**wanders of muttering and drooling**

quote:

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Originally posted by Seawolf:
Well to be honest, now that I've got the right drivers running. I'm pretty impressed with mine so far. Especially since it looks so good with FSAA and from what i hear the competitor can't even come close to matching the performance with thier (software)FSAA.

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NVIDIA announced today that it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against 3dfx Interactive® Inc. in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. NVIDIA's lawsuit involves five NVIDIA patents and seeks an injunction restraining 3dfx from manufacturing, selling or importing infringing graphics chip and card products including VooDoo3, Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 and VSA-100 family of products, as well as monetary damages. The lawsuit alleges that 3dfx's graphics chip and card products which are used to accelerate 3D graphics on personal computers, infringe on the following NVIDIA U.S. Patents: No: 5,687,357; No. 5,721,947; No: 5,758,182; No: 6,023,738; and No: 6,092,124.

3dfx did the same thing when the TNT came out. Nvidia infringed on some of thier patents. I wouldn't worry. NVIDIA is still around and making cards.

I guess ill by my V5 earlier than I thought, just in case. Stupid Nvidia f*cks up the world for the rest of us because theirs isn't the best anymore. There wouldn't even be an Nvidia if it wasn't for them stealing 3dfx technology for their first card, the TNT. Hell there probably wouldn't be ant 3d accelerators if it wasn't for 3dfx.

Well, to put five nights worth of misery into a short story...the thing would not work right, no matter what fixes I tried.
I even came onto the Combatsim forum to try to get some help. I got several suggestions, but nothing worked.

Nvidia, in my opinion, needs to get a life. I feel that they should try to learn from what 3dfx is doing and try to improve on it.

Like anything you get what you pay for. I paid A$450 for my Asus V3800 TNT2 Ultra Deluxe just over 12 motnhs ago in an upgrade from my V2, and I've never had a moments problem. It very comfortably runs Jane's F/A 18 at 1024x768 detail maxed out(except around a busy carrier in the campaign, and then only slows a little), and the only thing it lacks is a Glide API.

I think some of you are taking brand loyalty a little too far.

Besides all the shootouts at the moment show the latest GTS2s kicking everything else around, Radeon, V5 you name it, but then again, I'm not prepared to pay almost A$900 to get one.

Black Dog

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"He's on my six, he's on my six, splash my band... aaagghhhh"

So all the magazines lied???

"GTS2s kicking everything else around, Radeon, V5 you name it"

According to last PC Gamer the V5 is better for flight sims. That makes it the winner for me. And the differenct in other games is so small I don't care. I am not the kind of guy that pisses his pants when Quake 3 goes 55fps instead of 60fps.

I own both V5s and the Geforce GTS. I am happy with both of them, and yes, EECH supports T&L.

My final point is, V5's are not in the same class as the Geforce2. The vodoo5 was originaly intended to compete with the GeForce256 SDR, not DDR.

And if you really need performance, wait till the GeForce GTS Ultra comes out, or when the V6 comes out. By the time the V6 comes out, Nvidia will have the NV20........

So i wonder, who's the leader in the market today......
"Shares of 3Dfx are trading slightly lower today with a loss of 9 percent. Currently, shares of 3Dfx are trading at a 5 year low of 6 dollars."

now go check out Nvidia's shares.......

such as this quote. "I guess ill by my V5 earlier than I thought, just in case. Stupid Nvidia f*cks up the world for the rest of us because theirs isn't the best anymore. There wouldn't even be an Nvidia if it wasn't for them stealing 3dfx technology for their first card, the TNT. Hell there probably wouldn't be ant 3d accelerators if it wasn't for 3dfx."

Geforce2 is the best, nothin is better in speed. FSAA performance is up to par now pretty much with voodoo 5 since new drivers. TNT was not theyre first card. they had a crap first card(NV1?)but the riva 128 did very well and then came TNT which was the beginning of the end for 3dfx.

and its always funny to hear newbies they cant get a nvidia card working but 3dfx works magicaly. either u didnt push the card in right or u dont know what ur doing. i never have any probs with my tnt2 ultra unless i do somethin to mess it up. its usualy the operator that messes things up.

and even if 3dfx didnt start out theyre were many other card makers makin 3d accelerators such as rendition and S3 and others. 3dfx was good but now are slow. it used to be about performance but now they just ship things that dont compete.

Yes it does. Too bad Nvidia dosen't support EECH's implimentation of T&L with their crappy drivers.

"Nvidia 2x FSAA is equivalent to 3dfx 4xFSAA. "

B) "Yes it does. Too bad Nvidia dosen't support EECH's implimentation of T&L with their crappy drivers."

Hmmm, do you play EECH with the latest Det3s and the latest X Patch? You will notice some subtle differences when using T&L. I found quite alot of improvement when it comes to rendering sceneries with alot of buildings.

I wouldn't talk much about Nvidia's drivers, the latest Det3 are quite impressive. One thing i like about Nvidia is that they're constantly pumping out drivers. How long does it take for 3dfx to bring out new drivers? Are you going to compare Nvidia's OpenGL performance with 3dfx's? i really hope not. How about Direct3d?

As i mentioned before, what i wanted to state is that one cannot compare the GTS with the V5. Totally different price range and quite some performance difference.

I read something above regarding bandwidth.
Ill quote a website: "GeForce2 GTS actually has an advantage over multi-chip approaches, in that the texture bandwidth and texture storage for GeForce2 GTS is exactly half of other two-chip approaches, as those multi-chip approaches store a copy of the texture in each chip's frame buffer, and thus pay for storage and bandwidth for each texture twice."

Finally, in my opinion, the V3 and TNT2 Ultras have more than enough fill-rate capability for Jane's F/A-18. Flight simulators are not fill rate dependant. CPU and RAM , plus bus speed have the biggest effects. However, if you try playing EECH or FS2000 in 32-bit mode, and 1024x768, good luck. In this case, a V5 or GeForce256 or GTS DDR would help, due to the higher requirements in bandwidth.

C)"You are the first non-Nvidia employee on the face of the Earth to state this..why I wonder?"

i sure am not. Browse around the web, read, learn and be less ignorant.

Im not a Nvidia employee, I sure do wish that i was. As i mentioned earlier, i owned TNT1, TNT2 Ultra, V3, V5, GeForce256 SDR, DDR, and my current GeForce GTS. I have great interest in the area of 3d acceleration, and graphics rendering. Plus, i have enough experience using all of these cards.
I play different genres of games, ranging from RTS, to FPS and flight sims. Fill rate is quite important in FPS, however, not in Flight sims.

Finally, FSAA does wonders until a certain rez. The top limit being 1024x768. Above that, one is better off not using FSAA, since you'll be able to see far more detail, and the image will be less "blurry." Dont know if thats the right word. And one last quote: "Personally I happen to feel that very high resolution non-anti-aliased imagery looks better, more detail is visible. You can see more detail further away, and subtle, close-up details are more apparent. One "side effect" of most of today's hardware anti-aliasing methods is that one-pixel lines tend to get "blurry" which means text in cockpits and heads-up-displays, dials and gauges and the like can become difficult to read. So while the edges may look "smoother" anti-aliased, it doesn't always come with some other tradeoff."

FSAA isn't the wonder-feature it's been made out to be, though. In improving the image quality by removing the stair-stepping effect of diagonal lines and the shimmering effects they produce in moving images, FSAA at the same time degrades the image quality by blurring the very edges it's supposed to be enhancing. It doesn't completely remove aliasing artifacts, either"

I didnt noticed the effect FSAA had until i switched the rez i play games with down to 1024x768. My normal rez for gaming is 1152x864. ROgue Spear looks nice at 800x600, 4x FSAA on V5. But i prefer non FSAA at 1152x864.

The kings of the hill were the GeForce2 GTS and the Radeon 64MB DDR. The Voodoo5 turned up respectable marks, too, but we wouldn't recommend it based on raw performance.

Nvidia's driver team is consistently squeezing more and more out of its hardware.

"The clear winner as indicated by the benchmarks is the GeForce2 GTS 64MB chipset. Though the test card was the Guillemot/Hercules version, you can expect similar performance no matter which brand the chipset is affixed to. The last few Nvidia specifications have been so tight that there's little room for card manufacturers to customize their creations.

As expected, the Radeon 64MB DDR showed its muscle in 32-bit color and at high resolutions, except it didn't sweep the competition as it did when we first reviewed it. The GeForce2 GTS 64MB pulled ahead in all but one of the Quake III Arena benchmarks. This can probably be attributed to the recently released Nvidia Detonator 3 drivers, which gave the GeForce products a substantial performance increase over the D2 drivers."

Also, notice how Nvidia is working closely with the developement of DirectX 8. The NV20 is scheduled to role out when DirectX 8 is released. Features, features, more features.
ah yes.

Probably not. You see it's easier to call people ignorant and cut and paste useless information and marketing tripe from other sites. Ya know it cracks me up, the NVIDIA zelouts scream features, features, and features, yet my boards "features" are'nt worth the paper the marketing people used to sell it with. Who the hell gives a crap about features if games available ***now*** don't take advantage of them?

-Outlaw... proud owner of a NVIDIA product, but fully understanding that a V5 kicks the crap out of it *perfomance wise* with FSAA enabled. End of story.

I tried to prove my point by posting comments from respected gaming sites, and even recommended to read both 3dfx and Nvidias whitepapers regarding FSAA implementation. I like to be informed, and learn about the products that i own. I do not think it's useless information.

"Stupid Nvidia f*cks up the world for the rest of us because theirs isn't the best anymore. There wouldn't even be an Nvidia if it wasn't for them stealing 3dfx technology for their first card, the TNT. Hell there probably wouldn't be ant 3d accelerators if it wasn't for 3dfx."

Who ever wrote this is on something...Wasn't it the 13 year old kid?

If you are happy paying 300 bucks (or whatever the V5) costs for playing 2 year old games in FSAA mode with blurry fonts, then more power to you. BUt you are a fool if you try to argue that a V5 can go toe to toe with a GeForce 2 at high resolutions without the marketing gimmick turned on.

FSAA will be useless in another 8-12 months anyway, since processor power and advances in 3d technology will make 2048x1024 very playable in most newer games.

Geez another pile of crap to be thrown the the NVIDIA bullsh*t pile. Sometimes I'm almost ashamed to admit I have an NVIDIA card when I read trash like above. The particular line I like is "without the marketing gimmick turned on". Funny, but at least 3dfx's "gimmick" f*cking works on games **today**. T&L is ******** and nothing more. My GeForce is gonna be just as obsolete as any V5 in 6 months, so what has T&L done in the market? Nothing. You NVIDIA zealots can scream all you want about the V5's old technology, but the plain fact is, the V5 is the best at what it does best, FSAA. V5 users are enjoying FSAA and good performance **now**, what has my GeForce done with it's "marketing gimmick"? Simple. Nothing.

3dfx marketed some features whcih arent even at use at all. T-buffer? where?
FSAA? yes, they promised, they delivered. I am one happy costumer. Glide games such as F-15 Striek Eagle with 4xFSAA makes me happy indeed.
Nvidia? they promised T&L didnt they? Quake 3????
They promised (and let me put this in bold now) EXCELLENT VISUALS THROUGH HIGH REZ GAMING. Did they deliver? oh yes my friend they did. Do you own FS2000? Tell me, where are the "jaggies" and "blocky polygons" in
1152x864?
As processor and video power increases , high resolution gaming will become a possibility for everyone. By then, why would one want to use FSAA? pLease explain. However, i have old games and systems which could not possibly deliver 60 fps+ in 1152x864 32-bit with FSAA 1x2 in OpenGL.
In this case, i bought myself 2 V5's and they fixed things up by giving me excellent visuals in lower resolutions without severe FPS hit.

So there, i really hope you understand that i am not trashing 3dfx, nor am i a Nvidia zealot. I know of hte products i own, and their potential.

Peace

Nvidia never advertised FSAA with the first GeForce. And also, if Nvidia hasn't done anything with their "marketing", i really wonder how in the hell they are where they are today.

Also, when i upgraded the system at home from a p2-450 to a Celeron2-500, i saw significant performance increase with the V5. You know why don't you?
Nvidia boasted alot about their "GPU". This essentialy means that your video card is not processor dependant.

And to address a post above, FSAA is excellent in flight sims, in the sense that it fixes alot of visual jaggies and stuff in lower resolutions. Not alot of flight sims enthusiasts have 700+ mhz systems, 256 of PC133 ram, ATA-66 or SCSI. So they must run them at lower resolutions, and when you go down to 800x600 or 1024x768, you get jaggies, and 3dfx fixes that.

I own a Voodoo 3 3000 agp and run FS2k pro at 1024x768 and get no "blocky polygons" or "jaggies". It just has good graphics.

"Nvidia never advertised FSAA with the first GeForce. And also, if Nvidia hasn't done anything with their "marketing", i really wonder how in the hell they are where they are today."

I am pretty sure he was talking about T&L. I think that T L is more of a marketing gimmick than FSAA because FSAA actually does something in most games.

If the Voodoo 5 is the best for sims, which it is according to PC Gamer, I will buy it. End of story. The main reason for that is I mostly play Sims. Most of the other games I play are strategy and don't support acceleration, or are FPSs that work better in Glide anyway (forget all this Quake 3 crap, Unreal Tournament beats the pants off it).

It doesnt matter which game is better. I play Unreal Tournament more than Quake 3 as a matter of fact. With our new OC-3 connection here at RIT, one could only imagine the joys of multiplayer..... and no lag! Granted, UT's engine was originaly Glide only, but glide my good friend is dying fast. And with their latest Direct3d .dll, i can get good performance in Direct 3d.

"I am pretty sure he was talking about T&L. I think that T L is more of a marketing gimmick than FSAA because FSAA actually does something in most games."

Indeed FSAA does something in most games, most games where one cant afford to run in higher resolutions than 1024x768, where then i cannot see FSAA making a difference at all.

Perhaps T&L isnt widely used yet, tis' true indeed. Nevertheless, one should not blame one company alone for "false advertising."
I can find atleast 4 games which use T&L, but i cant find T-buffer action anywhere yet.

WHen i bought my GeForce GTS to be used in my primary computing rig, i didnt take T&L into consideration at all. What i took into consideration are: GPU (not processor dependant), WAY higher Fill rates (which indeed help alot when i run my applications at higher resolutions). I am happy with it.

Another final example, lets look at X-Plane. Both V3, V5, GeForce, GeForce2 can run this game at extreme resolutions and 32-bit color. Why would i want to use FSAA in such high resolutions? Now, i wouldn't buy a GTS to play F-15 at all. Aint worth the high dollars. Im gonna get the V5. Glide, FSAA.