Voodoo5 Image Shots

#191: You must be tribune using another ISP. Only a moron would stand up for that guy.

Why is it that Sierra always gets credit for games they publish? You
don\'t see this blurb saying \"...Activision\'s Quake III Arena\" do you?
So why is Homeworld a product of Sierra and not Relic? It seems
like every game Sierra publishes besides the uber-successful
Half-Life gets this treatment. I don\'t know what this really has to do
with anything, but I just wanted to throw that out and see if anyone
else had ever noticed...

#179: I made that background myself on Photoshop a few years back, and I used it ever since. It\'s like this water/chrome texture with ripples. I\'ll send it to you if you want, it\'s quite pleasing to the eye. Blue is the best color for a desktop IMO, it\'s not high-contrast and looks nice.

#171: I have high hopes for Rampage myself, but I\'m afraid that 3dfx is not going to come through again. On the other hand, they\'ve been working on Rampage since the original Voodoo came out, so I *should* be really impressive. If it\'s got all the right features and the speed, I\'ll buy it. The thing is, nVidia has had very consistently good products ever since the TNT and they don\'t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

I\'m not enjoying watching 3dfx suffer, I really hope they can match or surpass nVidia.

#181
That picture is divided into 2 parts, one FSAA\'ed and the lower part is without it. And it seems like the whole pic is in 16bit only, even though they said it is 32bit.

Just took a look for myself at FSAA on the geforce (which uses downsampling) I used 640x480x32 with 16 bit textures, bilinear filtering, picmip 1, S3TC turned off (same as V5 pics). As far as i can tell the edges look slightly better on V5 and the geforce exhibits the exact same banding due to the 16 bit textures, but the colors on the geforce are much brighter- 3dfx seems to have a thing for washed out textures. In any case, i was pulling 83 fps standing in that spot in q3a009.tga. If a V5 does \"free\" AA (no framerate hit) then it should be able to take the geforce to school on speed with AA turned on.

#168: What desktop background is that?

Ugh, 640x480 -- I\'m not impressed at all .. if I were even going to consider buying a new graphics card (my voodoo2 does fine with current games), I want to run in at least 1024x768 @ 32 bpp.

If this is the best that the Voodoo4/5 can do, 3dfx is going to go bankrupt very, very, soon.

GG Azraelot :)

#173 - If you say the word \"Ultima\" or \"Ascension\" ever again...I mean ever...I will harm you. I had to play that game SO much. Ugh. man. ugh. All I can say.

I wrote most of this:
http://gameguides.gamespot.com/guides/u9a/index.html

It sucked the life right out of me.

Have 3dfx lost their mind, or just their talent? The Q3a shots were ridiculous.

I for one think those screenshots are pretty sweet. FSAA by ANY card looks sweet and we\'ll all be using it soon one way or another, Nvidia card or 3dfx card.

But from a support point of view.. I love my voodoo3 3000. Get past the 16/32 bit debate (for one freakin second, will ya?!) and it runs quake3 maybe a hair slower than a tnt2 ultra (not much.. and after tweaks it\'s wonderful) and glide-based games like UT run like a dream on it. I happen to play Ultima Ascension and it ran GREAT on my voodoo3, and I didn\'t have to wade through Ultima\'s piss poor d3d troubles.

Overall, this has been the best, most trouble free piece of computer hardware I\'ve ever purchased. All games run great on it. And with Wicked GL Drivers, some even better! Can\'t wait to see 3dfx\'s next card and if it stacks up as promised.

In my mind only 2 things can save the V5 line:

1) Superior framerates (and not just 5 fps faster, usefully faster). Odds of this occuring (compared to an nv15): ~10% chance

2) 32 bit, FSAA @ 800x600 or higher that is far less expensive than nvidias FSAA. Likelyhood of this: 30% or so - My faith has been shaken with these screenshots though... (of course an nv15 was always likely to be my next upgrade from my ultra, I was just expecting 3dfx\'s FSAA to be more compelling than what I\'ve seen so far)

Again, the prognosis is not good....

#170. I actually find myself rooting for the underdog (3Dfx) a bit now. Without strong competition (I don\'t mean OEM) NVidia could eventually fall victim to the same fate as 3Dfx. Complacency at the top... only moving fast enough... then being forced to play catchup later. Only work as hard as you have to? pfft...

I\'ve already given up on the Voodoo5. There\'s just nothing that card can offer me, even if it\'s slightly faster than the NV15 on paper I don\'t think it will perform better in real life.

I\'m waiting to hear about Rampage, that thing will decide the fate of 3dfx. Actually I\'ve been waiting to hear about Rampage for years now, I thought Banshee would be the big thing, then I thought Voodoo3 will be the big thing, then I thought Voodoo4 or Voodoo5 would... I guess we\'ll have to wait for Voodoo6. I\'ve skipped 3-5 though, nVidia cards were just better overall starting with the TNT. One thing about nVidia cards is their OpenGL driver, it\'s the best in the industry.

Ok for all you non-believer dimwits, here\'s proof:

http://fightclub.dhs.org/desktop.jpg

Notice destkop set to 32-bit, then notice banding in sky. It\'s probably texture compression... More reason to get a 65Mb NV15 and not have to use crappy texture compression.

*sigh* I was looking forward to the Voodoo5 till I saw these ugly ass screenshots. Oh well... Nvidia, here I come :/

My desktop is set to 32-bit right now and I see the banding.

These Q3 screenshots were either taken at 16-bit, or they use 16-bit textures, or they use S3TC textures, either way the sky looks bad and even the wall textures look bad.

Ok, they COULD be using 16 bit textures in 32 bit screen mode. God only knows why they would as it still makes the screens look like ass and only saves them texture storage space (why they would be concerned about that for screenshots is beyond me).

Regardless, the screens ARE sacrificing image quality to get the FSAA effect. If they\'re trying to sell image quality, they certainly shot themsleves in the foot with this release.

Wow, they look like shit.

Maybe im blind as shit, but I see no difference in those shots and in what I see in Q3 with my 2-16 Meg Voodoo2s in SLI mode. And I mean NO DIFFERENCE. I am running 640x480 and 32bit.

My desktop has been 1600x1200x32bpp (on a TNT1) for a looong time. People really run lower rez\'s? Intentionally? :)

ACDSee, full screen, best fit. *shrug* I still say: \"More rez! Less fuzz!\"

everybody keeps on saying the new 4.08 drivers are excellent.... what are you waiting for :)

me = (beta6 == shugashack c-s server) ? happy : still happy but not as much :)