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

[Peter Jay Salzman]

begin Gabriel Rosa <grosa@ucdavis.edu> 
> 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?
 
my claim is that speed doesn't really matter at all past a certain
point.   have you ever played quake 3 with "sync on every frame"?
painful under the voodoo 3.  really painful.

on my (now old) 1st gen radeon, syncing on every frame is no problem
unless i'm playing like 8 bots on a HUGE honka arena.

> 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.
 
hmmm, this is hard to argue with other than i've never seen the need to
have a faster card.  i've seen nvidia cards that are supposedly faster
on paper, and nobody can accuse me of not playing my fair share of
games.

i just couldn't really tell the difference.  honestly.

but maybe i should wait for nwn to come out for linux.   :-)

pete

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