🚀 go-pugleaf

Daniel Chee <cchee2@bigred.unl.edu> wrote in message
news:3839F8FC.F948E667@bigred.unl.edu...
>
> Last I heard 3Dfx is going to make their own cards and stop selling their
chips
> to other manufacturers. That's why you don't see V3s on any other
manufacturer's
> cards. So Quantum won't get a piece of the action.

Right, 3dfx makes their own boards.  That's what they bought STB for.
However, Quantum has always had a piece of the action.  Their multichip
VSA-100 board is already announced.

> > It's a multichip design so using half the memory would not work out.
> > Using DDR would make the card more expensive.
>
> What do you mean by this? Could you elaborate on the multichip design
won't work
> it half the memory part?

The textures have to be duplicated in the memory for each VSA-100 chip.
If you knock the RAM down to 32MB for the 2 chip card, you end up with only
16MB left.
After the framebuffer takes it's chunk, that doesnt leave much for textures.

> > 32Bit and large textures are not features that have been needed so there
> > really is no point in the last generations of cards supporting them.
> > They will most likely be needed for 2000 though.
> > In 16bit, there really is no need to have 32MB RAM.  That's why Voodoo3
only
> > has 16.
>
> What do you mean by "not features that have been needed"? Expendable
supports
> 32bit textures. Q3 supports 32 bit textures. Incoming supports 32 bits.

Yes, and of those 3 games only one uses 24bit textures as source art,
Quake3.

> If you noticed, many people with cards supporting 32 bit colors do run it
at that color
> depth when speed isn't an issue. I played expandable in 32 bit color and
hated
> it in 16 bit. Textures in Q3 are sharper when you use a TNT2 compared to a
V3.

Voodoo3 was released 8 months ago.  Quake3 isnt out yet.
32bit was not needed when Voodoo3 was released, it still isnt needed today.
The textures in Quake3 Demo are not sharper when you use 32bit.

> It's more of a preference, but since the V3 doesn't have those
capabilities,
> it's basically forcing you to run small (256x256) textures and 16bit
colors.

The only game with textures larger than 256x256 at this time is Quake3 Demo.
Even that only has 5 textures larger than 256x256 anyway.

> > Finally?  AGP 4x isnt even out yet.
> > Sidebanding in AGP 2x is already supported by V3.
>
> It means that when the chipset comes out it will support the extra
bandwidth
> available.

The only cards that really support AGP 4x are the newest ones.
Most TNT2 cards do not support AGP 4x.  It was just 'assumed' they would
when they were released.

> > They dont have an AGP to PCI bridge chip.
> > They dont support AGP texturing.  Not that it is needed.
>
> AGP texturing would be needed if you start running higher resolutions with
large
> textures and at higher color depths. Since the VSA-100 is so good
according to
> 3Dfx, 333 and higher fill rate for the V4 AGP, you would want to do that
right?
> So when you start doing that you would want the extra system memory for
> texturing I should think.

No, AGP texturing is slow.  No games force an AGP texturing situation for
that very reason.
Moving to AGP texturing cuts the fillrate dramatically.
This is also why cards now have 32MB RAM on them.