I'm an unlucky soul who hasn't been able to get the BGN pack yet
this week. I'm hoping to do so next week; but I have one question
concerning it and the Rendition cards.
I currently have this setup:
200 Mhz Intel MMX Overdrive
512K L2 cache
32 MB RAM
Intergraph Intense 3D V100 Rendition
Diamond Monster 3Dfx
Now, here is my question: this system was originally an IBM Aptiva
133 Pentium. With the upgrades I've done, it's a pretty cool racing
machine. However, the motherboard is about two years old now. I've run
dmadiag for the Rendition card and it says "dma sucks on this m/c", but
it DOES support it, at least.
Indycar II Rend runs fantastic for me. N2 runs fine on some tracks,
but others I really must use the -4 switch. For instance, the fantasy
tracks are totally undrivable using renddma, but with renddma -4 it's a
full 30 fps the whole time. I suspect from the other posts I'll have to
use the switch all the time with BGN.
What I'm wondering is if an upgrade to one of the new V2100 or V2200
Rend boards like the Stealth II or Herc Thriller would make it so that
the Rendition performance is not so dependent on the DMA instructions on
this old motherboard, and would allow me to run the N2 tracks in all
their glory. This isn't the only reason I would want one; if anyone
could tell me what kind of 2D performance increase there would be, I'd
appreciate that as well. And two final questions: do these boards
support the features missing from the V100 chipset? And is it true that
these might do Direct3D even better than a 3Dfx Voodoo? (If it is,
these boards must really SMOKE!)
Thanks in advance for any info if you know anything about this or
have upgraded to one of these. Please e-mail me in case I don't check
back soon.