PNY GeForce 5900Ultra Review :) [Archive] - Forums on the BleedinEdge

Jim

07-25-2003, 08:35 PM

Originally posted by DAPUNISHER
Very nice and succinct review :cool: I would however very much like to hear his subjective opinion on 2D/3D IQ as it's helpful to have mutiple opinions to consider. Some reviewers/users have made comments on these qualities but not enough so that I feel like there is a consensus yet, so the Professor's opinion would be very welcomed :)

IMHO
My last 3 video cards have been Radeon 8500, TI 4200, FX5900.
I felt the 2D on the Radeon was better than the TI4200 on my 19" Planar. But the 3D was better on the 4200 than the Radeon.
That being said, the FX5900 is crisper in 2D and is noticably better in 3D in the game I play the most often. C&C Renegade. :)

DAPUNISHER

07-26-2003, 12:16 AM

Than Prof. :) I have the same opinion of my 5800Ultra (best 2D and 3D I've ever had) except the IQ my 8500le I had was better than my 4200's IQ all the way around. Abit really skimped on the components on the 64mb Siluro :mad:

Chuck232

07-27-2003, 04:56 AM

Nice review!:beer:

pmonkey

07-28-2003, 07:04 AM

i thought the reasoning behind investing in a card like this vs. $700 3.2 cpu was brilliantly put! it seems when someone states something so succinctly and to the point how obvious their conclusion is.
to illustrate the point: my rig is a amd 900mhz, 512 samsung 133mhz sdram, and a geforce 3 ti200. i can run a game like gta3 at 1024X768 and get more than playable fps. i've seen this game ran on a P4 2.4 with a ****ty 440mx and my box is clearly superior to his for this game. sure, my box takes 3 times longer to boot, but who cares!

Kingfish

07-28-2003, 11:44 AM

This is not directed primarily to this group. All I see is speed speed and speed... benchmark..benchmark... you get what I mean. What ever happened to image quality? Beautiful colors like the 3dfx cards prided themselves on with the glide technology. Old now, but true. It seems to me that graphics quality should be the focus with speed second in line. Cards available now are all fast as we all know. Lets concentrate more on graphics I say. When I bought my first geforce card after being a 3dfx user for years, the image quality didn't beat it. I was not satisfied. That was long ago, but you people who had them know what I mean. I'm not trying to start a war, but my subject is the focus here.

pointreyes

07-28-2003, 12:08 PM

Kingfish, I think the discussion on 2D quality is partly related to what you are talking about. I personally could care less about the speed of a gamer card if I cannot read with clarity with the same card then it's worthless. I remember switching from nVidia to the Radeon when it first came out. I had a GF2 card (that I upgraded from TNT2) and I promptly returned it for the Radeon due to the lack of 2D quality. I also remember using computers with voodoo built-in graphics and the 2D was horrible (I was using Sony Trinitron monitors-so it was not the display). However, the reason for speed is due to some of the more demanding games on the market. I have heard of gamers getting less than 10fps with some games with these outrageously priced high-end gamer cards. I'm curious, have you ever tried a Matrox card?

Mikki

07-28-2003, 02:20 PM

Kingfish, point well taken, and I can assure you that we do indeed care about quality, but quality comes at a price, and that price is performance. For instance, I use a Parhelia in my main rig because, for the things I do, I need quality more than I do performance. This card delivers that in abundance, but the cost is that it's slow as heck (hence the reason why I never reviewed it).

This board (and site) is geared toward performance, and therefore, quality comes second. I also would like to see more about quality in our reviews, but first I want to see how fast it is and how fast it will go, because that's what we're about. Not all we're about, but yes, that's what we're about.

:)

Kingfish

07-28-2003, 05:19 PM

pointreyes, Though I didn't mention it, I was referring to the 3d color quality in gaming. I was building a computer for my Brother and he wanted to get a game, and picked Myst. I was hooked. I had previously used computers for other things. Yes, I have had a Matrox video card which had excellant 2d graphics and at that time in video card history, I believe they were the king of 2d. I then added a Voodoo accelerator card as my secondary video card for 3d gaming and was astounded with 3d technology in gaming. Luckily I had the monetary assests to try many video cards, and to me 3dfx was the tops in 3d image quality. I agree with you about the 2d quality.. it surely wasn't a match for Matrox, even though the 3dfx card was not onboard! I've not been partial to onboard video, since this isn't the optimum venue for gaming. I had one board that had this, but I disabled it.

I do understand the need for speed and how it directly relates to image quality, but primarily speed benchmarks has widely become the rating system at which video cards are judged these days. Image quality, not image performance seems to be getting lost in the translation of reviewers. I understand that this race is similar to other hobbies where who's got the fastest can be a contest between freinds, which makes it fun.

oldfart

07-28-2003, 06:56 PM

Sorry, but 3dfx was far from king of image quality. I had a Voodoo 1 , Voodoo 2 SLI, Voodoo 3 3000, They were fast, but had the worst 3D IQ in the business. I remember going from my Diamond Stealth II S220 card which was based on the Rendition Verite 2100 to the Voodoo2 card. The Voodoo2 was MUCH faster, but looked nowhere near as good. That was back in Quake 2 and Half-Life days. 3dfx was always king of speed, not IQ. Glide was good in its day since DX and OpenGL were still not widely used or mature. 3dfx also had a maximum or 16 bit color and 256 x 256 texture size which was not great for IQ.

Kingfish

07-28-2003, 07:27 PM

Yes Rendition was great agreed. I also had a rendition based card. It was actually my first 3d card. This was only a 4mb card too. Man, that is old.

But oldfart, you are far from being correct about the 3dfx series. Competition was stiff between mfgs and 3dfx led the market for quite a long time with a large following of happy campers. "Far from king" I believe is something you have exaggerated. But alas, I say "to me it was tops". I was not speaking for the majority of the planet.

Not realizing the position of where 3dfx lead in the market, one wonders how you can substantiate your belief? You must have never noticed all the 3dfx logos on some of the most popular games of time. 3dfx was a legend I sure most here would defend in my behalf.

Kingfish

07-28-2003, 07:48 PM

Mikki,

I din't realize this was performance driven, but after reading about your site I understand, so I'm most likely out of place. But forums are for opinions also, and thanks for your consideration. Most gamers are concerned about frame rate I believe. No one likes slow rates we all know. I've had my share of them.

oldfart

07-28-2003, 07:54 PM

You completely changed what I posted. I said "far from king of image quality". You said "far from king" Two very different statements. If you quote someone, please do it accurately.

I didn't say they were not popular. I owned and enjoyed several of the cards myself. In fact, I still have a Voodoo3 in one of the kids PCs. I said they were known for speed, not IQ. That was a well known fact. Read any article from that time period. 3dfx was fast, not pretty. They were always criticized for their IQ. You must have seen the difference yourself between Rendition and 3dfx. As an example, the Rail Gun in Q2 was a beautiful crystal/Sapphire blue spiral of dots on a Rendition card or nVidia TNT/TNT2. A Voodoo2/3 card produces a kind of aqua blue spiral blur. No comparison.

Kingfish

07-28-2003, 08:39 PM

Oldfart , I'd like you to find a document in support of your statement as I have here from Tom's Hardware. This is typical of many review sites around that time period. Voodoo chipsets were widely know for their great graphics and speed.

"far from king of image quality" is so wrong oldfart.

Possibly your getting confused with some other graphics card?

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/19980121/3dbench-26.html

and yet another tidbit, though a newer card. The net is saturated with praise about 3dfx chipsets graphics quality:

http://www.hardware-unlimited.com/reviews/voodoo5/index12.shtml

I quote: "The above image is the ideal look, produced by cards with the 3Dfx Voodoo or Voodoo Rush chip, running under the 3Dfx own Glide engine. You can try whichever card you want, the image quality won't get better than that. "

This was before the Voodoo 2 even came out.

Perhaps your meaning 3dfx running under DirectX games? Many games had to be "patched" for the 3dfx glide API.

I never ran Q2 with the Rendition card, it would have never handled it with any good frame rate. It was a very early graphics card with only 4mb of memory. Rendition was very impressive and great graphics no doubt, though at that time was only available for purchase on the internet and not in any local stores like others were.

Mikki

07-28-2003, 10:26 PM

Originally posted by Kingfish
Mikki,

I din't realize this was performance driven, but after reading about your site I understand, so I'm most likely out of place. But forums are for opinions also, and thanks for your consideration. Most gamers are concerned about frame rate I believe. No one likes slow rates we all know. I've had my share of them.
Hehe...apparently I need to work on the image of the site, huh? :p

Don't think you're out of place mate, quality levels have a legitimate place here, and I'll support any quality-based discussion anyone brings up....;)

Just out of curiousity, which of today's cards would you consider the best for quality? :)

Jim

07-29-2003, 06:30 AM

kingfish wecome to the BE. :) I think the discussion here has pointed out the difficulty in including subjective opinion on screen quality. Probably most folks have a preference ATI or Nvidia or a certain brand name. If a CPU (AMD or Intel) or a video card are shown to perform similarly people will probably go with the brand they prefer and have found in there experience to work well with there hardware.
My 2 cents. (We need a 2 cent icon.)

Kingfish

07-29-2003, 09:07 AM

Mikki , I don't think your sites' image is on trial here. With discussions always come disagreements and other views. I was being constructive with my opinion I hope. I'm glad I wasn't out of place :)

Thanks for being so kind with your words, which shows a good image to me. Some groups would have used harsh words.

In response of the best quality graphics card at this time, I would have to opt out of that answer. I really don't know. I purchased the Nvidia Geforce 4 Ti4600 a while back, but have not compared it to any other. I do feel the image quality could be better of this card, cosidering the cost at the time I purchased it. I have wondered how it compared to the Radion 9800. As you know, Ati took the lead for awhile above Nvidia. Its a tight race isn't it?

DAPUNISHER

07-29-2003, 09:09 AM

In my mind there is no difficulty in stating a subjective opinion on IQ. It is a Personal observation and as long as it's stated as such and not pushed on others as some kind of proclamation of indisputable fact *cough*THG*cough* then readers can take it as they will, agreed?

All this Political correctness in everything is exasperating! I say call 'em like ya see 'em! :cool:

I am another who believes that 2D/3D IQ is essential now when reviewing graphics cards as even performance benchmarking is done at high resolutions with AA/AF enabled now. Why use the AA/AF if not because of it's superior IQ? The answer of course is that they are essential to the bleeding edge gamers experience, so therefore, the inclusion of the reviewer's impressions of how the IQ of the card was during the review process is of considerable use to the reader like myself since I can see the same benchmarks replicated on 50 different sites ;)

BTW, many sites are beginning to pay much more attention to IQ in their reviews because of it's importance in today's gaming scene and the fact that some of the most popular benchmarking programs and games have been revealed to be effected by "optimizations" in drivers, in particular and especially Nvidia's. So when I see a bunch of aseptic benchmarks I tend to have little enthusiasm for them since I am left wondering whether or not the visual quality of the game being used was effected or not by said "optimizations". Without the reviewer at least attempting to qualify the result by stating if he/she saw any obvious reduction in IQ while running the bench I feel like I'm right back where I started. Which is trying to determine if the card I'm interested in will be an intelligent purchase or not, since I can't necessarily rely on the bench results because with Nvidia encrypting their drivers now it is nearly impossible to know if they are "optimizing" for that particular game/benchie or not :(

Again, thank you for adding your thoughts on the IQ of the 5900Ultra Prof. as that part of reviews will play a major role in my future graphics card purchases.

*A quick disclaimer* I beta-test for Nvidia and bear them no ill will but I intend to carefully scrutinize the games I run FRAPS on for the above stated reasons ;)

Kingfish

07-29-2003, 10:10 AM

Originally posted by ProfessorFate
kingfish wecome to the BE. :) I think the discussion here has pointed out the difficulty in including subjective opinion on screen quality.

ProfessorFate , Thank you for the kind welcome :)

I was thinking yesterday how difficult it can be. If were not comparing to a lot of other graphics cards, we can more easily compare it to the one we just removed from our computer. This brings me to ask you a question since you had a similar graphics gard. I have the PNY Geforce 4 Ti4600. What is your opinion on the graphics picture quality of the 5900 Ultra compared to your old one?

Also, let me compliment you on your review. Very nicely done and great pictures to boot. Incredible frame rates we're getting these days compared to the old days. I remember the days that 85 fps at 800x600 were great, or even lower. I think it was around 35fps minimum that was an acceptable rate while playing games before the picture would jitter. That was long ago. I'm still using my P3 933E and getting great frame rates even with the newer ames like UT2003,Star Wars Jedi Knight 2. This has a lot to do with the Asus CUSL-C Black Pearl's Intel Accelerated Hub Architecture 266mb per sec, which is twice the speed of the PCI bus. Without that, I would not get as good rates.

But, it is time to make the jump to the P4 after all. I want to take advantage of the new technology my video card has with a newer processor, and look to the future as you have done. This ole' P3 @133fsb has treated me well indeed, and given me years of pleasure. I'll be jumping up to 800fsb shortly.

pointreyes

07-29-2003, 10:24 AM

IQ is kinda of easy for me to check.

Four computers on one monitor (KVM). Here's the highest to lowest IQ with my four cards in order:
9800 Pro (bios modded from 9800np to pro)
MSI Ti4200 8x 128Meg
9500 Pro
8500 DV

Matrox G400 and G550 would actually be below the MSI Ti4200. MSI did something very right with IQ. :)

Monitor being used: IBM P96 at 1280x1024x32@85. OSes used: Windows XP Pro; Windows 2000 Advanced Server; Windows 2003 Enterprise Server; Linux SuSE 8.2 Pro; Linux Slackware 9.0

Another thing of interest is DVD playback. The MSI Ti4200 has proven to be the best for DVD playback due to never freezing up. I will be testing the 9800 Pro shortly to see if it has this problem. The 9500 Pro and 8500DV do.

Kingfish

07-29-2003, 10:25 AM

Originally posted by DAPUNISHER
*A quick disclaimer* I beta-test for Nvidia and bear them no ill will but I intend to carefully scrutinize the games I run FRAPS on for the above stated reasons ;) [/B]

DAPUNISHER , now you've sparked my curiosity :)

Would you have any inside information on whether Nvidia has incorporated the 3dfx technology into their new video cards? I think it has been a couple years since Nvidia puchased 3dfx core assets, and I still don't know if Nvidia plans to release a 3dfx branded card. Do you have any of this information or even rumors?

DAPUNISHER

07-29-2003, 11:11 AM

Nope, I don't have any good dirt on the 3DFX-Nvidia relationship or how the merger is affecting the corp. or products and even if I did I couldn't tell you because I'm under a NDA ;)

pointreyes, that is exactly the type of content I'm interested in seeing more of in reviews. Of course not all the reviewers will agree and the monitor does make a difference, some times a drastic one! but if we have many different reviewers providing the content it will be advantageous to the user when deliberating on a upcoming purchase IMO.

BTW, I had a MSI ti200 and it was a jewel! Superb overclocker and good IQ though my 8500le's color seemed more vibrant. The Abit ti4200's 2D image filiters are the worst I've ever used and actually produce distortion waves through the backround :mad: I thought it was a bargain@83$ for the retail kit with Ghost Recon and all the cables&adapter but now I think it's overpriced for what you get.

pointreyes

07-29-2003, 11:32 AM

Originally posted by DAPUNISHER
BTW, I had a MSI ti200 and it was a jewel! Superb overclocker and good IQ though my 8500le's color seemed more vibrant. The Abit ti4200's 2D image filiters are the worst I've ever used and actually produce distortion waves through the backround :mad: I thought it was a bargain@83$ for the retail kit with Ghost Recon and all the cables&adapter but now I think it's overpriced for what you get.

Look at all the software I got with my MSI Ti4200. :)
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/vga/vga/pro_vga_detail.php?UID=380

I was able to use the WinDVD disk that came with this card to upgrade to the WinDVD Platinum software for $30. :cool:

I was sorely disappointed with Sapphire's 9x00 series cards (this was before the 9800) so it's very hard for me to trust any of the 'Powered by ATi' 3rd-party manufacturers. However, if MSI would ever make a 'Powered by ATi' card-I would immediately pick the MSI over an ATi retail. :)

DAPUNISHER

07-29-2003, 11:43 AM

MSI definitely provides excellent value. BTW, that's a serious cooling solution for a 4200 :eyepop: I bet that overclocks like mad!

pointreyes

07-29-2003, 11:58 AM

Originally posted by DAPUNISHER
MSI definitely provides excellent value. BTW, that's a serious cooling solution for a 4200 :eyepop: I bet that overclocks like mad!

Sadly, I don't oc since I don't do serious gaming. The card even has a copper-like plate on the back for heat spreading the ram chips. It's only a few points behind my 9500 Pro. All I know is that all my cards make my eye's feel better working with text. Now if I could just get that ViewSonic VP191b. :p

http://www.viewsonic.com/products/lcd_vp171b.htm

DAPUNISHER

07-29-2003, 03:00 PM

yeah, I have 2 15" LCDs (technically 3 with my notebook) because I got awesome deals on them but I will be making a 17" LCD my next upgrade. I don't care what the hardcore gamers say CRTs are old news. I do miss having a huge heater on my desk and the radiation and power consumption....NOT!!! :smash:

Mikki

07-29-2003, 03:25 PM

I just wanted to say this has turned out to be an excellent thread, and to me it's proof that not only can a forum handle a delicate discussion in a good way, but also that BE is doing it very well. This discussion could have gone bad pretty fast, I've seen it plenty of times before. Thanks a lot guys, you rock!! :rock: :wave:

All points were taken well, let's see if we can start incorporating quality into our discussions a bit more. I did realize that I asked a loaded question about quality cards, and like most, I don't have an answer because I haven't tested most of them. I will say that from what I've seen, I think any of us would do good with any of the current crop of cards out right now, hopefully BE can take a look at more of them...;)

Cheers!! :D

Hawk

07-29-2003, 03:27 PM

That's because you picked a real group of professionals. . . .

:na:

Also you gotta PM. . . .

Originally posted by Mikki
I just wanted to say this has turned out to be an excellent thread, and to me it's proof that not only can a forum handle a delicate discussion in a good way, but also that BE is doing it very well. This discussion could have gone bad pretty fast, I've seen it plenty of times before. Thanks a lot guys, you rock!! :rock: :wave:

All points were taken well, let's see if we can start incorporating quality into our discussions a bit more. I did realize that I asked a loaded question about quality cards, and like most, I don't have an answer because I haven't tested most of them. I will say that from what I've seen, I think any of us would do good with any of the current crop of cards out right now, hopefully BE can take a look at more of them...;)

Cheers!! :D

oldfart

07-29-2003, 08:48 PM

Not to beat a dead horse here but.... Am I the only guy that was around in the 3dfx days? There were discussions every day in forums such as this about 3dfx speed Vs nVidia IQ.

It's hard to find old articles now, but this is what was typical of the time:

THG: (http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/19990312/nvidia-03.html)

Image Quality

TNT2's image quality is identical to the immaculate image quality of TNT. There is certainly no reason to show you any screen shots, especially not if you are already the owner of a TNT based graphics card. People who are used to Voodoo2's image quality should really have a look at e.g. Quake2 running on TNT. Many of the Voodoo2-owners seem to still not know how much better Quake2 can look. TNT2 will combine TNT's image quality with 3D performance way ahead of Voodoo2
3dfx is not king of IQ

Anandtech: (http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=940)

As you all probably can guess, since you don’t happen to have the ultimate 2D/3D accelerator sitting in front of you, the nVidia Riva TNT never came through in terms of beating the pants off of the Voodoo2. Instead, what developed was a simple choice between the two leading competitors, 3dfx for the raw performance of their Voodoo2/Voodoo2 SLI solution, and nVidia for the superior image quality of their Riva TNT solution. Which solution was the superior one? That depends entirely on your point of view, while there are some users that prefer raw speed over image quality, there are others that prefer to enjoy a greater image quality over raw speed. Needless to say, ultimately, the year 1998 did not end up crowning any one graphics chipset manufacturer as the indisputable king of the market.
3dfx = speed, not IQ

Maybe each generation is needed.
G1: Voodoo 1. This was almost the only 3D accel available. Not much competition. There was the Rendition V1000, which was pretty decent, but not as fast. Glide was in and many games supported it.

G2: Voodoo2/SLI. Glide was still big and it was THE setup for Unreal (that is why I bought it). Rendition V2x00 was out and had superior IQ, but was slower. TNT and TNT2 afterwords were also around that time. Both had superior IQ compared to 3dfx; 32 bit color, 2048 x 2048 texture size Vs 16 bit color and 256 x 256 texture size of Voodoo2. OpenGL and D3D games looked much better on these cards. This was the era when "3dfx speed" VS "nVidia IQ" was the topic of the day.

G3 Voodoo3. Competition was Geforce/2. V3 3000 still 16 bit color, small texture size, still no OpenGL ICD. The nVidia cards were faster and had better IQ. 3dfx lost the speed crown and never got it back

G4: V4500/5500. Finally, 32 bit color support! The 5500 had pretty decent speed. The 4500 was ~ the same as V3000 but with 32 bit color. 3dfx did have the best AA in the game at that time. Some would say that has never been matched. nVidia had GF3 by that time and it was way ahead of the V5500 at that time as well

The only time 3dfx might have been known for 3D quality was in the Voodoo1 days when there was not much competition and Glide was predominant. The other would be for the V5500's FSAA capability. They were mostly known for speed, not IQ.

Kingfish

07-30-2003, 01:20 AM

oldfart, Nice bit of history you've dug up. I remember quite a bit of this. I believe in speed your meaning the Voodoo2 in what was called SLI mode, which is two cards joined tongether. This was done to give primarily increased speed...agreed.

See, I do agree with you often :D

No doubt, you are beating this horse :p
Because you are wrong stating that 3dfx had the worst 3d Iq in the business, and I have proved it to you.

As one stated, a lot is based on opinion in regards to IQ. But as I've mentioned all along it is the Glide API that made 3dfx cards shine. That was was all the games I had, were games that used glide.

Glide was a proprietary API to 3dfx only :mad:

I tried the TNT card with those games and the IQ just wasn't there. True, in Direct X or Open GL those TNT cards excelled above 3dfx in IQ which most I think know, especially those who knew nothing about API's, but that there games just didn't look good on 3dfx cards as with the TNT or Nvidia. At that time Microsoft was really trying to grow DirectX platform.

Your information here is something you spent a bit of time on, but you still have not backed your words.

you stated:

"They were fast, but had the worst 3D IQ in the business."

I'm sure we all could find much worse than 3dfx in this business.

you stated:

"Sorry, but 3dfx was far from king of image quality."

...and who said 3dfx was the king of image quality? Not me.

I said 3dfx was a legend :)

TNT2's image quality is identical to the immaculate image quality of TNT. There is certainly no reason to show you any screen shots, especially not if you are already the owner of a TNT based graphics card. People who are used to Voodoo2's image quality should really have a look at e.g. Quake2 running on TNT. Many of the Voodoo2-owners seem to still not know how much better Quake2 can look. TNT2 will combine TNT's image quality with 3D performance way ahead of Voodoo2
This is the way competion works oldfart, the TNT cards went on sale about 1 year after the Voodoo 2 cards were on the market. Wouldn't we expect the newer card to beat the old?

The TNT2 was released over 6 months later than the first TNT. Will this one be the Voodoo killer??? No way!! :wave:
.

oldfart

07-30-2003, 03:12 AM

I may have stated or overstated my case. My point is, without all kinds of detail that 3dfx was known for speed, not IQ. That was always their strong point. I had no beef with 3dfx and owned and enjoyed many of their cards including a Voodoo1, Voodoo2 SLI and which you speak of and a Voodoo3 . I have first hand experience.

The professional reviews all over the net also criticized 3dfx for their IQ. Its a fact.

Instead, what developed was a simple choice between the two leading competitors, 3dfx for the raw performance of their Voodoo2/Voodoo2 SLI solution, and nVidia for the superior image quality of their Riva TNT solution. This was very typical of the reviews of the time. 3dfx = speed at the expense of IQ.

Yes, 3dfx looked the best in Glide since it was a proprietary API and no one else did it. Kind of hard to compare IQ on an API only one vendor supported.

You are correct about the "king thing". I dont know where I got that. :confused: You said "3dfx was the tops in 3d image quality". Maybe in Voodoo1 days they were. Not Voodoo2 forward.

I fully agree about 3dfx being a Legend. The were the first and fastest cards around. I liked all the cards I owned.

Its a shame you never tried Q2 on you Rendition card. When I went from the Rendition to the Voodoo2 I was very happy with the speed increase, but immediately noticed the drop in IQ in the two games I was playing at the time, Quake 2 and Half-Life. No amount of tweaking would fix it. The speed increase was so dramatic, I decided to keep the card anyway, and I was also playing Unreal which really was a Glide based game.

Getting back on topic, I agree with you on the importance of IQ in games. I've always been a real stickler for it. It has been a subject of much discussion lately with all the driver cheat nonsense going on.

Yes, we can agree on something :)

Kingfish

07-30-2003, 09:13 PM

oldfart, Well, like me, you misquoted me. Except I won't give you grief about it. But this issue of graphics quality and speed is getting old now. I have shown you a some review stating how good the graphics quality was with Voodoo cards, and I just don't understand how you can say they were only known for speed. I'm not going to continue this discussion since like I said from the beginning, they were tops to me. I'll leave the bashing to the jealous critics.

I find myself repeating so much. Rendition Verite cards were not available to me. I would have loved to get one of the newer ones and played Q2. I had a couple of the TNT cards which were great on a few games I had. I don't remember Q2 specifically on that card, but there were many that looked real good on it. All most all of my games were Glide for the 3dfx cards. I had so, so many of those, that is why I stayed with them. The graphics was the best I had seen with all the series of cards I had. I have a right to my opinion oldfart, and I don't think you bought all those 3dfx cards just based on the speed of them, did you?

Fossil

07-31-2003, 04:51 AM

Well Oldfart I was around in those days too. I had an ATI Magnum 32 MB card with two Voodoo's in a sli config. It was sweet. This post got me wondering what these voodoo babies with Wicked 3D drivers would do on a ATI 9800 Pro. Bleeding Edge meets Old School.

Hawk

07-31-2003, 04:53 AM

GLIDE, damn I remember those days. . . :wave:

Fossil

07-31-2003, 04:43 PM

i found drivers for XP for the Voodoo 2000 cards. Took the cards out of the box and was amazed at the size of them. It looks like the ram is 100 mhz 1 MB chips...12 on one side and 4 on the other. I found the external video cable but i can't find the sli cable...still looking

DAPUNISHER

07-31-2003, 05:25 PM

Originally posted by Hawk
GLIDE, damn I remember those days. . . :wave: While everyone is waxing nostalgic about 3DFX checkout the review of the legendary V5 6K at Sudhian link (http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=413) Really neat stuff!

Kingfish

08-01-2003, 08:10 PM

DAPUNISHER, Thanks for sharing that link. They really had some fun with that. Very interesting article and I enjoyed the reading comparing to what could have been.
The legend lives on...

Jim

08-01-2003, 08:56 PM

Originally posted by DAPUNISHER
While everyone is waxing nostalgic about 3DFX checkout the review of the legendary V5 6K at Sudhian link (http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=413) Really neat stuff!

Yeah great link, interesting article. It's too bad 3DFX made the decision not to license their chipset anymore at one point. A fatal error, can you say Sony Beta ? Greed is a terrible thing. :D

DAPUNISHER

08-01-2003, 11:14 PM

Originally posted by ProfessorFate
Yeah great link, interesting article. It's too bad 3DFX made the decision not to license their chipset anymore at one point. A fatal error, can you say Sony Beta ? Greed is a terrible thing. :D Yes sir. One of those things that make you go Hmmmmm? is that Nvidia was the golden boy until they acquired 3dfx, now it's as if the bad karma came along with it :eek: They should call a witch doctor or the Dali Lama or somethin'! :scratch:

Kingfish

08-02-2003, 03:01 PM

Hi, Just thought I'd share something I found yesterday. If you folks play Unreal Tournament there is a newer opengl renderer that looks great! Colors look more vibrant and such. I made a backup of course of my current OpenGLDrv.dll in the unreal system folder and replaced it with the newer one. There is also instruction sets for the new functions of the renderer that you can add to the unreal tournament.ini. I found out about this new renderer from a great mod site if your into WWII war stuff.

This is how I found out about it:

The Third Reich (http://www.thethirdreich.com) Very cool online WWII mod. Not played like Unreal though, meant to be team oriented realistic gameplay.

This is Chris Dohnal's web page. The guy who made the new opengl:

An enhanced OpenGL renderer for Unreal Tournament (http://cwdohnal.home.mindspring.com/utglr/)

Enjoy...I am!! :yummy:

Kingfish

08-07-2003, 02:20 PM

Originally posted by ProfessorFate
IMHO
My last 3 video cards have been Radeon 8500, TI 4200, FX5900.
I felt the 2D on the Radeon was better than the TI4200 on my 19" Planar. But the 3D was better on the 4200 than the Radeon.
That being said, the FX5900 is crisper in 2D and is noticably better in 3D in the game I play the most often. C&C Renegade. :)

What exactly is better about the 3d graphics compared to the your last video card? My Son has one of the Nvidia Fx series, and the colors look more colorful and vibrant than the Ti4600 I have. What is your opinion?

boshuter

08-28-2003, 06:45 AM

Very nice, well done review Prof!

This is the first review of this card I have read. To be honest, I expected a lot better performance for the price. Can I ask why you chose to buy this card over anything else? You and I have very close to the same system specs and at stock speeds (no oc on card), we have almost identical scores in 3Dmark 2001 (+-5pts.). But if the 9800 is oc'd to close to the default FX speeds (I can't run 450/850, best oc I get is 440/840) it blows the FX card away by a very wide margin.

FX 5900Ultra @450/850 - 19093
9800pro @378/670 - 19087

FX5900Ultra @500/938 - 19817
9800pro @440/840 - 20897

It looks like the 9800 performs a lot better at the same clock speeds and shows a better gain from oc'ing. I just don't see the justification in the price difference unless there is something I'm missing. I know the FX has 256mb memory compared to my 128mb, but it doesn't seem to help it much in the benches, at least the ones we have now. Anyway, I hope you didn't take this wrong, that FX is a very cool card! Just too many dollars for what it will do IMHO..;)

BTW, my sys. specs are:
2.6c @262fsb
P4P800 Deluxe
2X512 Corsair XMS PC3500 @ 5:4 2-2-2-5
Fic 9800pro

Thanks for a great review, look forward to the next one..:wave:

Jim

08-31-2003, 08:55 AM

Originally posted by boshuter
It looks like the 9800 performs a lot better at the same clock speeds and shows a better gain from oc'ing. I just don't see the justification in the price difference unless there is something I'm missing. I know the FX has 256mb memory compared to my 128mb, but it doesn't seem to help it much in the benches, at least the ones we have now. Anyway, I hope you didn't take this wrong, that FX is a very cool card! Just too many dollars for what it will do IMHO..;)

I agree it's a lot of cash, but prices have finally started to fall. FX5900 128MB cards can now be had for sub $250 prices. I think we'll really know where the 2 cards stand when the likes of HL2 etc is released. Thanks for the feedback. :)