[vox-tech] gf4 vs radeon (was: video garbage)

[Gabriel Rosa]

On Sat, 27 Jul 2002, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:

> for what?  the radeon QC (1st generation radeon) has treated me well.
> in fact, better than your card treated you.
>
> past a certain frame rate, the card is no longer the bottleneck.  and
> somewhere along the way, the human eye can't discern the difference.
>
> so other than increasing the nvidia coffers, what does your card do for
> you that a cheaper card can't handle?
>

heh, damn. I had a feeling you were going to ask that.
I'm heading out, so i'll have to keep this brief.

>From what I've seen (correct me on anything), this is what the gf4 series does
that the radeons may or may not do.

4x fsaa
anisotropic texture filtering
programmable vertex shaders
nvidia extension for vertex programs
3d texturing in hardware [1]
128mb memory
twin view (analog + analog, analog + dvi, tv out as desktop, etc)
kickass drivers with full hardware functionality (last I checked, half the
hardware on the radeon cards was unsupported even with xfree 4.2, ie. the
8500 didn't even have full 3d with bells and whistles)


the 4400 runs at 275mhz (core) with 550mhz memory. Is the 7500 faster/slower?

and actually, I have a real world example as well. My computer now is
essentially identical to Marianne's computer, except for more memory
and different video card. Hers is a radeon aiw (7200 i believe), and
NWN runs *way* faster on my videocard.

Yes you're right, frame rates are irrelevant past certain rates. However,
what's _not_ irrelevant is that a card that can do 4x above a noticeable
frame rate can do a scene 4x as complicated at the max noticeable
framerate. I think this is the killer in NWN, as Marianne's machine crawls
in complicated rooms while mine doesn't.

-Gabe

[1] from what I know, none of the cheap cards (radeon, gf4 mx, gf3 mx (or
whatever it's called)) do this. I use this in my research, so I need it.
It's outline in opengl 1.2 i believe.