VOGONS


Reply 40 of 123, by spiroyster

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For edge-detection, it's important to note that the actual colour of the pixel is not important since it looks at intensity difference of adjacent pixels. DVI is a lot crisper/sharper so will band where VGA doesn't. The pattern is much finer though, and has a distinctinctly different character than the JPG imo (JPG ones are 2B pencil sketches, DVI is 2H!). VGA presents a softer image which cannot reproduce adjacent intensities as sharply as DVI can. In this case, the texture/pattern being analysed is a cloud/noise pattern so many of the adjacent pixels can have dramatic difference, which VGA will struggle to reproduce as a distinct sharp line so its gradient changes will overall be softer and produce a noisy edge-detection result. Loss of signal quality is a bit like free anti-aliasing (Can't turn it off though 🙁).

Personally, I don't think there is anything wrong with the Geforce or Quadro in the shots provided, IQ looks fine. What we see here is the limit of the texture quality itself imo, slightly more natural/anti-aliased/softer rendition through VGA over DVI's synthetic/sharp capabilities. I can see slight banding on your DVI shots, which now that I know about it, can't 'not see it' and it pisses me off ever so slightly. VGA is da way imo... until greater than 1920x1080 is required that is o.0

Reply 41 of 123, by The Serpent Rider

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Meanwhile I've tested Riva TNT2 Pro, result are kinda interesting. It's definitely less blocky, but not on par with super smooth Voodoo 4/5.

Riva TNT2

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Riva TNT2 edge

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Voodoo 4 lossless

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Voodoo 4 lossless edge

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spiroyster wrote:

The pattern is much finer though, and has a distinctinctly different character than the JPG

Nope. Different sky.

spiroyster wrote:

This PNG is the JPG you posted earlier simply saved as a PNG?

Of course not.

spiroyster wrote:

I don't think there is anything wrong with the Geforce or Quadro in the shots provided, IQ looks fine

Only if not compared to the VSA100 and possibly to some of Radeon cards too.

Last edited by The Serpent Rider on 2019-10-14, 01:42. Edited 1 time in total.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 42 of 123, by The Serpent Rider

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Radeon 7500

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Quality of linear filtering is kinda bad, but still better than GeForce.

From best to worst so far:
Voodoo 4/5 > Riva TNT2 > Radeon 7500 > GeForce 1-7 series/Kyro series

To do list:
RIva TNT
S3 Savage 4
S3 Savage 2000
Matrox G200
Matrox G400
Matrox Parhelia
ATI Radeon 8500 (9000/9100/9200)
ATI Radeon 9700-X800 series
ATI Radeon X1800-1900 series
ATI Rage 128 Pro
Anything else I forgot to mention

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 44 of 123, by firage

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I see, the complaint is that the banding is in blocky squares as opposed to the Voodoo's free-er lines. Otherwise the severity of banding is about equally bad in all these cases.

My big-red-switch 486

Reply 45 of 123, by The Serpent Rider

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appiah4 wrote:

Curious if V3 can match V4/5..

You can do some screenshots via HyperSnap for comparison.

firage wrote:

Otherwise the severity of banding

Some color gradation is expected, due to low resolution of the sky layers and limitations of 32bit color. On the other hand, blocky bits are not expected with linear filtering.

Last edited by The Serpent Rider on 2019-10-14, 01:45. Edited 1 time in total.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 46 of 123, by Carlos S. M.

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The Serpent Rider wrote:
From best to worst so far: Voodoo 4/5 > Riva TNT2 > Radeon 7500 > GeForce 1-7 series/Kyro series […]
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From best to worst so far:
Voodoo 4/5 > Riva TNT2 > Radeon 7500 > GeForce 1-7 series/Kyro series

To do list:
RIva TNT
S3 Savage 4
S3 Savage 2000
Matrox G200
Matrox G400
Matrox Parhelia
ATI Radeon 8500 (9000/9100/9200)
ATI Radeon 9700-X800 series
ATI Radeon X1800-1900 series
ATI Rage 128 Pro
Anything else I forgot to mention

Some possible cards to test

V2 SLI and V3, maybe V1 if it can run Q3 decently
Kyro 1
Radeon SDR/DDR/7200
Radeon 7000/VE
Rage Pro
Rage 128
Intel onboard video, if is possible (Intel 845/865, GMA 900/950...)
Fire GL cards
any of the SiS 3D cards if is possible
any of 3D Labs cards like Premedia, Wildcat... etc

What is your biggest Pentium 4 Collection?
Socket 423/478 Motherboards with Universal AGP Slot
Socket 478 Motherboards with PCI-E Slots
LGA 775 Motherboards with AGP Slots
Experiences and thoughts with Socket 423 systems

Reply 47 of 123, by The Serpent Rider

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Carlos S. M. wrote:

Kyro 1
Radeon SDR/DDR/7200
Radeon 7000/VE

Results will be pretty much identical to Kyro II and Radeon 7500 respectively, but I'am not stopping anyone to try.

Carlos S. M. wrote:

V2 SLI and V3, maybe V1 if it can run Q3 decently

V1/V2/V3 cards can be tested in Unreal/Unreal Tournament as an alternative. It's easy to test them on various lightmaps which suffer greatly in quality on the GeForce.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 48 of 123, by leileilol

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Just noticed this thread and skimming past it while facepalming pretty heavily throughout.... now I know how Scali feels.

The color loss/banding is due to the overbright compensation. Try r_overbrightBits 0 and the sky should look smoother (while the game looks darker). Set it to 2 to experience an even brighter game with more color loss. The only way that overbrights could have no color loss is if it were reimplemented on modern shader-supporting hardware, where a higher range per channel is had.

Furthermore Q3A defaults texture compression to 1 for the sake of unannounced future S3 Savage hardware needing to rely on it (and it's on for any card that supports the extensions), so set:
r_ext_compressed_textures 0
r_texturebits 32

and q3 should then look its "best" (at the cost of the volumnous overbright lighting that requires color precision to be sacrificed). For the record I've never had any of these ugly "haha geforce2 crap grafik crap fps 3dfx rulez invest in TDFX today" screenshots you've had when I used a GF2 back in the day.

Also keep in mind the majority of Q3's textures (mainly 24bpp textures) are JPEGS! Team Arena has higher quality lossless TGA replacements for many of them. You could copy it to opak0.pk3 in baseq3 to 'slipstream' them (at the cost of some interface-related assets like loading and console shaders)

and if you want a REAL sky problem to cry about, load a map that uses a skybox (like coralctf) and check out the black seams. Q3 was developed on nVidia's OpenGL ICD mainly (They used Quadros and Geforce256s at id), which assumed the wrong behavior for clamping (as well as 3dfx) so it screwed up on ATI cards which implemented clamping properly, and as q3's maps rarely used a skybox it wasn't realized

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long live PCem

Reply 49 of 123, by The Serpent Rider

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You've missed the point completely. Quake 3 is just an example and problem itself is much more global.

For the record I've never had any of these ugly

Not noticing something =/= not having it. I was oblivious too for a long time.
And for the record, even TNT2 is much better in that regard.

r_ext_compressed_textures 0

Once again - texture compression was always turned off.

r_overbrightBits 0

Less noticeable indeed, but unfortunately still there without any actual improvements to filtering:

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Note: Modern AMD/Nvidia hardware will render linear filtered textures pretty much identical to VSA100.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 50 of 123, by leileilol

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The Serpent Rider wrote:

Once again - texture compression was always turned off.

Even sliding the texture quality to maximum in the nvidia driver control panel, on period-proper detonators?

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Not noticing something =/= not having it. I was oblivious too for a long time.
And for the record, even TNT2 is much better in that regard.

TNT2 has no texture compression of any kind so of course it's not going to force it.

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Reply 51 of 123, by duralisis

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r_ext_multitexture 0 and r_picmip 1 seems to help increase blurring and smooth the sky texture out more. I tried disabling multitexture just because of the way Unreal used to handle sky blending. If there is a difference; I can't be positive; but even at picmip 0 it seems ever so slightly less blocky.

Reply 52 of 123, by The Serpent Rider

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leileilol wrote:

Even sliding the texture quality to maximum in the nvidia driver control panel, on period-proper detonators?

How many times do I have to tell - "Any GeForce from original 256 to 7xxx series on any driver"?

And if nobody can remember how actually texture compression looks like in Quake 3... well, then allow me to demonstrate:

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Infamous horrible DXT1 compression on pre-Geforce 4 card

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Forced DXT3 compression via RivaTuner

duralisis wrote:

I can't be positive; but even at picmip 0 it seems ever so slightly less blocky.

Didn't noticed any difference.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 53 of 123, by The Serpent Rider

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Got some 3Dlabs VP cards (VP560, VP760). Filtering quality is nearly identical to Radeon 256 family, which means it's blocky too.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 54 of 123, by The Serpent Rider

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Did some shots with Matrox G400. Overall very nice image quality with very few odd blocky bits here and there (similiar to TNT2).

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Nice and smooth linear filtering:

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Q3 wall macroshot Matrox G400 edge.png
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I've also did a screenshot of the same wall with GeForce 3 for comparsion:

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Ugh, very awful.

P.S.
It seems that nobody cares anyway 😈

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 55 of 123, by appiah4

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I care. Texture filtering was a big deal in the ATI vs nVidia arguments we've had in the GeForce 3 vs Radeon 8500 era, so I'm following this thread closely. I will probably install Quake 3 on my Voodoo 3 system soon and provide some screenshots, but IIRC the Voodoo 3 screenshots were already shared by someone earlier on.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 56 of 123, by The Serpent Rider

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Meanwhile I've tested Radeon 9800 Pro at last. Filtering pattern is identical to Radeon 7500, so it's safe to say that filtering is identical from Radeon 256 and all the way to Radeon X1950XTX. DX10+ cards have better quality of filtering overall as mentioned before.
Here's macroshot of Radeon pattern:

Q3 wall macroshot Radeon 9800.png
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Q3 wall macroshot Radeon 9800 edge.png
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And here's GeForce pattern (now with edge detection to compare)

Q3 wall macroshot GeForce 3.png
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Q3 wall macroshot GeForce 3 edge.png
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Radeon pattern is not perfect, but at least trying to resemble smooth pattern of older cards. While GeForce pattern is just a horrible mess of squares.
In conclusion? Probably should stick to Radeon cards for Windows 98 retrogaming and avoid any old GeForce like a plague. Or go full retro and stick to Riva TNT/3Dfx/Matrox G400.

But nobody cares anyway 😈

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 57 of 123, by kithylin

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The Serpent Rider wrote:
Meanwhile I've tested Radeon 9800 Pro at last. Filtering pattern is identical to Radeon 7500, so it's safe to say that filtering […]
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Meanwhile I've tested Radeon 9800 Pro at last. Filtering pattern is identical to Radeon 7500, so it's safe to say that filtering is identical from Radeon 256 and all the way to Radeon X1950XTX. DX10+ cards have better quality of filtering overall as mentioned before.
Here's macroshot of Radeon pattern:

Q3 wall macroshot Radeon 9800.png
Q3 wall macroshot Radeon 9800 edge.png

And here's GeForce pattern (now with edge detection to compare)

Q3 wall macroshot GeForce 3.png
Q3 wall macroshot GeForce 3 edge.png

Radeon pattern is not perfect, but at least trying to resemble smooth pattern of older cards. While GeForce pattern is just a horrible mess of squares.
In conclusion? Probably should stick to Radeon cards for Windows 98 retrogaming and avoid any old GeForce like a plague. Or go full retro and stick to Riva TNT/3Dfx/Matrox G400.

But nobody cares anyway 😈

Except the performance.. for Win98se gaming there's nothing AMD side that matches the performance of the 6800 ultra that's 100% native Win98se compatible. At least not that I'm aware of.

Reply 58 of 123, by appiah4

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kithylin wrote:
The Serpent Rider wrote:
Meanwhile I've tested Radeon 9800 Pro at last. Filtering pattern is identical to Radeon 7500, so it's safe to say that filtering […]
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Meanwhile I've tested Radeon 9800 Pro at last. Filtering pattern is identical to Radeon 7500, so it's safe to say that filtering is identical from Radeon 256 and all the way to Radeon X1950XTX. DX10+ cards have better quality of filtering overall as mentioned before.
Here's macroshot of Radeon pattern:

Q3 wall macroshot Radeon 9800.png
Q3 wall macroshot Radeon 9800 edge.png

And here's GeForce pattern (now with edge detection to compare)

Q3 wall macroshot GeForce 3.png
Q3 wall macroshot GeForce 3 edge.png

Radeon pattern is not perfect, but at least trying to resemble smooth pattern of older cards. While GeForce pattern is just a horrible mess of squares.
In conclusion? Probably should stick to Radeon cards for Windows 98 retrogaming and avoid any old GeForce like a plague. Or go full retro and stick to Riva TNT/3Dfx/Matrox G400.

But nobody cares anyway 😈

Except the performance.. for Win98se gaming there's nothing AMD side that matches the performance of the 6800 ultra that's 100% native Win98se compatible. At least not that I'm aware of.

There is the x800 series.

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Reply 59 of 123, by kithylin

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appiah4 wrote:

There is the x800 series.

Which don't have native win98se drivers officially published from AMD/ATI. This is all off-topic for this thread though.. just making a random comment about what (I thought) Was common knowledge.