I originally posted this for Greg Cisco, but perhaps everyone should
know.
Somebody said..
To all 4 meg 3dfx owners.
I don't think that you've so far considered the full ramifications of
the fact that N2 was designed for Rendition cards. It's well known
that Voodoo1 cards render faster than V1000 cards, But V1000 has some
other charecteristics which make it better for N2.
1. Dynamic memory allocation. The Voodoo1 cards always have exactly
2mb of framebuffer/ 2mb texture. N2 is 640x480, triple buffered, and
not Z buffered, so on a V1000, 2.9Mb of the 4MB is dedicated to
textures.
2. Better texture management. V1000 uses DMA busmastering (the same
capability that makes ULTRA DMA harddrives so fast) to load textures
from system memory to card memory.
3. Optional 4-bit mode. V1000 can load textures as 4-bit images (this
only aplies to the indivdiual textures, the game of course still runs in
16 bit mode) 4-bit textures effectivly double the ammount of textures
loaded in card memory, with a very negligible loss in picture quality.
It has been noted before that finding a way to accomodate the 2mb
texture memory problem was the main factor which delayed the N2 3dfx for
so long. Try using the environment variable options to reduce texture
resolution.
I think there may be a few people who think VooDoo cards are
infallable. They are not.
Kevin G.
Actually this explains the situation quite well. Thanks for the
info, I do appreciate it...
--
Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.
>I originally posted this for Greg Cisco, but perhaps everyone should
>know.
>Somebody said..
>> >Yes, this is a port of a rendition game. They didn't start from scratch
to
>> >reprogram the whole thing to use just 3dfx for free. Can't understand
why,
>> >maybe they want to stay in business. How old is this game? Where on the
box
>> >does it claim 3dfx support?
>To all 4 meg 3dfx owners.
>I don't think that you've so far considered the full ramifications of
>the fact that N2 was designed for Rendition cards. It's well known
>that Voodoo1 cards render faster than V1000 cards, But V1000 has some
>other charecteristics which make it better for N2.
>1. Dynamic memory allocation. The Voodoo1 cards always have exactly
>2mb of framebuffer/ 2mb texture. N2 is 640x480, triple buffered, and
>not Z buffered, so on a V1000, 2.9Mb of the 4MB is dedicated to
>textures.
>2. Better texture management. V1000 uses DMA busmastering (the same
>capability that makes ULTRA DMA harddrives so fast) to load textures
>from system memory to card memory.
>3. Optional 4-bit mode. V1000 can load textures as 4-bit images (this
>only aplies to the indivdiual textures, the game of course still runs in
>16 bit mode) 4-bit textures effectivly double the ammount of textures
>loaded in card memory, with a very negligible loss in picture quality.
>It has been noted before that finding a way to accomodate the 2mb
>texture memory problem was the main factor which delayed the N2 3dfx for
>so long. Try using the environment variable options to reduce texture
>resolution.
>I think there may be a few people who think VooDoo cards are
>infallable. They are not.
>Kevin G.
And boy do they get upset when they find out! Guess it must be hard to
spend so much time writing posts about how 3dfx beats everything else
under the sun and then come across a situation in which it isn't the
case.
Cheers,
Richard (who is quite happy with his 3dfx despite it not ALWAYS being the
best <g>)
