3dfx Voodoo3 3500TV

#24, a full ICD has hundreds, if not thousands of entries. The Matrox one is over 2Mb.

Point is - an ICD is a piece of code you dont want to make as a programmer. Its a m****n pain in the g*****n ass if I ever saw one.

Yeah, I know, no excuse really. But, not only 3dfx has trouble with it. It kinda depends on your hardware, but writing one is possibly a magnitude more complex then, say, just another 3D engine.

IMHO, Carmack made his point, and now he should just go with DX7. OpenGL was never designed to be a gaming platform. DX may be sloppier, but at least its supported by all 3D cards, and if I\'m not mistaking all D3D drivers are actually faster then their OpenGL equivalents.

I feel its kind of an upside-down world, one single soul using OpenGL, driving driver programmers from various 3D card manufacturers totally insane. Half-life shows quake engine games can be D3D. (He\'ll probably need DX7 for Q3, but what do I know, right?)

Oh yeah, \'portability\', I think that was one of his reasons not to use DX. Valid point, though I doubt many PC gamers care. I guess they get some \'support\' from Steve Jobs for porting to Mac though.

And you blame card manufacturers that their ICDs suck? Well, ofcourse you\'re right. But D3D drivers are much more important then the OpenGL ICD, so you\'ll have to excuse them for not making it a top priority. Little exercise here - name 25 games using only OpenGL, then name 25 games that can use Direct3D acceleration.

Beh... I\'ll stop now :)

Absofuckinglutely amazing how some people (for example, #25) are so damn sure about technology that has yet to be released.

And lets just say that nvidia had to cut their initially published specs more then once, because they couldnt live up to it....

3dfx vs Nvidia arguments are so funny. Question though:
TNT\'s run Q3 faster than V2\'s (from an article that was posted
here a couple of weeks ago). Now this isn\'t the case for other
games. Now my first and only card is a V3 2000 and although
I am absolutely pleased with its performance on other games,
Q3 is dreadful. Now I am guessing this has to do with the OpenGL
ICD. Since 3dfx has been the big boy of 3d accel I was expecting
bases to be covered and that was why I bought the card. I am
surprised that they haven\'t done this yet. What I would like is a
real ICD to boost Q3 performance until the next gen cards are
good to go. You think there is a problem that they can\'t get over?
Cuz wouldn\'t it be in their best interest to have released a good
OpenGL ICD a long time ago?

I have a hard time taking part in 16 vs 32-bit color arguements..

Whether you\'re in 32-bit color or 16-bit color, today\'s graphics are still cheesy, cartoony, solid-colory, lens-flary, semi-blocky polygony, and in some cases corny. It\'s getting better all the time tho, but that\'s where we are at.

So who the hell cares if there\'s faint banding in a lit sky pattern.. it\'s all cheesy cartoon graphics anyways.

Can\'t we all just get alone, and bye what ever card the provides the most bang for the buck????

It was worth a try :-)

No #6 post did not pop up till I Posted mines.

\"3dfx continually lies to gamers\"?? Every thing they said was the truth, the V3 may not have been the right answer, but they said the truth.

Humm I guess everything Nvidia said about the TNT1 was the truth. HA

In case #4 has been hiding under a rock the past months, the 3500 is NOT, HELLOOOO NOT competing with the NV10. Hell, It was anounced months before you have even heard a NV10. It is competing against the ATi cards with TV. In that case it is a good deal if your in the market for that type of card. Now Voodoo4 on the other hand is going head to head with the NV10. Me on the other hand, I am very happy with my TNT2 ULtra and my Voodoo2 setup for at least a year.

The V3 3500 is competing against the TNT2, I don\'t think that it is meant to compete against the next gen card, that would be stupid. It may be a modded V1/2, but the TNT2 is a modded TNT.

It\'s all swings and roundabouts.

sKunkworKs

I have been waiting for this for a while now, but with the next gen cards being announced I am now not sure. I like the idea of having a kickass TV card and freeing up 3 pci slots in my PC (2x V2 + old TC card).

Someone posted yesterday about 3DFX having no plans to make the V3 3500 compatible with win2000, is this true? Can anyone back this up with proof?

Thanks,

sKunkworKs
http://www.btinternet.com/~skunkhut