Advice: FireGL2 or Matrox card?

[Jon P. Inghram]

If I remember right, the reason why so many games are dark is 3Dfx had the default gamma on the orginal Voodoo card set at like 1.6 or something. So when everyone made their games to run on the Voodoo, they set graphics to match the default gamma of that card, causing ever other card that defaults to 1 to be way too dark.

[Gurm]

Kyro2 is your best bet. While its 2D is not as good as Matrox, and its video is not as good as ATI, and its 3D is not as good as a GeForce3... it's good overall. GeForce2 GTS speeds (except on certain slightly older games that disagree with its tile-based rendering), close to Radeon image quality in 2D, and acceptable video.

- Gurm

[Lemmin]

Update

I've managed to get my G400 into my workstation (there was a stupid sprung length of metal about 20cm long holding the fireGL in that nearly killed me when I undid the screw!).

First ideas of benchmarks in comparison to the FGL2 - I've just run Unreal Tournament again (since that was pretty much the only game than ran on the FGL). The quality IS noticabley better, and the lighting effects are better. In software the G400 was the same as the FGL (around 30fps variable). In D3D the G400 managed a consistent 75fps at all times, compared to the 30fps for the FGL (it obviously wasn't using D3D at all). Finally in OpenGL the G400 managed around 65 to 75fps variable, compared to the incredible 120+ fps that the FGL managed.

So in conclusion, the FireGL2 is probably at least twice as fast as a Matrox G400 at OpenGL stuff, but it is nearly useless for gaming where its drivers let it down for D3D.

Also, I managed to find an old Intel graphics card to go in the server, so my workstation can keep the G400 untill something tastier comes along - Kyro3? Radeon? Bitboyz? Whatever.

Oh, and I now have about a kilo of heatsink attached to a large expensive graphics card to get rid of...

Lemmin

[EvilDonnyboy]

I guess it's too late to ask now, but how does Counter Strike run on the FireGL?

[Lemmin]

If I had counterstike I would let you know, but I don't... Is there anywhere I can download a demo from, or something?

Lemmin