Look at this! Ha ha ha! Problems with the G-Spot ...

[MK]

Hi,


just read a short article about G-Spot and G400 on http://www.3dconcept.ch/ !
It`s worth reading. Ha ha ha ...


MK

[Buuri]

Oh it wasn't an XXX link after all..

_
B

[Buuri]

But it's in noman's language..

_
B

[MK]

Hi Buuri,


just german, not noman`s language. Try babelfish !


MK

[PurpleHaze]

The interesting thing about this is

... That's a lot of negativity towards the GeForce.

Thing is. People like Nvidia. They really do. (I favor Matrox but Nvidia does what they do pretty well) ...

If there's this much "bashing", chances are, something really is up with this GeForce card.

Nvidia changed a surprisingly small amount from TNT to TNT2 / UTNT2. Also, while the 3D graphics "state of the art" is advancing faster than many other technological timelines, it's unlikely that a hardware configuration was suddenly found such as the GeForce that could overtake everything. (Same reason I'm skeptical about Athlon - sure it's faster, but how much faster?)

Putting transform and lighting on the card may be a new thing but, is that where the bottleneck has been? If not, big deal. I can't say I'm totally deep in this but I thought the current bottleneck was fill rate. Which Nvidia has barely improved in their new chipset.

Also, I haven't seen what scene-rendering advances the GeForce offers. I mean, anyone can do yesterday's graphics today very quickly. But how about raising the bar on what an acceptable image is at an acceptable speed? EMBM may not be much but you have to admit, now, that cards that lack it are going to be seen as a bit lower on the totem pole unless they have something that's gonna do better than it - which is fine by me. The GeForce may or may not be faster than the G400, but even if it is, how many FPS beyond human perception do we really need to run Q2?

*phiz

------------------
Ami Y. Koriuchi - foxyviolet@hotmail.com
Asus P2B 1010 - P3-500 - And a G400Max now.
256MB 6NS 70 GB of 10k RPM SCSI UW

Mustard is illegal here.

[This message has been edited by PurpleHaze (edited 09-13-1999).]

[Ant]

One minute the Net darling, the next minute getting bashed left right and centre. Just look not so long ago 3dfx was THE manufacturer then suddenly everyone rounded on them and nVidia took their place, now it seems it is time to turn on them

The GeForce is a great step forward, I do think it could have done with a few extra features most noteably EMBM support, high poly models can't do everything. This next generation of boards is really going to shake things up, the big problem is that the hardware is now moving far too fast for the software developers to keep up, they are only just getting to grips with the last round of boards (V3, TNT2, G400). The T&L boards will be great but it will be sometime before they really come into their own. And yes Matrox do have one in the pipeline, have they told me anything about it? Do pigs fly? No they haven't but it's obvious they won't be far behind nVidia etc, they can't afford to do anything else. There was talk around here not so long back of a Matrox geometry accelerator that had been mentioned in a magazine article. Interesting times...

[PurpleHaze]

Sure, Ant, but Matrox's marketing and product deployment tactics will most likely give it a short shadowy lifespan. I think they should license their chipsets to OEM's, but what do I know.

I don't know. If their next G-series card (if there is one) isn't compatible with the RR-G, I may go elsewhere. Unless it's all integrated on the card. Features do matter and so does speed. Anyone from Matrox reading this forum you may want to take that to heart, or at least your product development dep't.

I've stayed with Matrox this far because their stuff is better - but going from Millenium 2 to G200, I almost said forget it because *the RR-G was not available for months and months and months* and I had an original Rainbow Runner with the Mil2 and wasn't about to throw out that functionality.

With the G400, the same thing pressed my patience. 4 months to get the G400Max. I have it now, it's great, but whatever they come out with next, at this point, they really better cut it out with this near half-year delay to shipping BS.

This may not be the pertinent forum for it, but let me finish my rant: Matrox, you guys are grown ups with buisiness suits - i'm sure you can figure out supply and demand a little better than this.

I'm sure Matrox can come out on top in the quality features and speed department, when it's in the lab. But literally, I don't have much faith in them at this point to deliver the goods.

------------------
Ami Y. Koriuchi - foxyviolet@hotmail.com
Asus P2B 1010 - P3-500 - And a G400Max now.
256MB 6NS 70 GB of 10k RPM SCSI UW

Mustard is illegal here.

[This message has been edited by PurpleHaze (edited 09-13-1999).]

[tish beta2]

I still don't undestand this "T&L" thingie... Isn't that what 3d now and simd is all about? why do nvidia put it on their card then? and what about in-game support? when will it come? Will it then be too late?

Matrox got their EMBM in-game supported relatively fast, but that's cus it's a DirectX option. (I may be wrong, is T&L also directX supported?)

Now a G400 Max is maxed out with a P3 550 Mhz. And when that special AI that takes up all the Mhz power appears in games, the prosessors would be strong enough to handle both T&L and AI and internet-multiplayer! Just look at the Athlon, already at 750 MHz, and before christmas, 650MHz would be as cheap as a PIII 450! So who cares about a T&L engine then? I don't need that crap.

And what about the heatproblems of the G-Force? while they are solved, more time has passed and the prosessors are cheaper. By golly that T&L is just a marketing technique like EMBM was for the G400. The difference here is that T&L is bull, since the G-spot don't got the fillrate.

My god. "in xx hours the world will change" thing is the most stupidest thing I've ever seen. ever. get real.

----------
just my random thoughts ¦ )

[jhalada]

I think Direct X 7.0 is supposed to support T&L.

In my opinion, the benefit to moving T&L to the graphics card is that if you want to get equivalent performance from CPU, you need to get top of the line CPU, and they usually go for $600 to $700. If you can get the same performance increase by buying $200 card, my opinion is: why not?

Another advantage may be that there may be less of the back and forth transfering of data between the CPU, main menory, Graphics chip and local graphics memory. With each transfer over the AGP or PCI bus you get a bad latency hit.

Joe

[DarkSyd]

As far as games go, T&L hooks are already part of OGL, and I think DX.

Why do it on a chip rather than on the CPU? From the numbers everyone's been throwing around, the GeForce should be able to pull it off at about three times the speed a PIII 600 is capable of. A couple hundred buck for a vid card or a couple thousand for dual PIII 900's...easy choice.

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Cel 266@448 on Asus P2b (1009), 128MB, OEM G400/16, Quantum Obsidian S12, Fujitsu 5.25gb, MX300, Dlink 530, Grey Cat, Orange Cat (still MIA)

[Rags]

Not with DX7, the T&L ops have to take the same path as if it were being done on the CPU.

Rags



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P3 450@560, BH6, 128MB PC100, Delta CD ROM, Mill.G200/G400, 8.4G WD, 8.4G seagate, SB16 (temp.), Yamaha Burner, Zip, Sportster 56K int., Storm Scanner. System SPECS subject to change without prior notification to end reader or my spouse. ™

[Rags]

Actually, one cycle has to be added to allow the vid card drivers to tell the CPU where the T&L operations are at.

Rags



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P3 450@560, BH6, 128MB PC100, Delta CD ROM, Mill.G200/G400, 8.4G WD, 8.4G seagate, SB16 (temp.), Yamaha Burner, Zip, Sportster 56K int., Storm Scanner. System SPECS subject to change without prior notification to end reader or my spouse. ™

[DarkSyd]

Hey Rags,

Do you know if the same is true of OGL? I hate wasted cycles...
Well, not really wasted I gues if the benefit is greater than what that cycle would have done normally

[Rags]

Unless they have some tricks up their sleeves, the ops have to make a trip to system memory, then to CPU, that would make 2 CPU cycles. But the upside is that there would be less CPU processing going on, so the CPU would have more cycles to spare.

Rags



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P3 450@560, BH6, 128MB PC100, Delta CD ROM, Mill.G200/G400, 8.4G WD, 8.4G seagate, SB16 (temp.), Yamaha Burner, Zip, Sportster 56K int., Storm Scanner. System SPECS subject to change without prior notification to end reader or my spouse. ™