On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 09:52:44AM -0700, GNewton [-XtenZ-] wrote: > ATI cards > 9600XT - runs Doom3 just fine with the Cat4.9 drivers. > 9800Pro/XT > x800/x600 > > nVidia cards > 5600 and below... don't bother, they are not an upgrade. > 5900/5950 - if you think you must support nVidia > 6xxx series cards - I have seen no tests done for HL2. Apparently do well > in Doom3. > > Remember, as far as I know, Doom3 = OpenGL and HL2 D3D. Each card, ATI and > nVidia, both can play either one but I see something common here with what > happened several years ago... 3DFX and nVidia. 3DFX was supporting > Direct3D (D3D) and nVidia OpenGL. 3DFX supported miniGL which played OpenGL > games but not nearly as well as their competitors and the competitors > (nVidia) could not play the D3D games as well as 3DFX (e.g. UT). Well, as > it was, the new up and comer was OpenGL, and they won the war but today... > D3D is taking hold... I guess the Graphics Card you decide to purchase will > be a personal choice based on games you play.
There is a lil more to the 3Dfx vs nVidia thing... Before OpenGL was used in games you had a number of different APIs for each card (or series). 3Dfx has Glide, Verite had whatever they called it (VQuake anyone?). There were patches or special version of games that were designed to use the card's API. Then along came GLQuake. 3Dfx created the minidriver to allow their cards to do GL. It literally would only do GLQuake. That was in voodoo1 days (Pure3d mmmm, 6 whole MB). When voodoo 2 hit there was also a lil card based on the Riva chip. The Riva was cool because unlike the voodoo series, it was a single card for 2d and 3d. It couldn't hold a candle to a v2 SLI setup. However, 3Dfx never really had another high end product. The voodoo3 wasn't all that hot, and nVidia followed up with the TNT, which was very good. Really we had a changing of the guard. 3Dfx never had a performance edge again. It had little to do with the new (at the time) and quite immature D3D API. Now the situation is quite different. We have two quite viabla APIs, OpenGL and D3D. We also have two companies making very high performance cards that do both APIs quite well. There is a bias, ATI has tended to do better with D3D apps, where nVidia has done better in OpenGL apps. Based on the reading I have done on the issue , it looks like the early HL2 performance problems nVidia had on the 5XXX series were from a problem processing full DX9 precision. This is apparently not a problem on the 6XXX series. I think the 6800 and 6600 series will do quite well in HL2. They may not beat the X800 stuff from ATI. They do however dominate the field in DOOM3 performance. I went with a 6800GT. It's got a good value for the buck (if you can call it that on a $400 video card) over a X800 Pro (the same price point in ATI land). The 6800GT gives me a lot better OpenGL performacne with a slight hit in D3D preformance. -- Hexis www.hxxl.com _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
