I, as many others, wondered 'Should I use Glide or D3D?" as I have
both an old Voodoo 2 card and a spankin' new TNT2u.
Well, a couple of screenshots later the issue was settled: Glide it
is, baby.
No noticable increase in framerate from my old 90 mHz 8Mb Voodoo card
to the new 190 Mhz 32Mb TNT2 Ultra. Funny huh?
MUCH better quality on the 3Dfx card. The anti-aliasing does it all!
You'll find three comparisions at:
http://www.racesimcentral.net/
http://www.racesimcentral.net/
http://www.racesimcentral.net/
(These were done on my Mac at work, hence the window styles etc.)
Some notes om compare1.jpg:
Texture on trucks at left is clearer on 3Dfx
Vertical lines on white grandstands far away is sharper/thinner on
3Dfx, blurred on TNT2
Horizontal lines/tops of grandstands are smooth on 3Dfx, jagged on
TNT2 (as is the case for all horizontal lines)
Small red sign (stopsign?) has visible pole on 3Dfx, floating in thin
air on TNT2
Some notes on compare2.jpg:
Texture on rear of car is MUCH netter on 3Dfx, blurred on TNT2
Details on grandstands are smooth on 3Dfx, jagged on TNT2. A-A at
work.
http://www.racesimcentral.net/
comparision of the car texture.
OK, much of the differences can be attributed to the anti-aliasing on
the 3Dfx but what really made me scratch my head was why the TNT2 with
it's huge 32Mb memory seems to load a low-res texture for the cars,
while the puny 3Dfx card, with it'd 256x256 limitation shows a much
better one?
Another funny thing is that the anti-aliasing is done on the "above"
side of lines, not 'beneath". Look at
http://www.racesimcentral.net/, the white lines to the right.
Tech specs: Celeron 450 Mhz, 96Mb, blah-blah-blah... Creatice Labs
8Mb Voodoo 2 with Glide 2.56 drivers. Creative Labs TNT 2 Ultra with
Detonator 2.08, mip-map level set to 0, no anti-aliasing in hardware
set (didn't make a difference).
/petern