Bit Boys? Oy!

This card never came out.

#54, I hope that last line was an accident. Why it almost sounded liek you were saying that it\'s id Software\'s fault that the V3 is slow in Q3test...

#60, I\'m with you. If you can sustain well over 60-70 Vsynced frames per second, motion blur is NOTHING. This is especially true when we\'re talking about gaming. If you compare 100fps and 50 blurred fps, your perception and accuracy will be much better at 100fps.

And just a little comment about AA... If I have a choice between an anti-aliased 640x480 and a regular 1152x864 at the same framerate, I\'m sure as hell going to take the latter. Why? It\'s for the same reason as motion blur. While it might seem nice to have AA, there is a loss of information there.

Then again if they manage to invent performance-hit-free AA, that would be keen. (but I\'ll believe that when I see it)

-=/ DinK

Oh also... Voodoo4 motion blur... Isn\'t that already simulated by you eyes when the Frame Rate is in the upper 100\'s? I mean since at most peoples eyes can only remotely perceive 60 fps (For those who get headaches from 60hz flurocesent lamps). Lets say in theory a game is running at 600fps.. (Work with me here) The human has sensite sight so he can perceive 60fps... 600 divided by 60 is 10 fps. So that means every time that eye percieves a fps it may capture up to 10 frames of animation that may still be on your computer\'s Cathode Ray Tube or in the actually image! Well theres a theory at least...

Glaze3D... wow... reading the specs, these people have been thinking about this chip a long time. You also have to keep in mind they made Enviromental Bump Mapping, they know a few things about the processes of graphics cards. Another interesting things is their PCIBuilder simulation device. These people have so idea what their doing. One nice thing is that their already providing pictures and movies of the sorts. These images are very... very... impressive. And if you heard their story and relize how long this chip has been in the design stages... they\'ve had some time to figure out everything. Keep in mind that this chip with Embedded DRAM (THE REASON THE FILL-RATE IS 1200 MTexels! 512-bit of 9MB of memory bandwidth people!) That the chip\'s transistor count only is 1.5 Million! Is is amazing compared to the other chips out there which ammount to 10 million and more! Seems like they\'ve keep it simple. Heck... I\'m saving money. If all goes right I would mind have one of those 4800 models! (Who the hell wouldn\'t!) Hey keep an eye on these guys. They\'ve been silent for awhile, but like the quiet guy in the corner of the classroom... they can listen into any conversation in the room... they\'ve been listening on the faults of other cards and what to lookout for.

The V3 doesn\'t support AGP texturing either :) Fergot about that.

One more thing. This is about the T-Buffer. The full screen anti-aliasing looks really nice, that\'s for sure, but that has got to be the WORST motion blur I\'ve EVER seen. ARE THEY CRAZY? Why would you possibly show the public such a terrible example! I sure hope that motion blur isn\'t included in their next card, or they at least give you the option to leave it off, because if not that fake motion blur is reason enough for me NOT to get their next card.

Tip for 3Dfx, not that they\'ll read this.....

TAKE OUT THE DAMN MOTION BLUR OR AT LEAST MAKE IT LOOK HALFWAY DECENT!

Just had to say that, I saw those pics and was like \"hmm, this full screen anti-aliasing looks pretty nice..... Oh my god they can\'t be serious, this is the WORST motion blur I\'ve ever seen in my life.\"

Gotta jump into this. First, let us all remember how many times we have been promised something, either for hardware or software, then at release there was the \"we simply didn\'t have time to implement all the features we wanted\". Sounds like a pretty nice card, though if/when they release them you can be almost sure that the stats aren\'t as good.

Now for the 3Dfx vs nVidia thing :) I\'m building a new system and have searched far and wide for which video card to use. I haven\'t owned any 3D card, ever, though I have seen the new ones in action at friends houses. In other words, I\'d like to think that I am as unbiased as possible. What do I think?

Back in the days things were easy. You got a TNT2 card for image quality and two Voodoo2\'s in SLI for speed. TNT had quality, Voodoo2 had speed. Too bad things have changed.

After looking at all the reviews, all the stats, all the features, I see no reason to get a V3 other then glide support. How many games today are released with ONLY glide support? Exactly, not much reason to get a V3 unless you can\'t spend $200. I look at it this way.

-Every benchmark I\'ve ever seen shows that the Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra is the fastest card available. Can\'t really argue with that.

-32bit support. 32bit rendering looks better, no doubt about it. If you can\'t tell the difference then something is wrong with your eyes or your monitor isn\'t that good. As for the huge fps drop often associated with the 32bit rendering by 3Dfx, it just doesn\'t exist. I haven\'t seen any numbers to show that there is more then a 5fps drop in any situation. 5fps is no big deal when you consider you get a better image. In some cases maybe using 16bit rendering would be be better then 32bit, but even if I decide to never use 32bit rendering, at least I have a choice with the TNT2. Even if you never us it having the option is still very nice.

-Texture size. I don\'t know that much about this but the 256x256 texture limitation of the V3 has got to have some effect when it comes to visuals compared to the much larger texture size of the TNT2(I don\'t know what it is but it\'s a lot bigger). Right now not many games support larger textures but the new games coming out do. The results will be interesting when a game packs tons of huge textures into a scene.

-Cost. V3\'s are cheaper. This is good and bad though. While they are cheaper which means spending less of your hard earned money, they also have less features and less power. Don\'t get me wrong, I\'m not saying they are bad, but you get what you pay for in most cases, and this is one of those cases. If I\'m spending 4k+ on a new computer I\'m not spend $50 more and get the best graphics card I can.

On a side not, don\'t ask why I\'m spending so much($5,500) on a computer. It\'s basically the best you can get. I\'ll have none of that dual celeron crap(don\'t get me started on celerons please). While I\'m on a side note I\'ll add one for below... There is a BIG difference between TNT2 Ultras, just like there is a difference between the V3 2000 and V3 3500.

So, as unbiased as possibly, a Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra and a Quantum 3D Obsidian2 X24 is the fastest, although not the cheapest, way to go. If only 3Dfx hadn\'t gotten too greedy and made the V3 a 3D only pci card like the V2, then things would really kick some ass.

While it is nice to see what sort of hardware could be availible, I have a feeling the Glaze3D won\'t be. 3Dlabs is a well established company, and I was waiting to see what the Permedia3 would do this spring. I seem to remember a PCX2 (?), and was told its second coming would humble everyone. Even if it is still in the works, isn\'t it a little late?

Oh, and before anyone spouts off about 3dfx trying to ram glide down people\'s throats just so they can have a proprietary API: What the hell do you think the original consumber VooDoos ran? Direct3D? An OpenGL minidriver? No such things. There was _no_ support for the cards. Glide was necessary just to use the hardware. Now new features (read: T-Buffer) will be in Glide first. I\'d guess D3D and Ogl will have all the swooby new features eventually though.

this reminds me of that russian mega-cpu that was going to smite down the very best intel and AMD have to offer .. sure it takes skill to design a CPU, but it\'s nothing compared to actually making the thing. I mean I could just give you the PIII and say \'and I\'m making it at .15 micron .. it will go 1200MHz!!!\' .. seems to me if it were that simple to just make things go faster, someone would do it?

in an industry with this development and experience in it, there isn\'t going to be some sudden, huge departure from what is current. What there is is limited more by manufacturing ability and price than anything else. Look how close nvidia/3dfx are *really* .. i mean, they\'re damn close.

So I couldn\'t care less about this release. May as well have just read, \"in the far-off future, video cards will be HEAPS FAST!!\"

ps locobastard i\'m sick of the nvidia/3dfx battle too, but you\'d think you could do better than \"my voodoo3 is better because tribes ran straight out of the box!\" i mean, wtf? bet you patched your 3dfx version anyway .. and it\'s a net-only game .. who gives a shit?!?!

ya.. heh
q3 at 200frames persecond... ya with quad herculies TnT2 ultras and a 1GHz Quad K7 system
then again.... if they do 1/2 of what they say we\'re gona see some interesting things

#46 its useless to talk to a thick headed tnt2 head..
they arent gona give in because they think the voodoo3 is inferior.. by a LONG shot...
sure its not as good but its got more bang per buck
and runs all the game i can think of OUT OF THE FRIGGEN BOX.. no need for an OpenGl friendly patch....

i hate tripple posting...
and FYI the 1.6 tribes patch WASNT released until a few days/week ago
and tribes has been out HOW long?

well if i really wanted to go after nvidia i\'d start using the G400 card as a good anti-nvidia and anti-3dfx card
but the open gl performance of the g400 is a bit lacking.. but WHEN they get it fixed tnt2 ultra is dead.....

well if ya want games RIGHT now.. i cant think of any w/o doing research
but i know tribes DIDNT work untill 1.6 was released.. i remember hearing tnt2 ultra users saying when the fuck are they gona make it work on this fucking card?
and i heard some one say 1.6 patch..
i didnt even install a patch... i just played the damn game out of the box with glide

well dsl boy spams again..
voodoo3 has a few things going for it...
PRICE, Bang Per $ and overall support

Hi there,

I don\'t know how long you people have been around this business or how familiar you are with the tech involved in this,
but if you had not been worshiping 3Dfx for their phenomenal achivements (V1&V2) all the time, you would have noticed
that the pyramid3d already had bump mapping, a feature that today only few cards really support (I\'m not talking emboss).
It was a very innovative chip and, for example, in case you did not know, these guys invented the enviromental bump
mapping which is now part of directx.

There\'s only one problem in this industry: it\'s VERY hard to get a chip on the market if you don\'t have a fab which produces
it and people who support your ideas with enough money so you can prove what you technology is able to achieve.

Embedded memory is a trend which all manufacturers are following right now, one being the Permedia3 (which did not
make it to the market). Multiple chips to multiply fillrate is old news introduced by 3Dfx, so calculations like #9 are
bound to lead to false numbers if you don\'t take into account how many of these chips are working on a board.

#12, does the fact that v2 had this problem of having to load every texture twice mean any other product has the same design?

#22, downsampling is not the only way to achieve AA, 3Dfx has the T-Buffer, and I bet there are other solutions.

#26, applying those filters to 32bit does not make sense as they are not needed there. 32bit calls for completely different
filters than 16bit.

I say we give these guys a chance, their specs aren\'t any less realistic than nVidia\'s or 3Dfx\'s (and the latter have not
announced much more than the T-Buffer).

I\'ll buy whatever out there has the best price/performance/feature-combination.
(coming out: I own an oc\'ed TNT2 now, and 32bits are just great)

$.02 worth:
3dfx never lied to me. I read the specs for the voodoo3 and didn\'t buy it. I\'ve recommended it to friends, but I noticed that really didn\'t offer anything over the TNT I\'ve been using for nearly a year. It seems I was right in guessing that the v3\'s and TNT2\'s are both stopgap measures, until new tech. is introduced. I\'m glad I waited.
Didn\'t the Glaze3D have something to do with the old demo group Future Crew?
I\'m beginning to think the gap in 3D gaming is going to be in presentation. The biggest jump in appearance of my 3D games came when I got my big monitor, not when I switched froom a V1 to a TNT. Monitors and TV\'s have been the same for years basically. The stereoscopic glasses I hear about seem like a step in the right direction. At the frame rates we are talking about, something head mounted/tracking seems to be called for.

Buy the product that suits you, after its been tested and reviewed. Don\'t buy something hot off the shelf unless you just have money to burn. Plan every purchase, and you can\'t complain about your \'terrible\' video card.