3D Cards

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.geocities.com/MotorCity/2444

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> 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.geocities.com/MotorCity/2444 >

What new graphics cards? I wasn't aware there were any available worth owning. Rendition cards won't be out till October now and they are the only ones that will run Nascar2 or Indycar2 accellerated. The Mystique is only out in 2mb so noone should buy it yet even though it will be a decent card. The Voodoo should be great, but they're still waiting on software. The rest all suck. By the way, Sierra is planning on selling its own Rendition based card now. Maybe they can bundle it with Nascar2 and Indycar2. That would be awesome. Dana Bailes

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> > 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.geocities.com/MotorCity/2444 > > What new graphics cards? I wasn't aware there were any available worth > owning. Rendition cards won't be out till October now and they are the > only ones that will run Nascar2 or Indycar2 accellerated. The Mystique > is only out in 2mb so noone should buy it yet even though it will be a > decent card. The Voodoo should be great, but they're still waiting on > software. The rest all suck. By the way, Sierra is planning on selling > its own Rendition based card now. Maybe they can bundle it with Nascar2 > and Indycar2. That would be awesome. > Dana Bailes

Ever heard of power VR from videologic and NEC Dana? You're not going to tell me that this card sucks do you, this going to be the number ONE card out there. 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/

> Has anyone purchased one of the new 3D graphics Cards yet.?? > Or does anyone have any info on their performance with Racing Sims.? I haven't bought one, and I won't in the forseeable future. Here's why: 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://userwww.service.emory.edu/~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 ===========================================================

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>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

I haven't heard of any plans to do a Win'95 version. I think the technical problems they ran into porting ICR2 must've made them think twice about doing a Win'95 version of NASCAR. Until Microsoft gives the game developers a way to take over the CPU, I think simulations are going to continue to be DOS-based. 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/

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> > Has anyone purchased one of the new 3D graphics Cards yet.?? > > Or does anyone have any info on their performance with Racing Sims.? > I haven't bought one, and I won't in the forseeable future. > Here's why: > 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. > --

I have the Matrox Millenium and absolutely love it!

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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Southend, Essex. UK -----------------------------------------------------------------