Grand Prix Legends-3dfx

On a 200, you might not see all *that* much differance between a V1 and a V2, or so conventional wisdom goes. But for the future, and considering the lowered prices of the V2, I'd go V2. For the same reason, I'd choose the 12mb. Most benchmarks have shown no diff between the two memory configs, unless there are a lot of textures. Expect texture size to increase now that there are a lot of 16MB cards on the shelves. None, or none worth speaking of. Go by features (do you want TV out?) and price.

Go buy a TNT card. It's cheaper than a Voodoo 2 card... has more memory, and if enough people own them.. then maybe Sierra will stop supporting their stoopid Rendition cards. Do they have stock in that company or something?? Who ever keeps making them create drivers for Rendition cards and not DirectX and 3Dfx like the rest of the world needs to be fired. Can anyone name one other game that has native Rendition support that isn't affiliated with Sierra?????

I have a Pentium 200 and I have not so many FPS in GPL so now I think that I must get a 3dfx-card but because Im not so very good at this I dont know whitch card I shall have. Voodoo or Voodoo2, is there much difference and shall it be a 8mb or a 12mb? And is there a difference between Diamond Monster, Orchid Righteous and Blaster Voodoo?

Heavy Gear? Jerry Morelock

Tomb Raider, EF2000 V2.0, SiN,VQuake.....the image quality for Rendition-native apps is far superior to 3Dfx, and without half the graphical glitches and texture problems. 3Dfx just has the reputation it has for one reason- speed. And in GPL, etc., that advantage is negligible. Rendition-based cards are not 'stoopid'.....they are some of the best dollar-for dollar values anywhere. -- Scott Moore Hoosier MotorSports [link lost in import] Sports *** Network [link lost in import: /***.com] >Go buy a TNT card. It's cheaper than a Voodoo 2 card... has more memory, >and if enough people own them.. then maybe Sierra will stop supporting their >stoopid Rendition cards. Do they have stock in that company or something?? >Who ever keeps making them create drivers for Rendition cards and not >DirectX and 3Dfx like the rest of the world needs to be fired. >Can anyone name one other game that has native Rendition support that isn't >affiliated with Sierra?????

In raw framerate, no real difference. But running at 1024x768 at the same speed as 640x480 was impressive when I was using a 12Mb V2 on my P200mmx. But if money's a problem, I'd say get the cheapest V1 you can find and enjoying the driving... that's what matters most. Andrew McP

On Sun, 18 Oct 1998 00:53:57 +0200, "Nichlas Ingemarsson" >I have a Pentium 200 and I have not so many FPS in GPL so now I think that I >must get a 3dfx-card but because Im not so very good at this I dont know >whitch card I shall have. >Voodoo or Voodoo2, is there much difference and shall it be a 8mb or a 12mb? >And is there a difference between Diamond Monster, Orchid Righteous and >Blaster Voodoo? If you're going to get a 3D card for GPL, particularly on a slow Pentium like a 200, I would strongly recommend a Rendition V2200 based card like the Hercules Thriller 8Mb. My experience has been that it is worth about 50% better frame rate than a 3dfx.

Don't listen to him! Don't buy TNT if you want to play GPL. REndition would be the best for your pentium 200 ( REndition v2x00 ). Borut >Go buy a TNT card. It's cheaper than a Voodoo 2 card... has more memory, >and if enough people own them.. then maybe Sierra will stop supporting their >stoopid Rendition cards. Do they have stock in that company or something?? >Who ever keeps making them create drivers for Rendition cards and not >DirectX and 3Dfx like the rest of the world needs to be fired. >Can anyone name one other game that has native Rendition support that isn't >affiliated with Sierra?????

Microsoft Monster Truck Madness 2 Activision Interstate '76 Gold Edition (Arsenal) Screamer Rally (only 3dBlaster PCI) and many many more!!!

Aaaaawwww, he only asked for ONE, dammit! <vbg> Jerry Morelock >Tomb Raider, EF2000 V2.0, SiN,VQuake.....the image quality for >Rendition-native apps is far superior to 3Dfx, and without half the >graphical glitches and texture problems. 3Dfx just has the reputation it has

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>for one reason- speed. And in GPL, etc., that advantage is negligible. >Rendition-based cards are not 'stoopid'.....they are some of the best >dollar-for dollar values anywhere. >-- >Scott Moore >Hoosier MotorSports >[link lost in import] >Sports *** Network >[link lost in import: /***.com]

no no no.. go buy a TNT card. so what if you can't play GPL in 3D accelerated mode.. it's still a better card, and eventually Sierra might be bought by EA and EA will force them to make a driver that would allow the TNT to play GPL at 1280x1024 resolution at 50+ FPS. Voodoo 2 SLI mode couldn't do that and Rendition is only good for about 2 games. Actually, the question is.. can you name 1 other Rendition based game that is a great of a game as GPL??? That is by Sierra.. the point is, we now have Voodoo 2 cards, TNT cards, G200 cards.. and Sierra is still stuck on their damn Rendition cards. Did any of you know that Sierra fought to get 3Dfx support in GPL? They wanted to do another Nascar2 repeat buy having support for Rendition only. If you LOVE the sierra sports game.. then Rendition is a great card, because your choice is limited. If you want to buy something that you can use for more than 1 year, than go TNT. Even 3Dfx boards are already outdated compared to their Rev. 2, boards that haven't come out yet. Voodoo 2 cards are great for the amount of games out there. But it's still gonna het ya over 200 for a Diamond Monster 2 12mb card... and double that price just to reach 1280x764 resolution. I paid less than 200 and can reach higher resolutions than that, with faster frame rates. (As long as the game company properly supports it) 3Dfx has a wonderful marketing department, they really win over their supporters and therefore they get their card used in their games. I think maybe 3Dfx should make a TNT based card.

>Go buy a TNT card. It's cheaper than a Voodoo 2 card... has more memory, >and if enough people own them.. then maybe Sierra will stop supporting their >stoopid Rendition cards. Do they have stock in that company or something?? >Who ever keeps making them create drivers for Rendition cards and not >DirectX and 3Dfx like the rest of the world needs to be fired. >Can anyone name one other game that has native Rendition support that isn't >affiliated with Sierra????? Hey, there are a lot of S3 Virge and Matrox M3D owners out there too - should they support them also? While I now have a Voodoo 2, I used a Rendition card for a long time. Until the Riva 128, the ONLY real 3D cards were by 3dfx and Rendition. Period. I was running 3D stuff in '96 with a Rendition V1000. The only cards faster than the 2100/2200 Rendition cards until the last few months were the Voodoo 2's. So supporting Rendition makes a heckuva lot of sense. The other point you don't grasp - TNT doesn't have a NATIVE programming mode, only D3D (and OpenGL for Quake). But since D3D was a pain to program and couldn't support a lot of the features until just recently with DX6, Rendition and 3dfx were smart enough to have API's to support their cards natively, so games could be programmed to run faster and with more features on their cards than using D3D. Papyrus already had a lot of experience with Rendition programming, and of course since they supported it in their other titles they knew that a lot of their customers would have these cards. With the prevalence of Voodoo 1/2's they were smart to add Glide support too. See, they DO support 3dfx "like the rest of the world". Just like a lot of other sims. And like a lot of them, it doesn't do D3D. I bought the hardware that runs my software, so don't miss out on anything. Those who buy hardware and hope that they get a patch later to run their software knew that going in, and shouldn't complain. They've sold a lot of Riva 128's, but I still see a lot of games that are Glide only, and a lot of not-so-old Glide / Rendition games that never got patched to D3D. So buying a TNT for some mythical future D3D patch to GPL would be kinda stupid, it supports Rendition and 3dfx Glide. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush as they say. If you get a TNT, don't complain 6 months from now about lack of a patch. Ken

>I have a Pentium 200 and I have not so many FPS in GPL so now I think that I >must get a 3dfx-card but because Im not so very good at this I dont know >whitch card I shall have. >Voodoo or Voodoo2, is there much difference and shall it be a 8mb or a 12mb? >And is there a difference between Diamond Monster, Orchid Righteous and >Blaster Voodoo? Not a lot of difference. As others have suggested though, a Rendition V2200 based card would probably be your best bet for GPL, since it seems to run really well on those. With your P200, you'd likely see it run a bit faster on the Rendition than on a Voodoo 2, but the Voodoo 2 will start to be faster after 300mhz or so. Ken

Sorry, I got carried away..... 8^)

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>Aaaaawwww, he only asked for ONE, dammit! <vbg> >Jerry Morelock >>Tomb Raider, EF2000 V2.0, SiN,VQuake.....the image quality for >>Rendition-native apps is far superior to 3Dfx, and without half the >>graphical glitches and texture problems. 3Dfx just has the reputation it >has >>for one reason- speed. And in GPL, etc., that advantage is negligible. >>Rendition-based cards are not 'stoopid'.....they are some of the best >>dollar-for dollar values anywhere. >>-- >>Scott Moore >>Hoosier MotorSports >>[link lost in import] >>Sports *** Network >>[link lost in import: /***.com]

> no no no.. go buy a TNT card. so what if you can't play GPL in 3D > accelerated mode.. it's still a better card, and eventually Sierra might be > bought by EA and EA will force them to make a driver that would allow the > TNT to play GPL at 1280x1024 resolution at 50+ FPS. 50+ fps at 1280x1024?? You're definitly reading to many press releases (a.k.a. hype) from the TNT boys...keep on dreaming or check some of the independent reviews for a change. l8er ronny -- How to get rid of censorship in German game releases <http://www.gamesmania.com/german/maniac/freedom/freedom.htm> |\ _,,,---,,_ I want to die like my Grandfather, ZZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ in his sleep. |,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' Not like the people in his car, '---''(_/--' `-'\_) screaming their heads off!

According to the Flight Sim folks(the ORIGINAL 3dfx diciples) The TNT IS superior to two Voodoo2 cards in sli mode. The upcoming Falcon 4, (a hardware hog if there ever was one) currently runs faster on TNT cards than the native Glide sli version. There will still be some programs that the V2's run better and faster, but thier advantage is slipping. Even here in this newsgroup, many Hercules owners have reported thier V2200 8 meg cards outperforming a double Voodoo in GPL dave henrie

>Go buy a TNT card. It's cheaper than a Voodoo 2 card... has more memory, >and if enough people own them.. then maybe Sierra will stop supporting their >stoopid Rendition cards. Ain't real bright are you ***sucker!? **On a P200**, even if supported in GPL, the TNT would in all probability give worse actual performance than a base Riva 128 due to other issues. As it isn't even supported in GPL, it's performance using GPL's software rendering would give the poor guy a poxy 10 fps in 'uglymode' if he was lucky! Still I can see how this would be appealing to you. TNT might be a reasonably good card for D3D supported apps or where a mini GL wrapper is available, but for GPL it's a non-event AND it's relatively expensive! Further, TNT = a poor choice for a P200 and a BAD choice for GPL plus abysmal *current* value for money or choice for *** generally with it's immature, buggy drivers and firmware. Grow up junior. Rendition's image quality is far superior to 3Dfx's cartoon like graphics..always has been..always will be. Using RRedline the advantages over Glide are clearly obvious. No anti-aliasing! Yuk! You've got to be kidding! The speed advantage that 3Dfx held for that short period of time is ancient history, so get with the program and catch up with Q4 1998. DirectX 6.0, D3D, OpenGl ICDs and wrappers have NOW pretty much nullified 3Dfx's early proprietry driven speed lead (thank God!) and unless they penetrate the OEM market, they're in deep sh*t! There are only a couple of specific games where the speed of 3Dfx II is clearly advantageous and taken advantage of now, and they still require an expensive 3D ONLY solution. Hey, if you've got the spare cash.. The poor 'ole Banshee isn't gonna' stave off S3's Savage, Nvidia's TNT, or Rendition's forthcoming offering for which I eagerly await. Micron behind Rendition is very encouraging. If you really have future vision, much though I DO like nVidia's products, why would I buy the .35 micron TNT when shortly I can enjoy Rendition's latest offering? My original Intergraph Reactor gave me stirling service, and my Stealth II S220 V2100 was pretty good too, especially for the price. My current AGP Viper V330 is a great card as well, and I hardly need to use my 3Dfx Voodoo for much any more, although just like the TNT the Viper V330 is absolutely useless for GPL. It's a shame I can't remove the Viper and use the old V2100 for GPL, but I'm all out of PCI slots 8^(, so I've got to put up with the poxy Monster's lack of anti-aliasing. The average 25fps framerate and graphics are OK, but just like in Nascar 2, Quake or Descent II, the 3Dfx images just don't rate beside Rendition's for those of us who appreciate quality. I for one am really glad Sierra/Papyrus have chosen to stick with Rendition. I've always been happier with the image quality and value of my Rendition cards over my 3Dfx Monster which was a market driven grudge buy. I'm certainly awaiting tRendition's next chipset with interest as a primary video replacement. If they get it as solid as my Intergraph Reactor card was at release, I'll be purchasing one without question. Insofar as I see it, the requirement to have any specific support for Glide only supported games is long dead already. *Almost everything* releasing these days supports Direct 3D or some subset of Open GL out of the box. Good riddance to all proprietry APIs, but if you're gonna' use one, use a decent one like RRedline, not Glide 'cos it's easy for dummies to program in or due some corporate affiliation like EA's stake in 3Dfx. As for nVidia's proprietry API...hehehe. I do love their Riva 128...but still not the 3D image quality of the Rendition V2100/V2200, and they pay for that speed with horrendous screen tearing and the tradeoff of texture load times. Just rip around a Quake 2 level with it and you'll see what I mean. As a 2D card, image quality is nearly (not quite) up there with Rendition, but speed ..YES, which is primarily why I bought it. Sure..do you recognise any of these 'obscure' non-Sierra titles... Quake Descent II Forsaken Tomb Raider EF2000 2.0 SiN Heavy Gear etc...etc...etc ...plus the stacks of others which just like 3Dfx cards use the D3D API or have mini/Open GL wrappers. Now crawl back in your cadaver you mindless buzzard! <gg>

> no no no.. go buy a TNT card. so what if you can't play GPL in 3D > accelerated mode.. it's still a better card, and eventually Sierra might be > bought by EA and EA will force them to make a driver that would allow the > TNT to play GPL at 1280x1024 resolution at 50+ FPS. Voodoo 2 SLI mode > couldn't do that and Rendition is only good for about 2 games. Well, you are majorly wrong about this. EA is a part owner of 3Dfx - they have owned 10% of 3Dfx stock since it went public. Who do you think makes more Glide titles than any other company - EA! FYI, it is the Rev.3 board that is the new faster Voodoo2 board, but no one is shipping it, yet. Also, you can get a 12MB Monster 2 for $139-$50 rebate=$90. $90 x 2 = $180 for SLI, that is less than the $200 you quoted for one board, not even close to the double that price you quote for SLI. I think you're confused about this. 3Dfx designs their own chips, they are not going to be making a TNT board. Once the lawsuit comes to trial, there may be nobody making TNT cards anymore.

NI> I have a Pentium 200 and I have not so many FPS in GPL so now I think NI> that I must get a 3dfx-card but because I|m not so very good at this I NI> don|t know whitch card I shall have. NI> Voodoo or Voodoo2, is there much difference and shall it be a 8mb or a NI> 12mb? And is there a difference between Diamond Monster, Orchid NI> Righteous and Blaster Voodoo? A Voodoo-II card will be quite a lot faster if your CPU is >266mhz. So get a Voodoo-I or a K6-II and a Voodoo-II, it's so damned cheap today... IMHO it doesn't make a difference if you you a Diamond, Orchid or whatever as the cards are quite identical. Even the drivers are exchangeble...;-) Also, man mailt sich... .\\atze [ FmMW2109 - FmMB2139 ] *home* : http://www.home4u.de/buesing/

>no no no.. go buy a TNT card. so what if you can't play GPL in 3D >accelerated mode.. it's still a better card, and eventually Sierra might be >bought by EA and EA will force them to make a driver that would allow the >TNT to play GPL at 1280x1024 resolution at 50+ FPS. Voodoo 2 SLI mode >couldn't do that and Rendition is only good for about 2 games. Explain to me, how is it better? All the benchmarks show it running half the speed of Voodoo 2 SLI in Quake 2. Yes, it can go higher in res, but on SLI? Oh yeah, it'll do 1600x1200, but at 17 fps? ugghh Ok, it'll do 1024x768 for $170, my single Voodoo 2 12mb will only do 800x600 - but you're only getting 32 fps and less, I'm getting 60+ at 800x600, just as fast as the TNT. Direct 3D games seem faster on TNT, BUT 3dfx has not released DirectX 6.0 drivers as of yet (beta one just ot last week, no release candidate), that take advantage of the dual texture units for example - so unless the TNT is twice as fast in D3D I'm not impressed. From what I've seen, it may run 1284x768 if GPL were patched, but you'd be real lucky to get 25fps, let alone 50. Plus of course it's limited to 36fps to begin with. Since you can't play several games accelerated on it, explain to me how it's a better card. I don't get it. A nice card, yes. Might put one in to replace my Riva 128 for 2D, and for those games where it works better than Voodoo 2 - but the Voodoo 2 sure wouldn't be going anywhere. Check out www.tomshardware.com for TNT vs. Voodoo 2. Although he praises the TNT for the higher resolutions, the framerates never show it to be faster than a V2 SLI at even the same resolution, and usually about the same speed as a single Voodoo 2. And 3dfx is pushing SLI, so look to get 2 V2's for about the price of a TNT in the next few months. For racing sims, let's see, Rendition runs N2, ICR2, and all the D3D ones. Also runs EF2000 2.0 and a number of older games in native mode, and will run everything you throw at it in D3D. AND GPL RUNS ON Voodoo 2 !!! What's your beef? Yeah, of course in a year there' ll be Voodoo 3 or something that's twice as fast. spectacular. Ok, you have really lost it now - 3dfx makes CHIPS. Companies like Creative, Diamond, Canopus buy these chips and make cards with them, that you buy at the store. nVidia makes the TNT chip, same thing. I think what it is, you bought your TNT because you saw specs on the box or some website, "Can do 1600x1200, it's faster than 2 Voodoo 2's,etc. etc" and are now pissed since you discovered half the games out, including GPL, don't run accelerated on it. And you're especially pissed that GPL doesn't just do like that half and support 3dfx, it also supports those "old" Rendition cards. Sucks that a $50 Stealth II can get more frames in a game than your $180 TNT huh? Ken P.S. Not trying to sound like a 3dfx or Rendition zealot, just trying to counter the TNT zealot <grin> It just doesn't run GPL (accelerated), no way you can recommend it to a guy wanting a card to improve GPL, seemed simple to me.

>>no no no.. go buy a TNT card. so what if you can't play GPL in 3D >>accelerated mode.. it's still a better card, Okay guys, lets let this die, or take it to the video ng where it is the flame topic of the month :-) I'd say it is better in some regards, as you well might admit if it wasn't for someone getting you hot under the collar :-) True, many of those benefits are moot until supported, but I suspect you would acknowledge that day will come. For instance... Faster than a single V2 in D3D (OpenGL??). 32 bit color. Greater texture memory capacity. Greater resolution capability. Better image (by most accounts). AGP 2x for large texture support. I agree it isn't a V2 replacement, at least until/if Glide support dissapears. But you seem to admit it has it's place! OEM TNT's are already in the $140 range. I suspect they'll stay ahead of V2 SLI's for quite a while. Not sure you suceeded :-) Alas, we all help it propogate, don't we? Agreed.

>Also, you can get a 12MB Monster 2 for $139-$50 rebate=$90. >$90 x 2 = $180 for SLI, that is less than the $200 you quoted for one >board, not even close to the double that price you quote for SLI. Where did you see this deal? I saw the 8M Monster II for $99.00 after rebate at CompUSA, but it was only for one week. David Snider

Okay, I feel a bit like a "lone voice in the wilderness", but the reason I like 3dfx is because it doesn't force me to MARRY one graphics card for all purposes. I do a lot more than just play games on my machine (3d animation), and I like the fact that I can use my Monster3D with whatever primary video card works best for my animation software (currently an Elsa Permedia2 card, probably to be replaced by a Permedia3 when available). My Monster3D is for games, period. Rendition may provide better image quality, but I have no problems with 3dfx quality right now, and there's no way that I want to use a Rendition board for graphics apps in NT. Rick

Vampyr wrote Yes but this is rec.autos.simulators... And the TNT is _not_ the way to go for racing simulators. I didn't said it's not the way to go for ***. I said not for racing simulators. WTF are you talking about ?? Sierra bought by EA... it's more complicated than that... Sierra in a certain way exist but not totally.. it's now divided in multitude of "alliances" such as Sierra Sports/Attractions/FX/Studios/Home and finally Dynamix. You just can't "buy" Sierra. Actually... this is a myth and it's false. Papyrus never made a Rendition rasterizer because Sierra was selling their V1100 Rendition card. Back in 1995, they decided to go with Rendition and port Icr2 because it was the only good choice at that time. 3dfx board was about non-existant, and 3d-accelerators were not enough mature (the "boom" appeared just after..) Since they already had a good port with Icr2 they decided to continue in Nascar Racing 2 with it... and after Software Allies took it to do SODA. Finally, the Papyrus rasterizer method for Rendition was really mature and great, so with GPL it gives incredible results. They tweaked it all those years and titles, and don't be surprised to still see a Rendition port for Nascar Racing - 1999 and Nascar Racing 3. No, go buy a Voodoo-chipset based card. For racing simulators. And if you want, get yourself a Rendition card as your primary 2d/3d... You will be in heaven. A TNT will only bring you good fps in NHRA Drag Sim and I think that's mostly all.. compared to a Voodoo/Rendition combo. - Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard> Good race at the Brickyard! - Official Mentally retarded guy of r.a.s. - Excuse me for my English (I'm French speaking) - Sponsored by http://www.awpss.com/ - "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."--

I don't know about anyone else but the Pure3d2 (without SLI) is allowing me 36+FPS anything higher than that and it doesnt seem to register. >>But it's still gonna het ya over 200 for a Diamond Monster 2 12mb >>card... and double that price just to reach 1280x764 resolution. I paid >>less than 200 and can reach higher resolutions than that, with faster frame >>rates. >TNT is not faster than Voodoo2 SLI. And if you're saying that TNT is faster >than a single voodoo2 in > 800x600 then, like you just said, a single voodoo2

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>doesn't do > 800x600 so I fail to see how it's a valid comparison. >>3Dfx has a wonderful marketing department, they really win over their >>supporters and therefore they get their card used in their games. I think >>maybe 3Dfx should make a TNT based card. >I thought that these chipset companies only made the chips. I mean you can

buy >a voodoo2 or a TNT from Diamond. CL sells both. >I'm happy with my card now, I have an upgrade path, and I'm in a fairly big >market segment, so I'm quite confident about future support. Everything's fine >and working here. >glen