G800 to have FSAA ???

[everettes]

My 2 Cents. I have both the V3 3000, and a G40032. The V3 cleans the floor with the G400 in frames. Now this is with a PIII600EB. Any other proc, I don't know. I honestly can't tell the difference between the V3@16bpp or the G400@32bpp(except the G400 z-buffer thing which aggravates the hell out of me)in UT as far as picture goes. Matrox's 2d is a tad sharper unless I use the BNC connectors with the V3. Then it the same as the G400(Sony CPD500 @ 1024). But that's it. I can run the V3 at 1024 and play just fine. The G400 at the same rate wears me down after a bit and I have to bring it back to 800. NOW, the V5-5500 with FSAA4x enabled will give me A LOT better image and the same performance as my V3-3000. I'll by it the week it gets to the distributor. EVEN if you think FSAA doesn't look good (Everyone who has reviewed it first hand gets a "Woody" ), the fill rate with 2x enabled is outstanding, with FSAA disabled is outrageous. You may have your ego arguments (i.e. my G400Max beats your V3 3000), but FSAA is gonna rock some heads.

------------------
PIII600EB, CC820, 2 x 128 Crucial PC100CAS2, 2940U2W, Seagate Cheetah,V3 3000 or G400-32 SH, Plextor 8\20, Plextor 40Max, SBLive!, MS FFPro, Altec Lansing ACS-48, Sony CDP 520GS



[This message has been edited by everettes (edited 08 April 2000).]

[LAMFDTK]

Hey Ill take the FSAA its an open source so what the hell, right?

Remember the P3 800 CM will be 250$ in the early fall so things should scale rather nice with the new crop of cards.

I have yet to play a game with Bumpin' that did'nt kill the frame rate. Cept' Kyodia.
If a card costs 275.00, I want it all!

heheh

------------------
PIII-450@600, 128 HDSRAM, Asus P3BF, G400/32, SBLive!,Brand stinkin' new Sony G400 19", (no Dual head) Nokia 447Xi 17",AOPEN DVD-1040 10x slot,PLEXTOR 8x4x32 ATAPI CD-RW,PromiseULtra66, and some fish,

[archangle]

CHHAS & Darin,
I remember doing timedemos for quake and the bummap water demo thing when overclocking my cpu & G400.

clocking my athlon 500 upto 750 didn't improve the frame rates much (can't remember the figures but only about 2-5% more).

clocking the G400 32mb vanilla upto 150 core and 200 memory (pll of 300) gave very big differences like 10-15%+.

the G400 is defenatly the bottleneck above 400/500 Mhz CPUs.

O yeah, the P3 with its extra instructions gives better rasterization and texture fill rates (helps Geoforce as it does T&L by itself (when used)) and the Athlon does software T&L and geometry stuff alot faster due to better FPU & 3DNow instructions (helps 3D cards without hardware T&L(if the game uses it)).

depends what you want but I would prefer the Athlon at the momment when using the G400 but a P3 for Geoforce cards.

Oh yeah, get the P3 600e as it over clocks far better than b & be cards (can push the fsb from standard more) should get about 800Mhz with good cooling.

[RAB]

Two things:
If you want to see here FSAA would help, get the Need for Speed-Porsche Unleashed Demo. Run the course and hit as many street signs as you can. When its played back after the race, watch the signs fly in front of you. They are all very jagged on their edges. But the car itself has very smooth outlines. AA on Matrox cards is for the main subject only, in this case the cars, but doesn't handle the whole scene. I can definitely see an advantage to FSAA.

Now that said, Gamespot also got a demo of the 3dfx card and was shown FSAA only at 640x480 and 800x600. They even noticed a slowdown at these resolutions but thought the improved visuals were worth it. But I wonder how useful FSAA will be if you can only use it effectively at 800x600 OR LESS!!

RAB

[This message has been edited by RAB (edited 09 April 2000).]

[isochar]

After reading all the posts, a few thoughts come to mind...

Who's the graphics powerhouse right now? Nvidia of course. (Although I wish matrox was)

Sure 3dfx is releasing the voodoo 4 & 5 in a month or so, and they have put a lot of hype behind them with the FSAA. However, Nvidia has the April 25th announce date for their "new" card - as I've heard the NV15 (geforce2). Who will be the better card? I'm no fortune teller so it's really up to Nvidia and whether they were able to beat the Voodoo 4/5 specs.

The important question will be who's gonna dominate the market? My money will be on Nvidia. Why? Since Microsoft will be gearing all direct x stuff (and anything else) for Nvidia so that the X-Box kicks ass.

What does this mean? Any card manufacturer should at least offer what Nvidia cards have, if not more. (This is where the G800 comes in =)

Sure, T&L isn't supported yet... give it time. Even if no one wants it (yeah right), Microsoft and Nvidia will be able to push their standards and features like Intel is pushing Rambus.

Just my $.02... feel free to criticize or agree

iso

[isochar]

It's been mentioned above, but I'll repeat it again. The Voodoo 4/5 WILL NOT have T&L. This is a Big mistake. When all the software does support T&L (which my guess will be sooner than later because of Microsoft/Nvidia), the cards that support it will be romping over the Voodoo 4/5.

I bet that when the reviews come out for the voodoo 4/5, the reviewers will mention that these cards will be the least "future proof" of all the upcoming hardware this summer.

iso

[Jutai]

i think it's interesting to see 3dFX moving in this direction with their cards as RAB pointed out they looked at it over at Gamespot and he quoted them saying they noticed a "slowdown" at 800X600 but they said the "improved visuals are worth it" now i don't know if Gamespot guys are 3dFX partial or what but i wonder if this is what the hard core VooDoo lovers are saying because that's what we've been saying all along Visuals are King!
-Chris k.

[isochar]

Someone mentioned that'll be a while before T&L starts appearing in games...

Seems that T&L games are already appearing!
Even more proof that the Voodoo's are in for a rocky road with Nvidia/Microsoft

Check it out: http://x43.deja.com/threadmsg_md.xp?...935.1092878361

[Damien Green]

Looks to me like 3DFX doesn't learn from its mistakes. Anyone remember the lack of 32Bit colour in the Voodoo 3 range of cards. 3DFX said that they didn't feel that such a feature was worth including - and look at how it's held back their cards. Now they're about to do the same thing again by omitting T&L.

[Storm]

All I can say about FSAA is that it's a great feature to have, but it Has been overhyped too much. FSAA will make anything look better, but only at lower resolutions (which is the whole point of it). For those of you who can, try taking a screenshot from a game with tons of detailed textures and models at 2048x1536x32, save it and downsize it to 800x600 using photoshop (or whatever can do good quaility conversion). There you have it. An 800x600 screenshot with FSAA oversampled 2.5x. Even at the most extreme resolutions, there will always be texure artifacts, jaggies and flickering pixels (which is a part of what mip-mapping reduces, though not entirely). The blurring effect due to a downsampled scene will make those go away completely, but Obviously you can't do FSAA at 1600x1200. 4x oversampling would require an ungodly fillrate at that point, which is why the recommended resolution w/FSAA enabled is 800x600 for the V5/6 cards. A company who deliberately chooses Not to use AA in their system, when it's supposed to run at low resolutions, probably has a deathwish (*cough*Sony*cough*). It's a great overall feature that definitely improves the visual quality of Any game, but at the expense of fillrate. In fact, an 800x600 scene with AA, will look smoother and more CG-like than a 2048x1526 scene without it. On the Other hand, if FSAA drains all the fillrate from the videocard, there will be none left for in-game effects or hi-res animated/still textures. That might be the reason why 3DFX is flashing the fact that you can play your >OLD< games with FSAA. Because you won't be able to once something heavy comes out.

The V5/6 has to have more than AA to impress their buyers. Motion Blur is useless, so is Depth of Field. The V5/6 will Never have the fillrate to do those without producing ghosts (at least not at fast speed). They're on the right track, but they don't have the technology to handle those yet. Either they think it looks good by *their* definition, or they think people are morons. Either one for sure.

Just my opinion.
Nick.

[CHHAS]

What you discribed is Nvidia's way of doing FSAA.

3dfx is doing either 2 or 4 frames pr frame, I think they are being partially shifted in some way, and then merged, in order to create the FSAA effect, this means that you will have FSAA effect, even at 1600x1200, but of course it'll cut your frame rate to 1/4, and at 1600x1200 the overall visible effect will be much less than in 800x600



------------------
P3 500, 224 MB ram, G400 16SH,
Maxtor DM 40+ 30GB, IBM Deskstar 16GP 10GB, Maxtor 4320 13 GB
SB Live Value

[alessandro]

Storm,

The PS2 has OFCOURCE hardware AA but it wasn't implemented in the first wave of games because of a difficulty in programming this feature in the first PS2 games.

[Storm]

True, but None of the current or even upcoming games are using it. With AA, the PS2 would look better by a Huge margin. They *claim* to support it, but so far we haven't seen it in action. PS2 is still the best console out there and it will remain that way for a while (at least until the x-box comes out.. IF it'll come out at all, which I seriously doubt. I mean really, M$ relying on Intel and Nvidia to make a console together. There is definitely Something wrong with that statement. In 22 months, PS3 will most likely be close to being done.) This is a bit off topic, but it's about AA, which would be nice if the G800 supported it in hardware.