Possible New Video Card

All right, first things first, yes, I did take back the Radeon. I got a full store credit which I used to purchase some other "odds and ends" that I needed. As for why, well let's just say I had my reasons. One of them was the fact that I read an article about the NV30 and according to what the acticle said, from sources at Nvidia, the NV30 could become "top dog" and also contend with or even beat the Radeon 9700 pro. That is the main reason why the Radeon went back, the card that I've decided I REALLY want is the NV30. Hope you all understand where I'm coming from.
Chris Ray you say the NV30 is due out on Nov18th? Well, Kingstar said, in another thread, that it is due out on Nov. 15th and I had heard that it wasn't due until February or March of next year. So who is right? Only time will tell.
sincerely,
sx/amiga

[Particleman]

It's going to be launched on Nov 18th, but don't expect to see it in stores until Christmas at the earliest, since cards don't actually ship until a while after the launch date, usually a month sometimes more. If we are lucky we will see some cards on store shelves by christmas, but it won't be readily available in large quantities until next year. I expect NV30 to beat the 9700 Pro, but not by a huge margin. Anyways, at this point it's just wait and see. I am happy with my 9700's, but I'm not that surprised that sxamiga is taking his back, since he seems to play mainly emulators (the 9700 is overkill for playing gens ), and not really graphically stressing first person shooters.

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Last edited by Particleman; October 26th, 2002 at 07:57..

[Demigod]

The NV30 will definitely be faster than the Radeon 9700 (even ATI it aware of this). I'd be very disappointed in Nvidia if it isn't. Still, it will never achieve the same outstanding level of image quality as with ATI cards (unless you get a particular brand that uses quality parts). The Radeon 9700 is also superior in DVD performance and MPEG-2 encoding/decoding. The NV30 will probably follow the Nvidia tradition (blazing fast 3D, sub-par 2D and image quality). Most sources would indicate a November release but it had better get here sooner than later. It's already been delayed enough.

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[Kane]

>*fivefeet8 or Lord Kane should be jumping into the discussion right about now*

Sorry, I was sleeping
Anyhow, the voodoo 5 is still the king for emulation for a few reasons:
1) Lewpy's plugin provides most effects at a lower performance hit than others.
2) The FSAA in the Voodoo is unmatched (and yes I have seen and used a Radeon 9700 Pro) for emulation, as no other FSAA filters the 2d nearly as well.

Good for you Sxamiga, as when the NV30 arrives, ATi are apparently bringing out something to compete. Yuo can make a choice then.

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[spajdr]

sxamiga : NV30 will be out maybe in 4 months,since its more on paper than real thing for now.I dont understand why you return your radeon,its pretty cool card,especially with Anisotropic Filtering 16X with FSAA 6X.

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[liquid]

Originally posted by Lord Kane

Anyhow, the voodoo 5 is still the king for emulation for a few reasons:
1) Lewpy's plugin provides most effects at a lower performance hit than others.
2) The FSAA in the Voodoo is unmatched (and yes I have seen and used a Radeon 9700 Pro) for emulation, as no other FSAA filters the 2d nearly as well.

Actually, voodoo cards are very slow at doing framebuffer effects in pure hardware, that is why much of these framebuffer effects are off-loaded to the CPU via software rendering.
When it comes to pure hardware framebuffer effects, Nvidia cards are much faster...especially in OpenGL.
As for FSAA, the NV30 is the first chipset co-developed by nvidia and former 3Dfx engineers, so it might have FSAA equal to that of the Voodoo 5 (but that is speculative at this point).

[Kane]

In theory it shouldn't be hard to make it use the same algorithm anyway. The NV30 is meant to be fully programmable ^_^

I agree that the GeForces are better at hardware framebuffer, but hte Voodoos excel because of the glide based plugin IMO.

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I've said it before and I'll say it again. Voodoo5's only excel at lower resolutions. The card is just too slow to do 4x FSAA at 1024x786x32 effectively. It just doesn't have the memory bandwith for it.

However, Having access to lewpy's plugin is great if your having compatibility issues. But I'd only reccomend a 3dfx card to take a PCI slot. It's definately not worth putting in an AGP slot over current cards.

Aside from that. Sxamiga. Nvidia will be doing a paper release of the NV30 at November 18th at Comdex. There will probably be a few released in december. but most won't become available till january.

[fivefeet8]

Originally posted by ChrisRay
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Voodoo5's only excel at lower resolutions. The card is just too slow to do 4x FSAA at 1024x786x32 effectively. It just doesn't have the memory bandwith for it.

As I have said before as well, lower resolutions is where emulated psx games look the best.. Especially 2d games.. But anyways, I'm hoping as well that the Nv30 atleast has an option for FSAA like the voodoo5.. I still haven't found a card that does for 2d what the voodoo 5 can do.. Glide would be sweet too, but it's highly unlikely.. If the Nv30 is all this and more, then I can keep my voodoo 5 pci in storage and sell my geforce 4...

I've read an article at anadtech that stated the Nv30 should be arriving in november or december..

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[_E_]

As for the ATI Radeon 9700 vs NV30 arguement, please have a look here

http://www.tech-report.com/etc/2002q...s/index.x?pg=1

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Originally posted by fivefeet8


As I have said before as well, lower resolutions is where emulated psx games look the best.. Especially 2d games.. But anyways, I'm hoping as well that the Nv30 atleast has an option for FSAA like the voodoo5.. I still haven't found a card that does for 2d what the voodoo 5 can do.. Glide would be sweet too, but it's highly unlikely.. If the Nv30 is all this and more, then I can keep my voodoo 5 pci in storage and sell my geforce 4...

I've read an article at anadtech that stated the Nv30 should be arriving in november or december..

Well thats entirely opinion. Personally I don't think they look stretched at all. IN fact, the whole reason I play emulated FF8 and FF7 is because I can't stand playing at 640x480.

Aside from that, if a 2xSal mode for Peops games gets released. I have a feeling the 2d will be more than satisfactory.

Nvidia isn't gonna revive glide. The Api is dead, not expandable. and about 3 years behind in tech. It would be a huge set back for the gaming industry. Like going back to DX 6.0 tech.

The Nv30 will most surely not do RGSS for FSAA as well. They are gonna stick with Super Sampling as its the most effective FSAA with speed in mind.

[fivefeet8]

Originally posted by ChrisRay


Aside from that, if a 2xSal mode for Peops games gets released. I have a feeling the 2d will be more than satisfactory.

Maybe, but for 2d/3d games.. I'll stick with my voodoo 5's 4xFSAA.. Less bugs, looks the best, and super fast..

yeah.. I know they won't revive glide.. But with the bandwidth capability of the Nv30, RGSS FSAA shouldn't be a problem with quality in mind.. LIke I said, it would be nice as an option to their already growing list of FSAA options..

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yeah.. I know they won't revive glide.. But with the bandwidth capability of the Nv30, RGSS FSAA shouldn't be a problem with quality in mind.. LIke I said, it would be nice as an option to their already growing list of FSAA options..

Hmm its possible. But I doubt it with the Nv30. Nvidia was claiming the 4x FSAA performance will be in comparison to the 2x/quincunx anti aliasing performance on the g4 ti cards.

So I expect great speed out of it. But I just don't expect quality to be upped. Was also suggested the possibility of 6x and 6xS FSAA as well.

But I don't see much need for it.

Actually what I am hoping for out of the Nv30 is have the memory capabilities and bandwith. to Play 4xS FSAA, 32 Bit Color, And 2xSal mode enabled at 1024x786 resolution. However I can do that at 640x480 w/o slow down.

As right now. This drops me to about 45 FPS which is just too distracting. Definately due to a lack of memory for me I'm sure. I want anistropic filtering improved. Not because I paticularly care for the feature (trillinear is fine with me) but I don't want to see Nvidia fall so far behind in a certain tech that it becomes unrecoverable.

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Last edited by ChrisRay; October 26th, 2002 at 17:33..

[dogulation000]

Originally posted by ChrisRay


Hmm its possible. But I doubt it with the Nv30. Nvidia was claiming the 4x FSAA performance will be in comparison to the 2x/quincunx anti aliasing performance on the g4 ti cards.

So I expect great speed out of it. But I just don't expect quality to be upped. Was also suggested the possibility of 6x and 6xS FSAA as well.

But I don't see much need for it.

Actually what I am hoping for out of the Nv30 is have the memory capabilities and bandwith. to Play 4xS FSAA, 32 Bit Color, And 2xSal mode enabled at 1024x786 resolution. However I can do that at 640x480 w/o slow down.

As right now. This drops me to about 45 FPS which is just too distracting. Definately due to a lack of memory for me I'm sure. I want anistropic filtering improved. Not because I paticularly care for the feature (trillinear is fine with me) but I don't want to see Nvidia fall so far behind in a certain tech that it becomes unrecoverable.

I would also like to use the Voodoo 5 style FSAA. There should be AT LEAST an option to enable it, if not to have it on by default. And I wish their Anisotropic filtering also get better, too. ATI has been known to do well in anisotropic filtering, so they better hurry up. :eyes:

The only real problem with adopting the RGSS style of FSAA is that it has extremely limited usefulness in today's games. Keep in mind that this feature is only really strong with emulation in mind. For most newer games it's not nearly as good as it used to be. So I strongly doubt Nvidia will opt for an RGSS FSAA, so many other things Nvidia cards could use improvement on.

[Particleman]

They might use a form of RGSS, but I'm willing to bet that it will not blur stuff the way the Voodoo 5 does. Ever since the Voodoo 5, the push for FSAA has been to make it blur textures less and less, and reduce performance hit. Something that blurred textures like the Voodoo 5 did would draw a lot of criticism from hardware review sites, since that blurring doesn't look good on anything except 2D sprites and backgrounds. Although we emu users would like to see the option, unfortunately emu users just don't make a huge percentage of people, nVidia and ATi don't even take the time to make sure their FSAA works glitch free in emulators. That's why Pete's plugin needs a workaround for bugs in their FSAA implementation when used with ePSXe. And then their was the infamous "tile" bug on unfiltered textures with nVidia's multisampling. For over a year nVidia couldn't care less that their FSAA messed up games with 2D backgrounds beyond belief. And even now the glitch isn't completely fixed. Anyways I am highly skeptical that nVidia would include a feature just to appease us emu users (especially a feature that would draw a lot of criticism from the rest of the gaming community), since from their past record it looks like they don't even know the emu community exists.

[Esturk]

I hate blurring or filtering on anything.

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[_E_]

Originally posted by Esturk17
I hate blurring or filtering on anything.

ATI cheated once by releasing a driver which blurred background images to produce better effects. They soon fixed this bug out, but that a was a neat trick by that time and some got really fooled by that!

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Margaret C. Smith

, unfortunately emu users just don't make a huge percentage of people, nVidia and ATi don't even take the time to make sure their FSAA works glitch free in emulators

well this is mainly because emulation is a somewhat taboo market. People Do it. use it. But wouldn't admit to it in public. You can't expect companies to support emulation at all.

[average_guy]

isn't emulation is in the "shade" area?