REACTOR Worries

After much convincing I purchased the Reactor card (should be here today) and now I read that NON-rendition ready games and DirectX games are running slower than they used to on the previous owners video card. IS THIS TRUE!! Since I have about 200 games that are NON rendition ready and only Quake and ICR2 that ARE R-Ready - did I get the shaft here? This is why I always hate to invest in new technology. I always get ahead of the software. Hell - I had to pull 32mb out of my machine yesterday JUST to install Death Rally CD. Works fine with 64mb - you just can't install it.... Anyway - any info on these reported LOSS of performance will greatly be appreciated. I have to wonder how a $150 video card is supposed to out-perform my $350 Diamond Stealth 3400xl. Maybe I need to keep both and swap video cards when playing Quake or ICR2.

VGA games will be quite slow, but a fast processor should make up for this. On my P120 Doom and other games are still quite playable. VESA 2.0 SVGA games will be very fast. I've been impressed with the DirectX and Win95 speed of this card, it's faster than my ATI Mach64. Also, keep in mind these are the initial drivers. -- Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

I installed my reactor yesterday can tell you that gp2 and nascar (svga) run much faster now on my computer. I know that these games were not written for the reactor card so I have no idea why this is so. Haven't tried any other games yet.

My reactor -- running plain old non-accelerated Quake, gets only about a half a frame a sec less than my STB Lightspeed 128, which IMO was a pretty fast card. Jason Perkins

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> >After much convincing I purchased the Reactor card (should be here today) and > >now I read that NON-rendition ready games and DirectX games are running slower > >than they used to on the previous owners video card. > >IS THIS TRUE!! > >Since I have about 200 games that are NON rendition ready and only Quake and > >ICR2 that ARE R-Ready - did I get the shaft here? This is why I always hate to > >invest in new technology. I always get ahead of the software. Hell - I had to > >pull 32mb out of my machine yesterday JUST to install Death Rally CD. Works > >fine with 64mb - you just can't install it.... > >Anyway - any info on these reported LOSS of performance will greatly be > >appreciated. I have to wonder how a $150 video card is supposed to out-perform > >my $350 Diamond Stealth 3400xl. Maybe I need to keep both and swap video cards > >when playing Quake or ICR2. > I installed my reactor yesterday can tell you that gp2 and nascar > (svga) run much faster now on my computer. I know that these games > were not written for the reactor card so I have no idea why this is > so. > Haven't tried any other games yet.

The Reactor is no improvement over a Triton 9440 PCI graphics card for NCR1. As a matter of fact I think it's a little worse. However, from what I've seen of ICR2 Rendition Ready in indysafe mode my mouth is watering in anticipation of NCR2. I just hope I can get indyfast to work soon. David Martin

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>After much convincing I purchased the Reactor card (should be here today) and >now I read that NON-rendition ready games and DirectX games are running slower >than they used to on the previous owners video card. >IS THIS TRUE!! >Since I have about 200 games that are NON rendition ready and only Quake and >ICR2 that ARE R-Ready - did I get the shaft here? This is why I always hate to >invest in new technology. I always get ahead of the software. Hell - I had to >pull 32mb out of my machine yesterday JUST to install Death Rally CD. Works >fine with 64mb - you just can't install it.... >Anyway - any info on these reported LOSS of performance will greatly be >appreciated. I have to wonder how a $150 video card is supposed to out-perform >my $350 Diamond Stealth 3400xl. Maybe I need to keep both and swap video cards >when playing Quake or ICR2.

It depends on whether your talking about a VGA game or an SVGA game. Depending on what your old card was, SVGA games might well be faster, and VGA games will almost certainly be slower. My former card was a Hercules Dynamite Power (ET4000), which is a fairly decent card for DOS games. Here are my observations of how a few games played when I installed the reactor (sorry, no frame rate numbers, you'll have to live with "faster" or "slower" <g>). My machine is a P133 w/32 meg EDO. Also, there is a utility available called renutil that will allow certain VGA games to run using the SVGA core of the card, so they play MUCH faster. DOOM and all it's cousins - Slower Descent Slower Descent w/renutil Faster Mechwarrior II (640x480) Faster Mercenaries (640x480) Faster NASCAR (640x480) Faster GP II (640x480) Faster F22 Lightening II Faster Fighter Duel Faster Warcraft II Faster Apache (640x480) Faster Overall, unless your current card is a Matrox or an ET6000, your SVGA performance should improve, and VGA games don't generally tax your system anywhere near as much as SVGA, so your processor should be able to compensate for the cards shortcommings in VGA. David You're only young once, but you can stay immature forever.