rec.autos.simulators

"Everybody says" that the Verite boards are slow DOS and Win95 cards.
Can anyone tell me how much slower?  For instance, could you say that
a P-133 with a Verite runs like a P-120 with a Lightspeed 128 or some
other subjective impression?

What about new drivers?  "Everybody says" new Win95 drivers are coming
for the Verite cards.  Rumor or fact?  Has anybody actually used these
new drivers?

"Everybody says" that the Verite cards are the "same" hardware.  If
I get a Reactor for $150, will it run _all_ the software that will
run on the Sierra?

What about non-3D games?  If you've run any flight or racing sims on
a Verite card, was it much slower than, say, a Lightspeed 128 or Mystique?

Thanks (feel free to reply via email or via the newsgroup).

--

In Win95, the Verite cards perform about the same as a Diamond Stealth
or ATI Mach64 card.  They aren't blazingly fast, but they aren't
noticeably slow either.

Fact.  I'm beta testing them for Rendition as we speak.

Yes.  The only different card is the 3D Blaster.  It uses Creative's
BIOS which allows you to run games made with their CGL API.

Mystique?

At SVGA VESA 2.0 resolutions, the Verite cards are very similar to
those cards (perhaps 1 fps or so slower then the 128).  At regular old
VGA the card is quite slow (probably about 1/4 the speed of those
cards).

--

Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

I have heard that these are coming, I have also heard that they are
mostly compatibility fixes, not performace improvements.

According to Sierra, ICR2's 'indyfast' runs just fine on the Sierra
board in any system, while the same software will not run on the Reactor
in some Cyrix systems. Intergraph says they are working on a fix.

I tried out GP2 and NFS on the Reactor and they are, if anything, a
little faster now (compared to the Lightspeed).

Hoping for a ICR1 fix...

Jason

Bob,

Regarding 2D DOS and Win95 speed, although I don't have a Verite card, I
have heard from several reliable sources that the Verite chip is very fast
in DOS in SVGA (almost as fast as the ET6000 cards), very slow in DOS in
VGA, and relatively slow in Win95 (about 30 million Winbench96 Graphics
Winmarks on a P5-166 in 16 bit color).

Best regards,
Jean Salvati

I had a Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM, 2MB, using the latest Diamond GT Win95 drivers.
The Reactor, using its initial Win95 drivers, is about 20% faster than the
Stealth.  I used Wubench to test this:  Stealth: 164 Video, Reactor: 198,
at 640x480, 256 colors.  The difference is slightly noticable.

In VESA SVGA, it is about the same as the Stealth.  I did a comparison between
the 2 cards in GP2 with exactly the same graphic settings, same framerate, in
SVGA, at the same track, same straight, in Practice any Circuit, and I got
identical processor occupancy rates.

I haven't done any empirical standard 320x200 VGA tests, but the Reactor is
much slower than my Stealth.  The GP2 log video score went from 428 to 24.
I doubt if it is really 17 times slower, as this suggests, but before
I could run full detail in VGA with 25+fps, <100% occupancy, except Monaco,
and now in VGA, I get 18.2fps for <100% occupancy. This is on a P166.  Using
the 3dbench VGA test, I think the Stealth was about 60-70fps, and now the
Reactor tests at 30.3fps.  If you have a fast Pentium, the VGA speed might
not be a problem.  They do have a 14 day money back guarantee if it doesn't
do the job for you.

Intergraph has stated they have new Win95 drivers coming out within a week,
and that all 3 Rendition boards are the same, hardware-wise.
--

"Feel Lucky, Scubaboy?" - Discovery Channel, Shark Week, 1995

->ALX<-

On Wed, 13 Nov 1996 06:34:36 -0800, Steven Williamson

   On my Reactor and P133, I get the following 3DBench scores:

VGA     28.5 fps
VESA    115 fps (calculated, the timer glitches and reports 25)

Pick one or more: Model Rockets (competition-NERCB) / PCs (even Atari!) /
Papyrus ICR-ICR2-NCR / Who needs a life when you have multiple non-lives?