Posted by
Hemos
on from the games-are-going-look-nicer dept.
Quite a number of you wrote in with the news that Nvidia has released the drivers for all of their chipsets, TNT2 included. The drivers are X and OpenGL, and are availible under the XFree86 license. To get the stuff, head over here.
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.
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
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· 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.
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.
Re:Also note this news fro XFree86
by
Jeffrey+Baker
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· 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
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· 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
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· Score: 1
This absolutely rocks!
But, one thing I ask, how close is Q3test to being playable on TNT hardware under linux now?
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.
Not really
by
Anonymous Coward
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· 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.
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.
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.
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:What are the framerates like?!
by
Booker
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· Score: 1
Umm... what app? what resolution? That would make your framerates more meaningful.:-)
RIVA128 and Debian Slink
by
guacamole
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· 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
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· Score: 2
I think that NVidia just sold a hellofalotta TNT2's.
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!"
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
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· 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
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· 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
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· 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-
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· 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
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· 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.
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
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· 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.
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.....
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...
> 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.
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.
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.
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:Great, now which card to get?
by
LarsWestergren
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· 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
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
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..."
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
status of nvidia with debian's x
by
Adam+Heath
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· 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.
3DFX, are you listening?
by
Extremist
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· 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:)
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.
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.
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. --
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 .
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...
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.
> 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.
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:A non-systems programmer question...
by
drig
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· 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.
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
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.
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
·
· 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
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· 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
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· 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
Was gonna get Voodoo3, now maybe TNT2 ??
by
gatzke
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· 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.
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.
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
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?
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
·
· 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
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
Re:Are you listening, Creative Technologies?
by
Signal+11
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· 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.
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
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.:)
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:What are the framerates like?!
by
hRothGar
·
· Score: 1
You should see roughly 15 fps on a 200MHz CPU, up to roughly 20-25 fps on a 400+MHz CPU.
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
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· 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
Running something like Quake2
by
Anonymous Coward
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· 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
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· 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.
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.
Moderation strikes again...
by
Catullus
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· 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.
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...
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
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.
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
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· 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
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
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· 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?
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!
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
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· 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.
Re:Are you listening, Creative Technologies?
by
Griffone
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· 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
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· 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
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· 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
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· 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
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· 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...
"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.
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/
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:help: return my 3dfx?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· 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.
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.
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. --
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.
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
·
· 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!
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.
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:What are the framerates like?!
by
kijiki
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· 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.
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
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.)
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
Re:What are the framerates like?!
by
hRothGar
·
· 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.
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! --
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.
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
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· 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.
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.
How about NetBSD support?
by
Zach+Fine
·
· 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.
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...
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!
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.
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.:)
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?
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.
(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.)
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!
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:Emacs cursor disappeared.
by
blam!
·
· 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.)
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
·
· 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
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
·
· Score: 1
The README states that it includes the VMWare patches in the X binary...
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
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.
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.
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:Emacs cursor disappeared.
by
Nick+Ives
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· 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
Re:go away Crow
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· 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.
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.
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
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.
You have to use glibc, RedHat uses glibc2 (aka libc6) since version 5.0
oh no! now i need TWO xservers!!!
by
fishbowl
·
· 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
·
· 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.
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.
Slashdot Mirror
multiple windows really handy for side by side work in video editing . . .
yes there is a reason . . . would have thought it was obvious.
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
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
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
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.
This happened to me, as well.
Hmmm...I wasn't trying to be funny. What parts confused you?
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
On every line it gives you an error (there are two or three), just insert a ';' before the closing '}'. That fixed it for me.
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?
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.
:), and right now my main problem is finding one of these TNT2 Ultras with a digital flatpanel output :(
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
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.
-jwb
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!
This absolutely rocks!
But, one thing I ask, how close is Q3test to being playable on TNT hardware under linux now?
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
I agree 100%; he deserves a lot of credit for this work!
--
Brent J. Nordquist N0BJN
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.
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.
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.
Very cool. Kudos Dave. I like the bit of anti-Microsoft sentiment in the FAQ.
-- I can't say enough in 120 chars!
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.
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.
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
Yep, several of us also noticed this and remarked about it in other posts on this topic.
--
Jake
Hey, has anyone actually used the glibc setup script? It seems to be broken on line 159! If you've found otherwise, please help!
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!!
Umm... what app? what resolution? That would make your framerates more meaningful. :-)
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...
I think that NVidia just sold a hellofalotta TNT2's.
;P
Well... at least one...
Phenym
This is so cool! /FLY/!
Haven't even tried Quakin' yet, but the XScreensaver GL hacks
Been waiting for this a long time...
THANKS NVIDIA!
--Kevin
Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD-Sparc
=-=-=-=-=-=
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!"
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 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.
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.
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.
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
This is slashdot. People have the right to express their opinions. And it is common courtesy not condem people for doing that.
--
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.
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!"
>Creative Labs, Diamond... one's head spins..
f ault.asp
>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/de
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
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.
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
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
--
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
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. :-)
You should see roughly 15 fps on a 200MHz CPU, up to roughly 20-25 fps on a 400+MHz CPU.
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
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
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
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?
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.
--
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...
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
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.
Got a Creative TNT. Should still last me until 2001.
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
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
I have a Debian 2.1, kernel 2.2.6, glibc, Xfree86 3.3.2 with the new NVIDIA 3.3.3.1 server.
.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.
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
Best of luck
Pavlos Papageorgiou
pavlos@please.avoid.spam.voxar.com
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"
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?
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!
Thanks
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens.
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
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/
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
I see the same thing on a 8MB Riva 128 ZX.
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
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.
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.
--
A lot of it is that it's indirect rendering which will be fixed in XFree86 4.0... woo hoo.
Kudos to nVIDIA, BTW. :)
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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.
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
it's still 16 bit
---
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.)
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
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.
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!
--
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
Hopefully this will be a good example for other hardware vendors.
We're moving rapidly towards making Linux into a good 3D workstation!
- |Daryll
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!!
--
We want SOURCE!
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.
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.
Are you talking about AMDs 3DNow! technology, or what?
:-) 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...
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
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
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
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.
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.
Read the FAQ.... glibc my little buddy....
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
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?
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.
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.)
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
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.
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?
this patch might help sb. use the supplied installer (for the -dyn.tar.gz archive and glibc
/dev/null } /dev/null /dev/null }; /dev/null ;
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"$' ${XCONF_PATH} >&
+ if grep -i '^section "module"$' ${XCONF_PATH} >&
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' >&
+ grep -i 'glx.so' >&
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.
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
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.
The README states that it includes the VMWare patches in the X binary...
jf
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... ?
Wow!! :->
We need to get NVidia there own icon for /.
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
---
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
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
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 ?
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
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.
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.
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*
The website says that they'll be releasing alpha versions this July. Look for "release plans" or something similar.
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
new concept:
optimization
usage:
voodoo(2) has it
Riva does not have it yet
yeesh...
Mommy mommy Bruce isn't playing fair.
Sheesh, get a life or get a grip.
--
Infuriate left and right
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
doesnt work right
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
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
You have to use glibc, RedHat uses glibc2 (aka libc6) since version 5.0
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.
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.
is it only the 2d source or the full 3d thingy?
According to the FAQ, this is the first and last libc5 release. Future releases will be glibc only.
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.