Well early Nvidia cards are better DOS compatibile and have better backward compatible Direct3D/OpenGL. So you have a nice comparison.

in terms of drivers, i mainly remember them being particular about installing the standard VGA driver beforehand. early nvidia drivers also may have been like that but i think ati stuck with that for much longer.

in DOS, they tend to force vsync in VESA modes, but games like quake and duke3d already have other means to prevent screen tearing, so all you get is extra input lag and noticeably worse performance.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-12-23, 15:16:

Well early Nvidia cards are better DOS compatibile and have better backward compatible Direct3D/OpenGL. So you have a nice comparison.

Yes I know that this is the general consensus.
But I wonder if this isn't just somewhat of an echo chamber response.
I this REALLY the case, or are people just repeating what they have been told over and over.

Now I know that ATI generally has lagged a bit behind in OpenGL performance, that one I don't really doubt.
But whether or not it is going to be game breaking or just a minor concern 90% of the time is kind of what I'm curious about.
Is this the case in one or two popular titles? Or across the board?

R100 were solid enough GPUs, but compared to Nvidia they have less compatibility with old stuff and driver overhead for old stuff (SS7) is definitely worse.
On pro side they have better looking 16-bit dithering, which can be tweaked and less blocky texture filtering. Nvidia had visibly crappy filtering on old GeForce cards.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2024-12-23, 15:06:

table fog, palleted textures

These two are now documented thoroughly on the Vogons Wiki, specifically here and also here. Paletted textures were mostly used to improve performance on weaker cards which supported them (Voodoo 1, S3 Savage, Matrox Mystique etc.) and their lack won't negatively affect the visuals in most cases. Notable exceptions being Driver and the Final Fantasy games.

Table fog was used a bit more, and people will likely notice when it's missing, due to the prominent impact that it has on game visuals. Some examples:

Of course, how big of an issue this is depends on whether one wants to play the games which use it. Also, later Radeon cards (starting from R300 and going up to R580) can perfectly emulate table fog under WinXP using Catalyst 7.11 drivers or newer.

For me, Radeon was the only sensible upgrade from the Matrox G400. Radeons have better image quality than GeForce 1 & 2 and usually much better VGA output quality. They have fast anisotropic filtering, even if it is not exactly per spec and not so hot compared to what you see today. They have EMBM support, which Nvidia doesn't have until GeForce 3. You can run the G400 tech demos on them I think, and enable EMBM in games like Dungeon Keeper 2 and Battlezone 2. 16-bit rendering is much higher quality in general compared to Nvidia. They also don't have the DXT1 quality issue.

Table fog works with some driver versions combined with registry settings.

The OpenGL side of their drivers is definitely weaker than NVidia though. Quake based games usually work ok. If you like Bioware games you probably want to steer clear. Part of the problem here was a lack of effort in developer relations.

swaaye wrote on 2024-12-23, 19:42:

Table fog works with some driver versions combined with registry settings.

I can't speak for the R100 as I don't have that card, but on R200 and R300 cards, that registry tweak isn't a perfect solution. In some games like Shadows of the Empire, table fog doesn't work even with the tweak enabled. And in others like Thief 2, the tweak induced table fog rendering doesn't match Nvidia/Voodoo cards:

The only way to get 100% accurate table fog emulation on Radeons is to use WinXP and Catalyst 7.11 or higher. However, that driver version doesn't support R200 and R100 cards, from what I recall.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-12-23, 19:52:

I can't speak for the R100 as I don't have that card, but on R200 and R300 cards, that registry tweak isn't a perfect solution. […]
Show full quote

I can't speak for the R100 as I don't have that card, but on R200 and R300 cards, that registry tweak isn't a perfect solution. In some games like Shadows of the Empire, table fog doesn't work even with the tweak enabled. And in others like Thief 2, the tweak induced table fog rendering doesn't match Nvidia/Voodoo cards:

The only way to get 100% accurate table fog emulation on Radeon cards is to use WinXP and Catalyst 7.11 or higher. However, that driver version doesn't support R200 and R100 cards, from what I recall.

Yeah it might be some kind of imprecise table fog emulation. Maybe that's why it requires a tweak. It's better than nothing though.

This is why you gotta have lots of video cards!

I never got Second Reality to work on newer Radeons (R300, RV200 and possibly others). I wonder if it works on R100 based cards. I suspect that it does not, but it would be nice to know.

AFAIK ATi did it by injecting vertex fog. And later Windows XP drivers probably implement some wrapper that translates fixed function table fog to Shader Model 2.0.

Everyone, thanks for the information!

I THINK that I had read most of this and was mostly aware but it's always nice to have confirmation and all the relevant information in one place.
I knew that there were some hacks or workarounds for the the table fog but I'd not really messed with it much.
I might try to dig through those games lists and try some of them and maybe try some of the fog tweaks just to see for myself if it's a viable solution.
I suppose it would be if it's all that you had, anyway.
Might even get a wild hair and throw together a Windows XP machine and test what drivers support what. In addition to these two cards I've got a few newer cards that I could try. A FireGL 8800 and the aforementioned 9250 128bit that I could mess with. I might also have a few VE cards as well, I can't remember.

In Windox 9x environment FireGL 8800 is practically just a Radeon 8500XT, because you can freely apply regular Radeon 8500 drivers.

Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but quite a few of my friends had Radeon DDRs (one even bought the VIVO model for playing around with video editing) and never had any issues with them. I was usually the go to for troubleshooting or just generally planning out and assembling builds so I definitely would have heard about it, kinda like all the complaints about the video quality on RIVA 128 cards. I personally didn't run one, but the 8500 I eventually picked up was really solid, even if the initial drivers left a lot of performance on the table. That didn't matter so much for me though, I was coming from a Voodoo II so it was a rocketship in comparison)even if I held on to that Voodoo II for Diablo II for a really, really long time.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-12-23, 23:18:

In Windox 9x environment FireGL 8800 is practically just a Radeon 8500XT, because you can freely apply regular Radeon 8500 drivers.

That is what I was thinking. I remember Phil doing a video on it as well, but it seems like it has issues with OpenGL when using the 8500 drivers or something?
I can't recall.

Phil never tested FireGL 8800 in 9x environment, only in XP. Which is a wasted opportunity, because Radeon 8500 isn't that good for Windows XP anyway.

So if SS7 is not an ideal platform for the R100, what would be considered the ideal platform?
Also, which OS and driver version are prefered?

I am asking because I have both the SDR 7200 and the DDR Rage 6 and I’d like to build machines that are a good fit.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-12-24, 20:16:

Phil never tested FireGL 8800 in 9x environment, only in XP.

Ah ok. That makes sense.
I might have to put it in a rig and do some testing with it. I've had it for some time but only briefly tested it to make sure it was working.

byte_76 wrote on 2024-12-24, 20:17:

So if SS7 is not an ideal platform for the R100, what would be considered the ideal platform?
Also, which OS and driver version are prefered?

I am asking because I have both the SDR 7200 and the DDR Rage 6 and I’d like to build machines that are a good fit.

I'm no expert. And certainly feel free to use whatever platform that you want, it's your gear after all.
But I think generally speaking the best platform is something with higher memory bandwidth and stronger FPU. Something that can absorb the somewhat higher driver over head.
PIII 440BX, 815 or Athlon class maybe. But even so there will be diminishing returns to a point.
These cards were outclassed fairly quickly by both the competition and ATi's own subsequent offerings.

byte_76 wrote on 2024-12-24, 20:17:

So if SS7 is not an ideal platform for the R100, what would be considered the ideal platform?
Also, which OS and driver version are prefered?

I am asking because I have both the SDR 7200 and the DDR Rage 6 and I’d like to build machines that are a good fit.

Also to elaborate a little on what I meant, I was referring to the fact that SS7 has rather poor AGP implementation, and VIA chipsets weren't exactly the gold standard either.
That is part of the reason that boards can be so picky about working with contemporary cards of the day.
In the end I was able to get mine to work acceptably, as many others have. But it's not always as simple as install the drivers and "go"