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GeForce4 Ti 4200 Preview
Mike Chambers writes "Hi All, I've completed a preview of NVIDIA's GeForce4 Ti 4200 graphics chipset. Although the preview contains your typical benchmarks, it's centered around game play and antialiasing image quality. Here's a list of the games involved - Quake 3 & Team Arena, IL-2 Sturmovik, Nascar Racing 2002 Demo, Jedi Knight 2, Serious Sam 2, Max Payne Demo, Comanche 4 Demo, Dungeon Siege and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2002 Demo. Since antialiasing image quality, especially Quincunx and 4XS, was an important aspect of the preview, all of the screen shots were saved in high quality PNG format. For those Slashdot readers that are avid gamers, you might want to check this out."
I was looking forward to uncovering these features of the GeForce4 Ti 4200 myself. Now you've spoiled everything.
Well, there's no reason to get a GeForce 4 now unless you're a software developer or really need those extra 5 FPS in Quake3 (305 FPS instead of 300 FPS)... GF4 (and GF3) do offer significant advantages over older cards, but since the development cycle for high-quality games is about 3-4 years, compared to the development cycle of new graphics cards (6 months - 1 year), the game engines are always lagging behind. Nothing out yet even really takes advantage of what the GeForce 3 has to offer -- until Doom3 is released, anyway.
The best thing to do is just ignore these new card releases, and let other fools buy them just to be 'l33t'. In a year or more when you can actually buy games that will use GF4 features, the cards will be much cheaper than they are now...
Funny, but just FYI I do have a working Hercules and I'll tell you something: it displays 80x25 text mode as fast as your GeeForce78 5000000 (or whatever is c00l today), i.e. much faster than I can read. I use it in my web/mail/ftp/dns server with 500MHz AMD K6-2 and 256MB of RAM. The advantage is that the 14" monitor is in size (the depth) between the smallest new 14" CRT I've seen and 14" LCD (something in the middle). Works great. Very low power consumption (the card and the monitor). Total cost: $0. Great for servers where you need a display but you don't want to waste a lot of space and power.
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
As with almost all graphic card reviews, the only tests/benchmarks this review has is games. I don't know about the rest of you, but I actually don't play games the majority of the time I'm using my PC and therefore this review is sadly almost useless to me.
I would like to see a review that actually had a serious focus on 2D performance and quality.
No matter what, I'll not buy a Geforce4 card - AFAIK they have and need active cooling and I don't need that - I want a card with passive cooling! A Geforce3 TI200 should actually be able to run with only a nice large heatsink and that is what I believe I'll be buying soon. It is much cheaper too and it's 3D performance is still excellent.
The human eye cannot distinguish more than 24 frames per second...at 23 fps you can see some chop, at 25 you can't. That's because the brains "refresh rate" for incoming info from the eyes is at 24 fps.
Therefore, anything beyond 24 fps is USELESS! Basic biology, folks! And still we get these idiots going "hey it runs at 30 fps!". You can't see that! Your brain cannot cope with more than 24 still pictures per second before it "runs them together" to make moving images.
Repeat after me:
24 frames per second is the minimum required for fusion.
48 frames per second is the minimum required for lack of flicker. (Movies show at 48fps - didn't you know that? Each frame is shown twice, with a gap in between).
Anything higher than that, up to about 100fps, is better. Above 100fps, qualititative judgement of smoothness is pretty much impossible.
Don't believe me? Look at your 60fps (or 50fps) television set out of the corner of your eye - you'll see flicker.
Or, alternatively, if you're american, go to Europe and watch TV there. The flicker will drive you to DISTRACTION (NTSC = 60fps; PAL = 50fps). It's PLAINLY visible.
So in other words, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Don't assume that just because you heard somewhere that 24fps is the slowest speed at which images join together to make a moving image, that you can't see any difference between that and higher frame rates.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
...or did 3D-gaming get old several years ago. Granted - Doom was damn cool. Ultima Underworld was nice too. The zillionth FPS was just a yawn.
In the mid 90s, for some reason, something happened. Suddenly the mainstream opinion was that a game without 3D was somehow inferior to the 3D ones, so *everything* had to be 3D. Face it - 3D is just a gimmick like anything else. For most games, 3D is just wrong. It makes the interface bad and worsens gameplay. We humans are by nature not fully 3D-compliant (e.g see Rubik's Cube for proof). Imagine what a pain in the ass a 3D window manager would be (yeah I know some people research it, but that is their problem, isn't it?).
IMHO games are now in the childish state of "the more real it looks, the better". Now, I am certainly not opposed to the idea of beautiful games. I want stunning, great looking games. But where would art be today if it had stopped at the rather primitive notion that the painting that most resembles reality is the most beautiful?
I don't know about you, but when Heroes of Might & Magic III came out (New World Computing makes arguably the most beautiful 2D-graphics in the world), I was far more impressed by the beautiful details and the general mood that they managed to generate, than by the graphics of Quake III (or whatever FPS-clone was the current rave then).
Don't get me wrong, there are games that benefit from 3D (Tekken comes to mind), but not *all*. Is there even a non-3D game available for the xbox?
Damn the lemming mentality of the game publishers... Will I ever see stunning artwork again?
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati