Thread View: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.games
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Started by Mark Rouleau
Fri, 11 Dec 1998 00:00
Unreal, the MX300, and me.
Author: Mark Rouleau
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 00:00
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 00:00
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Just got my MX300 and replaced my old (!) IOMagic (Vortex1) sound card.
Haven't had a real chance to play with it, yet. But I did run some
fps.timedemos in unreal (which as you all know supports A3d1.0) I
thought the results were surprising enough, and encouraging enough, to
post.
My system:
P2-233 64MB Ram
8 MB Voodoo2 card
Boston Acoustic MicroMedia Speakers
Benchmarks were run through the fps.timedemo utility. Each benchmark
represents 10 runthroughs of the opening unreal sequence.
Iomagic (Vortex 1) results.
With 3dsound Without 3d sound
640x480 25.5 fps 28.15
800x600 23.19 24.68
No surprises here, right? Except that my computer is not exactly the
fastest gun in the west.
Now look at the MX300 (Vortex 2) results
With 3dsound Without 3d sound
640x480 31.98 31.32
800x600 26.49 26.72
Wow. Notice the ~3 fps increase at 800x600, and the ~6.5 fps increase
in 640x480. Nifty. Also notice that with the MX300 there is little or
no change in fps with or without 3dsound enabled. This indicates that
the 3d sound is being done almost entirely in hardware, with little or
no cpu overhead.
For those of us (ahem!) who have older, slower systems, this is great
news, as the MX300 lets us squeeze a few extra fps out of our aging
machines.
Re: Unreal, the MX300, and me.
Author: Mark Rouleau
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 00:00
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 00:00
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As a follow up, just about EVERYTHING seems to be running faster with the MX300 onboard, even non-a3d games. I imagine this is do to the greater processing power of the vortex-2 chip allowing the cpu to squeeze out a little more performance. One odd little thing: I gained over 100 "d-marks" in 3dmark, even tho there's no sound during the demo? David Gasior wrote: > > In article <3671C616.FCD2E973@frontiernet.net>, mrouleau@frontiernet.net > says ... > > >Wow. Notice the ~3 fps increase at 800x600, and the ~6.5 fps increase > >in 640x480. Nifty. Also notice that with the MX300 there is little or > >no change in fps with or without 3dsound enabled. This indicates that > >the 3d sound is being done almost entirely in hardware, with little or > >no cpu overhead. > > Thanks for posting. That would seem to back up the posting I did a few > months ago using Unreal as a test as well. We're going to keep working > on the drivers to see if we can evenm squeeze out a little better > numbers as well, so that when A3D 2.0 arrives in Unreal, it play great > and sound even better. > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > David A Gasior h: dgasior@home.com > Developer Relations, Aureal w: dgasior@a3d.com > ------------------------------------------------------------ > Please note that this post reflects my own opinions, and not > necessarily those of my employer.
Re: Unreal, the MX300, and me.
Author: David Gasior
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 00:00
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 00:00
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In article <3671D981.8468FAF9@frontiernet.net>, mrouleau@frontiernet.net says ... >One odd little thing: I gained over 100 "d-marks" in 3dmark, even tho >there's no sound during the demo? Well, I'd like to say that a Vortex 2 board will just make your system run faster in general, but I don't think that'd be true. :) It may have been something like our drivers occupy less memory space, your previous sound card drivers had some sort of memory leak, it was a bus issue, something along those lines. ------------------------------------------------------------ David A Gasior h: dgasior@home.com Developer Relations, Aureal w: dgasior@a3d.com ------------------------------------------------------------ Please note that this post reflects my own opinions, and not necessarily those of my employer.
Re: Unreal, the MX300, and me.
Author: David Gasior
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 00:00
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 00:00
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In article <3671C616.FCD2E973@frontiernet.net>, mrouleau@frontiernet.net says ... >Wow. Notice the ~3 fps increase at 800x600, and the ~6.5 fps increase >in 640x480. Nifty. Also notice that with the MX300 there is little or >no change in fps with or without 3dsound enabled. This indicates that >the 3d sound is being done almost entirely in hardware, with little or >no cpu overhead. Thanks for posting. That would seem to back up the posting I did a few months ago using Unreal as a test as well. We're going to keep working on the drivers to see if we can evenm squeeze out a little better numbers as well, so that when A3D 2.0 arrives in Unreal, it play great and sound even better. ------------------------------------------------------------ David A Gasior h: dgasior@home.com Developer Relations, Aureal w: dgasior@a3d.com ------------------------------------------------------------ Please note that this post reflects my own opinions, and not necessarily those of my employer.
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