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Strengths and Weaknesses of different brands in 3D?

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First post, by Kordanor

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I wanted to get an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the main protagonists when rendering 3D games. I don't want to go too much into super specific 3D accelerators. There is already a good thread for that over here: 3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)
I watched several of Phils Videos and also this one about different renderings of different accelerators: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU5Zi69QPQs
From what I saw in the thread mentioned before, no vendor specific accelerator (except 3dfx/glide) is supporting more than 50 games.

So if I am not mistaken you could limit "popular" renderers from around year 2000 to:
Glide (3DFx)
DirectDraw (Part of Direct X)
Direct3D (Started as extention of Direct Draw, Part of DirectX)
OpenGL
Software

So what I'd like to know is major differences between these and if any Card Series have specific stengths and weaknesses.

Glide:
Glide is 3dfx exclusive. Was very compatible with games released in that timeframe. A few exclusives. Takes off a lot of load from the CPU.

OpenGL
Open GL always profits from new tech like T&L immediately.
Uses less CPU Power than Direct3D

Direct3D:
Newer Drivers for Nvidia Cards significantly lower performance compared to older drivers in directx6/7 (3DMark99 &3DMark2000). These new drivers are necessary for Geforce 3 and Upwards
Voodoo Cards don't have T&L, perform fine with directx6, but fall behind in directx7
Radeon R100 introduced T&L with R100 (Radeon 7000 and newer) gives performance a big boost.
D3D
Uses more CPU Power than Direct3D

Software rendering:
Software rendering is the backup option for most games. Speed of the game extremely CPU dependent (Graphics card not super relevant)

Also one Question I have: Glide is actually taking away a lot of weight from the CPU for the graphics. How is this for Direct3D and OpenGL in comparison to software rendering?

Last edited by Kordanor on 2023-03-20, 22:26. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 1 of 2, by vstrakh

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Kordanor wrote on 2023-03-20, 20:48:

OpenGL
(I guess the same applies as in Direct 3D, just with different versions, but I couldnt confirm, also didnt find which OpenGL Version first supported T&L Hardware, supposedly it was earlier than directx did with v 7.0)

OpenGL did not require explicit T&L activation as it was in D3D. The OpenGL implementation implicitly enables it when the underlying hardware is capable, so pre-TnL OpenGL games could benefit from new video card immediately. This detail is irrelevant to the API, so you will not find explicit reference to T&L in docs.

Reply 2 of 2, by Kordanor

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vstrakh wrote on 2023-03-20, 21:11:
Kordanor wrote on 2023-03-20, 20:48:

OpenGL
(I guess the same applies as in Direct 3D, just with different versions, but I couldnt confirm, also didnt find which OpenGL Version first supported T&L Hardware, supposedly it was earlier than directx did with v 7.0)

OpenGL did not require explicit T&L activation as it was in D3D. The OpenGL implementation implicitly enables it when the underlying hardware is capable, so pre-TnL OpenGL games could benefit from new video card immediately. This detail is irrelevant to the API, so you will not find explicit reference to T&L in docs.

Thanks! Added that and also something regarging CPU usage after talking to a friend.

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