I'm going to throw in a dissenting vote here - I use an ATI Rage 128 card
and it runs fine. I haven't tried DirectX on it, but OpenGL performs really
well. Unfortunately, there does seem to be some dissension on this. I've
seen other folks who I'm sure know what they're talking about (such as John
here) who have nothing but bad to say about ATI's support of Java3D.
My suggestion is to get the latest non-beta driver and see if you can get
hardware acceleration of Java3D going under OpenGL. If not, I've heard
nothing bad about the NVidia cards, so that would be where I'd go next.
If you have an ATI Rage Pro, I've never seen Java3D run properly on it. I'm
pretty sure you'll need another card if you have a Rage Pro.
Unfortunately, all of my information is anecdotal; I don't have performance
data to back it up. Just my personal experiences.
HTH,
Bobby
----Original Message Follows----
From: John Wright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [JAVA3D] FPS
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000 20:24:42 -0500
I think Jim gave a very accurate portrayal of the current Video card
situation with Java 3D. ATI certainly has been poor. NVidia has been
great (GeForce 256 is solidly twice the speed of a Voodoo 3). 3dfx's
Voodoo's have serious driver problems. Matrox does ok but they can't
match the speed of NVidia's GeForce chipset.
- John Wright
Starfire Research
Jim Schatzman wrote:
>
> Re. Java3D performance:
>
> This is a popular topic. If the major journals weren't terrified of
printing benchmarks,
> the answers to these questions would be more widely understood. As it is,
you have
> to go to www.tomshardware.com or the gaming websites to see meaningful
cross-
> vendor comparisons.
>
> Basically, the performance of the various graphics accelerator cards for
3D
> and Java3D in particular varies enormously depending on platform. For the
OpenGL
> mplementation of Java3D, I would say that NVidia has the best OpenGL
> support today (that includes Creative, Hercules, Guillemot, Elsa, and
other
> brands of video boards using NVidia processors). Some Diamond cards also
> perform very well, also, such as the Fire GL1. 3Dfx cards
> may be fantastic for DirectX but they are largely useless for OpenGL (due
to an incomplete
> OpenGL ICD). If you can use the DirectX version of Java3D they may be
fine.
>
> The older ATI Rage Pro processors are pretty worthless for Java3D. There
seems to be
> controversy over the ATI Rage 128. I tried out several ATI XPert 128
cards about a year
> ago and could not get them to work properly with Java3D at all. Bad
colors, incomplete
> rendering and poor performance are what I saw. Some other people have
reported good
> performance recently with other ATI cards using the ATI Rage 128
processor.
> It would appear that ATI may have improved their OpenGL support in recent
months.
>
> Your 933 MHz PIII (I presume) should deliver fantastic performance when
matched with
> a good video accelerator. For less than $150 you can buy one of the
GeForce II MX cards
> which should work very well. If you need top performance spend $500 and
buy a GeForce II Ultra
> card (if you can find one!). The Ultra uses 4 to 4.5 ns DDR memory!!!
>
> No - I do not get kickbacks from NVidia. I have just had to try to make
Java3D work on
> numerous operating systems (all versions of Windows and Solaris) with
about 10 different
> video accelerators. There can be a 30-to-1 difference in Java3D
performance depending on
> the platform and video card. On some platforms, some Java3D applications
do not seem to
> work at all at any speed. NVidia processors seem (TODAY) to deliver
maximum performance
> with minimum hassle. That's my opinion and I do have Java3D benchmarks to
backup my
> claims about speed! Check out tomshardware for other benchmarks
(unfortunately, they do not
> post Java3D tests but they do post a lot of OpenGL benchmarks).
>
> Jim Schatzman
>
> At 12:00 PM 9/14/2000 -0500, Shaun Shepherd wrote:
> >I'm trying to run a simulation that loads in an object and translates it
along a path(via setTranslation). The current fps is 3.5 and I know my
computer can do better than that. I have a 933mhz with ATI Rage 128 Pro. I
really have no idea on how to up the frame rate. I get the feeling that my
java3d is not taking advantage of the graphics card, but I don't know how to
remedy that. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.
> >
> >
Shaun
>
>
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