🚀 go-pugleaf

Marek Pawel Synowiec wrote in message
<85qjbv$ame$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>...
>
>> As far as I know, Unreal Tournament doesn't take advantage of the
>> GeForce
>> T&L unit, that means the CPU has to do it, and then of course you get
>> better results with a faster CPU. With dedicated T&L titles like Dagoth
>> Moor ZG,
>> the difference between processor speeds is smaller, but according to the
>> benchmarks I've seen, it's still a pretty big gap: a Celeron 400 gives
>> 80%
>> the framerate of a Pentium III 550 in DMZG.
>
>Of course it does..... how do you think the information gets to the
>GeForce....


No it doesn't. Do you know what transform and lighting are? Mathmatical
computations, that's what.
Now the geforce on board chip can do it which is designed to, or the CPU can
through software instructions, and
that is what UT does. Sweeny even said he would not use in place openGL
calls for these because
they were not effecient enough and he would hand code the routines [CPU].
Why I can't figure out, since
their OpenGL sucks so much it makes a crack hoar look like an amatuer with
his highly optimized routines, but...
Actualyl I can, but we all know about Sweeny's loyalty to 3dfx so we don't
need to go there. Mysteriously diamond
provides metal for UT which out performs the 3dfx cards and the latest UT
patch breaks it. Hmmm.......

>You need to feed it.... forget all the _crap_ about 'frees up cpu time'.
>Your cpu is feeding the GeForce, and _currently_ no CPU can feed it fast
>enough to reach the Transform limits of the GeForce so it just gets faster
&
>faster.

No, your bus is feeding the geforce, your CPU is doing computations and gate
operations.

>No, its not a con. The GeForce does the T&L much faster than _any_ CPU.

To date.

>Yes. There are many ways around the CPU, but that just speeds up the
>transfer and leaves the CPU idle....

Umm, no it leaves the CPU to do other computations like AI, sound, network,
etc...


The reason UT runs so bad is it was designed around the Glide API, which is
almost nothing like
the D3D API, thus optimizing the interface is virtually impossible. the
engine sets up info the way
glide likes it, than  moves it all around so D3D can use it. Its a 3dfx
game, like it or not, and it always will be
unless somone codes a Glide API driver [not a wrapper] for the other cards
which would require the
company, in this case riva, releasing technical information about thier
chipsets to the public or thier programers
adding the support to the drivers which they have already stated they will
not do.


The D3D driver for UT has been public src's by EPIC in hopes someone else
will fix their problem for them, but
I wouldn't bet on it....