rec.autos.simulators

The 3dfx cards are a graphics accelerator they take the load off your CPU.
The only thing the CPU needs to do is pass the geometry information to the
3d card.   This is the same for the Rendition chipset, it is however widely
acknowledged that 3dfx Voodoo1 was the best performing of the first
generation of 3d video accelerators.

No, that simply is wrong! GPL is NOT optimized for Rendition, it comes with graphic
engines for Rendition AND 3dfx! To say that ALL graphic boards REMOVE all graphic
load from the CPU is totally bullocks. The thing is that the 3dfx is harder on the
cpu, that's all! This has to do with how the Glide and RRedline are implemented
through buffers etc.

I don't understand you 3dfx users, you think that your boards are the best in ALL
contexts. This time it isn't, because:
1) GPL has for once been written in the native language of Rendition, if you can
call any API  native, and thus takes advantage of the RRedline API (not many games
use RRedline, unfortunately)
2) GPL is so *** the CPU that the graphics API becomes crucial.
3) The 3dfx and Voodoo II is harder on the cpu than Rendition...

I have to point to Allisons site, explaining how this works in practice... She
simply says that the Thriller (Rendition) works best all the way up to PII300 (I
don't remember the exact numbers).

That is because the Rendition cards are doing well in this context (and that is
lucky for us Rendition owners ;-), but not others...

---Asgeir---
PS: I don't want to get involved in another "3dfx or Rendition - who's
best"-argument

% No, No, NO.  3dfx cards and Rendition cards are hardware accelarators, they
% remove the onerous job of rendering from the CPU.  Therefore no hardware
% graphics accelerator is harder on a CPU than any other.  The only difference
% is that a faster accelerator will render each frame more quickly and
% therefore be ready for the next one that much quicker. Having said that, in
% the case of GPL I understand that it has been optimized to work with
% rendition cards, therefore there is a performance hit when using a 3dfx card.
%  This means that with lower specc'd machines, you will see better framerates
% from a Rendtion card.  Indeed with all but the highest end machines (~333 PII
% and up) the rendition is better.

Actually I think the Rendition cards have a leg up over the Voodoo cards
because of the way they use DMA to handle the transfers.

--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./.  [-  < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Voodoo II is a marvellous product, with a very specific customer target, namely the
top-end users... It is not the best product in all contexts, as you rightfully agree
with. The wierd thing is that the 3dfx users seem to have a religious relation to
their graphic cards with all the ***that brings along... Fanatism etc...

---Asgeir---
PS: I will try to run GPL on my P 250, and Stealth II, and if that should proove
bad, I simply have to upgrade... GPL, must be enjoyed, no matter cost!!!

l8er
ronny

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Go look at some comparative 3D card benchmarks.  (There's a big
3D card comparison on www.tomshardware.com, for example, which
uses several different benchmarks with several different CPUs with
several different cards.)  Voodoo and Voodoo 2 cards do very well
on lower-end systems in most games, and scale less with CPU than
most other 3D cards in most games.  Papyrus games are an unusual
case, as they were originally written for Rendition's strengths
(like unified video memory) and weaknesses (like no Z-buffer) and
then ported to 3Dfx.  You just can't make general statements about
3D card CPU scalability from one engine's results.

The statement you make about the Voodoo 2 is much more applicable
to, say, the TNT.  Crazy fast on high-end systems; not a very
good choice on low-end systems.  (And unusable in GPL, sigh.
I hope Papyrus sees the light and makes an OpenGL or Direct3D
version of their engine.)

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