What do you think about DXTC and G450??

[JackYi]

Yeap nice info Himself but hey, I knew mip-maps ARE scaled down from each source texture.

Anyways, thanks Ace.
Hey, if the G450 really supported DXTC I'll be off and buying one. Although I just bought my G400 DH a week ago.

[Mark F]

Ok folks you G400s do support DXTC.
But only in software.
In most situations the differance is not noticable, only in extream cases will anyone notice a slowdown, by doing it in SW. Yes of cource there is a lot more traffic on the buss doing it that was, but generaly the FPS are too close to tell.
I remember seeing (what was it, the first game to have a S3TC node, maybe...) UNREAL running with the special S3 techtures on a TNT with 'only' 16MB ( if I have the wrong game down I'm sure someone will correct me, but you get the idea). It was actually running faster on the TNT than the native S3 card, that was doing hardware TC tranfers.

Mark F.

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD

[nosuchluck]

ok, since the g400 supports texture compression in software, how can we use the unreal 2nd disk and those 7 s3tc maps running around the net?

thanks!

[CMB]

Yes yes tell us.
Im chomping at the bit of giving my brand new MAX a work out :O)

[Marcelo]

Maggi:
I posted before said I did used S3TC on my brother's S3 card and compare it with my G400 on the same system in the gaming forum. Eventually, ALL the maps originated from UT get S3TC if it is enable. The difference is very noticeable, but if you want to know, the map fight on an old ship is the best example to see Texture Compresssion on all the wooden part of the ship (much more clearer, crisp textures). But I don't know whether the D3D code from UT support TC, since the S3 card have to use the MeTaL driver from UT in order to work.

[Maggi]

Thanx, Marcelo !

I'll give that ship a try ...

[CMB]

OK
let me get this right
if U you copy all the textures off the 2nd cd over the original ones installed.
Then the G400 must use them otherwise you would get some kind of error right?
otherwise how would it run?

i can only assume the drivers detect the compression and decompress it in software. and there isnt a performance hit due to the excellebt AGP implementation of the G400?

or am i talking out my wazoo???

im gonna try that copying thing right now..

[Helevitia]

Maggi,

You are never going to see any difference in visual quality as the G400 does not support it and therefore will not use the textures at all. Here is the the 'Description' from the install disk:

"Improves visuals on 3D cards which supports DXT1/S3TC format compressed textures such as the S3 Savage 3D. This option will have NO VISUAL EFFECT if you have an UNSUPPORTED 3D card."

Dave

[Marcelo]

Maggi:

I just remembered that the CTF-Face, also is the best example to show S3TC, the picture of the Earth looks as thro as it is taken from satellite, a lot of details of the Earth shown (not blurred). Hope this helps for your investigation.

[This message has been edited by Marcelo (edited 16 February 2000).]

[Maggi]

I need to know which map utilizes which textures ...

As I posted before, I manually copied the textures from 2nd UT CD and overwrote the existing ones.

Thus I think, I might be already using them ... don't know though.