NVidia releases Linux drivers for X and GL

Re:BeOS Rocks! by Vryl · 1999-06-02 17:48 · Score: 1

multiple windows really handy for side by side work in video editing . . .

yes there is a reason . . . would have thought it was obvious.

Yes by leonbrooks · 1999-06-02 07:04 · Score: 1

running games in a window is shitty. am i the only one who feels this way?

Yes. (-:

I prefer to run games in a window while I'm debugging or monitoring something; that way I can also see the item that earns me money, and pause the game to attend to it if need be.

--
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing

Re:Which one to get? by VinceJH · 1999-06-03 05:07 · Score: 1

Thanks for the post. I checked around with some two gues, and they both said the tnt was a better choice. Guess il get more ram with the money I woulda spent.

--
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent

Dynamics of Moderation 101 by Skip666Kent · 1999-06-03 01:23 · Score: 2

Attention class. Quiet down please. Joey, give Sally her blouse back and sit down.

Good. Now:

You may be under the impression that moderation happens sequentially, as in "He's only been moderated to 4? That's not enough! I'll moderate him to FIVE!" I'm sure that's true at times, but I'll wager that in most cases, a number of folks moderate posts more or less at once. This happens in both directions. An only mildly retarded post may get wailed down to -1 if it's posted near the beginning of the overall thread, while a mildly intelligent post will top the charts at number 5.

The Reason for this is simple: when there's fewer posts for moderators to choose from, more moderator's will moderate the same posts, hence the effects of moderation will be exaggerated.

What's the Cure? They're the guys that wrote "Primary", which is an amazing song, but of no concern to us here. In terms of a cure for A Lack of Temperance in Moderation, I don't think we need one. It just doesn't matter. The system work Pretty Darn Well as it is, and that's a LOT better than Really Bad!

If one were to impart a Fix, I think it would be along the lines of an algorhythm of sorts (no pun intended) which would cause the Strength of a single Act of Moderation (up or down) to vary in relation to the number of posts overall. It would no longer always be "one man, one vote".
I must reassert, however, that I think this would be a cosmic waste of time.

In other words...

STOP WHINING!

;^D

cheerz,
-kent

--
**>>BELCH

Re:Dynamics of Moderation 101 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-05 05:21 · Score: 0

I have another idea. In the moderating page (whatever that's like), make sure to encode the current score or a time stamp for what the post was at before the current moderating action. Then, instead of incrementing the score a lot of times, it only increments the score if the moderator really intended such. The moderators will never know the difference, so maybe it should tell them "this post already moderated up/down to ___ before your command got through; would you like to further moderate it?"

Q3 works fine by jsgf · 1999-06-03 01:32 · Score: 1

Well, I didn't know it wasn't supposed to work, so I tried it out. It worked fine! A little slow, but pretty good.

Re:Emacs cursor disappeared. by jkujawa · 1999-06-03 02:00 · Score: 1

This happened to me, as well.

Re:Running something like Quake2 by drig · 1999-06-02 22:14 · Score: 1

Hmmm...I wasn't trying to be funny. What parts confused you?

--
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics

Re:Setup Script by jwilloug · 1999-06-02 12:01 · Score: 1

On every line it gives you an error (there are two or three), just insert a ';' before the closing '}'. That fixed it for me.

Mmm... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 08:33 · Score: 0

That should make life a lot easier at my dorm. Three people on my floor are running Linux boxes with a TNT or TNT2 card. They'll now get acceleration. Two people are buying new machines, and were wavering between Voodoo 3, TNT2 and G200. I think there's a clear winner now.

Maybe I should also look into upgrading my old Imagine 128. It's the only piece of hardware still in my computer for which the chipset maker didn't contribute a driver.

I like how they also support BeOS and OS/2, although I will never run either of those foresaken operating systems.

Re:16BPP Limit - Only on RIVA? by jkujawa · 1999-06-02 12:13 · Score: 1

I've got a TNT. I just got it running.

It's definately doing software rendering at 32BPP.

GL Screensavers run rather too fast, though, in
16BPP :)

However, it seems to be not synching to refresh
when screensavers are run at -root, leading to
high amounts of flicker -- anyone else seen this?

Re:TNT and Bumpmapping by Arithon · 1999-06-02 10:19 · Score: 1

Yes, the embossing isn't the same as the Matrox method (Environment-mapped). However, I've yet to see any real comparison as to what sort of performance hit the G400 takes when it's enabled. So far there are very few games far enough along in development to even demo this feature, and none of the ones I've heard of (or seen screenshots of) have full-screen environmental bump maps. Most have it strictly limited to a few surfaces (water, maybe a player skin, not much more), and the only review I've seen that mentioned the performance hit had a pretty substantial number (can't recall what it was, or I'd post it). It's yet to be the hot feature that it might end up.

I've been planning to build a new machine, so I've been looking at this sort of thing (about time I had a good gaming rig :), and right now my main problem is finding one of these TNT2 Ultras with a digital flatpanel output :(
Of course, if Matrox gets their act together and offers better (and Linux) drivers, perhaps they'll get the spot.

Arithon
I am the Imp of the Perverse - Knowing this won't help you, either.

Shalom Dave by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-04 00:02 · Score: 0

...GREAT. Cool. Thank you.

You rock Dave! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 07:18 · Score: 0

I bow down to you.. You are Awesome.. I just ordered two TNT2's because of you! Nvidia should give you a bonus! :)

Re:Also note this news fro XFree86 by Jeffrey+Baker · 1999-06-02 06:30 · Score: 1

Yeah, pardon my typo. The sentence should read:

Now drivers for BeOS and other platforms will spring up soon.

-jwb

Re:Also note this news fro XFree86 by Daniel · 1999-06-02 06:26 · Score: 1

Read his message again. He clearly meant to type 'no doubt drivers for...' but failed due to Evil Alien Mind Rays or some such thing.. :-)

Daniel

--
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!

Peer Pressure... WHOO HOO!#@#@$ by Didel · 1999-06-02 06:22 · Score: 1

This absolutely rocks!

But, one thing I ask, how close is Q3test to being playable on TNT hardware under linux now?

Re:Huh? by pmsyyz · 1999-06-02 13:28 · Score: 1

I do not think his post was off-topic. And even if it was, there are many posts that are a lot more off-topic than his. Why don't you go bother them.

--
Phillip

Re:Excellent move nVidia! by Brent+Nordquist · 1999-06-03 02:13 · Score: 1

The web site says to mail linux@nvidia.com -- I believe his personal address is dschmenk@nvidia.com.

I agree 100%; he deserves a lot of credit for this work!

--

--
Brent J. Nordquist N0BJN

Re:Slackware users note... / Wacky patches by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-03 03:18 · Score: 0

Me again...

The Mesa patch doesn't apply cleanly either. Granted, all the hunks that fail are RCS comments, but that would normally indicate to me that the patch *might* be for something other than what it says (Mesa-3.0). Cross your fingers and ignore the rejection messages on this one, folks.

AGP is good for something by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 13:28 · Score: 0

AGP TEXTURING is good for something when its supported well. There are a few hardware sites that actually test AGP texturing by loading a demo that uses exceptional large textures (I thing tom's hardware used an old S3 demo that was intended to show off S3TC). Most results show that under Windows, nVidia and Maxtrox are the leaders in supporting AGP TEXTURING, 3DFX basically denies it exists. Basically, when textures get large, AGP provides noticeable performance benefits. In a time like right now, not alot of games use really big textures, so performance increases aren't all that great. It's also a damn buzzword, so even cards that have almost no 3D features hook into the AGP bus, making it harder to transport them to older systems later. I think that if a manufacturer isn't going to support AGP texturing, they should just make PCI cards. For them to sell AGP cards (like 3DFX, no AGP support) is misleading.

Anyways, I have box next to me w/ a crappy trident video card. a few months ago I needed a vid card for X, and when it got old I wanted to be able to move it to the box next to me for better 2d. Well, I decided on the Creative TNT on the PCI bus, since Creative supposedly was makin' drivers. I'm happy w/ my choice.

Send in the warranty card. by mrsam · 1999-06-02 08:52 · Score: 1

Here's one way you can provide feedback to Nvidia: see that little warranty card that came with the video card? Fill it in, and send it in.

I'm the type that almost never fills in the manufacturers' warranty cards. But when I dropped a TNT card into this box, a few months ago, I made a note to fill out the warranty card. Under "Operating Systems" I checked off "Other" and wrote in "Linux". Then, under "reason for purchase", I checked off "Other" again, and wrote "Linux compatibility".

It's absolutely true that the warranty cards are really used for marketing, more than anything else. But in this case this is precisely what you want the salesdroids to know: that Linux is selling these cards. My warranty card was postage-paid, that tells you right there that the video card manufacturers are very much interested in the their customers demographical information, and warranty cards are the primary source of information that they go with.

... And I'll be dropping a second warranty card into the mail this weekend, after I upgrade another workstation with a new motherboard, and a TNT card.

Good job, Nvidia.

Re:XFree86 4.0 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 09:24 · Score: 0

well, alpha snapshots to be released every 4 to 6 weeks are still far from a release. However I guess I'll just have to be patient (or reboot into that other OS every once in a while).

Not really by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 08:21 · Score: 1

3d sound cards actually have much more proprietary stuff in the API than graphics cards. The 3d sound algorithms are much less mature, and vary much more than the essentially identical stuff 3d graphics cards do. They also rely on a much greater mixture of software/hardware rendering. They have a bit more to defend than nVidia.

Having said that, I will never buy a Creative product until they open up specs. I also guide the purchasing decisions of 4 or 5 other people, and to some extent, my group at work, who will never buy Creative products until they're more open.

The Source is with us... by Stiletto · 1999-06-02 05:58 · Score: 0

Most importantly, this comes with the source.

Actually... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 08:33 · Score: 0

3DFX claims 22-bit rendering for the Voodoo3. I say claims, because at this point I'm less and less inclined to take any technology claims 3DFX has at face value. The rendering core for Voodoo3 hasn't changed all that much over previous Voodoos (from what I've heard of course).

Debates have been done to death about this. And no offense, but Tom's Hardware is a site that has been accused (rightly so) of bias since a lot of his dollars come from advertising.

Plus, Tom has done all sorts of IDIOTIC stuff lately, like benchmarking Q3Test when id Software said the timedemo code was broken (and then having the gall to tell them that he was right and id was wrong. Yah, okay, I guess Tom is not only a benchmarker, but also a binary/assembly/C god. Sure.) and then benchmarking the Q3 IHV test (Independent Hardware Vendors FYI, essentially just a test for the IHVs to test their drivers against) which had been obtained illegally.

I'll give 3DFX the benefit of the doubt, but yes, true 32-bit rendering is the way of the future.

Actually, so is bumpmapping, so watch out for the G400. Oh please release the specs Matrox, oh please please please... :)

Finally by Graymalkin · 1999-06-02 05:56 · Score: 1

Lets hope other 3D card makers folow suit. Maybe we can start seeing more games for linux (John Carmack is our friend).

--
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.

Dave is here!!!! by BrianS · 1999-06-02 07:29 · Score: 1

Very cool. Kudos Dave. I like the bit of anti-Microsoft sentiment in the FAQ.

--
-- I can't say enough in 120 chars!

Re:Huh? by Compuser · 1999-06-02 10:33 · Score: 1

As far as public forum goes, there were
essentially two comments made in all the
threads: 1. Yippee and 2. Buy TNT2 to show
that Linux brings money. Bruce has posted
the third relevant comment, namely: let's
nudge other hw makers to release either
OS drivers or specs. A relevant thought can
hardly be inappropriate, especially since
many companies' employees (although not the
ones that matter, namely the suits) do read /.
Also, personally, BP's mistakes whatever they
may have been, have not yet hurt me, while his
efforts were somewhat beneficial. That doesn't
mean I agree with the OSS definition or like
the "join then quit" approach to community
leadership, but I do not understand your
condescending tone, or your criticisms.

Re:No doubt by Vector7 · 1999-06-02 10:20 · Score: 1

ICD stands for Installable Client Driver. Basically, Microsoft's opengl32.dll provides a full software path and is what all apps are linked against, but if an ICD is installed the MS dll switches over to the ICD, which provides accelerated rendering for whatever chipset you have installed.

People emphasize ICD because there is also such a thing as an MCD (mini-client driver, I think), which is much easier to write than an ICD since it plugs into an existing framework rather than having to handle the entire OpenGL pipeline itself. These are only available on NT, and MS doesn't seem to support them any more, presumably because they wanted to see GL die a quick death. Since they don't work on 95/98, they aren't really an option for IHVs anymore.

Re:Packaging by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 07:09 · Score: 0

alien you moron.

Re:Quake2 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-03 09:15 · Score: 0

Go into the Quake2 console and type

_windowed_mouse 1

Re:Who's handling bugs? by VinceJH · 1999-06-03 05:16 · Score: 1

Remember the g200-glx dev list. Some people from their will be maintaining it. Go to:
http://www.on.openprojects.net/glx/

--
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent

Flickering screensavers when run with -root by Fandango · 1999-06-02 12:40 · Score: 1

However, it seems to be not synching to refresh when screensavers are run at -root, leading to high amounts of flicker -- anyone else seen this?

Yep, several of us also noticed this and remarked about it in other posts on this topic.

--

--
Jake

Emacs cursor disappeared. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 13:31 · Score: 0

After installing the new X server for my Velocity 4400 card my emacs cursor has disappeared.

Anyone else have this problem?

Re:Emacs cursor disappeared. by blam! · 1999-06-04 02:29 · Score: 1

In case Dave Schmenk is still monitoring the thread:

"me too". (Otherwise, excluding full-screen gl stuff, which flickers like crazy, it works beatifully on my TNT. Thank you.)

Where do we report bugs like this?
Re:Emacs cursor disappeared. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-04 03:24 · Score: 0

Does it disappear in all bit depths?

Dave...
Re:Emacs cursor disappeared. by Nick+Ives · 1999-06-03 01:22 · Score: 1

Thought I was going insane, but I appear to have this problem aswell. I'm almost certain that I had an Emacs curser before I insalled this X server. Anyone got a solution to why the little curser that shows you where you're typing in Emacs whilst under X dissappears whilst not over text?

Nick

--
Nick

Setup Script by toaster13 · 1999-06-02 09:27 · Score: 1

Hey, has anyone actually used the glibc setup script? It seems to be broken on line 159! If you've found otherwise, please help!

Re:Setup Script by toaster13 · 1999-06-02 22:42 · Score: 1

It only happens on 159 with the "then" statement. and believe me, i've tried putting in that damn ";". where exactly did you put it?

It was all us! by Ezra · 1999-06-02 06:03 · Score: 1

This is definatly the result of our slashdotting
their phone system a couple weeks back. We showed
them we want it.

That's what we gotta do to get what we want, if a
company sees enough of a customer need they will
do _whatever_ we want.

Go Us!!

Re:It was all us! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:07 · Score: 0

Lets do the same thing to creative! We got their
drivers but we need their source!

No Source We Won't Go!!!

Quake 2 in a riva 128 ? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 08:54 · Score: 0

Did anybody managed to make Quake 2 to work in a Riva 128 ( 4 MB RAM ) ?
I followed the instructions in the FAQ ( downloaded the updated RPMS for XFree, installing the new drivers, replacing the MesaGL, modified the CF86config, start with 15bp, etc ), but when I try to set up the video in Quake2 as GLX, MesaGL or whatever, it quits: no bus error, no core dumps, anything.
I'm puzzled, so if somebody managed to get it working, I'll appreciate instructions

Re:What are the framerates like?! by Booker · 1999-06-02 06:04 · Score: 1

Umm... what app? what resolution? That would make your framerates more meaningful. :-)

Great, now which card to get? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 12:41 · Score: 0

Creative Labs, Diamond... one's head spins..
Are they all the same?

I don't have an AGP slot.. are there any PCI
Riva TNT cards?

I can't wait!!!

Re:Great, now which card to get? by LarsWestergren · 1999-06-02 13:31 · Score: 1

>Creative Labs, Diamond... one's head spins..
>Are they all the same?

No. They are not extremely different, but they have taken quite different directions. Some developers overclock the TNT chip to get the fastest card, others have advanced control panels.

Check out
http://www.firingsquad.com/guides/tnt2buyers/def ault.asp
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/
for the latest on the TNT2 cards.

>I don't have an AGP slot.. are there any PCI
>Riva TNT cards?

Yes.

--
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die

RIVA128 and Debian Slink by guacamole · 1999-06-02 17:49 · Score: 1

If you got this thing working on Debian 2.1 please
tell me what did you do. All I did is install their custom X server from 3.3.3.1 (but the rest of XFree distrib is from 3.3.2 on slink), Debian mesa 3.0 package and run the riva_install script. Everything seems to be in place but I still can't get quake and and xlock to work in GL modes...

$$$$$$$ by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 05:58 · Score: 2

I think that NVidia just sold a hellofalotta TNT2's.

Well... at least one... ;P

Phenym

Re:$$$$$$$ by Didel · 1999-06-02 06:35 · Score: 1

Well, it was going to be either the Diamond TNT2 or the Voodoo 3 3000 this weekend, looks like nVidia made up my mind for me. :)
Re:$$$$$$$ by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:44 · Score: 0

betcha!

was just about NOT to buy TNT2, but NOW...! no way jose i'm going for anything else!

OhHellYeah! by Pope+Slackman · 1999-06-02 07:22 · Score: 1

This is so cool!
Haven't even tried Quakin' yet, but the XScreensaver GL hacks /FLY/!

Been waiting for this a long time...

THANKS NVIDIA!

--Kevin
Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD-Sparc

=-=-=-=-=-=

What are the framerates like?! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 05:57 · Score: 0

Can people with nVidia cards post their Quake II and maybe q3test framerates? Please include resolution. I'm just wondering how fast it actually is other than "not optimized."

Re:What are the framerates like?! by hRothGar · 1999-06-02 06:00 · Score: 1

You should see roughly 15 fps on a 200MHz CPU, up to roughly 20-25 fps on a 400+MHz CPU.
Re:What are the framerates like?! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 07:42 · Score: 0

You're surprised that two 3D cards with highly optimized drivers are faster than one 3D card with unoptimized drivers?
Re:What are the framerates like?! by kijiki · 1999-06-02 06:08 · Score: 2

Just my preliminary /timerefresh immediatly after starting the first board (yeah yeah, lame I know):
800x600 with all visual options on: 27FPS.

keep in mind, it is VERY unoptimized, the two worst offender is that all rendering happening in the Xserver's context, which means all that data has to be pumped through a pipe! No AGP texturing doesn't help either. Now for a 100% unscientific "test" morph3d screensaver looks about 4 times faster under linux with this driver than under windows with nvidia's detonator drivers (no textures to stuff through the pipe). I can hardly wait till Precision Insight works their magic.

All in all, a very solid alpha driver, works great (except for q3test) and speed will only improve with time.
Re:What are the framerates like?! by hRothGar · 1999-06-02 06:08 · Score: 1

Sorry, the initial post was refering to quake2 & q3test. THe numbers are very rough, for quake2 (640x480). Try it out, numbers are bound to vary somewhat. q3test is a bit slower, but will hopefully improve somewhat before long.
Re:What are the framerates like?! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 07:14 · Score: 0

That kind of sucks cuz my 2 voodoo2s ( SLI ) do better fps than the NTN2? I get at least 30fps in quake2 doing the "timedemo 1" "map q2dm1" test.
Re:What are the framerates like?! by Saber · 1999-06-02 08:18 · Score: 1

new concept:

optimization

usage:

voodoo(2) has it

Riva does not have it yet

yeesh...

Re:Which one to get? by demon · 1999-06-02 10:22 · Score: 1

Uhh, AGP isn't supported by Linux? What planet have YOU been on? AGP cards work just fine with Linux. AGP's just basically a modified PCI bus, and Linux sees devices on AGP buses just like it does on PCI buses. It may not support textures in system RAM, or 2x/4x modes, but I don't know if that's gonna make that huge a difference at this point.

--

Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"

16BPP Limit by jkujawa · 1999-06-02 10:00 · Score: 1

I'm curious why they chose to limit the driver
to 16 bitplanes. It's not as though the chipset
has ever been limited to 16BPP in 3D. Is this
a limitation of DGA? GLX? Mesa?

I hope this is fixed soon.

i just bought a G200 - DAMM!!!!!! by Paul+Jakma · 1999-06-02 06:38 · Score: 1

I had to decide between the TNT and the G200 'bout 2 weeks ago. I bought the G200 cause it had the GLX driver in development, and i figured NVidia's drivers would be a way off..

FSCK!!!!

The worst is that i can't palm the g200 over to one of my other pc's or alpha cause they don't have an agp slot... sh1t.

Anyway, NVidia: Next time i buy a card, it'll be one of yours..

-Paul.

--
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.

Re:i just bought a G200 - DAMM!!!!!! by Chad+Page · 1999-06-02 06:52 · Score: 1

The G200 is still a great 2D card, and hopefully it'll have a decent XFree86 4.0 3D driver, too.
Then again, the TNT2 is gonna kick total butt.
Re:i just bought a G200 - DAMM!!!!!! by elflord · 1999-06-02 08:02 · Score: 1

Your G200 is going to work with 3D acceleration before long. And depending on how cooperative Matrox are, and what happens with the g400, this might prove a better buy than the TNT2.
cheers,
Re:i just bought a G200 - DAMM!!!!!! by Crow- · 1999-06-02 06:55 · Score: 1

Well, dont worry just yet. Im sure this move by nvidia will really press matrox to release the rest of the specs we need for proper G200 support. Hell, even one of the windows icd developers said if we get the info we need we will outperform the windows opengl driver... and specs will be released for the g400 also.
Re:i just bought a G200 - DAMM!!!!!! by Black+Parrot · 1999-06-02 09:57 · Score: 1

> Your G200 is going to work with 3D acceleration before long.

It already does. Like the thread starter, I selected the G200 when I built a system a couple of weeks ago, and for the same reasons. I thought I understood that the G200 only accelerated full-screen displays as of that date, so I was pleasantly surprised when I installed Mesa 3.1beta2 and the G200-specific GLX, fired up a demo program, and got accelerated 3D within an X window without further ado.

It doesn't exactly scream yet, but I'm seeing about a 3:1 speedup over unaccelerated Mesa running on a fast CPU, and the developers are only advertizing their GLX as "alpha" at this point anyway.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

libc5 or glibc ? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:28 · Score: 0

I have Red Hat 6.0, which should I use?

Re:libc5 or glibc ? by UnkyHerb · 1999-06-02 06:43 · Score: 1

Read the FAQ.... glibc my little buddy....

--
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
Re:libc5 or glibc ? by Doc+Holliday · 1999-06-02 06:30 · Score: 1

You have to use glibc, RedHat uses glibc2 (aka libc6) since version 5.0

Wished it was sooner... by maelstrom · 1999-06-02 06:31 · Score: 1

I'm super pleased to hear that they are now supporting Linux... I ended up buying a Voodoo 2 card because at the time 3DFX was the only company with any linux support.

Now, my next card may very well be a TNT2 :)

Good job!

--
The more you know, the less you understand.

Re:Running something like Quake2 by mistshadow · 1999-06-02 06:38 · Score: 2

There's two parts to their OpenGl support under X. One part gets loaded into the server as a module, the other part is a shared library that gets loaded into the application. The shared library then communicates with the X server to get things done.

OMG!!! by Trashman · 1999-06-02 07:18 · Score: 1

I'm shocked! I logged on from home with the intention of going to Matrox's site to preorder a G400 Max! I'm glad Slashdot is my home page!

Qestion: has Matrox released the programming specs to the G400(Max)? By all accounts, I hear its an awesome card, especially at higher resolutions.

Now I'm faced with a dillema: Should I buy the Nvidia Now or wait a couple of weeks(maybe months?) before Matrox formally anounouces what their plans for Linux are? I'm not even taking 3dfx into consideration at this point.....

--
Do not read this .sig

Re:OMG!!! by Llamedos · 1999-06-02 22:20 · Score: 1

I was browsing through the archives, and noticed a post by John Carmack (sp?). He said that once (the lack of) WARP was the bottle-neck, he'd start bugging Matrox himself...
Re:OMG!!! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-03 23:25 · Score: 0

;> G100 3d acceleration ?
Re:OMG!!! by Black+Parrot · 1999-06-02 12:34 · Score: 1

> has Matrox released the programming specs to the G400(Max)

This quote from a Matrox employee(?) recently appeared on the G200 developer's list:

> we plan to release G400 specs, same as we did for G200
> WARP specs are far to proprietary and cannot be given out at this point

The quoted document is here. The top-level link to the mailing list is here. The developers' page is here, and updated G400 info should show up there sometime after it becomes available (though the brief mention at the bottom has not yet been updated with the information quoted above).

BTW, talk among G200 developers on that list seems to indicate that they are within a leap of achieving the same acceleration that the Matrox-furnished drivers for Windows does, so it looks like another vindication for the OS development model, and a bright future for use of G200/G400 under Linux.

The WARP spec mentioned in the quote concerns a feature of the G200 that is not currently the driver's bottleneck, but will eventually limit the amount of acceleration achievable under Linux. However, there seems to be some "no promises" negotiation going on re the possibility of getting Matrox-furnished microcode to load onto the card for WARP support unless/until that spec can be released.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

Re:Huh? by extrasolar · 1999-06-02 09:29 · Score: 1

Come on! This is slashdot. There is no need to condem people who post based on technicalities. In fact, Bruce's post was an extension of the topic and is perfectly legal, even with your comment patrol.

This is slashdot. People have the right to express their opinions. And it is common courtesy not condem people for doing that.

--

No doubt by Inhume · 1999-06-02 06:29 · Score: 1

I really like my Viper V550 TNT (despite the heat issues), I'm glad I don't have to supplement it with a V2 or exchange it for a V3 after all.

I feel kind of bad though, I wrote nVidia several...creatively worded... emails about this in the past month, tongue-lashing them for their sloth and lack of vision on this issue (Linux OpenGL ICD). *Poof*, all of a sudden, here the drivers are. They were probably cooking these up for a while. Oh well, I'm sure they'll forgive me when I buy an NV10 this Fall.

Re:No doubt by Paul+Jakma · 1999-06-02 07:44 · Score: 1

what's an ICD? i've seen this bandied about on various hardware sites, but never explained.

Whatever it is, i doubt there could be such a thing as a /linux/ opengl icd. XFree86 X server GLX plugin maybe?

:)

--
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.

Re:Huh? by demon · 1999-06-02 13:04 · Score: 1

Whine, whine. You sound like a spoiled child. If you think it's so irrelevant then WHY are you bothering to read it? And on top of that, why e-mail Rob, bothering him with one MORE unnecessary gripe? Get over it already.

--

Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"

Re:XFree86 4.0 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-03 09:42 · Score: 0

Err - NT DOES have DirectX 3.0, and Winblows 2000 (aka NT 5) have full DirectX 6 support (rumors says DirectX 7).

DirectX != Direct3D. You still can't play games that use Direct3D under NT (sorry, I guess you can, minus hardware acceleration...) And don't even talk to me about getting sound cards to play nice with Win NT...

Re:BeOS Rocks! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 13:06 · Score: 0

---------
You gotta watch it running multiple quicktime windows, whilst copying info from the cd-rom to the desktop and playing an mp3 to really understand how good it is.
----------

Heh, that is pretty cool thing to be able to do, but really, WHY? Wouldn't the sound of all the quicktimes and the MP3 mix into an unintelligible mess? Anyways, the reason I think BeOS runs so well w/ media is because of its thread API and the fact most apps actually use threads. A lot of apps for other platforms don't use threads like BeOS does, and a lot of people don't write their programs to thread. The lesson: there has to be an easy to use thread API that is portable and standard. I'm not much of a programmer so I haven't done any threaded stuff (as in POSIX threads), but from what I've heard from a professor of mine is that Java's Thread class makes threaded programming far easier than any other library he's worked with. Any thread programmers out there that can attest to good thread libraries?

Thanks Man!!! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-03 07:27 · Score: 0

Thank YOU!!!!

Anyone gonna hack a full screen Mesa/NVIDIA combo? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 12:42 · Score: 0

Would be cool if somoene made a Mesa/NVIDIA driver combo wich just bypassed the GLX layer and ran full screen like Mesa/Glide can. Would remove the layer of indirection and tide us over till XFree86 4 gets here.

Shouldnt be too much work, but then what do I know :) If I did know I would do it myself.

TNT and Bumpmapping by tono · 1999-06-02 08:54 · Score: 1

Actually the TNT/TNT2 has hardware bumpmapping and the Q3a win32 test shows it off most gratuitously. Why wait for the G400 when the TNT2 has everything now, and is hellafast

--
cheese logs keep my wang warm at night.

Re:TNT and Bumpmapping by tjoynt · 1999-06-02 09:45 · Score: 1

The TNT/TNT2 and Voodoo3 don't REALLY use hardware bumpmapping, they use "embossing".

From 3D Gaming website "SharkyExtreme":

"Most other 3D cards (the Voodoo3, TNT2 etc...) use the conventional embossing method to simulate bump mapping- which really isn't all that big of a deal."

" Basically, a TNT2 or Voodoo3 will 'counterfeit' bump mapping because embossing is NOT the real deal..."

See " http://w ww.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/reviews/video/matrox _g400max/g.shtml" for the context and more information.

PS: Both TomsHardware and AnandTech (as well as many other respectable hardware sites) have said exactly the same thing.

-- Tom Joynt

--
--==Hail Eris!!==--
Re:TNT and Bumpmapping by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 10:05 · Score: 0

Even if it did have bumpmapping, NOTHING uses it right now. Q3A test DOES NOT HAVE BUMPMAPPING. Q3A is also not slated to have bumpmapping either. It was originally planned, but was pulled by decision of John Carmack. Trinity, however, will use bumpmapping as far as i know. I have looked at the screenshots of the G400 with bumpmapping and they look REALLY good! Also, in response to an earlier thread, the Voodoo3's are NOT faster than TNT2 Ultra's. The higher end ultra reviews are just starting to show up. Anand did a review of... i forget which board clocked at 175 core 183(200?)mem out of the box and it was whipping it up. Canopus of Japan is also releasing a TNT2 Ultra shipping at a core of 183 and memory of 200, exactly the same as Voodoo3 3500. The Ultras will whip it up even more when we can do Q3A benchmarks becuase of the Voodoo3's lack of proper AGP texturing. All i can say is, look at EVERYTHING before you decide. I hate making uneducated decisions, which is why i try to learn as much as possible about products i am interested in buying.

GoatCheez
a.k.a. Chris Goetschius
gcheez@tampabay.rr.com

Re:Rain on parade sux by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 09:31 · Score: 0

Then I will refrain from making similar comments in the future.

Re:XFree86 4.0 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 09:19 · Score: 0

Since quake3 doesn't support DirectX, I don't see what the problem is.

3dfx drivers by delmoi · 1999-06-02 05:57 · Score: 2

Heh, acutaly 3dfx drivers suck on windows to. they *Still* don't have a full working ICD, and there users are having tons of trouble getting the q3a test to work. to top it off. They've been trying to get people to write games in glide, by making terrible OGL and even d3d drivers, and now its backfiring.
---------------
Chad Okere

--

ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n

status of nvidia with debian's x by Adam+Heath · 1999-06-02 10:34 · Score: 2

The XFree86 maintainer for debian, Branden Robinson, builds X on my box. On occasion, I have helped him out with different parts of the system, and I have designed the current debian side of the build system(automatic applying of patches).

The nvidia patch is waiting in the queue. The so called vmware patch been in potato's X since -4.

Re:Excellent move nVidia! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 05:57 · Score: 0

Any contact information for Dave ? He DOES deserve a lot of credit, in the form of fan-mail by the tens of thousands, and maybe even a couple decades supply of pizza vouchers =)

-=-Faux Pas III (fauxpas@cc.gatech.edu)-=-

3DFX, are you listening? by Extremist · 1999-06-02 05:57 · Score: 1

This is great. Although I bought a Voodoo3, I'm still cheering NVidia and Matrox on. Kudos!

Hopefully, with all this new 3D hardware support, things like Blender will start exploiting that hardware, instead of just games. Don't get me wrong, 'cause I'm loving Q3, too :)

Re:help: return my 3dfx? by tono · 1999-06-02 07:34 · Score: 1

Get a TNT2 when the drivers are finalized your image quality will be greatly superior to that of a voodoo2 err I mean 3. Sure you'll lack maybe all of 5 fps out of 65 but that really depends on which type of voodoo3 you got.. just make sure to get a TNT2 Ultra.

--
cheese logs keep my wang warm at night.

help: return my 3dfx? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 07:24 · Score: 0

Wow.. What great news..
I spent all day waiting for my Voodoo3 to
arrive in the mail today. It didn't.
When it does, I'm going to send it straight back
without opening it, and then run to the store
and get an nVidia card!!!

Maybe this isn't the right thing to do...
Maybe I should take the damn Voodoo3 and
hope they follow suit in a few weeks...

I've never owned a 3D card.
My instincts tell me that the Voodoo3 is a better
card, though.... Advise, please!!

Freeeeeeeedommmmm!!!

Re:help: return my 3dfx? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 07:29 · Score: 1

Voodoo3 will generally get MORE FPS than any NVIDIA board, but Voodoo3 also renders in 16bit which looks like shit and is the reason its
faster.

TNT/2/U renders 32bit. Looks FAR better. But runs
slower.. TNT2Ultra is your best choice. Fast 2D, Fast 3D (not quite as fast as V3, but looks better).

If you have a SLOW CPU, IE : Pentium 233MMX get a Voodoo3, slow systems are not good on TNT boards.

Werd

Huh? by Bruce+Perens · 1999-06-02 06:39 · Score: 1

Dear SIGSEGV,

When one hardware manufacturer makes a brave decision, I think it's fair to nudge another hardware manufacturer, pointing and saying "see!".

Sure, I have a soapbox and I am rarely off of it. Somehow, by some incredible miracle, big companies are listening. I wish I could tell you about the mega-corporations I've been working with on free software licensing this week. You'll find out eventually.

I think I'm still doing the community some good. I hope you don't mind too much if I continue.

Thanks

Bruce

--
Bruce Perens.

Re:Huh? by SurfsUp · 1999-06-02 10:28 · Score: 1

Bruce Peren's post was on-topic. The topic was: NVidia releases linux drivers. Any response of the form "well, when is everybody else going to do that, and not just for video cards" is most certainly on topic - there is nothing grey about it.
--

--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Re:Huh? by Milkman+Ken · 1999-06-02 16:06 · Score: 1

Bruce's post isn't nearly as offtopic as your post about how offtopic he is (and by induction, this one).
Re:Huh? by Bruce+Perens · 1999-06-02 07:44 · Score: 2

I'm going to have to do a reality-check and see who else feels the way you do... but not here on Slashdot, please, folks. If you have to, email me at bruce@va.debian.org .
Thanks
Bruce

--
Bruce Perens.
Re:Huh? by Nail · 1999-06-02 10:52 · Score: 1

Bruce,

Please don't self-edit because some well-meaning but misguided person wants narrow threads on slashdot. Speak your mind, I want to hear it. This is not an article, it is more of a conversation, and the post you made wasn't so far off topic that is should provoke the response it got. That is my less than humble opinion.

Have a great day people,

Troy

--
...yellow number five, yellow number five, yellow number five...
Re:Huh? by Signal+11 · 1999-06-02 09:44 · Score: 2

This is slashdot. People have the right to express their opinions. And it is common courtesy not condem people for doing that.

Apparently the people reading this thread are evenly split on the issue, if the fluxuations in the original post's score is any indicator. It's a grey area in the moderator guidelines, and it's obviously been unearthed in this thread. I'll e-mail cmdr taco about this... hopefully we'll have the boundaries for "on topic" and "off topic" more clearly defined.

--
Re:Huh? by Signal+11 · 1999-06-02 06:59 · Score: 2

> When one hardware manufacturer makes a brave decision, I think it's fair to nudge another hardware manufacturer, pointing and saying "see!".

Yes, but this is a public forum. What's worse, there are many hundreds of comments posted each day. When people click on the [comments] button, they want to read more about that topic. In this case, it's nVidia o-sourcing their drivers, not creative's lack of doing so. I think it's inappropriate to get up on the soapbox to point that out.. and it's also an ambush: Creative employees wouldn't likely be reading this thread. If you want to send those hw manufacturers a message - send it right to the CTO and cc it to marketing. Better yet, print it out, and snail-mail it to Creative's corporate HQ.

Sure, I have a soapbox and I am rarely off of it. Somehow, by some incredible miracle, big companies are listening. I wish I could tell you about the mega-corporations I've been working with on free software licensing this week. You'll find out eventually.

If your posts to license-discuss are any indicator.. I suspected as much. Post something to slashdot about it when you have something. I look forward to reading it. And that post would probably be an appropriate forum to mention which companies aren't "with it". Maybe throwing up a list at opensource.org of a "what's happening" nature would be a Good Thing too.

I think I'm still doing the community some good. I hope you don't mind too much if I continue.

Your contributions have been enormous. Of course, your mistakes have been equally monumental! :) Go right on fighting. Contrary to what many slashdotters may think, the odds are still very much against us. We can use all the help we can get.

--

Re:Excellent move nVidia! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 15:17 · Score: 0

Agreed! If I can find out how, Dave is gonna get some pizza vouchers from me!

Re:BeOS Rocks! by Vector7 · 1999-06-02 15:18 · Score: 1

Other that X's occasionally shitty video performance (at least on my machine), I see no reason my Linux couldn't do this. Copying from a CD takes very little CPU, neither does playing an mp3, so as long as xanim can keep up you should be good to go.

Re:DirectX is good by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-03 09:49 · Score: 0

Where are the 3D sound API on Linux ?

Check out Java3D... just released for Linux a couple of weeks ago. It supports 3D sound (likely doesn't use hardware for this though).

You are right though, quality audio support in Linux is lacking. However, BeOS blows Winblows out of the water if you want to do cool stuff with sound.

Re:A non-systems programmer question... by drig · 1999-06-03 04:29 · Score: 1

I'm guessing that the previous release of the source for their 2D driver would be more germaine. The linux kernel framebuffer doesn't deal with 3D AFAIK.

But, this release contains some 2D enhancements, so at least some of this would be useful.

--
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics

Not quite 'ALL' by Seth+Cohn · 1999-06-02 09:32 · Score: 1

Nvidia released for 'all' _CURRENT_ chipsets. Those of us who have older hardware are still out of luck. How about Nvidia release source for the older drivers, like the NV1??? That card died a fast death... and it was a nice little (slow) card with built in wavetable and more... the existing X drivers would surely benefit from open sourcing the full specs.

--
Help achieve Liberty in your lifetime - join the Free State Project - http://www.freestateproject.org

Re:Not quite 'ALL' by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 10:33 · Score: 0

Because they want your money NOW, dude! If you haven't bought new hardware in the last nine months, you are not the one these companies care about...

There is a god by grappler · 1999-06-02 08:36 · Score: 1

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

I have a TNT (not II) and I had just about given up hope on any good drivers. I love everything about my linux computer except the x server which is unresponsive at times and could be faster. I wanted be part of the solution, so I emailed the XFree86 project asking how I could help with the TNT support, and they told me I couldn't because there weren't any available specs. Now there are!
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!YEEEEHHHHHAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWW

You have no idea how much that just made my day. THANK YOU NVIDIA. You have at least one new loyal customer.

--
Vidi, Vici, Veni

Re:There is a god by Nick+Ives · 1999-06-02 08:45 · Score: 1

Wow, I was gonna post almost exactly the same thing but it looks like you beat me to it. I like, totally love nVidia for this, this means that I now actually have a free PCI slot as I can throw away that dusty ol' Voodoo 2 that I use for glQ(2) in Linux. And like, yay, they added more 2D acceleration, meaning that I get a day to day speedup aswell.
Man, its only 3am and its already a good day =)

Nick

--
Nick

Also note this news fro XFree86 by Jeffrey+Baker · 1999-06-02 06:06 · Score: 4

This is wonderful news that a first rate hardware vendor has open-sourced the drivers for their flagship product. No drivers for BeOS and other plaforms will spring up soon.

A related piece of good news for the Linux 3D community is the news from XFree86 that a pre-4.0 build will be available in July 1999. Check it out over at xfree86.org.

-jwb

Re:Also note this news fro XFree86 by Jburkholder · 1999-06-02 10:39 · Score: 1

No(w) drivers for BeOS and other plaforms will spring up soon.

Actually, go to the page and you will be pleasantly surprised. :-) Linux is not the only non-Win32 platform to get support.
Re:Also note this news fro XFree86 by Caballero · 1999-06-02 07:35 · Score: 3

XF4.0 will include our (Precision Insight) direct rendering infrastructure. One of the important issues for good 3D performance is getting a fast path to the hardware. Direct rendering provides that structure.
When the FAQ says that the performance isn't great, it is because they have to use GLX and go through the X server to do their 3D rendering. There's some significant work to connect up a new driver to the DRI, but the nVidia drivers appear to be well suited to the PI DRI.
Once that's done the performance will improve. Beyond that there's undoubtedly other optimizations that will be needed, but it'll be a great start.
People seem to be worried about in a window rendering versus full screen. That's really a non issue. It is true that GLX implies rendering is in a window, but if the window is the same size as the screen, then there isn't really a difference. It should be possible for the driver to detect this case and do page flipping instead of copying and get the performance improvement.
- |Daryll
Re:Also note this news fro XFree86 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:19 · Score: 0

This is wonderful news that a first rate hardware vendor has open-sourced the drivers for their flagship product. No
drivers for BeOS and other plaforms will spring up soon.

So you have proof that they won't appear on BeOS anytime soon? And what little bird told you that?
Re:Also note this news fro XFree86 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 12:49 · Score: 0

Stop reading Slashdot and get cracking!!! :)

Re:Strategic Advantage by luminiferous · 1999-06-02 05:58 · Score: 0

If 3dfx were to do the same thing, we'd have a bunch of different apis spring up in a short period of time. Chances are the apis would not be compatible.

3dfx by keeping the chipset details out of view, forces their sdk on you. By doing that, software written for 3dfx on one platform is much easier to port to another platform.

(Just another point of view)

Re:go away Crow by Crow- · 1999-06-02 07:44 · Score: 0

Yeah i know im an asshole, if people werent so stupid I wouldnt have to be though.

Was gonna get Voodoo3, now maybe TNT2 ?? by gatzke · 1999-06-02 20:18 · Score: 1

I was just about to get a Voodoo3 cause 3dfx has given specs to a developer for 3D support.

Now that the TNT2 is open source, I am quuickly changing my mind.

M$ must be scared as more harware and software support keep appearing.

Re:BeOS Rocks! by Vryl · 1999-06-02 17:56 · Score: 1

any language or OS can do what any other language or OS can do . . . it is a fundamental point of computer science. You can write a lisp parser in java and vice versa, or emulate any OS under any other one.

Why one lang or OS is preferred over another is usually comes down to the model it uses and efficiencies or utility gained from that model.

Doze, Linux, BeOs can all do what the other does.

Like I said, I wouldn't use BeOS as a webserver. It fully rocks for multimedia (esp video). Why cobble something together in unix (where X is actually introducing inefficiencies, in some regards doze is better because is the api is close to the kernal).

My point was that linux and beos can work nicely together. X into the server from beos, do multimedia apps on a system designed for it, serve webpages and ip traffic from a system designed for it.

beos is pretty close to posix compliant (I use the beos shell just like a unix shell).

Unix is optimized for multiple users, BeoS is optimized for single user. You work it out.

Re:Which one to get? by VinceJH · 1999-06-02 10:53 · Score: 1

Thats what I meant, system textures, and all that good stuff. I know nothing about it. I guess it is good for something. I wanted to know if it was just some buzzword, or something really useful when it is "fully" supported.

--
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent

Re:Packaging by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 07:35 · Score: 0

(cd / && rpm2cpio filename.rpm | cpio --extract --make-directories)

Re:Excellent move nVidia! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:39 · Score: 0

We're moving rapidly towards making Linux into a good 3D workstation!

And a good 3D gaming platform.

I no longer have a reason to use Microsoft Windows. Free from the borg. :-)

NVidia Drivers by tsikora · 1999-06-02 10:30 · Score: 1

Everyone is saying cool. Did anyone try them? They suck(excuse my language)I just installed the libc5 versions on my STB Velocity 128 and it is the same buggy drivers they had before. Green console screen when quitting, screen placement way out of sync and the contrast set to double of normal. I put the excellent 3.3.2.3 SVGA server back. It works fine. What happened since then?

--
-- Ted tsikora@powerusersbbs.com

Re:NVidia Drivers by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 10:54 · Score: 0

Stop your bitching!!!!!!!!!! Of course they are slow because they don't support dri yet! When Xfree86 4.0 comes out, it will be pimp! Besides, they released the fucking source so it will be pimp soon!
Re:NVidia Drivers by John+Fulmer · 1999-06-02 11:46 · Score: 1

You need to upgrade to the entire 3.3.3.1 XFree package. Don't know about the 128, but the Velocity 4400 ROCKS! with the new drivers.

Still a lot of work to go, but the Mesa Demos run great (170+ FPS on the 'gear' demo ;), Quake 3 SORTA runs okay (actually had it running as good as my VooDoo 1 with GLIDE at one point), and bzflag is GREAT as long as you reduce your desktop to 640x480.

Really good for a first cut at Beta drivers using just GLX. The DRI stuff should be great!

Re:Which one to get? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 10:02 · Score: 1

With a P2-300 you're better off with a TNT. A TNT2 will only buy you a small increase in performance, in Q3 test anyway. Check out http://idsoftware.com/bwh/benchmarks.html

Re:BeOS Rocks! by Vryl · 1999-06-03 17:28 · Score: 1

depends what ya doin, and what ya brainspace can handle, I spose . . .

I have mucked around with the draco as well, and that is nice too . . .

flexibility is power

ha! forget v3. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 16:29 · Score: 0

I was eyeballing a Voodoo3 before...
but #$%^ that now! Even though these drivers sound pretty
umm, work in progress, this has sold me a TNT for sure.

I'll bet these drivers become real good, real quick.
Soon enough anyway.

Re:Slackware users note... / Wacky patches by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 16:36 · Score: 0

Don't you have something better to be doing with your time?

Right this moment, I'm sitting here compiling the *source* and I doubt that it much cares what libc I use. (Let's see *you* get those patch files to work, mouth-boy. Heheheh) What's more, Slackware's glibc-2.0.7 compatibility [shared] library seems to be working a lot more smoothly than they way Caldera has them wedged into OpenLinux 2.2. (Try compiling OpenLDAP on Caldera. Ouch.)

I'm frankly a little surprised the XFree86 diff was as weirdly made as it was. It can *not* be entirely applied without some hacking, and it applies to the 3.3.3 source with the 3.3.3.1 patch (which after some examination, is quite a bit different from the stuff in the 3.3.3.1 directory where it matters). After I see that the thing is working properly, I'll make a patch to convert their diff to a normal unified diff which can actually be read by GNU patch and put it up someplace.
(Yes, a patch to apply to a patch/diff-file.)

Note to people used to compiling XFree86 on their own... You will need the X333servonly file as well as X333src-1 and -2, and you will have to get them from the directory named current/ which has the fixes/ directory and the 3.3.3-3.3.3.1 patch file in it. The directions on nVidia's site don't have the location of the proper files quite right.
Provided you get the right files (the 3.3.3-3.3.3.1 patch won't apply cleanly if you don't). Next you'll have to cut nVidia's patch into two parts with the last hunk in a separate file, or type out those insanely long filenames for each hunk. The hunks don't directly tell patch where the files are buried in the xc/ hierarchy, and the last one is in a different place from the rest. (`diff -urN pristine/ patched/` folks!)

Re:Are you listening, Creative Technologies? by Signal+11 · 1999-06-03 08:16 · Score: 2

Doomy, you'll probably never read this, as there have been a dozen new stories posted.. but I don't believe Bruce's post was worthy of a 5 rating. It was Bruce that posted it, that's why he got a 5. If I had posted it.. it might have gotten as high as a 2. It was off topic. End of story.

And if I really wanted to "take stabs at bruce", as you've so subtly put it, I'd attack him for being childish about the open source trademarking infighting between him and ESR. Okay? There's plenty of flame bait to go around.

I'd also like to point out that contrary to all the flak I've taken in this thread.. it isn't dead for a reason. Let that eat away at you for abit, 'cuz like it or not people it's the truth.

--

Which one to get? by VinceJH · 1999-06-02 09:20 · Score: 1

Glad I held out on upgrading the Rendition card.

Anyway, do the TNT2 cards perform well on older p2 processors, like a p2-300? I heard they kinda suck on them? Will they be better than a plain tnt or Voodoo2? And will the cheapo 16mb cards max out my processor, or could a tnt2-ultra help?

Also, how does the fact that AGP isn't supported by linux effect these cards performance?

Also again, anyone wanna post a screenshot? Just to see how the visual quality is on Mesa.

--
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent

Re:Which one to get? by Dehumanizer · 1999-06-03 17:14 · Score: 1

The TNT2 will always be faster, but the faster the processor, the bigger the difference between the TNT and TNT2. On a P2-300 (I have one) we SEE the difference. On a P200mmx, probably not a lot. Also, the TNT2 has other advantages over the original TNT, such as the 32Mb (even less texture swapping, i.e. pauses during games) and a much smaller performance hit when doing 32-bit color instead of 16-bit color, at the same resolution. But both are great cards, and pure 3dfx killers if you ask me. :)

--
The Tlog - a technology blog

Re:Support for IDT Winchip C6.. JK by Ellis-D · 1999-06-02 20:26 · Score: 0

Well i'm waiting till end of summer or october before I get new machine. By october all the K7 should be sorted out. Hopefully a TNT 3 will be out..hehe.
I ate my tag line.

--
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-

Re:Calm Down Y'all by Booker · 1999-06-02 05:58 · Score: 1

Open source 3D drivers for today's cutting-edge video chipsets? I reserve the right to be excited. I understand that it's preliminary. That doesn't make me less excited. :-)

Re:BeOS by Adnans · 1999-06-02 06:44 · Score: 1

Seesh, you remind me of myself a few months back. Be this, Be that, Been! aarghl! :) -adnans

--
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds

I step closer to deleting windows! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 13:34 · Score: 0

Games are stopping me from deleting windows. This puts me one step closer. I want to delete windows off my HD so bad too! Once XFree86 4.0 comes out, loki shoots off more games, and (the big one) WINE is deemed "beta," windows will be probably gone for good: maybe sooner. Btw, how does WINE handle DirectX calls? And, does loki look for FreeBSD testers to test stuff under linux "emulation"?

Re:XFree86 4.0 by pmsyyz · 1999-06-02 13:19 · Score: 1

Q3A does support DirectX, just not Direct3D. Q3A will use DirectDraw and DirectSound if available, and other parts of DirectX also.

There are many API's in DirectX, some good, some bad.

--
Phillip

Re:A non-systems programmer question... by Ethan · 1999-06-03 09:57 · Score: 1

Yeah, I guess I worded that poorly. I know the fb doesn't do 3D... I understood that there was a lot more 2D stuff, too, though. I haven't looked at the source or anything.
Ethan

Re:Two or three more here by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 09:36 · Score: 0

Anand got hold of some Windows TNT/TNT2 drivers that had the 3dnow hookups Detonator were supposed to have. Very nice, about the level of performance boost 3dfx had when they came out with their 3dnow driver set. So no need to fear on the windows bunch. As for Mesa/Linux , its open-source and the money that Carmack donated is going to pay a guy to do optimisations to Mesa, including improving 3dnow support.

Check out the whole TNT review at http://www.anandtech.com

Running something like Quake2 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:13 · Score: 1

I'm a bit confused as to how these "drivers" work. Are they distributing their own X server (source or binary, whatever) for the TNT/TNT2? I think i just read the "mesa libs are built-in to the X server". How would quake2 use these then? I'm a bit confused on how the drivers fit together in the end - could someone explain? I couldn't piece it together from what they had on their page.

Speaking of Quake, how would run Quake3? Does it run on my Voodoo1 through XFree86 (the newest version, whatever) and Glide/Mesa, or are there larger forces at work here?

Re:Running something like Quake2 by drig · 1999-06-02 06:49 · Score: 1

Okay, I started writing this and then figured there is a good chance I don't know what I'm talking about. Everything after this sentence should be viewed as as AFAIK.

They have Mesa drivers to do 3D in hardware, but also GLX drivers. GLX is implemented as a module that you add to XFree86 that allows you to use OpenGL calls over the network. This is a useful thing. It allows you to send simple GL instructions ("Draw a sphere here and a box there") instead of pixmaps, and thus save bandwidth. It is useful even for local access because it saves a bunch of pixmap copying.

So, you don't need to use the X module for Quake or anything, but it might end up being a little faster.

Apparently, they also made one change to XFree86 to scratch an itch the developer had. Something about stippled fills and the way it made the KDE logout screen look. Sounds like a good thing, and an indication that NVidia might be a fun place to work.

--
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics

3dfx drivers by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:06 · Score: 0

uhh, as far as i know, the 3dfx voodoo1/2 and banshee/voodoo3 drivers are open source, and programmed my daryl strauss. check out glide.xxedgexx.com for more details. i just wanted to let all of the 3dfx bashers know

Re:Calm Down Y'all by Fizgig · 1999-06-02 09:38 · Score: 2

About the AGP: that's Intel's fault, not nVidia's. Intel won't release the specs for the GART interface on their chipsets. The other chipset manufacturers will, but that's just for Super7 chipsets, which is a minority of the market, making it more difficult to get something working.

heat issues by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 09:20 · Score: 0

I read that both the new Voodoo and TNT2 based cards run very hot. is this true for all cards (which ones do you recommend?)

do they run hot only when the 3d stuff is active or all the time?

Re:heat issues by PenguinDude · 1999-06-02 20:53 · Score: 1

I can't comment on the temp of the Voodoo3, and can only say that a friend of mine has a V2 and it runs very, er warm...
My baby is a P3-500 w/TNT2 Ultra. The board from Diamond (v770U) ships with active cooling (i.e heatsink + fan) and I have no heat issues whatsoever. The Diamond InControls 99 that their TNT2 ships with has a very nice overclocking feature. Even with bumping up the core/memory speeds a bit (like thats even necessary!!), the card still handles incredibly well. (please bear in mind that the InControls app is for windoze!)

As far as cards go, I recommend the Diamond Vipers. Yes, they cost a bit more ($239-240 for the Ultras), but they are very well rounded cards that perform well. Plus the v770 Ultras InControls app lets you set the OpenGL/DirectX effects (anti-aliasing, mipmapping, fog tables, etc) on a per-game basis. Definately cool. I have three viper cards (v330, v550, v770U) and each one really rocks.

In all, the Diamond cards are a good buy. Yes, you pay a tad more, but in my opinion, you get your money's worth.

Moderation strikes again... by Catullus · 1999-06-02 18:08 · Score: 1

While I agree that this was an interesting and relevant comment, and it's always nice to hear what the "star personalities" of the Linux world have to say... it's weird that this post got immediately moderated up to 5. The content of a post is (usually) more important than who wrote it.

--

must be my lucky day by wdixon · 1999-06-02 10:31 · Score: 1

I logged on this evening and checked my mail and found that the V3 I ordered 2 days ago was out of order. As a result, the order was cancelled. I then visit Slashdot and see this. Must be my lucky day...

Re:Sproingies by Fandango · 1999-06-02 10:44 · Score: 1

Yes, sproingies looks really cool, but on my 16MB TNT2 (Guillemot Maxi Gamer Xentor), I can't run it in full-screen mode (it's *extremely* flickery). Has anyone else seen this problem? -Jake

--

--
Jake

Two or three more here by roystgnr · 1999-06-02 07:26 · Score: 2

If the frame rates on this thing are in the ballpark with the Voodoo 3 3000 (and last I heard they weren't much slower, even with 32 bit rendering on), I'm getting one. I'm worried about performance on my K6II, though - all the benchmarks I've seen show 3dfx cards performing almost evenly with Celerons at the same clock speed, while TNT/TNT2 performance falls off dramatically.

I know a couple other people whose only gripe with the TNT2 was the lack of Linux support - I expect their minds are made up solidly now.

Re:Too late by VinceJH · 1999-06-03 15:48 · Score: 1

Got a Creative TNT. Should still last me until 2001.

--
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent

Thank you nVidia! by NaCh0 · 1999-06-02 06:40 · Score: 1

This is great news. I purchased a TNT a few months ago because it was the best and there were signs of linux drivers. Then nVidia pulled the source back. The public spoke and full drivers are available now! I knew nVidia would kickass.

Brian

Q3 works but only in window mode by pavlos · 1999-06-03 19:47 · Score: 1

I have a Debian 2.1, kernel 2.2.6, glibc, Xfree86 3.3.2 with the new NVIDIA 3.3.3.1 server.

I found that Q3 worked acceptably at 800x600 resolution but only in a window. It looks great too, even at 16bpp. All the OpenGL features, such as textures on jump pods, portals, marks on walls etc. work correctly.

To get a pleasant game experience I added an 800x600 mode to my X server, switch to that with CTRL ALT +, and carefully scroll the view to match the window before entering the arena, while I still have use of the mouse.

This was a bit of a mess to set up for debian. First, converting the .rpm to a .deb and then installing it doesn't work because the files end up in /usr/local/games and it seems to need write access to the game directory to write a config file. Better to convert to .tgz (with "alien") and unpack in your home directory. Next, it tried to start in full screen mode and failed, causing the game graphics to appear in an otherwise garbled screen. It doesn't seen able to exit this mode so I had to kill the X server several times to get it working. After much frobbing I eventually managed to convince it to run in a window and save the configuration file. No problems after that. My advice is, run once until it saves a config file and then edit the file to set the "in window" option.

Best of luck
Pavlos Papageorgiou
pavlos@please.avoid.spam.voxar.com

Re:Q3 works but only in window mode by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-04 01:49 · Score: 0

After some fooling with it I got Q3 to work in full screen mode. I had to add 640x480 mode to my X server which is what I think made it work.

just wanted to add my "yay" by stor · 1999-06-02 13:47 · Score: 1

This is fan-bloody-tastic. I wanted to go Riva instead of Voodoo, because I actually care a lot more about image quality (32bpp) than a couple more frames/sec.

I thought I'd be stuck with a v3 (16bpp) solution. Now thank god we have the support of NVidia. What I can't believe is that they released _source_ and binary drivers... that's incredibly good. That means that it won't take long for the drivers to be optimised and adapted to XF864.0.

Well you got my money NVidia, thanks guys... we _really_ appreciate it. You made my day. A lot of us want to ditch windoze even as a gaming platform asap and this sort of support really helps us do that.

Cheers

Stor

--
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"

Multitexturing not implemented by lsd · 1999-06-03 11:14 · Score: 1

Cool! This thing actually works... but I'm only getting ~13fps on my K6-2 300 with TNT. According to q2's GL renderer, the multitexture extension ins't implemented. Has anyone else checked this?

Where is G200 GLX? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-03 08:34 · Score: 0

I can't seem to find it

A day too late! by Nelson+Minar · 1999-06-02 06:13 · Score: 1

Argh, I just ordered a new video card. I wanted a TNT2, but I went with a Matrox card because I mostly need 2d graphics and XFree86 supports the G200 well. If I'd only known this a week ago, I would have bought a TNT2 instead. Oh well, next time!

Re:A day too late! by dirty · 1999-06-02 08:41 · Score: 1

IIRC US laws requires that a company allow you 72 hours to cancel an order made via internet/phone. So assuming the 72 hours hasn't yet expired you should still be able to cancel the order. Failing that, if the product hasn't shipped yet it should be possible to cancel it, and if it has been shipped, uhm...you could always refuse the package, you'd probally eat the shipping though.

--

-matt

Are you listening, Creative Technologies? by Bruce+Perens · 1999-06-02 06:01 · Score: 5

Creative is an OEM of Nvidia chip sets. Creative, nothing in your sound cards can possibly be as proprietary as Nvidia's 3D chip. Let's please have real Open Source drivers for all of your sound cards, and hardware documentation on the web. Lead the pack, don't be a reluctant follower.

Thanks

Bruce Perens

--
Bruce Perens.

Re:Are you listening, Creative Technologies? by Griffone · 1999-06-02 06:45 · Score: 1

Anyone else notice how Creative changed their Driver Download page recently? (past 6 mos or so) You now have to go through about a 8 page EULA to get your drivers (Win9x/NT).

For the card you already bought.

Can we say HUH?

I like creative stuff, but I think its about time they took that big hunk of wood out of their $%^.

--
I used to have a cool sig.
Re:Are you listening, Creative Technologies? by NaCh0 · 1999-06-02 06:19 · Score: 1

Bruce, I agree. I'm buying a Trident 4DWAVE-NX based soundcard next Monday when the vendor (hoontech.com) gets their secure ordering back online. Trident was excellent enough to give their tech specs to the ALSA team. I only wished more card makers would use this chipset.

Brian
Re:Are you listening, Creative Technologies? by Athos · 1999-06-02 06:51 · Score: 1

I think this is about leveraging the successes we've had.

--

--
-- The Internet is the Suppository of All Knowledge. You get it in the end.
Re:Are you listening, Creative Technologies? by Signal+11 · 1999-06-02 06:23 · Score: 1

Hey Bruce, not to rain on your parade, but this is alittle offtopic. We're talking about nVidia, and the release of their 3D specs, not Creative. They're two seperate entities, and they have different agendas. Not only that, but they're seperate markets altogether.

Now please, come down off the soap-box. We're here to commend nVidia for taking a brave stand, not castigate Creative for staying proprietary.

--
Re:Are you listening, Creative Technologies? by doomy · 1999-06-02 11:53 · Score: 1

I don't feel that was very appropirate. SIG11 your coment was obviously wrtten to cause a nation wide flame war and create a long line of off-topic posting.

It was obvious that your posting was an attempt to drag attention to your sorry self and make some rather unwarrented stabs at an otherwise respected individual. IMHO, it was your posting that was offtopic and self-centered. I just wish this whole thread get moderated out. I'm removed my moderation hat for this whole thread..

--

--
...free your source and the rest would follow...

Re:Support for AMD? by birchallr · 1999-06-02 20:28 · Score: 1

"The AMD K6 (at least the ones without 3DNow!) was never designed to be a games machine. In fact, getting a Pentium of a _lower_ chip speed will often help you. But of course, other things (remember the K6 series has been optimized for business applications, just like the Cyrixes) will be slower."

Pentiums were never "designed to be a games machine" either.

Nothing wrong with the AMD chips. However many games are optimized for the way the Pentium FPU works, which hurts performance on non-Intel.

AMD would have to *exactly* clone the Intel FPU to take advantage of the same optimizations, which they cannot do.

The 3DNow! instructions were an attempt at an end-run around this business problem.

Richard

Re:Never too late! by JamesHenstridge · 1999-06-02 10:55 · Score: 1

Have you actually tried out the latest G200 glx drivers? I did a few days back, and was very impressed. It ran quake 2 very smoothly at 640x480 (the X server was running with a 16-bit visual). I tried out q3test, and after turning down the texture detail (the game still looked very good), it also ran smoothly (same res/depth).

The best thing is that this driver will get better and faster. From what I hear, they are working on something that may allow them to use the WARP engine, which should give a good speed up. Also there are many places where the driver can be optimised.

Note that this is a beta driver, and does have bugs, and a few memory leaks (you may want to restart your X server after a few games of quake).

I am not saying that other cards will not give better performance, but the G200 gives great 2D performance, and gives fairly good 3D performance, and looks like it will improve.

If you want more information about the G200 glx drivers, go to http://www.on.openprojects.net/glx/

Call me crazy... by gavinhall · 1999-06-02 05:46 · Score: 0

Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:

...but that sounds like good news. 8^)
--
"Please remember that how you say something is often more important than what you say." - Rob Malda

Re:oh no! now i need TWO xservers!!! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 08:01 · Score: 0

Dave --

Thank you. It's heartening knowing that people
are listening out there, after having heard nought
but silence from companies such as Aureal. May
the community thank nVidia in a way IT
appreciates...

a TNT user

(hmmmmmm. wonder whether reporters would be disturbed at the threatening acronym appearing so many times on the web...)

Re: 3dfx visual quality by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 07:36 · Score: 0

Voodoo3 also renders in 16bit which looks like shit...

Not true -- the V3 looks pretty good with the new drivers, much better than the Voodoo 2, which not too many people complained about anyway. See the *updated* screenshots at http://tomshardware.com

missing rpms by ralphclark · 1999-06-02 07:53 · Score: 1

The FAQ on their site promises rpms on metalab.unc.edu for the XF86_SVGA server and the appropriate libs...guess what, they're not there, even when you allow for the fact they garbled the pathname of the directory.

:o(
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction

Re:missing rpms by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 08:15 · Score: 0

I'm pretty sure that it's referring to the standard XFree86 release, not the update for the TNT. They're just saying you have to start w/ the latest standard XFree. You can get the RPMs most anywhere, try redhat mirrors or rpmfind.net

Re:Sproingies by Ben+Chu · 1999-06-02 10:52 · Score: 1

I see the same thing on a 8MB Riva 128 ZX.

Re:DirectX is good by HipPriest · 1999-06-03 18:43 · Score: 1

I see "Linux needs DirectX equivalent" a lot. I disagree:

Direct3D: Obviously not, OpenGL.

DirectDraw: Nope, this was necessary on Windows because the normal GDI method were so bad for games. X has already had MITSHM for a long time and more recently there is DGA.

DirectSound: This is the only one where there might be a point. Linux has a good sound API and it is trivial to write a mixing sound server, but the problem is everyone writes their own (I'm guilty too, I wrote one last year) so different apps don't mediate access to sound device well. Nevertheless a defacto standard will probably emerge based on the new desktop environments, KDE and GNOME, although I haven't checked yet if their solutions are adequate for realtime gaming performance.

DirectInput: Nope, check out the 2.2 kernels for the extensive joystick-like input device support.

DirectPlay: This is nonsense, trivial syntactic sugar. Any serious networked game is going to write their own networking code on low level sockets.

Scrolled off the main slashdot page so no one will read this but what the hell.

thanks! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:41 · Score: 0

That definitely answers my question.

Re:thanks! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:58 · Score: 0

I detect a note of sarcasm in your post. However, his post gave me an excellent idea for a little "adult" merchandising.

Anonymous Spanker

Re:Strategic Advantage by larien · 1999-06-02 16:41 · Score: 1

Well, this certainly gives me more of a reason to buy an nVidia card when I upgrade my PC (probably near the end of the year). I wanted a good 3D accelerator after having seen a P166 + 3D card produce graphics far better than my 233 could have. However, I was always going to make sure that the linux support was there (and possibly Solaris). I'll probably now get an nVidia card when the time comes, unless some better 3D support is supplied.
--

Re:Sproingies by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 17:24 · Score: 0

i was reading some web site with bench marking and whatnot and it had that card on there.. it was the worse of the three it looked like ( between the diamond, and the hercules and yours ). they said that the xentor would leaves weird traces on the screen and whatnot. the hercules was said to be the fastest .. i'm going with the diamond ( i have a slow cpu and i wont be able to enjoy half the acceleration the ultra gives me anyway %) ).

- Catatonic

Re:Calm Down Y'all by Chad+Page · 1999-06-02 06:53 · Score: 1

A lot of it is that it's indirect rendering which will be fixed in XFree86 4.0... woo hoo.

Kudos to nVIDIA, BTW. :)

Never too late! by Inhume · 1999-06-02 06:38 · Score: 1

Ack, return it. The G200 is a stellar desktop performer, but it's truly craptastic for games and GL stuff. Either exchange it for a TNT2, or wait a little bit longer for the G400; both will run circles around a G200. Myself, I'd probably go with the nVidia. Matrox has yet to write a decent OpenGL ICD, even for Win9x/NT, so I'm somewhat supicious of their intentions/abilities.

I suppose if you don't game it really doesn't matter much, and you could incur a sickeningly high restocking fee for returning the G200, but depending on what you do, it may be worth it.

Re:XFree86 4.0 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 17:28 · Score: 0

Who needs DirectX? OpenGL is enough for me.

Re:You smoke crack by luminiferous · 1999-06-02 06:59 · Score: 1

You'd also have a million cards that just so happened to be 3dfx compatible. You already do have OpenGL compatability ontop of glide.

From a corporate point of view 3dfx's way is better.

Didn't they exist before? by rav · 1999-06-02 06:38 · Score: 1

Didn't the X drivers exist before (Xfree 3.3.3.1)? I don't mean the GL drivers. This is really good news though and I'm sure nvidia will be surprised by the amount of people who download the drivers.

Re:Didn't they exist before? by jwilloug · 1999-06-02 10:58 · Score: 1

Yeah, the FAQ mentions that code was used as a base. There's was some moderate 2D support for the NV1, RIVA 128, and TNT chipsets, but nothing official, and it was far from complete.

And, of course, 3D support rocks. Now I can check out Tux: A Quest For Herring!

Re:XFree86 4.0 by Submarine · 1999-06-02 16:49 · Score: 1

XFree86 4.0 is going forward slowly.

There are major changes, mainly the driver structures has been enhanced, allowing for dynamically loadable, OS-independent drivers to be loaded. This is intended for boards manufacturers; for now, if they wanted to ship Linux drivers with the board, they had to put a full X server.

Unfortunately, that means that some porting is needed for the old drivers.

Other added goodies include:
- antialiased graphics (especially TrueType text);
this is currently under development
- 3D stuff.

Quake2 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 13:55 · Score: 0

I am getting great performance with quake2. However, I can not get the mouse to stick! Does anyone know how to get the mouse to work for q2 so that I can use it to look and turn????

Re:Quake2 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 20:41 · Score: 0

Try to run "gpm -k" before you run quake2

Closed source. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:19 · Score: 0

Those drivers are awesome, Daryll is the man. But 3Dfx won't let him release any specs or source for the 3D processor.

-=-Faux Pas III (fauxpas@cc.gatech.edu)-=-

Whoo hoo! by Espressoman · 1999-06-02 05:48 · Score: 0

Good job nVidia. Gee, someone must have read the really convincing letter I sent them the other day ;o)

Re:How about NetBSD support? -- and others by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 11:40 · Score: 0

Yeah, what about us *BSD Users? But hey, I guess we can always TRY the linux ones, I mean glide seems to work. Though this makes me happy, good starting point for other platforms.

Re:Strategic Advantage by _vapor · 1999-06-02 21:42 · Score: 1

This is something that puzzles me a little bit.. I run a K6-2 400mhz with a 16MB Riva TNT to play Quake2, and with or without 3DNOW support enabled, I can't notice any difference from an P400. I've done the research, and seen all the benchmarks comparing K6-2 and Pentiums. I realize the Intel chip is supposed to be superior with FPUs and such, with all the integrated instructions, but I really don't see any difference in performance firsthand.
Anyway, back on topic.. if you wait until the end of the year, get an AMD K7 (probably $200 cheaper than the Intel) at 600mhz (which i believe it will be, although I could be mistaken) and a 32MB Riva, I'd be willing to guarantee you won't find a difference from an Intel chip.. I've been happily surprised with my nVidia.

--
www.poak.net

Re:$$$$$$$ from me i am buying one this Weekend!!! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:01 · Score: 0

This is where we prove that a Linux can bring in the cash.

Re:Strategic Advantage by fastcard · 1999-06-02 18:09 · Score: 1

You should be administering our lovely RGU network, not perusing the wonderful /. !!

Anyway, yeah...I now have a reason to re-install SuSE on my development box. Lack of OpenGL support is the main reason Linux has only temporary residence on my machine.

I recommend a TNT2 Ultra.....

Ryszard Sommefeldt - RGU Student!!
http://www.planet3dfx.com/fastcard
fastcard@planet3dfx.com

--
-- Ryszard

Re: 3dfx visual quality by arielb · 1999-06-02 07:43 · Score: 1

it's still 16 bit

--
---

Re:Support for AMD? by Sesse · 1999-06-03 19:59 · Score: 1

The Pentium was made for general-purpose stuff (including games) _and_ FPU-intensive stuff. The Pentium FPU is pipelined, the K6' FPU is not. No matter how good a coder you are, you can get about 2x the FPU performance of a Pentium vs. the K6, with both CPUs running properly optimized code (for themselves). (The K6 can issue a FPU instruction about every 2 cycles, the Pentium can do one every cycle, if you pipeline correctly.)

Besides, the 3DNow! instructions are single precision, which limits their use somewhat. (They aren't SIMD either, BTW.)

/* Steinar */

--
(This comment is of course GPLed.)

How about Quake 1? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-03 12:19 · Score: 0

I tried glquake (quake 1) with the new drivers yesterday. But I couldn't seem to get it to work, because glquake wants glide drivers. How do I get this to work???

BeOS Rocks! by Vryl · 1999-06-02 09:43 · Score: 0

Linux rocks pretty much as well, but it is really a server OS that ppl are transforming (some for politcal reasons, but most just cos they can) into a general purpose OS.

Now, BeOS is superoptimized, single user OS for multimedia, and will always piss on linux for these uses. I wouldn't use it as my webserver tho . . .

You gotta watch it running multiple quicktime windows, whilst copying info from the cd-rom to the desktop and playing an mp3 to really understand how good it is.

I hope it goes well. Linux/BeOS is a nice fit . . . they go well together. BeOS has a nice shell, very familiar to unix users, and some really good apps for sound/video etc. It dual boots really nice with doze or whatever, and on the PII-300 boots in about 8 seconds.

'forsaken' maybe, but it is damn fine . . . nVidia has been the card of choice for BeOS for a while now as well

Re:BeOS Rocks! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 20:52 · Score: 0

You can emulate C in Prolog? Damn, I'm impressed.
Re:BeOS Rocks! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 21:51 · Score: 0

writing as a video editor, multiple windows PLAYING VIDEO AT THE SAME TIME is not useful, it is in fact confusing, we prefer to look at one thing at a time :)

Showing Gratitude by FreekyGeek · 1999-06-03 16:53 · Score: 1

I think it's important that we all take time to send some "thank you" email to Nvidia for this. We don't want to be seen as ungrateful complainers who never do anything but write flames. I suggest that when a company makes a good move like this, we make sure that they know we noticed, we cared, and we will patronize them with our business. A little goodwill goes a long way, and what comes around, goes around, and soon.

Writing to the guy who pushed it through is nice, certainly, and he deserves a lot of credit, but I also think we should write the PR people, the sales people, and other PHB types.

Doug Linder
public@ario.ch

Screw creative. GO TRIDENT! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:15 · Score: 0

Forget creative, they dont get it. Trident does. Get a hoontech card. It rocks!

Re:Screw creative. GO TRIDENT! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 08:28 · Score: 0

Why was this post moderated down? Other than the less formal tone it says the same thing as the post below it (the message is the same anyway).
Re:Screw creative. GO TRIDENT! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-03 23:40 · Score: 0

Yea Hoontech is a bunch of funky mothers. Try!! 8D
customer service man! For instance Hoontech made
Linux driver for their cards almost a year early
before Creative released their Sound Blaster Live!
beta driver. And Hoontech supplied developer specs.
Instead of going for multiple page ads in mags...
there is already drivers by Gerd for Hoontech
Sound Track series and Guillemot Maxisound ...

look under audio at http://www.linuxhardware.net

Thank you Dave! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 11:04 · Score: 0

It appears that its time for me to pick up that TNT2 and once XFree 4 is out I'll dump my Voodoo2! You're great Dave! This is a great contribution to Linux. Thanks again.

-Speedy

Re:XFree86 4.0 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 07:55 · Score: 0

ClanLib (http://www.clanlib.org) offers a good
cross-platform API, as does SDL (http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/).

Re:Strategic Advantage by larien · 1999-06-03 21:03 · Score: 1

You should be administering our lovely RGU network, not perusing the wonderful /. !!

Well, this lets me keep up to date with a fair few things I wouldn't otherwise be hearing much about.

In any case, the TNT2 sounds real good; there's one in a local shop (Electronic Boutique, FWIW) for 100 quid, although I could probably get it cheaper mail order. I'm sorely tempted just to get one for my current PC... So many toys, so little money!
--

Re:Do you feel HORNY? by Lars+J · 1999-06-02 16:50 · Score: 1

Yeah baby! YEAH!!!!

Shagadelic! Smashing baby!

Now, Austin Powers is funny. Why moderate this down to -1? "We're just trying to get a rise out of you, for shits and giggles" ;)

Lars J

2d appears to be about the same as 3.3.3.1 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 17:36 · Score: 0

Has the general 2d support changed much? I still use 100% cpu when I drap my Netscape window around (ie. the XFree86 3.3.3.1 driver appears to be about the same speed for 2d).

Re:DirectX is good by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-03 23:17 · Score: 0

alsalib ? www.alsa-project.org
and for 2d, try sprite32, OpenPTC www.scene.org/ptc www.ggi-project.org

Linux audio beats windows audio by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-03 17:01 · Score: 0

> You are right though, quality audio support in
> Linux is lacking. However, BeOS
> blows Winblows out of the water if you want to
> do cool stuff with sound.

Do your homework before spreading FUD. IMHO ALSA, is better than MMAPI and DirectSound. You can get much lower audio latency in Linux with ALSA than Winblows, it's easier to program and for realtime performance there's RT/Linux (although I'm not sure if it's possible to use it with ALSA drivers) It's not the support that is lacking, but the applications. I'm doing something about it whenever I have spare time.

If you meant support for high-end cards, it's certainly true that they usually don't have drivers for Linux, but it may change if more companies start to supply drivers and hopefully write audio software for Linux.

Re:thats great and everything but... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 07:01 · Score: 0

No it does not mean that at all. They run in full screen like q3test does and then after it exits you are automatically kicked back in to X with your normal res.

thats great and everything but... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:54 · Score: 0

Correct me if im wrong (im aware that theres a large possibility that i am), but doesnt that mean that you can only run these things in a window in X? Sorry, but that just sucks. The 2d stuff sounds great, but running games in a window is shitty. am i the only one who feels this way?

That doesnt mean im not glad about all this, it just means that ill stick with my voodoo^2 until these drivers are somewhat useable.

Excellent move nVidia! by Caballero · 1999-06-02 05:49 · Score: 4

Dave Schmenk of nVidia deserves a lot of credit for pulling this off.

Hopefully this will be a good example for other hardware vendors.

We're moving rapidly towards making Linux into a good 3D workstation!

- |Daryll

Strategic Advantage by Signal+11 · 1999-06-02 05:50 · Score: 2

This will give them a strategic advantage over 3dfx - the TNT drivers will be preferred over 3dfx on linux, which means nVidia will have a larger share of the market on linux.

3dfx should realize this, and if they're smart, the rest of the industry will shortly follow suit, and we'll have open sourced drivers for most (all?) 3D products. My hats are off to them for creating an excellent product, and for letting us tinker with it. I'm sure this will only accellerate 3D uses with linux (GAMES!) and it's acceptance into mainstream.

Thanks guys!!

--

Re:Strategic Advantage by fastcard · 1999-06-14 20:59 · Score: 1

They finally got a price for the Xentor in EB. Hmm....100 quid sounds not too bad, although I think it's only a 16Mb version.

I'm tempted by the Creative Labs TNT2 Ultra (about £145 from Dabs I think). I think I'll stick with the TNT2 and Creative Labs since I already have a Creative TNT.

Can't wait for XF86 4.0 and proper hardware acceleration.

BTW, did you get hit hard at RGU by Worm.Explore??

--
-- Ryszard

Are you listening, 3DFX ? by knghtbrd · 1999-06-02 18:46 · Score: 1

You said it Bruce! I suddenly have this urge to find some cash and buy myself a TNT2. I sincerely hope the people at 3DFX and Creative Labs are both listening.

We want SOURCE!

2 weeks? by Booker · 1999-06-02 06:12 · Score: 2

I'm sure that requests from the Linux community had a lot to do with the release of these drivers, but give them some credit - they've been working on these for more than 2 weeks. Read the FAQ - Dave said there are 10 man YEARS in the windows version of the drivers. These things don't fall together overnight. Linux users can get pretty impatient while they wait for hardware support, but it's important to refrain from shouting "(hardware vendor here) SUCKS!" if you mail them and you don't have drivers within 2 weeks.

NVIDIA did a good thing here - if you mailed them requesting the drivers, make sure you mail them and let them know how much you support their action.

I agree with Bruce by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 08:28 · Score: 0

I liked Bruce's post. When I first read the headline all I thought was "got to buy one to run Quake 3 on!!!" but after Bruce's post I realized this could be even more far reaching and help other people "see the light."

Re:16BPP Limit - Only on RIVA? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 11:04 · Score: 0

The FAQ is unclear on this. The author at some points
appears to distinguish between RIVA and TNT.
Context suggests this 16bpp limits may be a memory
limitation on the older cards.

Anyone know for sure?

Anyone getting speedups in 32bpp mode on TNT's?

Dwayne

How about NetBSD support? by Zach+Fine · 1999-06-02 11:29 · Score: 1

So now that the specs are out, I'm hoping to see drivers for other free software platforms in the near future.

The question on my mind is whether or not the linux gl driver for the TNT will be at all usable with NetBSD, or whether I'll have to wait for the next XFree86 to get a native NetBSD binary of the drivers.

Maybe I'll wait on purchasing that new graphics card.

Re:How about NetBSD support? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 11:46 · Score: 0

Support is here NOW!

They've only released *binaries* for Linux, but the *source* can be compiled for any unix architecture supported by XFree86. You should invest a little time compiling X and optimizing it for your processor anyway. The default binaries you get with your distribution are (usually) optimized for a 386 processor, so as you can imagine the speed increase is remarkable.

I run FreeBSD here, and was a little worried that they'd only release a binary version of their TNT2 drivers.

Three cheers for nVidia!

Support for AMD? by Sesse · 1999-06-02 19:23 · Score: 1

Are you talking about AMDs 3DNow! technology, or what?

The AMD K6 (at least the ones without 3DNow!) was never designed to be a games machine. In fact, getting a Pentium of a _lower_ chip speed will often help you. But of course, other things (remember the K6 series has been optimized for business applications, just like the Cyrixes) will be slower. Perhaps it's time for a little system upgrade after all :-) Of course, it all depends on your own system, and the money you've got. If you want to be a serious gamer, you _do_ have to pay a bit. That's life...

/* Steinar */

--
(This comment is of course GPLed.)

Re:Support for AMD? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-05 05:23 · Score: 0

What makes a good, cheap, fast compile engine, then?

Hey, How about a Poll ?! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:42 · Score: 0

I for one am going to be ditching the Voodoo Banshee card I have, which works exceedingly well mind you, for an nVidia card in the very near future. I doubt I'm alone. How about a poll regarding how this move by nVidia has directly affected people's purchasing plans ? Something to send to nVidia to show support, something to send 3Dfx to get them thinking, etc etc etc.

Yes! Yay! Whoo! Yippee! Bonzer! by leonbrooks · 1999-06-02 07:10 · Score: 1

news from XFree86 that a pre-4.0 build will be available in July 1999

Th' millennium done arrived! (-:

Now I can do my OpenGLised window manager, with a REAL desktop (with lamp, blotter and clock... and mouse...?), windows that REALLY minimise and proper fade-in (alpha channel) menus and popups!

--
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing

Language? by Vryl · 1999-06-09 04:02 · Score: 1

from everything.blockstackers.com:

PROLOG
Writeup by jankr
I like this write up
I don't like this writeup
Undirected graph database management system with built-in depth first search primitives. Not much more. Often mistaken for a programming language.

Re:XFree86 4.0 by Kyobu · 1999-06-02 06:22 · Score: 1

NT doesn't even have DirectX. That means you can't play Q3 unless you have OpenGL, which means I can't play it in my AP Chem class. I have to either do it in Journalism or at home. :)

--
Switch the . and the @ to email me.

Good timing! by Greyfox · 1999-06-02 07:11 · Score: 1

I'm plotting an upgrade cycle Real Soon now and will finally be getting rid of my Diamond Stealth/Diamond Monster cards as part of the cycle. I was hoping something would happen with nvidia before I started and it did. That makes me hap-hap-happy!

--

I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

Who's handling bugs? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 17:41 · Score: 0

Is there someplace we should send "things that go wrong"?

I found that with the new Nvidia driver, xterms opens "too small" for my default font: -*-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-normal-*-*-110-100-10 0-*-*-iso8859-*

I'd track down the bug myself, but I'm currently in a release cycle at my day job ;'P

Re:Who's handling bugs? by Ethan · 1999-06-02 21:03 · Score: 1

This is certainly a good question, as my Xserver segfaulted over night last night... I'm not sure if I should blame it on E-0.16 or the new Xserver, though. ;-)
Ethan

Let them know by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:55 · Score: 0

This is wonderful news!

Please, please let them know how you feel. (I emailed info@nvidia.com, as I was unable to find a more relevant address on their web site.)

Tell them that it really matters that they took the time to open source their drivers.

I plan to go out and buy a TNT2 today. I've never bought an nVidia video card before.

Let them know that their efforts were worthwhile!

Re:Let them know by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 07:19 · Score: 0

I just emailed them. And I ordered a new TNT2 :)

Re:XFree86 4.0 by sterwill · 1999-06-02 12:19 · Score: 1

OpenGL is fantastic at 2D graphics--buy the OpenGL Programmer's Guide and Reference Guide. "Open Graphics Language" doesn't have "3D" anywhere in the title.

Drivers for FreeBSD by mathematician · 1999-06-02 21:42 · Score: 1

I have compiled these drivers for FreeBSD 3.x. Get them at

http://math.missouri.edu/~stephen/software/xfsft/F reeBSD-3.x/xfsft-1.0.3.patch1/XF86-3.3.3 .1/.

(Note the link does not work when you click on it because somehow an extra space is put into the web address, and I just cannot get it to disappear. So click on it, then remove the space, then it will work.)

Quake 3 runs... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:20 · Score: 0

According to a post further down. My reading of the FAQ is that Q3 was not recommended becuase of lack of speed of the current unoptimized drivers.

Diamond Edge-3D by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 12:21 · Score: 0

Does this really mean ALL nvidia-based cards? Even the old Edge-3D with its nv1 chipset? As I recall, that one was pretty much useless with any polygon-based API such as DirectX or OpenGL.

Nope by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:16 · Score: 0

Completely closed on the 3d end of it.. 3DFX only opened up their 2d specs.

XFree86 4.0 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 05:54 · Score: 0

Does any one know when it will come out? Linux NEEDS (really bad) a good video system to compete with BeOS & NT. NT 5.0 seems pretty dam good workstation OS.

Re:XFree86 4.0 by Betcour · 1999-06-02 07:13 · Score: 1

Err - NT DOES have DirectX 3.0, and Winblows 2000 (aka NT 5) have full DirectX 6 support (rumors says DirectX 7).

So far Linux lacks a good gaming API. OpenGL is good for 3D, but what about 2D, sound, midi, etc... ?
Re:XFree86 4.0 by drig · 1999-06-03 04:30 · Score: 1

Heh...poor phrasing. I meant, when you search the XFree86 web page, look for the phrase "release plans" to find the section that talks about release. Sorry to anyone who was confused.

--
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
Re:XFree86 4.0 by drig · 1999-06-02 08:32 · Score: 1

The website says that they'll be releasing alpha versions this July. Look for "release plans" or something similar.

--
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
Re:XFree86 4.0 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 09:55 · Score: 0

Anyone know when XFree 4.0 is supposed to come out?
I think 3.3.3.2 will come out first, with new 3dfx and S3 support.

Re:Packaging by Caballero · 1999-06-02 07:59 · Score: 1

I wanted to make it as easy for users as possible. Having support for each distribution in its own native packaging fomat would be the best answer. Unfortunetly, I can't do that. I don't have the time to make separate packages and install scripts and maintain all the different distributions on my system. So I had to compromise. For MOST people the easiest solution is an RPM. (Red Hat, SUSE, and Caldera)

I didn't want to leave other users out in the cold. My website has two different solutions for converting out of the RPM, either alien or rpm2cpio. So if RPM doesn't work for you, you've got an alternative. I've also had other distributions do the work of repackaging, which was fine with me.

The problem with a tar.gz is that you need to know how to install it, where to install it, and to do any of the extra steps required for correct execution. A single RPM bundles all that up. As long as you have a way to convert out of RPM it seems like the best answer.

I can tell you from my experience that even RPMs aren't easy enough for a lot of users. I spend a lot of time trying to answer people's questions. As we move towards things like games that HAS to get easier as the users aren't going to have the skills to handle it otherwise.

The only solution I see to this problem is a standard packaging format that works accross distributions. So support LSB and their efforts to standardize packaging!

- |Daryll

XFree86 4.0 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 08:29 · Score: 0

Anyone know when XFree 4.0 is supposed to come out? The fact that these drivers came out as OSS rules, but I'm more interested in quake3 being playable.

Re:Packaging by dmiller · 1999-06-02 11:31 · Score: 2

When _you_ develop and release software, _you_ can choose the packaging format.

Don't bitch about someone else's choice, especially when they are giving their work away for free. You should be grateful that someone has done it at all.

Re:Setup Script - Solution by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 09:50 · Score: 0

It appears to work fine with bash-1.x and die with the error you noticed with bash-2.x

installer patch by bluehell · 1999-06-03 00:11 · Score: 1

this patch might help sb. use the supplied installer (for the -dyn.tar.gz archive and glibc
edition):

--- riva_install.orig Thu Jun 3 19:01:06 1999
+++ riva_install Thu Jun 3 19:01:21 1999
@@ -155,13 +155,13 @@
# verify that the needed change hasn't already been made!
echo "Checking for existing GLX capabilities."
# check for a Modules section, inside of which must be the glx string.
- if { grep -i '^section "module"$' ${XCONF_PATH} >& /dev/null }
+ if grep -i '^section "module"$' ${XCONF_PATH} >& /dev/null
then
# found it. Let's see if glx is in that section
# use sed to extract exactly the Module section, and grep to look for glx
- if { cat ${XCONF_PATH} | \
+ if cat ${XCONF_PATH} | \
sed -n '/[sS]ection "[mM]odule"/,/^[eE]nd[sS]ection/ p' | \
- grep -i 'glx.so' >& /dev/null };
+ grep -i 'glx.so' >& /dev/null ;
then
echo "The X Server appears to already be set up for the GLX module."
echo "If GLX isn't available when you start up the X server,"

--
-- To bloody go where no man has gone before.

A non-systems programmer question... by Ethan · 1999-06-02 12:33 · Score: 1

How difficult would it be to use these drivers as reference for creating a RIVA TNT kernel framebuffer driver? Will this make that a lot easier?

I, for one, like the idea of a unified framebuffer interface across platforms; I would *love* to see some more explicit HW support.

If I'm barking up the wrong tree, forgive me... I'm not a device driver programmer. (Yet!)
Ethan

Re:Sproingies by Matrix · 1999-06-02 08:00 · Score: 1

Heh, for a number of months I've been pondering getting a 3D card just for the GL enabled screensavers... They're cool but just kinda choppy with software GL, as I'm sure you know.

Re:oh no! now i need TWO xservers!!! by John+Fulmer · 1999-06-02 11:38 · Score: 1

The README states that it includes the VMWare patches in the X binary...

jf

BeOS by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 05:55 · Score: 0

Once again the story is incomplete. The drivers were also released for BeOS.

Re:BeOS by Lx · 1999-06-02 06:24 · Score: 1

No they weren't. All that's on the Nvidia page is a link to Be's website, saying that drivers for their products were available there. Why would Nvidia release drivers for X for Be? Read a little more closely before you call the story incomplete.

-lx

go away Crow by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 07:02 · Score: 0

Why is it every time you post, you have to insult someone? Look at some of your past posts -- here are some examples:

"You smoke crack"

"DUH"

"WRONG"

"You are full of *hit"

"Grow a brain"

"You just don't get it"

Quit being such an asshole Crow. Learn how to treat people with some respect, or please just go away.

Re:go away Crow by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 08:32 · Score: 2

...if people werent so stupid I wouldnt have to be though.
Blasting stupid people is an exercise in futility; chill out and enjoy life, instead of alienating people from your project.
Besides, most people aren't stupid, they're just ignorant, as we all are in one area or another.

Re:*BSD ports/packages?!?! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-03 23:56 · Score: 0

it might show up in xsrc / x11 for NetBSD/OpenBSD
if the diffs to GLX.. are committed with CVS 8-]

Wow! by HaKn5La5H · 1999-06-02 17:46 · Score: 1

Wow!! :->

NVidia Need there own Icon on /. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 07:15 · Score: 1

We need to get NVidia there own icon for /.

all about choice by arielb · 1999-06-02 17:14 · Score: 1

and that's good. Some may feel the v3 is better (it's faster for 16 bit games) or that 3dfx was first to support linux before linux was cool or whatever. All I know is that companies can't take the community for granted but they won't have to worry about MS playing around with the API's that they need

--
---

Re:all about choice by knghtbrd · 1999-06-02 20:56 · Score: 1

3dfx doesn't support Linux. If they supported Linux, I'd have the source to their driver.

Calm Down Y'all by doozy · 1999-06-02 05:54 · Score: 2

Hey, don't get TOO excited. The drivers aren't 100% optimized (and no AGP texturing...boo) so, according to the FAQ, you can't run Quake3 with them although Quake2 should work fun. Still, it's a good start, and hopefully when (if) XFree84 4 comes out, I'll be able to play Q3 with a TNT2...yum.

doozy

DirectX is good by Betcour · 1999-06-03 00:46 · Score: 1

As rude as this might be - some parts of DirectX are pretty good. I played with DirectDraw (2D acceleration) and there's everything there to make some good 2D video games using hardware acceleration. I'm speaking about multiplan scrolling and zillions of sprite. There's nothing to do that on Linux, at least nothing that talk straight to the hardware like it. OpenGL is fine for 3D but for making a good shoot-them-up (yes I know, it's outdated but I love them), DirectDraw is the only good thing out there (thought I think the framebuffer console is a step in this direction).

Same thing for sound - making sound is one thing, but using the hardware to mix 64 sound streams is another thing, and this require some good API that can handle modern hardware. Where are the 3D sound API on Linux ?

Re:oh no! now i need TWO xservers!!! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 06:22 · Score: 0

I included the VMware extension into the binaries.
You're covered.

Dave...

3dfx drivers lack... by Ellis-D · 1999-06-02 06:17 · Score: 0

support for AMD.. I hope soon that they will support AMD alot better...
I ate my tag line.

--
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-

Re:16BPP Limit - Only on RIVA? by Anonymous+Shepherd · 1999-06-02 11:46 · Score: 2

The older RIVA and RIVA ZX cards were limited to 16bpp in order to get 3d acceleration(same as the Voodoo).

Now there may be driver issues that limit TNT and TNT2, but I do know that Windows drivers for TNT and TNT2 support 32bpp acceleration...

I guess you have to wait for a response from a Linux TNT user...

-AS

--

-AS
*Pikachu*

You're going to WHAT? by A+nonymous+Coward · 1999-06-02 11:38 · Score: 1

Mommy mommy Bruce isn't playing fair.

Sheesh, get a life or get a grip.

--

--
Infuriate left and right

Re:Packaging by xcp · 1999-06-02 07:18 · Score: 1

doesnt work right

Sproingies by drig · 1999-06-02 06:51 · Score: 1

Am I the only one thinking this:

SPROINGIES IS GOING TO ROCK!!!!!!

?

(In case you don't know, sproingies is a cool screensaver in xlock and xscreensaver that uses OpenGL)

--
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics

oh no! now i need TWO xservers!!! by fishbowl · 1999-06-02 06:17 · Score: 1

I have to have this AND the vmware server :-(
Oh well maybe Vmware will work NVidia's code
into their server and all will be well...

--
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.

Great news for ALL owners of 3D cards by kijiki · 1999-06-02 05:58 · Score: 2

This is great for any linux user who has a 3D card. 3dfx released binary only drivers, Matrox witholds information for programming the triangle setup engine (WARP). The consumer 3D market is so competitive, now that Nvidia has done it, the others will be forced to follow suit, so they are not percieved as having inferior linux support.
Its good to see that the linux "market" has grown to the point that companies are writing drivers themselves. Here's to a open sourced linux driver on every hardware vendor's web page!

It doesn't seem to run quake3 for me yet, but quake2 runs and looks great (still a little slow, hopefully Precision Insight will come through for us soon). The kicker? you HAVE to see sproingies at 1600x1200 flying by! Running quake2 and sproingies both in a window and getting good framerate out of both is cool too.

*BSD ports/packages?!?! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-06-02 12:38 · Score: 0

Okay, the burning question . . . who is up to working on a Free|Net|OpenBSD port/package? That way the user base can easily install/deinstall the drivers.

2d/3d? by ard · 1999-06-02 05:56 · Score: 1

is it only the 2d source or the full 3d thingy?

Slackware users note... by Malc · 1999-06-02 10:07 · Score: 1

According to the FAQ, this is the first and last libc5 release. Future releases will be glibc only.

Packaging by xcp · 1999-06-02 07:02 · Score: 1

Notice how the packaging is the standard tar.gz
Not everyone uses redhat and rpms. I repeat, not everyone uses rpms. Go to Darryl's glide development page and download your glide files in any format you like, as long as its rpm.
Kudos to nvidia, I think I'm going to sell this banshee for next to nothing and buy a TNT2.

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