rec.autos.simulators

Apologies in advance if this has already been beaten to death in this
group - I certainly don't want to dredge anything up again. At the same
time, I'm looking for whatever input I can get, as I have my P-150 sold,
and I'll be building my new PII system over the next week (PII 266 or
300, 64MB Ram, either 66 or 100Mhz bus) - trying the GPL demo on a P-150
without 3d acceleration is just too painful d:)

What I'm looking for is a card that is *very* fast for 2d windows - I
have a PCI Millenium II right now - and also has very good to excellent
3d acceleration as well. I also figure I'll get an AGP card - I know
it's not a big performance win, but since I've got the slot...

Right now, the most impressive looking system isn't available yet - the
forthcoming Matrox G200, but it won't be available until June-August
some time. Right now my thinking is either get a reasonably inexpensive
card (ie ATI Xpert AGP2x), and then get a Matrox G200 when it comes out,
or go for a really good board right now. The two I'd be leaning towards
are both from Diamond (I do like to stick with mainstream brands):

Diamond V330 AGP (NVidia Riva 128 chip)
Diamond Stealth II G640 (Intel740 chip)

Oddly enough, the V330 seems to benchmark faster than the G640 (from
what I can find on the net), although the latter is *supposed* to be
faster.

At any rate, my favorite game is still GPII, and for it 3D is
irrelevant, but I would like to get a 3D capable card for GPL, etc. Can
anyone comment on the Matrox, ATI or Diamond cards mentioned above, or
better yet, suggest the best combo card with great 2d and good to great
3d?

Incidentally, if I *am* rehashing something that either a) has been
covered recently or b) is covered well on some web pages (which you
might point me to), please let me know and I'll be happy to cancel the
post. Otherwise, I look forward to your comments.

Thanks in advance,

Barry

--
Michael S. Davis
Creative Media-Works
Computer/Audio/Video Convergence
"from Creative minds spring Creative solutions."
http://www.creativemedia-works.com

Barry,

I'm currently running a STB Velocity 128 (which came with my Dell XPS
D300) and just recently picked up a Diamond Monster 3D II voodoo2 card.
This combo seems to work pretty well, although I would concur to an
extent with Mike's comments about the image quality.  The riva chip set
smokes in terms of performance, but the quality certainly doesn't rate
with the rendition or the i740, or even the voodoo for that matter.
But, to be honest, it's not something I noticed all that much in a fast
paced 3D environment - I guess this comes down to personal preference or
individual interpretation.  People raved for ages about the 3dfx image
quality, but to me it looks fairly washed out and over filtered (the
trade off for getting fairly seamless texture transitions, I guess).

I picked up the voodoo2 card for a couple of reasons - firstly, the
speed difference (v2 is definitely the fastest in what is available
today) and secondly the support for any Glide only games (although these
are decreasing).  I'm also planning to replace my Riva128 card when
something a bit nicer comes to market, but keep the voodoo for
compatibility reasons.  The MGA-G200 looks like a pretty nice piece of
hardware and should be available around June (which probably means
July/August).  3dfx have their Banshee card coming out soon, but it
looks more like a voodoo2 rush.  The new PowerVR chip set is due out
around July as well, and looks interesting - supporting fairly recent
features such as multitexturing, trilinear and texture compression, but
works on a funky tile based architecture.  Finally, nVidia are coming
out with their new Riva based card, the TNT, some time in the fall (as
opposed to their 8mb 2x AGP Riva128 which should be available now).
This sounds like the pick of the bunch so far, as it supports the new
features coming out (multitexturing, 24 bit Z buffer, 32 bit color
depths, etc. - but strangely no trilinear, which is a bit odd) and
promises fill rate and triangle set up similar to 2 voodoo2's in SLI.
But, nVidia are also being sued by SGI for patent infringements which
could slow (halt?) the process of bringing it to market.

As for what to do?  Well, given that the new cards should be out in a
couple of months, I'd stick with the Matrox card for now and pick up a
voodoo2 (around $200-250) if you want 3dfx compatibility.  Stick with an
AGP motherboard and then look at something like a MGA-G200 (sounds like
a little british convertible) or the TNT when they finally come
available.  If you can't wait that long for killer 3D, I'd look at
either a Rendition 2200 based card (like the Hercules' that Mike refers
to) or an i740 based card, such as the Real3D Starfighter - they're both
about the same cost, but I'd probably give the i740 the nod due to its
greater speed (especially in OpenGL) and only slightly inferior image
quality (still heaps better than riva 128 or 3dfx).

To get the skinny on 3D cards, pick up a copy of this month's boot rag -
it has a round up of the above mentioned 3D cards, performance stats,
price, etc etc and has a preview of the MGA-G200.  Hope this helps
some...

Neil.

I don't know how much money you have to spend, but I would hold out for the
p2-400 boards with the 440bx chipset.  You are better off to get the best
processor and board you can right now, as I bought a p2-266 last year and am
already dreaming about the new 400's.  That alone will increase the speed of
gp2 more than anything, although I can get most details turned on with mine,
with 90% occupancy, and over 25fps.  I would go with an agp board, no matter
what, it will be faster regardless of brand, but I would lean towards a
rendition based board, as it will have support for nascar2 as well as soda
and icr2.  This will get you by until you can afford the voodoo2 board.  I
really wouldn't worry about the 2d part of the boards, they are all getting
the most out of the 2d part, and with at least a 300, I think you will be
happy with the results in gp2.  Like I said, my 266 will get all but a few
details turned on, and looks silky smooth.

I just got done assembling my P2-400.  I will say that it is quick as hell.  I
went from a Pentium 233 MMX to this and I am in love with it.  I currently am
running with the Diamond Viper V330 AGP and have the Monster 3D (I have the
Monster 3D II on order, but it is backorderd from Shopping.com.)  The picture on
my system isn't al that bad.  It is better than I had with my Millenium II.
With the Millenium II I was getting a ghosting effect at resolutions greater
than 1024x768.  This was unacceptable.  I don't think it could handle the
refresh rates that my monitor could support at those resolutions.  The ghosting
has gone away for the most part with the Viper.