world where the ARM controls all technology, censors history and operates in secert is not my idea of utopia.
Without the misfits who studied banned history texts and read about war the Earth would have fallen to the Kiniz (sp?). Most likely they played video games also.
Microsoft is the only supplier of Windows, and Creative is the only supplier of Sound Blaster-compatible sound cards. nVidia, on the other hand, is by no means the only supplier of OpenGL and Direct3D accelerators.
Really, what does nVidia have that no one else is theoretically capable of matching?
I don't see any kind of proprietary API that only runs on nVidia hardware. I only see them supporting OpenGL and Direct3D - two APIs that anyone else can use just as well. The only way they've brought themselves into such a powerful position is simply good products and good business. Ever since the TNT they've been aggressively pushing new features like 32-bit colour and hardware geometry acceleration. It's not they're preventing other companies from adding new features, so tell me, what egregious tactics have they used to shut out competitors?
Like Citizen Kane. What is that? CRAP!
Or The Maltese Falcon. That's crap too.
Or the original Gameboy. Shades of black on the screen. Ergo crap.
Or even that asshole M. C. Escher. Lots of shades of black there. And it was craptacular.
sigh
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
I contend that things like this actually make things easier for scientific research.
Instead of building 10 amazing computer componets for $1M each they can build 100 000 amazing computer componets for $100 each. It makes it cheaper for those who want to do scientific stuff.
People buy faster computers for games and less so for office applications.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
It's from an old (sega genesis?) game. Badly translated. It is called Zero Wing.
f
For some reason people thought it was funny enough to spam everywhere.
Someone went so far as to make a small flash movie of it... http://www.detonate.net/newsitems/01021601/ayb.sw
It's quite amusing actually.
Still, that card's feature-set is certainly a force to be reckoned with. I'll stick with the X-Box for now.
Since it doesn't appear that there will be a separate story talking about the other new announcements at MacWorld Expo, here are some of the highlights most interesting to Slashdot readers:
- The Power Macs were subtly altered. The former build-to-order dual 533 MHz model is now a standard configuration from the Apple Store (which means retailers will start carrying it as well), and there's an option to purchase a 733 MHz model with a CD burner in place of the DVD-R/CD-RW combo unit (saving $400 in the process).
- Those wild new iMacs have at least upped the specs slightly for the graphics chipset; still Rage 128-based, but at least there's more memory (16 MB) on board. Plus, the 500 and 600 MHz models are the new G3 chip with the full-speed onboard 256K cache.
- The Cube now offers the GeForce2 MX card as a build-to-order option (standard w/ CD burner on the high-end model). Guess ATi's still on Apple's shit list to some extent.
- Fellow Mac users should try running Software Update and see if they get CarbonLib 1.2.5.
- The $49.95 5-pack of DVD-R disks is finally available from the Apple Store, but the estimated ship time is 45 days.
Now, if I could only get a Flower Power G4 Cube..... mmmmmmm....
The Mac forums are blazing with commentary on the new iMac colors. Personally, I kind of like them, and hope they do a good job of stimulating interest in a highly overlooked demographic; women computer users. Anything that brings computing power to a wider audience can't be a bad thing. Besides, the effect is supposed to be slightly 3Dish, with the pattern all the way through the case instead of merely stuck onto the surface. I can't wait to see one in person.
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I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
"It'll be out in 2 weeks!" Of course, it's always 2 weeks from the present point in time... No wonder nothing ever gets release! :)
-Ted
Creative soundcards are only adequate. There is no competition, and as a result there have been no really great developments. I would like to see soundcards with support for proper 3dimensional sound - this would do for sound what 3d graphics cards have done for graphics, add a whole extra dimension.
Sounds like you want a Creative SB Live! card, which has support for Dolby Digital.
Creative make good card with GPL'd drivers, and as such I have no problem in buying their products. nVidia make products that might be good, but with binary-only drivers I don't intend to find out. My 16mb Matrox G400 does me fine, good 3D performance (Quake3 runs very well)and proper open-source drivers. I don't intend to buy an nVidia card unless they change their driver release policy.
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Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
Or at least that's what The Register says. :-)
This isn't just a demo of Doom, it's to show off the GeForce3. What better way to make all the dynamic light look the most impressive than to have the levels full of dark areas, shadows, etc...
Humanity will always have conflict. People will always have agression.
Any book that talks about giving people drugs to treat their "Aggressive emotions or tendancies" had better do so in the style of a satirical vonnegut novel. I like my feelings just the way they are, thank you.
Fwiw, I'd much rather juice someone into a puff of red mist in a video game and laugh about how nasty it looked than do it in real life and spend the rest of my days grabbing the bars while i get porked from the rear.
While we're at it, as long as people are at home playing video games, they're not out raping someone i care about. Thats fine by me.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Although its offtopic... its Kzinti, the "ratcats".
And, don't forget: In "Madness Has Its Place", the ones re-arming humanity (with lasers used to launch slowboats, powered by the Sun) were crazies who went off their meds, not "misfits".
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
y'know, i wasn't so sure about this "doom 3" thing. i was an avid player of the original doom series (imo, the best way to play it was in a dark room at 2 a.m. with a pc conneted to a big set of speakers, which are cranked all the way up) and i just wasn't sure that id could recapture that spooky atmosphere it had.
however, since i cheked out those screenshots, i have had my faith in id restored. id will be forgiven it's past transgressions (quake 2, hexen, heretic, no more commander keen games, etc) if this game is half as good as it looks.
i also seem to have something wet in my pants. excuse me.
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Great, another first person shoot em up that adds nothing innovative to the world of gaming. More blood, more splatter, more gore, nothing new.
You're right, it's really easily to extract gameplay elements from the screenshots.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Bill - aka taniwha
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Bill - aka taniwha
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Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Running on... Mac OS X, no less
The Mac version of Doom 3 will be for Mac OS X only. Mac OS 9 and earlier will not be able to run it.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
There's a video of the event showing some of Doom 3 (as well as other info about the new card) on Cnet. I followed the link from bluesnews.com. I'd paste it here but the URL is quite large. Anyway, very impressive.
-Frijoles-
Niven a pacifist? No way. A pacifist would never write stories with themes like, "but sometimes you just have to fight anyway." That is exactly the theme that is presented in the short story "The Warriors," where pacifist golden-age-of-no-violence humans first meet the Kzinti and STILL kick their furry asses.
I know, I know, I shouldn't feed the troll. But I hate to see someone slander Niven that way. Well, go ahead and slander his last few years of work, but the classic Known Space stuff is still some of the best SF ever, IMHO.
I think there is a real danger that NVidia will do to the graphics card market what Creative did to the sound card market.
What? Make a pretty decent product at a reasonable price? Yeah, that would be horrible...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
... and I'll be the first to flaunt that some software (i.e. DOOM 3) was released for Linux before its WIndoze counterpart.
For Mac, this is HUGE!
Does anyone have an URL for a "download and THEN watch" version of the video, or an equivalent to "wget" for rtsp streams?
I'd really like to get the whole thing and then watch it full-size, rather than trying to cram it through my slow internet connection and losing most of the detail...
---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Moral of this story: never post any stories to Slashdot on time. Ever. :)
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Actually, Commander Keen was by ID. Nice way to disprove you're own argument.. :)
--
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
From Blue's News
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Yes indeedy, it is very much about Thinking Different.
The techy PC market is saturated. People have sated themselves on cheap ram, cheap CPUs, cheap storage, and cheap video cards. There's no reason for PC growth to grow.
So now Apple is probably targetting the *non* techy market. Coincindentally that also happens to be the female market. Girls. The ones who don't know or care about the iMac's increased graphics memory or CPU speed, or video chipset speed.
The ones who buy new pairs of shoes to match their new dresses to match their new handbags etc.
If they can hook these girls even once, Apple can almost guarantee multiple resells as a fashion industry. Basic black with chrome highlights. Iridescent green with transparent blue panels. Etc.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
I thought I listed a whole bunch of improvements for you already...
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
To generalize your question, what software is used that sound cards could accelerate?
How about digital USB speaker output? Right now that sucks up CPU resources that a good sound card should be able to handle.
How about MP3 encoding/decoding? Right now it's a trivial 2% of my system, but if I up the bitrate, the number of channels, and the 'effects', I can start soaking up CPU. Why not have a soundcard accelerate it the same way video cards accelerate 3d graphics?
How about voice recognition software? Hardware accelerate that!
3d sound: Anything that uses a 3d library should be able to use 3d sound. Imagine Quake3. If the soundcard could access the level data, the walls, the enemy placement, the weapon type, etc, it could actually do occlusions, echoes, reverbs, damping, amplification, cancelation, etc.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
If you do play Quake, you should know that one trick to light up a room is to do exactly that - fire a Plasma Rifle shot.
Ok - Someone please help here: Is the geforce3 also the "NV20" i hear about? Is this the final product this 'code word' will ship as?
I'm not sure if I read this right.. it can't be true.. I WILL be able to get a GeForce 3 for my PC/Linux box, right? RIGHT?
-- Doesn't know anything about Macs, please excuse my ignorance.
------------
CitizenC
I've always been fascinated by codecs that allow you to trade CPU time for compression efficiency.
An example of this was Iterated System's fractal codec, where you could spend literally days of 33 Mhz i486 CPU time searching for a better compression, or be satisfied with the compression you got from a few minute's search.
Are there any modern codecs like that? So that a powerful machine can really crank the compression up, but a slower machine had better have a fat pipe, 'cause it isn't going to have time to get much compression done.
I guess it'd have to be a codec whose compressed representation was almost turing complete (I guess we could just send a program, but the halting problem seems intractable.)
An Evil Empire's new piece of hardware being released to jam themselves into a new market to further twist there .net into the home using the force of the game API from their desktop OS monopoly to achive it...
or
A friggin' fast piece of hardware from a company that has been fairly good to the 'alternate' worlds in Computer Land, and a piece of game software that will be friggin' excellent, just like everything out of it's makers doors, that will at least have binaries released for 'alternate GNU OS using people', if not a box set.
Personally, I'd buy a GeForce 3, Doom 3, and a GameCube, but for the love of god don't let Microsoft get a foot in the door!
I'll save everyone the hassle of going over to a Mac to try to view the pictures. The detail isn't there - the images are just dark, there is no secret hidden detail in them. If you aren't convinced, open Photoshop or something and apply a Gamma. Black becomes gray, but no details.
When I said "X-Box" I actually meant it. Instead of a GeForce3, I'll just get the X-Box in June and get pretty much the same experience. $600 for a videocard is ridiculous unless you are actually doing high-end renders.
Unfortunately, the giant projector screens are not color calibrated the same way at all.
The colors did get rather washed out on the big screen.
John Carmack
If only there were a way we could see images generated directly from the source...
You'd probably think something like this is very dangerous stuff. I bet you want to burn all evidence of its existence. Other people would consider Hamlet a classic of literature, stage, and screen. Different tastes, I guess.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Okay, so this is totally off topic, but I just ordered a Titanium PB, I'm going to get Mac OS X the minute I hear the PB has shipped, and I have a hobbiest's interest in gaming.
Prelude aside, I haven' been able to find much in terms of cross platform programming on Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows 2000, three of the least popular gaming platforms out there behind PSX, Gameboy, and Windows 98. Though I suppose what with the DX 8/7 support in W2k, Windows 2000 isn't a problem.
I *really* want to learn and use Objective C, the Cocoa libraries, and OpenGL. I know that's not a problem with the Mac, given that Apple has made them all first class citizens of Mac OSX; is there any chance of being cross platform?
Or do you just code straight C for the game (and thus target every platform on the planet I guess), with platform specific code for the input and display handling?
I really wish someone had a book published, using iD as the case study, on cross platform development. IDEs, compilers, best practices, optimization techniques, workarounds, etc.
Of course, just saying all this out loud has given me a solution ^^; Code in C, abstract out the platform specific display, device, and input handling routines into a separate library, and use the 'best' software for each platform, whether that be Metrowerks, GCC, Visual Studio, etc.
Actually, I guess you could use Metrowerks for all the platforms, couldn't you? Is that what you do?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
We did a ton of testing the last two weeks while we were putting the demo together.
The 733 G4 was not as fast as my 1 ghz PIII in any of the trouble areas.
Apple is doing a lot of good work, but the CPU's just aren't as fast as the x86 ones.
AltiVec can compensate in some cases, because it is way, way easier to program for than SSE, but it takes a very simple batched, computation intensive task for it to pay off in any noticable way. Amdahls law and all that.
We did a couple functions with AltiVec, but they didn't make much difference.
Video encoding and large image processing are two areas that it can pay off, because you may be spending 90%+ of your time in one page of code.
Even then, it takes a special balance to let a G4 come out ahead, because it has less memory bandwidthd than a high end x86 system.
John Carmack
Spoiling the story for people who haven't read it yet is REALLY BAD FORM.
can be found here: http://www.3dfinger.com/individual.php3?fingeracco unt=johnc@idsoftware.com
I just want to say I think it kicks ass that you post to Slashdot. Most senior developers have "better things to do with their time", which you do as well, but you post anyway, which is cool.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
now if this was *really* a direct sequel to doom 2, there'd be a lot more pulsing blue stuff.
Hey now, anyone who has ever wasted a few months of their life away in the world of Doom knows full well all you really need is a double barrelled shotgun. Dodge baby, dodge!
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Duke Nukem merely ripped off the one-liners, but Doom used essentially the same plot without being insulting to the original. It's a matter of "look'n'feel". I don't know about anyone else, but I felt like I was Ash In Space.
Here you go.
-jfedor
I think the person you're responding to said that if a Mac user brags about their photoshop results he'll point them here where it says that a Mac will win in those cases, but not in anything else.
For those of us who don't apply four-pixel gaussian blurs to 256MB CMYK images...
But nobody would buy a computer just to run SETI or Folding @Home (or the other similar projects). The computers are purchased because there's a periodic task (games, 3d rendering, etc) which takes a kick-ass CPU. Then the spare cycles can be put to good use. But those cycles wouldn't exist if the machine wasn't made and sold for another purpose.
My $0.02 as a game programmer...
> Sticking to ANSI usually makes things easier in the long run, right?
Compared to finding working compilers that support STL, and templates, properly, then yes, it is easier to use ANSI.
In writing game code, no. C++ provides some nice paradigms: Abstract types via classes, inheritance, over-ridable behaviour via "virtual", templates, operator overloading, namespaces, etc. You can simulate all those in C, but it is much harder to read, then "native" C++.
In C/C++ you still abstract key components out, i.e. sound, graphics, networking, so the language doesn't matter for the "design". C++ just makes the implementation easier in some areas.
There's a VGA Box you can buy that allows S-Video and RGB (15-pin dsub). Sega makes one, and there are third-party boxes as well.
The AltiVec unit requires a couple of things that you dont have to deal with in normal code. The data has to be nicely laid out all in one place, and you have to be willing/able to deal with it more than one element at a time. Most programs are not designed that way (or if they are it is only by chance) so usually it is hard at first to find ways to retrofit Altivec into existing code. Certain trends in programming (e.g. OOP) make it even less likely that you will see these kinds of data structures. So to make a long story short, to get pervasive use of AltiVec, you have to design around it. I cant speak about the Quake engine, but from John's comments that sounds a little bit like part of the problem.
This is not to say that AltiVec is useless for such apps. AltiVec more often than not just so happens to be very good at accelerating that 10% of the code that consumes 90% of the CPU time. So, a little bit of work often goes a long way.
What you learn working with it is that memory bandwidth is almost always the problem. The result is that certain common old-gen programming techniques for code optimization that rely on memory access to save CPU time (longer code, lookup tables, etc.) are about the last thing you would want to do with AltiVec. You only unroll loops as much as is necessary to get proper scheduling and stop there, for example. Almost everything, including constants are best calculated on the fly rather than loaded from memory. As John points out, you are better off with one big complicated function rather than a lot of simple ones. Accessing memory is so expensive that once you have the data you had better do a lot with it. You typically have about 30-40 cycles of time per 32 byte block of memory that is "spent for you" every time you load memory. If you dont do something worthwhile during that time, it is your loss.
AltiVec is also good for sound code. It is a great way to reduce the overhead associated with single sound channels so that you can have lots playing concurrently without having time spent at interrupt running amok.
Ian Ollmann iano@cco.caltech.edu
Jeez are you serious? Do you honestly think Creative Labs, Guillemot, and all the rest of the current GeForce/GeForce2 partners aren't climbing over themselves trying to get GeForce3 done first?
It's very simple -- Apple must have paid nVidia lots of money to secure the exclusive, because they need some sort of competitive advantage.
"And like that
Can you contrast your comments
The 733 G4 was not as fast as my 1 ghz PIII in any of the trouble areas. Apple is doing a lot of good work, but the CPU's just aren't as fast as the x86 ones. AltiVec can compensate in some cases, because it is way, way easier to program for than SSE, but it takes a very simple batched, computation intensive task for it to pay off in any noticable way. Amdahls law and all that. We did a couple functions with AltiVec, but they didn't make much difference. Video encoding and large image processing are two areas that it can pay off, because you may be spending 90%+ of your time in one page of code. Even then, it takes a special balance to let a G4 come out ahead, because it has less memory bandwidthd than a high end x86 system.
With those of graeme devine as posted on insidemacgames.
I finally got around to programming in Altivec support for Quake3 1.27h. If you have a G4 you'll certainly want to flex that velocity engine! I think this safely puts the G4 ahead of the PC. I'll probably post this tomorrow. We have in the office a G4/533 with a GeForce2 card. It's a very very nice setup. Graeme.
It would seem the two of you are at odds over this little issue.
Doom3 has a totaly diffrent codebase then quake3, q3's code may get a bigger boost then d3s.
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"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Not to mention juggling all those files is just NOT something I want to do in Windows with its atrocious and botched file system in which you step one inch out of Microsoft's predesigned method and you're screwed.
What the hell are you talking about? "step one inch out of microsofts..." The only thing I can think from that sentance is that if you drag the files into the wrong window or something (one ince off). Windows Explorer has a lot more ways to move files around then Finder does. (cut+paste, drag/drop, commandline, etc)
And how is Perl better on a mac then a PC? if anything, I'd say it would be better on a Unix machine.
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"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Yeh, right...
Just try to get numbers like that in the real world, and the Itanium is going to be way slower then an x86 chip when it comes out.
The fact of the matter is that Doom3 runs faster on a PC then a g4. Mac zealots can rant all they want, but it isn't going to change anything. And anyone who believes apple's ludicrous numbers is a certifiable moron.
Megahertz don't matter, thats how fast the swith flicks on and off. the G4 processers have at least 4 times the AMOUNT of switches that a PIII has, making a 500 megahertz G4 processer equal to a 2 gigahertz pentium in speed.
You might be trying to dumb things down, but you only make yourself look dumb, That sentence makes absolutely no sense on its own with regards anything relating to CPU design.
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"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
It was John Carmack. He has posted on /. on various occasions before. Also see this list of names of prominent /. users.