rec.autos.simulators

    Will this be a 2D/3D combo card? Also, does anyone know if it will
actually support the AGP x2?

i want one now.... NOW I say!!

    One of them is 2d/3d (can't remember which one, MAYBE all of them...).
It supports AGP 2X (4X "soon"; whatever that means).

"Gunner"
ORSA Bronze #78 Navy Dodge truck

I've read that these boards still won't be able to do coloring at 16-Bit
or better, there're still only doing 256 colors, i'd stick to the Voodoo2
until they do have 16-Bit+ colors.

Dwayne W.
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Yes it is a 2d/3d board and does support AGP 2x..  They also have plans to
support AGP 4x with the Voodoo 3  -4000 later this year.  Although these
board will support AGP 2x and 4x they will not use the AGP Graphics port to
store textures in the system memory as AGP was meant to do..

Cowen

Your information is incorrect.  These boards will support 16bit color but
WILL NOT support 32bit color as 3dfx feels it would be too much of a
performance hit.

Cowen

Who cares... most games will not support the 32 bit colors... or so I
read.

Philster

The fact is the only reason the ATI Rage fury can render 32bit color so well
is because they screwed up the 16bit rendering so bad performance can only
get better in 32 bit..  I mean look at the screenshots of Rage Fury in 16
bit.  They stink.  You can actually see the rings where the colors change.
That is not the makings of a quality video accelerator.

Cowen

The new V3 cards from 3dfx are in a sense new technology because they took
the two chip setup from Voodoo2 and put in on one chip as well as added 2d
support. As for TNT and Rage Fury being new technology, that is hardly the
case.  The fact is the basis of both those chip were taken from Voodoo 2.
Single Pass Multitexturing is what runs the TNT and the Rage fury and that
is a patented technology from 3dfx.  Had it not been for 3dfx it would have
been a little longer before we saw this technology.  It was proven my 3dfx
in a court of law that nvidia stole the Single pass mutitexturing from 3dfx.
Whereas in most people minds this means nothing and granted they are all
great video cards, but I just don't have as much respect for companies that
took another patented technology in one form or another..

Cowen

For the last 2 years, 3DFX has

Nope, but they will support 24bit color. And 24bit looks a hell of a lot
better than 16bit.  Not to mention the V3s are STILL stuck with the 256x256
max size for textures where everyone else is at 2kx2k.  On top of that, S3's
texture compression is NOW a part of the DirectX which supports very large
textures.  In addition, even though the V3 sits in an AGP port it really
doesnt use all its features.  Personally, while speed is essential if I can
get 30+fps with 24bit color at 1024x768 then I will be happy.  30+fps at
1200x800+ at 16bit color really doesnt thrill me all that much.  Not to
mention I have 2 V2s already. ;)

Where did you read this?.... as I would like to read it!... As far as I know
they haven't been to court yet so that alleged patent infringement  has yet
to be decided

My first impression is that the more expensive models sure don't
look much better than the 2000.  Apparently the 3500 is 100%
more expensive than the 2000 and in theory about 25% faster.
It will be interesting to see how these things test out.

rob.

<snip>
<snip>

Chris:

Check out articles about Bitboy's Glaze3d.  www.bitboys.com.  I believe this is
the correct web site.

It will have:

400 million dual  textured pixels/sec
400 million gourard shaded pixels/sec
400 million dual or bilinear filtering

integrated programmable floating point accurate triangle set engine can handle 3
million fully featured triangles /sec

32-bit true color rendering pipeline

Four simultaneous textures are supported in a single rendering pass with
trilinear mip-mapping.

Supports DX6 Bump mapping etc.

Scalable architecture from 200 million to 800 million rendered pixels per
second.   Also, triangle set up from 3 million upward to full geometry
processing within the core.

memory is from 6.4 GB required for true color rendering of 400 million
pixels/sec  using Direct RDRAM.

I am going to wait to see what the V3/4000 Nvidia's TNT2 and the Glaze3D looks
like before I spend another dime.  I am willing to go from my P2/400 to a a 500
or better to combine with this type of card .... if the software requirements
are there and the software is worth the expense:<)

Roland

On Fri, 12 Feb 1999 20:13:18 -0500, "Cowen Wilson"

Duh!!!

So in the pc world ,hmmm maybe you save intel&ibm, too bad for those
japanese who reverse the ibm bios and made possible the pc revolution
(in the process making uncle billy really rich).

In the mac moron world, hmmmm ,lets see the windows interface ,damn it

they copied it from xerox.

In the linux droid camp, Linus Tovalds hmmmmmmmmm, too bad he hacked
Minix a  unix flavour.

? The Null-A (TM) Corporation 1999 All Rights Reserved.

Is 100+ frames/sec even noticable by the human eye?
Also, should I dump my old card now, while the gettin's good (Diamond
Monster 3D).