Found a Canopus Pure3D among some old AGP graphics cards this afternoon:
The top card is a reference-design 4MB Voodoo card, the bottom card is the Canopus, with its unique 6MB of VRAM.
Are there any games where you'd see a noticeable difference in performance between the two?
I found a Carmack .plan suggesting the 6MB version because apparently 4MB Voodoo cards are susceptible to stuttering issues with their small texture RAM. Texture swapping over PCI. He was talking about Quake 2.
I think the 6MB cards have 4MB texture RAM, 2MB framebuffer?
The 6MB Voodoo 1 cards weren't really all that useful because Voodoo2 came out and obviously you'd rather have that. Voodoo2 12MB has a 4+4+4MB setup. There was an 8MB Voodoo2 that was 2+2+4MB and you would definitely want to avoid that.
Yeah I'd like to have one of those Canopus Voodoos to play with, they drew hype for a short time before the Voodoo 2s came out. I don't know what games would show favorably to the 6mb card over the regular 4mb, I'm thinking most game studios would be aiming for the 4mb masses during that time period. My 4mb Orchid served me fine till the V2 came out.
Well like I said, Carmack suggested 4MB texture memory for Quake 2.
Some fun .plan quotes
http://www.team5150.com/~andrew/carmack/johnc_plan_1998.html
An 8mb v2 has 2 mb of texture memory on each TMU. That is not as general as the current 6mb v1 cards that have 4 mb of texture m […]
An 8mb v2 has 2 mb of texture memory on each TMU. That is not as general as the current 6mb v1 cards that have 4 mb of texture memory on a single TMU. To use the multitexture capability, textures are restricted to being on one or the other TMU (simplifying a bit here). There is some benefit over only having 2 mb of memory, but it isn't double. You will see more texture swapping in quake on an 8mb voodoo 2 than you would on a 6mb voodoo 1. However, the texture swapping is several times faster, so it isn't necessarily all that bad.
If you use the 8 bit palettized textures, there will probably not be any noticable speed improvement with a 12 mb voodoo 2 vs an 8 mb one. The situation that would most stress it would be an active deathmatch that had players using every skin. You might see a difference there.
A game that uses multitexture and 16 bit textures for everything will stress a 4/2/2 voodoo layout. Several of the Quake engine licensees are using full 16 bit textures, and should perform better on a 4/4/4 card.
The differences probably won't show as significant on timedemo numbers, but they will be felt as little one frame hitches here and there.
Because of the slow texture swapping, anyone buying a voodoo should get a six mb board (e.g. Canopus Pure3D). The extra ram prevents some sizable jerks when textures need to be swapped.
So, it just boils down to one game? Any other games before the V2s arrived?
I've really lost faith in Carmack. He was the shizanit back in the 90's though I guess. The thing that got me the most was that when Doom 3 was released the said that the world will catch up graphically [to D3] in a couple years, but then Riddick was released a month later and visually was on par. Then Half-life was released too and while not quite as pretty ran so much better and was actually fun to play.
wrote:So, it just boils down to one game? Any other games before the V2s arrived?
I've really lost faith in Carmack. He was the shizanit back in the 90's though I guess. The thing that got me the most was that when Doom 3 was released the said that the world will catch up graphically [to D3] in a couple years, but then Riddick was released a month later and visually was on par. Then Half-life was released too and while not quite as pretty ran so much better and was actually fun to play.
Doom 3 ticked me off because it was such a one trick pony. Dark corners, cheesy "BOO!" monster attacks and sounds, and indestructible and always-in-the-way machinery-environments. F THAT BULLSHIT.
Rage doesn't look very interesting either from their latest trailers and interviews. Hoping to be proven wrong.
I only played Doom3 recently and still found it amazing!
Riddick on the other hand was still a challenge for my PC 🤣
I remember european airwar wouldnt run on a voodoo 2 unless you limited texture memory to 2mb in the driver control panel (later fixed in a patch)
other games may have the same problem. generic voodoo 1 drives wont have a limit texture memory to 2mb setting (pure3d ones may)
Guardian of the Sacred Five Terabyte's of Gaming Goodness
I played Doom 3 when it was new and was disappointed. I ended up putting it down partway through. That was only a couple years after I had originally finished Deus Ex 1, though, which ruined conventional plotless FPS games for me 😀
The problem with iD games is that they're really just demos for their FPS engines. They just crap something out that looks pretty so that people will want to license it from them to make other FPS games. Epic does the same thing with their FPS engines. Valve does too, but they have enough pride to use their own engine (Source) for lots of in-house projects (HL2 + episodes, Portal series, L4D series, TF2, etc.).
I keep meaning to try Riddick, but it still ran a bit sluggish on my Core 2 Duo + nVidia 8700M GT SLI laptop when I tried it last year or so. I also wasn't liking the first boss fight a lot. It's on the to-do list for trying on my Core i7 + AMD Radeon HD5870 desktop.
Riddick is well worth trying out again. There is a pack on steam for both games with the first one remastered. I loved the game! It's very "stealthy" so if you are into games like thief or splinter cell you should enjoy this...
What some people don't realize is that John Romero was a huge part of id's early days and he came up with a lot of the crazy game ideas. He also worked on Heretic and Hexen during the brief time that id Software was in Madison, WI (down the street from Raven Software). Quake didn't really turn into what was originally envisioned (this is why it has such disjointed weird levels). I think Daikatana was more the Quake that Romero wanted... Romero had these crazy game ideas and Carmack would reign them in to be achievable. They balanced each other out 🤣.
There's a book about id Software out there that's quite interesting. Called "Masters of Doom".
Oh yes Masters Of Doom is absolutely fantastic! I still loved Quake though and Quake 2 and Quake 3. But generally speaking they are pretty much what HunterZ said. Epic and Valve though release at the very least good games, if not great from time to time.
I also read Masters of Doom when it was released, very good read!
Great read!
Hilarious how they took all the work computers with them after hours 🤣
