Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 09:47:24 -0600 (CST) From: Chris Dillon <cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us> To: Stephen McKay <syssgm@detir.qld.gov.au> Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org, Haikal Saadh <wyldephyre2@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: Choice of display cards under freebsd. Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.20.0002030931070.38707-100000@mail.wolves.k12.mo.us> In-Reply-To: <200002031112.VAA91854@nymph.detir.qld.gov.au>
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On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Stephen McKay wrote: > On Wednesday, 2nd February 2000, Chris Dillon wrote: [...snip...] > >I would avoid any of the 3DFX VooDoo cards. I've got an "old" VooDoo2 > >myself, and it works pretty well (in Windows), but it has some serious > >limitations. The VooDoo3 boards have some limitations as well, such > >as only a 16-bit Z-buffer and color depth in 3D mode as opposed to > >32-bit which is available on just about any other modern card. > > For most purposes 32 bit colour is too slow, and almost impossible to > pick visually. If you restrict yourself to 16 bit colour, then the > Voodoo 3 is the current speed leader in recent games (Quake 3, Unreal > Tournament) under most circumstances. For UT in particular, 3dfx cards > work exceptionally well, due to Glide support, and are visually superior > to other cards. For Q3A, you have to take a visual detail hit because > of the limited maximum texture size. My point was more that the 3DFX cards can't even do what their peers can, which is 32-bit color-depth and Z-buffering. It is true that those only help with visual quality and not speed, but if visual quality is your thing, you definately want it. The 32-bit Z-buffering matters more than the color-depth because it helps prevent odd clipping problems, which is far far worse visually than only seeing thousands of colors instead of millions. I see these kinds of things all the time using my VooDoo2. It can be very distracting and annoying, especially if you're playing a deathmatch with someone and all of a sudden you see some clipping "noise" out of the corner of your eye and think it is your enemy coming after you. :-) If you take the Matrox G400 MAX as an example, it performs nearly as well in 32-bit modes as it does in 16-bit, so 32-bit doesn't have to mean a significant performance hit when your hardware is designed correctly (plenty of memory bandwidth). > >If I were to buy a card right now, it would be either a NVidia GeForce > >256 based card (probably the ASUS model), or a Matrox G400 MAX. The > >GeForce based cards will offer you pure, unparalleled 3D speed. The > >Matrox G400 MAX would offer you what Matrox has always offered -- > >excellent visual quality, great features, and solid drivers, but it > >isn't nearly as fast as the GeForce in the 3D arena (not that you > >couldn't play a mean game of Quake with it.. you can). Your biggest > >concern is which of these will be supported the best under XFree86, > >and as far as I can tell they've all got quite a bit of support under > >them. > > I recommend a cheap Voodoo2, to be honest. You don't need proper support > in XFree86 to drive a Voodoo2, unlike any other card. When full OpenGL > support arrives for XFree86, I'd recommend the Matrox G400 for the visual > quality. Until then, the Voodoo2 is a reasonable workaround. Right, but I've also had limited luck getting my VooDoo2 to work under FreeBSD. It does work, but I just can't get the gamma correct (everything is too dark), and the mouse is totally erratic (a linuxulator config problem on my part, I know). I guess I also haven't cared enough to actually get it working correctly. :-) Also, the VooDoo2 is seriously lacking in visual quality. Just about any modern card, even the cheaper ones, can probably do better. > I'd also disagree about "solid drivers" from Matrox. I've installed > many of their unreliable OpenGL driver revisions. Then I bought a TNT2. Most of my experience with the Matrox drivers has been in the 2D arena, and I must say I've never had a problem with them. I can't comment as much on their 3D drivers, but ALL of the vendors have problems with that now and then, especially when the drivers are young. -- Chris Dillon - cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us - cdillon@inter-linc.net FreeBSD: The fastest and most stable server OS on the planet. For Intel x86 and Alpha architectures. ( http://www.freebsd.org ) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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