rec.autos.simulators

by **Colin Harri** » Tue, 13 Mar 2001 08:05:37

Can I just get some opinions, please, on this video card? It's about all my
budget will stretch to, but if there are any 'issues' with it, I'd like to
know. Thanks a lot.....

--

Colin
ICQ 25485061

by **Tyler Eave** » Tue, 13 Mar 2001 08:14:09

If you can spend another $40 or so, you can get a 32MB GTS which will be
~twice as powerful.
As there is such a narrow gap in price and such a wide gap in preformance,
going with the MX is just stupid IMHO.

>Can I just get some opinions, please, on this video card? It's about all my
>budget will stretch to, but if there are any 'issues' with it, I'd like to
>know. Thanks a lot.....

>--

>Colin
>ICQ 25485061

by **Colin Harri** » Tue, 13 Mar 2001 09:17:29

Thanks for the advice, Tyler, but why is it twice as powerful? They're both
32Mb, aren't they? Or is that not the point?

--

Colin
ICQ 25485061

> If you can spend another $40 or so, you can get a 32MB GTS which will be
> ~twice as powerful.
> As there is such a narrow gap in price and such a wide gap in preformance,
> going with the MX is just stupid IMHO.

by **Tyler Eave** » Tue, 13 Mar 2001 09:49:29

The GTS has a higher clokc speed, plus the RAM on it is twice as fast.

>Thanks for the advice, Tyler, but why is it twice as powerful? They're both
>32Mb, aren't they? Or is that not the point?

>--

>Colin
>ICQ 25485061

>> If you can spend another $40 or so, you can get a 32MB GTS which will be
>> ~twice as powerful.
>> As there is such a narrow gap in price and such a wide gap in
preformance,
>> going with the MX is just stupid IMHO.

>> >Can I just get some opinions, please, on this video card? It's about all
>my
>> >budget will stretch to, but if there are any 'issues' with it, I'd like
>to
>> >know. Thanks a lot.....

>> >--

>> >Colin
>> >ICQ 25485061

by **George Majo** » Tue, 13 Mar 2001 10:25:30

I would get a voodoo 5500 for $125 on Pricewatch with 64MB of memory much
better.

by **Simon Brow** » Tue, 13 Mar 2001 11:09:30

The 64 MB is irrevelevant since a V5 has to duplicate every texture it loads
for both chips. A V5 effectively has 32 MB of available texture memory. A
V5 should be comfotably faster than a GF2 MX though, you are totally correct
there.

by **George Majo** » Tue, 13 Mar 2001 12:21:08

The only reason I like voodoo is because I love FSAA, I tried a geforce and
it doesnt smooth the jagged lines like the voodoo 5 does, Those jagged lines
drives me nuts :) I dont know how people can stand them

by **Simon Brow** » Tue, 13 Mar 2001 12:36:52

Yep, I wasn't saying the V5 is bad card, it's very fast and very nice, and
it's FSAA is faster and better looking than a GF2. In straight horse-power
it's pretty close to a GF2 gts, particularly in D3D performance. It's only
really let down by not having hardware vertex processing and not doing
bump-mapping. I owned a V5 myself, but had to sell it due to a few bugs in
the early drivers (which I believe are now fixed).

I was just pointing out that although it has 64 MB of vram, it's effectively
only a 32 MB card.

by **Ian** » Wed, 14 Mar 2001 02:36:55

I've got a V4 4500 and tried a GeForce2 MX (Hercules Prophet), the V4 was
considerably faster in all my games except N4 where it was pretty close.
A friend has a V5 and that is considerably faster than my V4. (he previously
had a V4 and the performance on his PC was comparable to mine.)

--
Ian P
<email invalid due to spam>

> Yep, I wasn't saying the V5 is bad card, it's very fast and very nice, and
> it's FSAA is faster and better looking than a GF2. In straight
horse-power
> it's pretty close to a GF2 gts, particularly in D3D performance. It's
only
> really let down by not having hardware vertex processing and not doing
> bump-mapping. I owned a V5 myself, but had to sell it due to a few bugs
in
> the early drivers (which I believe are now fixed).

> I was just pointing out that although it has 64 MB of vram, it's
effectively
> only a 32 MB card.

> > The only reason I like voodoo is because I love FSAA, I tried a geforce
> and
> > it doesnt smooth the jagged lines like the voodoo 5 does, Those jagged
> lines
> > drives me nuts :) I dont know how people can stand them

by **Simon Brow** » Wed, 14 Mar 2001 07:43:37

But a GF2 GTS is also a lot faster than a GF2 MX, and a GF2 GTS is also
faster (although not by much) than a V5 5500 AGP, something I know through
owning both cards. Again, the only point I was making is that a V5 is
effectively a 32 MB card.

by **Ian** » Wed, 14 Mar 2001 08:56:07

I can't argue with that, as I've never tried a GTS.
I was just pointing out that my V4 was significantly faster than an MX,
however, if the V5 is effectively only a 32MB card, how come it's so much
better than a V4 which is 32MB ?

--
Ian P
<email invalid due to spam>

> But a GF2 GTS is also a lot faster than a GF2 MX, and a GF2 GTS is also
> faster (although not by much) than a V5 5500 AGP, something I know through
> owning both cards. Again, the only point I was making is that a V5 is
> effectively a 32 MB card.

> > I've got a V4 4500 and tried a GeForce2 MX (Hercules Prophet), the V4
was
> > considerably faster in all my games except N4 where it was pretty close.
> > A friend has a V5 and that is considerably faster than my V4. (he
> previously
> > had a V4 and the performance on his PC was comparable to mine.)

> > --
> > Ian P
> > <email invalid due to spam>

by **Dave Henri** » Wed, 14 Mar 2001 09:07:50

because the V5 has two chips EACH with 32 megs of memory...while the V4
has only
one chip with 32 megs of memory. If you choose the single chip option on
your v5
3dfx tools hub, then you are essentially running a V4.
dave henrie

by **Ian** » Wed, 14 Mar 2001 09:17:44

So it's only a 32MB card when you tell it to be ? Other times it is a 64MB ?
ok my brain is confused now, I'm going to bed <G>

--
Ian P
<email invalid due to spam>

by **Simon Brow** » Wed, 14 Mar 2001 10:05:40

The V5 is an SLI card, which stands for Scan Line Interleave, which means it
has two chips which render alternate horizontal scanlines at the same time,
meaning it can generate frames in theory twice as fast as just a single
VSA-100 chip. The problem is that if the two chips had to use the same
memory, then they would often end up waiting for memory access while the
other chip was reading from memory.

So the memory (64 MB) is split into two 32 MB segments, one for each chip,
and when a game loads a texture onto the card, the V5 drivers load it into
both the memory banks. Of course to render a frame, both chips need access
to all the textures used in the 3d scene, which is why the textures have to
be duplicated.

Actually, in single-chip mode, it's still a 32 MB card, the other 32 MB
isn't used becaue single-chip mode is only a testing mode, not intended for
use. Also the memory is positioned for quick access for the chip the memory
belongs to, so if one chip had to use the other chips memory, I think it
would compromise performance. That's why there isn't a single-chip 64 MB
mode.

Just another note, not connected to the V5, people seems to assume that
because a card has more memory, it must be faster, which isn't always the
case. For instance, there's a 32MB and 64MB version of the GF2 gts, and you
will be hard pushed to find a game that the 64 MB version runs faster. As
long as the textures needed to render a particular frame fit in the video
cards memory, then any amount of memory beyond this is irrelevant. The
extra memory is handy for something like FSAA, which needs multiple frame
buffers, but since most games are designed so that the textures designed
will fit in 16 MB (let alone 32) then the extra memory is often wasted if
you are running without FSAA.

rec.autos.simulators

eVGA GeForce 2 MX 32MB

eVGA GeForce 2 MX 32MB

eVGA GeForce 2 MX 32MB

eVGA GeForce 2 MX 32MB

eVGA GeForce 2 MX 32MB

eVGA GeForce 2 MX 32MB

eVGA GeForce 2 MX 32MB

eVGA GeForce 2 MX 32MB

eVGA GeForce 2 MX 32MB

eVGA GeForce 2 MX 32MB

eVGA GeForce 2 MX 32MB

eVGA GeForce 2 MX 32MB

eVGA GeForce 2 MX 32MB

eVGA GeForce 2 MX 32MB

eVGA GeForce 2 MX 32MB