rec.autos.simulators

Has anyone purchased one of the new 3D graphics Cards yet.??
Or does anyone have any info on their performance with Racing Sims.?

--
rgs
John (aussie)
< JGM Sim Racing - http://www.racesimcentral.net/;

Dana Bailes

Marco Kleyn

The number one card for what, big blocky textures?  The PowerVR lacks
filtering of any kind.  Bilinear filtering is supposed to be incorporated
into the next revision, and until it is this card will never be a contender
for the top 3D card.  This is a major shortcoming IMHO.

BTW, am I the only one who finds it strange that NEC chose to put an ATI
RAGE 2D/3D card coupled with a Diamond Monster3D (a Voodoo based card) in
it's PowerPlayer line of computers rather than the card they helped to
develop?

--

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

PC-Player, a German computer game magazine, did a test on seven 3D
accelerator cards:

         Matrox Millenium
         Matrox Mystique
         miroMEDIA 3D
         Orchid Fahrenheit 3D
         ATI 3D Xpression
         Diamond Stealth 3D 2000
         Elsa Victory 3D

They tested the cards with different benchmarks (incl. CBENCH) under
DOS, which gave pretty good results for the Matroxes, and o.k. results
for all other cards but the ATI. The benchmark programs did not
support the special 3D hardware on the cards, but our autosims don't
either! (Apart from some special editions for specific cards.)

3D acceleration is interesting under Win95, where the DirectX driver
can translate between a game and the hardware. In theory, future games
can use the 3D chips on those cards via the driver, - sorta like VESA,
only better. Actually, however, the versions of this driver provided
with the cards did *not* support the 3D hardware! With none of the
cards! Software 3D and hardware 3D were identical in speed, and the
generic driver shipped with Win95 showed better results with some of
the cards. "Hellbender", the only game so far that supports hardware
3D, did not run in this mode on any of the cards.

The Orchid Fahrenheit scored highest with PC-Player's domestic Win95
benchmark, a CBENCH-like rotating cube with mapped textures. The card
achieved 37 frames per second, which is exactly the score of the old
Elsa Winner 1000 Trio (S3 Trio 64 chipset) which they tested for
comparison. This was the only reconciling info from this test - for
me, because I own this very card. :)

In a nutshell:

- Today's DOS games don't support hardware 3D acceleration.
- 3D cards don't have decent drivers yet.
- Without using the 3D chips, those cards aren't faster under
  Win95 than regular cards.

The Matrox cards are a good buy for their DOS speed, but not for their
special 3D capabilities. I will wait at least half a year before even
considering buying a 3D card, provided decent games and drivers are
available by then.

--

               "per aspera ad absurdum"

And did you expect these results to be any different?  All the cards listed
were early first generation cards (except for the Mystique which is a 1.5
generation card) that were tested before Direct3D was supported.  None of
these cards should have even been released as they really offer nothing in
the way of 3D acceleration.  Even the accelerated versions of games that
came with these first generation cards were not all that spectacular.  I'm
sure we've all seen the ATI ads for their RAGE card.  Those Mechwarrior
screenshots look great, but as it turns out the frame rate is slower with
the 3D card!  What good is a better looking game if it runs slower?  BTW,
it soon be replaced by the RageII chip, giving this card a 3 month
lifespan.

These cards are not meant to do a thing for old DOS games, and as expected
they do not.  ATI's have always been known as slow DOS cards and their 3D
card upholds this reputation.  All of the second generation cards however,
will ship with drivers to fully support Direct3D.  There is also a
benchmark (The Direct3D tunnel test) that can be used to measure the
performance of 3D cards using their acceleration.  Of course, all of the
cards you listed scored rather low, in the 25fps range although the
Mystique did get about 50.  Upcoming cards based on the Voodoo graphics
chipset, like Orchid's Righteous3D, scored in the upper 90s.

Like it or not, the future of *** is Win95 with Direct3D or direct
support of 3D accelerators in DOS, although the latter seems more of a
stepping stone.  For DOS ports, it looks like the Rendition chip is leading
the pack.  Even Sierra had joined in and will be producing its own card
along with A-10 and ICR2 ports.  There are already a few Direct3D games out
(Hellbender, Monster Truck Madness, Hyperblade) with many more around the
corner (Quake, Mech Warrior 2: The Mercenaries, Interstate76).  

--

Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
Nascar Setups Page: http://www.racesimcentral.net/~ebusch/

Dissapointed to here Nascar is only gonna be on the Rendition upfront.
I assume their planning a D3D version, correct?

Why Seirra chose the Rendition over the Vodoo was a poor choice, IMO.

Well I expect Papyrus will make a vodoo version or they'll find
themsleves with a second rate product to Vodoo based racing games.
Seriously.

BH

Sierra's decision, like iD's Rendition port of Quake, seems to be purely
financial.  The marketshare of the Voodoo cards should be smaller than
Rendition's even though the consensus is that they will be the fastest
cards.  The Rendition cards will sell for about $200 and will do 2D
(reportedly with quite fast DOS SVGA) in addition to 3D.  The Voodoo cards
are 3D only and will be about $300.  For those with good cards already, the
$300 isn't a bad upgrade.  However others will need to upgrade their 2D
card as well, bringing the total up to near the $500 range.

I plan to get one of each so I end up with the best of both worlds (Ports
for both cards as well as fast Direct3D via the Voodoo), but for some this
might not be an option.

--

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

It depends on what point of view your looking at. To the consumer, the
faster card would the better choice to port to. However, someone at Papyrus
once told me that the Rendition Verite has some nice flexibility in coding
for it and they would like to see that technology succeed. Hence, I believe
that's why they're porting to the Verite and why Sierra-Online is also
going to be making a video card based on the Verite. Don't know when it
will be available.

Well, I know Psygnosis will be porting their F1 game to the Verite as well.
Not 100% sure that they'll still follow through with their Voodoo port
though.

===========================================================
Alex Fernandez
MTS
Lucent Technologies
No. Andover, MA
email:

tel: (508)960-6510
===========================================================

As far as Rendition vs. Voodoo, I have no opinion. To my knowledge, there
aren't any benchmarks on either product that would tell us what the
relative performance is going to be. Rendition is going to be very
inexpensive for a 3D engine. Word is that Creative will be selling a board
w/ 4MB of video memory for US$ 199. That's less than what I paid for my 4MB
Stealth 64.

Dave (davids) Sparks
Late Night League
http://www.sequoia-dev.com/Hawaii/latenite.html

 >I plan to get one of each so I end up with the best of both worlds (Ports
 >for both cards as well as fast Direct3D via the Voodoo), but for some this
 >might not be an option.

I've though about this option as well.  Right now I have a Matrox Millenium
but really am interested in the Rendition card that will have the optimized
ICR2 included.  Is it possible to use two video cards in the same machine
without having to open the case all the time to switch them out?

Thanks,
Clark

The Direct3D Tunnel Test that comes with the DirectX II Developers Kit is
exactly such a benchmarking utility, and has been used by some of the card
makers.

This test was run on a Micronics P166 with 16MB and 512K cache using the
Righteous 3D.  It maintained an average of 98 frames per second with the
following configuration: 640 x 400 resolution, Gouraud shaded, perspective
correction, point sampled, 16-bits per pixel color, dithered rendered.

For comparison on a Gateway P166 16MB and 256 cache with the same features
enabled, the Matrox Mystique scored a 52 (this comes from Matrox's own
adds).

I have yet to see Tunnel Test data from the Rendition based cards, but from
posted stats about the cards (polygon rendering, pixel fill rates, etc...)
the Voodoo does look to be faster (perhaps has much as twice as fast).  

--

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

You mean keeping the Matrox and adding a Rendition card as a second video
card?  I wouldn't think it would be worth the hassle to switch drivers and
switch your monitor cable all the time, but I guess you could do it.

If you mean using the Voodoo and Rendition card in conjunction, there's no
problem with it.  The Voodoo card is 3D only and the Rendition's
video-output will pass transparently through a y-cable on the way to the
display with no degradation.

Why don't you wait and see the actual speeds of the Rendition cards before
you make a decision.  It just might turn out to be just as fast as your
Matrox, then you could just go for the swap.  If not you'll have to decide
which is more important, overall speed of your Matrox or the accelerated
ICR2.

--

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

You can take that attuidue and never own any proper kit. Waiting on the
fence will get you nowhere fast.

Still each for there own.
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Southend, Essex. UK
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