OT: Voodoo4 Q - Voodoo5 users please read

I am seriously considering a Gfx card update tomorrow (own a Voodoo3 2000), but I have not yet decided if it will be a Voodoo4 4500 or a Voodoo5 5500 (it has to be a voodoo card so don't recommend any nvidia stuff please). I am not terribly excited about FSAA, especially the price of the V5 here in germany is a bit steep (700DM, about 300$, compared to 350 DM, which is 150$ for the V4), but I want a card that supports larger textures and has more video ram than the V3. So the V4 looks like the card to get. Question: has anyone already got experiences with the V4, especially in GPL ? Question#2: there are plenty of V5 users in this ng. If you set the V5 to single chip it should perform like a V4. right ? Could somebody give a quick report how the card performs in single chip, compared to the dual chip V5 and the older voodoo cards ? Will GPL be playable at 2xFSAA at 800x600 with the V4 ? Does the non-Fsaa performance suffer much from using only one chip ? (Games I play: GPL, Nascar Heat, MBTR, Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament). Thanks for answering, Alexander

I forgot GP3 on that list, I am really interested in GP3 performance on a single chip VSA-100 card. Is it better than on a V3 ? Is FSAA playable ? thanks, Alexander

Alexander Marx wrote: > > I forgot GP3 on that list, I am really interested in GP3 performance on a > single chip VSA-100 card. Is it better than on a V3 ? Is FSAA playable There is a (known?) problem with the V5 5500 and GP3, that being that running in the "fastest performance" setting (dual chip) is actually slower than running in "single chip"...it *seems* to me to be a driver bug. Running single chip on my V5 5500/P3 650@820/384 Mb gives fantastic performance in 1280x1024. Switching to 2X FSAA in 1280x1024 actually gives better perfomance than the "fastest performance" setting while 4X FSAA tends to get bogged down in 1280....1024x768 is more playable in 4X FSAA. Anyways, I think you should be fine with the V4's performance...since you can actually turn a V5 5500 into a V4 by running in "single chip" mode, I've seen first hand what a V4 is capable of. Sergey

GP3 with V5 5500 works great for me regardless of the mode I use. -- Todd S "Sergey Zakharov" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > Alexander Marx wrote: > > > > I forgot GP3 on that list, I am really interested in GP3 performance on a > > single chip VSA-100 card. Is it better than on a V3 ? Is FSAA playable > > There is a (known?) problem with the V5 5500 and GP3, that being that > running in the "fastest performance" setting (dual chip) is actually > slower than running in "single chip"...it *seems* to me to be a driver > bug. Running single chip on my V5 5500/P3 650@820/384 Mb gives fantastic > performance in 1280x1024. Switching to 2X FSAA in 1280x1024 actually > gives better perfomance than the "fastest performance" setting while 4X > FSAA tends to get bogged down in 1280....1024x768 is more playable in 4X > FSAA. Anyways, I think you should be fine with the V4's > performance...since you can actually turn a V5 5500 into a V4 by running > in "single chip" mode, I've seen first hand what a V4 is capable of. > > Sergey

There is ABSOLUTELY NO reason to get a V4 if you have a V3. And once you "SEE" FSAA you will not want to run without it. It is soooo subtle that the best way to notice the difference is to leave it on for a week or two, then turn it off...UGH! HUGH UGH! Sims without built in AA are amazing with FSAA. Think of the difference between Nascar1 and Nascar2 on a Rendition or 3dfx cards. FSAA is the real deal...ask mr NOS. or Papa Doc. Now, back to the V4. Yeah, it will be slightly faster than the V3...but not enough to justify spending the dough. Nascar heat is GORGEOUS with FSAA on. SCGT cleans up well. Gpl can run either the D3d or Glide version in 2xfsaa mode and get great framerates. A V4 is a low end non-solution to the problem. I don't know what the price-point of the next 3dfx card is after the V5-6000, it's the napalm card(?) it should be cheaper than the 4 chip 6000 so perhaps when that comes out the V5 will take a price dive. Either that or start scouting ebay. Haven't played dues x or unreal(lately!) but since they have graphic AA built in, you probably won't see tooo much difference. I can't see any simmer settleing for a V4. Save the money and get cpu upgrade, that would be better use for your $$ and improve gpl as well. dave henrie ps.. as far as I know, you NEED two chips to get the fsaa working. anyone know for shure???? "Alexander Marx" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:8q60tv$up6$15$[email hidden]... > I am seriously considering a Gfx card update tomorrow (own a Voodoo32000), > but I have not yet decided if it will be a Voodoo4 4500 or a Voodoo5 5500 > (it has to be a voodoo card so don't recommend any nvidia stuff please). > > I am not terribly excited about FSAA, especially the price of the V5 herein > germany is a bit steep (700DM, about 300$, compared to 350 DM, which is150$ > for the V4), but I want a card that supports larger textures and has more > video ram than the V3. So the V4 looks like the card to get. > > Question: has anyone already got experiences with the V4, especially inGPL > ? > > Question#2: there are plenty of V5 users in this ng. If you set the V5 to > single chip it should perform like a V4. right ? Could somebody give aquick > report how the card performs in single chip, compared to the dual chip V5 > and the older voodoo cards ? Will GPL be playable at 2xFSAA at 800x600with > the V4 ? Does the non-Fsaa performance suffer much from using only onechip

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> ? (Games I play: GPL, Nascar Heat, MBTR, Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament). > > Thanks for answering, > > Alexander > > >

It does 2xfsaa. J. Janasov Nos <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > On Mon, 18 Sep 2000 23:59:12 GMT, "Dave Henrie" <[email hidden]> thus > spoke: > > > There is ABSOLUTELY NO reason to get a V4 if you have a V3. And onceyou > >"SEE" FSAA you will not want to run without it. It is soooo subtle that > >the best way to notice the difference is to leave it on for a week ortwo, > >then turn it off...UGH! HUGH UGH! Sims without built in AA are amazing > >with FSAA. Think of the difference between Nascar1 and Nascar2 on a > >Rendition or 3dfx cards. FSAA is the real deal...ask mr NOS. or PapaDoc. > > Now, back to the V4. Yeah, it will be slightly faster than theV3...but > >not enough to justify spending the dough. Nascar heat is GORGEOUS withFSAA > >on. SCGT cleans up well. Gpl can run either the D3d or Glide version in > >2xfsaa mode and get great framerates. A V4 is a low end non-solution to > >the problem. I don't know what the price-point of the next 3dfx card is > >after the V5-6000, it's the napalm card(?) it should be cheaper than the4 > >chip 6000 so perhaps when that comes out the V5 will take a price dive. > >Either that or start scouting ebay. > > Haven't played dues x or unreal(lately!) but since they have graphicAA

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> >built in, you probably won't see tooo much difference. > >I can't see any simmer settleing for a V4. Save the money and get cpu > >upgrade, that would be better use for your $$ and improve gpl as well. > >dave henrie > > I'll second everything that Dave says above. > > > ps.. as far as I know, you NEED two chips to get the fsaa working.

anyone

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> >know for shure???? > > I don't think the V4 does FSAA. At least there is no mention of it on > the 3DFX product page for the V4 so I can only assume it doesn't do > FSAA. The V5 has twice the fill rate of the V4 so that is probably why > it doesn't do FSAA. If it did it would be very slow. Here's some > comments below from the 3DFX FAQ regarding V4. > > 1. What is the difference between the V4 and V5? > > The Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 are 3dfx board product families. The Voodoo4 > family includes a single 3dfx VSA-100 graphics processor. The Voodoo5 > products contain two (2) or four (4) VSA-100 graphics processors on a > single board. > > > > 2. How does the Voodoo4 perform compared with the Voodoo3? > > The single-chip Voodoo4 boards does, clock for clock, significantly > out-perform Voodoo3. Here's why. Voodoo4's VSA-100 engine renders two > pixels per clock for single-texture content, whereas Voodoo3 only > renders one pixel per clock. Also, we've made the basic 3D rasterizer > more up to 20% more efficient. The VSA-100's texture compression will > help performance tremendously in games that use compressed textures. > These improvements, when combined with some other fundamental > enhancements like all of the important DirectX6 and DirectX7 texture > combines, new alpha blends, and guardband clipping to offload the CPU, > lead to what could be a 100% performance improvement in a lot of > situations. > > > -- > Nos

On Mon, 18 Sep 2000 23:59:12 GMT, "Dave Henrie" <[email hidden]> thus spoke:

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> There is ABSOLUTELY NO reason to get a V4 if you have a V3. And once you >"SEE" FSAA you will not want to run without it. It is soooo subtle that >the best way to notice the difference is to leave it on for a week or two, >then turn it off...UGH! HUGH UGH! Sims without built in AA are amazing >with FSAA. Think of the difference between Nascar1 and Nascar2 on a >Rendition or 3dfx cards. FSAA is the real deal...ask mr NOS. or Papa Doc. > Now, back to the V4. Yeah, it will be slightly faster than the V3...but >not enough to justify spending the dough. Nascar heat is GORGEOUS with FSAA >on. SCGT cleans up well. Gpl can run either the D3d or Glide version in >2xfsaa mode and get great framerates. A V4 is a low end non-solution to >the problem. I don't know what the price-point of the next 3dfx card is >after the V5-6000, it's the napalm card(?) it should be cheaper than the 4 >chip 6000 so perhaps when that comes out the V5 will take a price dive. >Either that or start scouting ebay. > Haven't played dues x or unreal(lately!) but since they have graphic AA >built in, you probably won't see tooo much difference. >I can't see any simmer settleing for a V4. Save the money and get cpu >upgrade, that would be better use for your $$ and improve gpl as well. >dave henrie

I'll second everything that Dave says above. > ps.. as far as I know, you NEED two chips to get the fsaa working. anyone >know for shure???? I don't think the V4 does FSAA. At least there is no mention of it on the 3DFX product page for the V4 so I can only assume it doesn't do FSAA. The V5 has twice the fill rate of the V4 so that is probably why it doesn't do FSAA. If it did it would be very slow. Here's some comments below from the 3DFX FAQ regarding V4. 1. What is the difference between the V4 and V5? The Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 are 3dfx board product families. The Voodoo4 family includes a single 3dfx VSA-100 graphics processor. The Voodoo5 products contain two (2) or four (4) VSA-100 graphics processors on a single board. 2. How does the Voodoo4 perform compared with the Voodoo3? The single-chip Voodoo4 boards does, clock for clock, significantly out-perform Voodoo3. Here's why. Voodoo4's VSA-100 engine renders two pixels per clock for single-texture content, whereas Voodoo3 only renders one pixel per clock. Also, we've made the basic 3D rasterizer more up to 20% more efficient. The VSA-100's texture compression will help performance tremendously in games that use compressed textures. These improvements, when combined with some other fundamental enhancements like all of the important DirectX6 and DirectX7 texture combines, new alpha blends, and guardband clipping to offload the CPU, lead to what could be a 100% performance improvement in a lot of situations. -- Nos

I read a Voodoo5 review that tells in rain race, GP3 becomes incredibly heavy (with Athlon 1GB and 256MB SD-RAM system, GP3(1280x1024) told 320% CPU occupacy). Is it fixed now? He also mentioned switching the PCs Voodoo5 to GeForce2GTS made just 60% occupacy. I heard 3dfx fire some skilled engineer, it might make driver development so hard. Y.Minami "Todd Sorensen" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:1zxx5.151830$[email hidden]... > GP3 with V5 5500 works great for me regardless of the mode I use. > > -- > Todd S

On Tue, 19 Sep 2000 14:22:08 +0900, "Yoshi Minami" <[email hidden]> thus spoke: >I read a Voodoo5 review that tells in rain race, GP3 becomes incredibly >heavy (with Athlon 1GB and 256MB SD-RAM system, GP3(1280x1024) >told 320% CPU occupacy). Is it fixed now? > He also mentioned switching the PCs Voodoo5 to GeForce2GTS >made just 60% occupacy. 320%?? I'll have to test it further, but I'm never over 100% from what I have seen when I did check it. That's on a P3 800. Maybe he was in software mode and didn't realize it. > I heard 3dfx fire some skilled engineer, it might make driver >development so hard. As rrevved mentioned. Nvidia drivers are always a problem. Yes, I've owned two Nvidia cards in the past so I'm not making that up. -- Nos

"Alexander Marx" <[email hidden]> writes: > Question#2: there are plenty of V5 users in this ng. If you set the V5 to > single chip it should perform like a V4. right ? Could somebody give a quick > report how the card performs in single chip, compared to the dual chip V5 > and the older voodoo cards ? Will GPL be playable at 2xFSAA at 800x600 with > the V4 ? Does the non-Fsaa performance suffer much from using only one chip > ? (Games I play: GPL, Nascar Heat, MBTR, Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament). In GPL, I get almost identical results with the V5 in single chip mode as I got with the V3/3000: (Monaco race start stationary at end of grid, every option maxed out, 1=min, 2=ai's disappear, 3=max, all with a Athlon 700) Voodoo 3/3000 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200 (*) 1 25 21 19 17 2 36 36 33 27 52 3 36 36 36 32 Voodoo 5/5500 single chip 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200 1 24 22 19 18 2 36 36 31 27 52 3 36 36 36 32 Voodoo 5/5500 no FSAA (= max performance) 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200 1 25 23 21 19 2 36 36 36 33 63 3 36 36 36 36 Voodoo 5/5500 2xFSAA 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1 26 23 21 18 2 36 36 33 29 76 3 36 36 36 36 Voodoo 5/5500 4xFSAA 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1 24 21 18 15 2 36 36 27 20 105 3 36 36 33 22 _ Mats Lofkvist [email hidden] GPLRank -2.11 (*) For Magnus Svensson if you happen to read this post :-) It's the fillrate in megapixels/second at the highest tested resolution for test 2. It is quite obvious that the full V5 potential isn't used without turning on the FSAA (preferably 4x).

Mats Lofkvist <[email hidden]> writes:

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> Voodoo 5/5500 single chip > 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200 > 1 24 22 19 18 > 2 36 36 31 27 52 > 3 36 36 36 32 > > Voodoo 5/5500 no FSAA (= max performance) > 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200 > 1 25 23 21 19 > 2 36 36 36 33 63 > 3 36 36 36 36 > > Voodoo 5/5500 2xFSAA > 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 > 1 26 23 21 18 > 2 36 36 33 29 76 > 3 36 36 36 36 > > Voodoo 5/5500 4xFSAA > 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 > 1 24 21 18 15 > 2 36 36 27 20 105 > 3 36 36 33 22

Thanks for the info. Is it possible to test the Voodoo5/5500 single chip with 2xFSAA ? (should be like the V4 with FSAA) -- Olav K. Malmin remove spam when replying

On 20 Sep 2000 09:48:13 +0200, [email hidden] (Olav K. Malmin) thus spoke: >Thanks for the info. Is it possible to test the Voodoo5/5500 single >chip with 2xFSAA ? (should be like the V4 with FSAA) You can't do that. The selections are single chip, fastest performance (both chips), 2X FSAA (both chips), and 4X FSAA (both chips). The V4 does not do FSAA. -- Nos

On Wed, 20 Sep 2000 10:30:02 GMT, [email hidden] (Nos) wrote: >>Thanks for the info. Is it possible to test the Voodoo5/5500 single >>chip with 2xFSAA ? (should be like the V4 with FSAA) > >You can't do that. The selections are single chip, fastest performance >(both chips), 2X FSAA (both chips), and 4X FSAA (both chips). The V4 >does not do FSAA. J. Janasov claims it does 2X FSAA. Who is correct here? Enquiring minds would like to know... Regards, Brett C. Cammack That's Racing! Motorsports Pompano Beach, FL

On 20 Sep 2000 00:25:49 +0200, Mats Lofkvist <[email hidden]> wrote: >(*) For Magnus Svensson if you happen to read this post :-) > It's the fillrate in megapixels/second at the highest > tested resolution for test 2. First I'd like to thank you for the work you made putting that list together... :) It was very interesting. The remark I made earlier was meant in general, not GPL, I missed that you specified a title. I tried to do some myself(C450, GF1DDR), but the results were rather erratic... For instance the max i got at 640x480 was about 30, whereas at 1600x1200 max was 33. Then I gave up... :) > It is quite obvious that > the full V5 potential isn't used without turning on > the FSAA (preferably 4x). Hm, yeah. It's one way of looking at it... The other is that the V5(Or GPL) sucks at high-res. ;) /Magnus GPLRank hcp: -3.07

On Wed, 20 Sep 2000 11:58:35 GMT, [email hidden] (Brett C. Cammack) wrote: >J. Janasov claims it does 2X FSAA. Who is correct here? Enquiring >minds would like to know... Did a little research on this at the 3dfx web site. Nowhere do they say that the board does 2X FSAA, but in the FAQ about the board and the chip, they say the chip will do FSAA. It would be reasonable to infer, therefore, that a Voodoo4 will indeed do 2X FSAA at least, although with some likely performance penalty. The board sounds like it could be a decent value if you're interested in "real good" graphics and performance instead of "the ultimate that money can buy" sort of stuff... Regards, Brett C. Cammack That's Racing! Motorsports Pompano Beach, FL

"Quentin Stephens" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> [email hidden] (Alexander Marx) wrote in <8q60tv$up6$15$[email hidden] > online.com>: > > >I am not terribly excited about FSAA, > > Be very excited. It's the only reason for buying a V5 over a G2 and the > increase in visual quality is simply stunning. Toca 2 at 2x FSAA is great, > and Toca 2 at 4x FSAA is *wonderful*. Pay the extra for the V5 5500. You > won't regret it. >

But will my PII400 be enough for a V5 or should I stick with my V3 until I can upgrade? -- don New GPL Programs for the Converted Tracks: http://www.ianparker1.plus.com/gpl/bapom/ You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted, then used against you.

[email hidden] (Alexander Marx) wrote in <8q60tv$up6$15$[email hidden] online.com>: >I am not terribly excited about FSAA, Be very excited. It's the only reason for buying a V5 over a G2 and the increase in visual quality is simply stunning. Toca 2 at 2x FSAA is great, and Toca 2 at 4x FSAA is *wonderful*. Pay the extra for the V5 5500. You won't regret it.

On Thu, 21 Sep 2000 17:53:46 -0700, "don hodgdon" <[email hidden]> thus spoke: >But will my PII400 be enough for a V5 or should I stick with my V3 until I >can upgrade? You will still get the benefits of FSAA. But, the V5 does scale with the CPU so I would upgrade the cpu first. -- Nos

[email hidden] (don hodgdon) wrote in <8qeafa$teo$[email hidden]>:

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>"Quentin Stephens" <[email hidden]> wrote in message >news:[email hidden]... >> [email hidden] (Alexander Marx) wrote in <8q60tv$up6$15$[email hidden] >> online.com>: >> >> >I am not terribly excited about FSAA, >> >> Be very excited. It's the only reason for buying a V5 over a G2 and >> the increase in visual quality is simply stunning. Toca 2 at 2x FSAA >> is great, and Toca 2 at 4x FSAA is *wonderful*. Pay the extra for the >> V5 5500. You won't regret it. >> > >But will my PII400 be enough for a V5 or should I stick with my V3 until >I can upgrade?

I have a Celeron 400, so yes you will benefit.