elfuego wrote:

swaaye wrote:

Yeah except with D3D and GL you might as well go Geforce FX and benefit from much better image quality options.

Voodoo5 works with most Glide games. DOS Glide games usually won't work but there are a few exceptions. I had Carmageddon working once.

This needs to become sticky or somewhere where it's visible. Really. This is exactly the explanation why not to bother with any GF less then FX, but GF 6800 would be even better 😀 Either go full retro (with 3dfx) or full D3D/OGL; dont settle for less 😎

I think this is something kind of personal. For me, an FX5900 wouldn't give me the same "feeling" than a Geforce2 Ultra would do, even though it may have better Aniso & AA. 😜

Period authenticity is cool. But sometimes I just want the games to run as fast as possible with all the fixings.

elfuego wrote:

... I'll try to find the old thread somewhere...

I actually found the old thread; but my old forum lost the images 🙁 However, what we can do is following:

Guys with V5 5500, GF2, GF FX and GF 6x00, lets make some new screenshots!

Let's set the 3D image quality to maximum - activate every single eye candy that is possible in the driver, with no respect to frame rate (even if its 1 fps) and post the screenshots here. Lets use 3dmark 2000 and 2001 for this purpose, with 1 screenshot per test. That way we will have a direct visual comparison of the retro-titans 😀

elfuego wrote:

I actually found the old thread; but my old forum lost the images :( However, what we can do is following: […]
Show full quote

elfuego wrote:

... I'll try to find the old thread somewhere...

I actually found the old thread; but my old forum lost the images 🙁 However, what we can do is following:

Guys with V5 5500, GF2, GF FX and GF 6x00, lets make some new screenshots!

Let's set the 3D image quality to maximum - activate every single eye candy that is possible in the driver, with no respect to frame rate (even if its 1 fps) and post the screenshots here. Lets use 3dmark 2000 and 2001 for this purpose, with 1 screenshot per test. That way we will have a direct visual comparison of the retro-titans 😀

High quality visuals are meaningless if a game is unplayable at those settings. What matters is which card makes the game look the best without becoming a slideshow while doing it. What needs to be done is these video cards need to be tested on the fastest platform possible so that the only bottleneck is the video card itself. That way you know the card is giving you it's best possible speed with all the bells and whistles turned on. Then with all the cards cranked up to the maximum settings possible, the one that gives the best framerates is the winner.

And quite honestly I don't see how GeForce 6 doesn't simply blow all the other cards you mentioned out of the water without even being tested. The move from GeForce FX to GeForce 6 was a quantum leap similar to the leap ATi made when they went from R3x0 to R4x0.

sliderider wrote:

elfuego wrote:

I actually found the old thread; but my old forum lost the images :( However, what we can do is following: […]
Show full quote

elfuego wrote:

... I'll try to find the old thread somewhere...

I actually found the old thread; but my old forum lost the images 🙁 However, what we can do is following:

Guys with V5 5500, GF2, GF FX and GF 6x00, lets make some new screenshots!

Let's set the 3D image quality to maximum - activate every single eye candy that is possible in the driver, with no respect to frame rate (even if its 1 fps) and post the screenshots here. Lets use 3dmark 2000 and 2001 for this purpose, with 1 screenshot per test. That way we will have a direct visual comparison of the retro-titans 😀

High quality visuals are meaningless if a game is unplayable at those settings. What matters is which card makes the game look the best without becoming a slideshow while doing it. What needs to be done is these video cards need to be tested on the fastest platform possible so that the only bottleneck is the video card itself. That way you know the card is giving you it's best possible speed with all the bells and whistles turned on. Then with all the cards cranked up to the maximum settings possible, the one that gives the best framerates is the winner.

And quite honestly I don't see how GeForce 6 doesn't simply blow all the other cards you mentioned out of the water without even being tested. The move from GeForce FX to GeForce 6 was a quantum leap similar to the leap ATi made when they went from R3x0 to R4x0.

I have a 2800MP on a DFI kt333 motherboard. 3dmark01 gives me 11031 3dmarks at the "default" 230/460 clocks. 😁. Can't remember which driver set I used ATM though, but I'm pretty sure it was a 12.xx one. That must be quite more than enough to max out a card like this.

Colin Mcrae 2.0 looks gorgeous with Cubic enviroment mapping + 4xFSAA at 1024x768 - 32bpp on my Quadro2 pro "geforce2 ultra" 😜

elfuego wrote:

Lets use 3dmark 2000 and 2001 for this purpose...

I see a problem

GF2 and older have almost useless anti-aliasing and anisotropic capabilities. Extremely inefficient and ineffectual ordered grid supersampling (SSAA). Minimal anisotropic support.

GF3-4 have multisampling AA (MSAA is edge only) and Quincunx post process mode. The MSAA is ordered grid which is not very effective but it is at least usable because it is more efficient. Quincunx is a post process filter which can be interesting at high resolutions. Anisotropic is much improved but very slow. Max 4x SSAA.

GF5-7 have similar anisotropic and anti-aliasing capabilities (and limitations). Rotated grid MSAA is decent but it is inferior to ATI gamma corrected rotated grid MSAA. Anisotropic has been optimized and is quite usable. Many unofficial AA modes like Quincunx, ordered grid SSAA, hybrid MSAA+SSAA and Gaussian are available via Rivatuner. Max 4x MSAA.

Radeon is not very useful for the games people here want to play. They are best for D3D7+. Forget non Quake OpenGL games and D3D5. Still, to be thorough :

R100 has ordered grid SSAA like GF2 and it is equally weak. However it has a speed optimized anisotropic that while having implementation caveats is much better than nothing.

R200 is very similar. It supposedly has SSAA with a programmable sample pattern but practically it is again ordered grid SSAA. Anisotropic is also similar. GF3 anisotropic is higher quality but since you can't practically use it so what.

R300+ have superb gamma corrected rotated grid MSAA and top notch anisotropic capabilities.Max 6x MSAA. NVIDIA didn't catch up until GF8.

For some reason ATi refused to implement SSAA again until the 5000 series.

Voodoo5 has fantastic rotated grid SSAA but of course this is extremely inefficient. 4x SSAA essentially requires 640x480 to be playable but it is wonderful for old Glide games. Radeon 5000+ officially support a similar mode. Voodoo5 does not do anisotropic. Some people tweak texture LOD to reduce mipmap blurring with SSAA.

The main thing that puts me off older Radeon cards is the issue with fog in games (Table Fog i think?).

Anyway, i've just installed a 64MB Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS Pro and it's running fine 😎. The 2D quality is much better than the crap Inno3D GF2 MX400, but still not as sharp or vibrant as my Matrox G400 Max, but it's still acceptable 😀 .

The only game i'm having issues with is Deus Ex (which ran fine on my Matrox G400 Max), but it seems many people had problems getting this game to run correctly with a Geforce card.... I can't even get through the games menu as it's painfully slow and the mouse cursor skips across the screen! I also find it strange how it shows 3DFX Glide as a compatible device in the rendering options (i've had Voodoo 2 SLI, Voodoo3 and Voodoo5 cards in this machine, but uninstalled the drivers and ran a driver sweep too!) .

Deus Ex is best with Glide or a D3D8+ card that can use one of the alternative renderers that have popped up in recent years.

And yea Radeon doesn't do table fog or palettized textures.

swaaye wrote:

Deus Ex is best with Glide or a D3D8+ card that can use one of the alternative renderers that have popped up in recent years.

And yea Radeon doesn't do table fog or palettized textures.

I remember Deus Ex running fine with a 32MB TNT2 Vanta (PCI) i had years ago... It was also working fine with my Matrox G400 Max in both Direct3D and OpenGL modes, although OpenGL went a bit funky if you changed the resolution during the game though 😒.

Oh well, i'll just wait for my Voodoo5 5500 AGP to arrive and then decide which cards to keep and which ones to give away or bin (my dodgy and worthless Inno3D GF2 MX400 has already been binned and the GF2 Ultra will be next if i can't be bothered to fix it 🤣). If only the Matrox card was a bit faster at 3D... *sigh*

If only Matrox Parhelia supported Win98. 😀 Though I have a feeling its compatibility with old games may be dodgy.

But yeah the old Unreal Engine 1 D3D mode was unpredictable. It also doesn't support some features like detail textures.

swaaye wrote:

If only Matrox Parhelia supported Win98. 😀 Though I have a feeling its compatibility with old games may be dodgy.

I had a 128MB Parhelia at one time and it wouldn't even boot in my SE440BX-2 board (just beeps and no signal)... Maybe i had a dodgy one? I was going to use it with a WinXP partition just to see what it was like.

... I bet even my G400 Max can still trounce the G450 and G550 when it comes to gaming too (since the G400 was the last gaming card from Matrox).

Without having looked up benchmarks;

I wouldn't be so sure of the G400 MAX beating the G550. The G550 has 2 extra TMU's and DDR memory, though it does have a 64bit memorybus.

NitroX infinity wrote:

Without having looked up benchmarks;

I wouldn't be so sure of the G400 MAX beating the G550. The G550 has 2 extra TMU's and DDR memory, though it does have a 64bit memorybus.

I know the G550 also has hardware T&L but it can't be used (permanently disabled for some reason).... The following review shows the G550 is about on par with a plain G400 when it comes to gaming:

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles/g550/index.html

I think getting a G550 would have been a downgrade for G400 Max users.

sliderider wrote:

Then with all the cards cranked up to the maximum settings possible, the one that gives the best framerates is the winner.

And quite honestly I don't see how GeForce 6 doesn't simply blow all the other cards you mentioned out of the water without even being tested.

This is where you are wrong my friend. GF6 will not work with Glide games. Also, GF6 will indeed be faster then anything else, but it will not necessarily have best image quality on games with locked resolution (640x480).

What's the use of a game that runs with 300 fps, when it looks as if the textures are washed down? Better settle for 60fps, or even 30 - but with all the possible eye candy 😀

Yup a Voodoo5 is perfect for those 640x480 Glide games.

These are the cards i'm left with after clearing out some very old ISA, PCI and a couple of other AGP cards:

64MB Visiontek/Elsa Geforce 2 Ultra
64MB Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS Pro (Geforce 2 Pro)
64MB 3DFX Voodoo 5 5500 (still waiting for it to arrive from Ireland)
32MB Matrox G400 Max
16MB 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000

I've had a play with them and can't decide which one to keep in my old Win98 PC (Pentium III-E 850Mhz with 384MB RAM). Anachronox looks a bit squiffy with all cards at 1280x960 since i'm using a 5:4 screen (1280x1024)... I'll see if i can edit the config file and change the res for that game. Deus Ex is just completely unplayable with the Geforce cards and thinks they're compatible with Glide for some reason! There's also no noticeable performance difference between the two geforce cards either.

What would you guys use?

elfuego wrote:

This is where you are wrong my friend. GF6 will not work with Glide games. Also, GF6 will indeed be faster then anything else, but it will not necessarily have best image quality on games with locked resolution (640x480).

What's the use of a game that runs with 300 fps, when it looks as if the textures are washed down? Better settle for 60fps, or even 30 - but with all the possible eye candy 😀

Sure, but you can run dgVoodoo or nGlide and run most of them on a GF6 at a higher resolution 😀.

From that list, definitely Voodoo5. Though Voodoo3 is great for glide too, better than Voodoo2 SLI in many ways.

Geforce 2 Pro and Ultra are very similar in clock rate so I wouldn't expect anything tangibly different.

F2bnp wrote:

elfuego wrote:

This is where you are wrong my friend. GF6 will not work with Glide games. Also, GF6 will indeed be faster then anything else, but it will not necessarily have best image quality on games with locked resolution (640x480).

What's the use of a game that runs with 300 fps, when it looks as if the textures are washed down? Better settle for 60fps, or even 30 - but with all the possible eye candy 😀

Sure, but you can run dgVoodoo or nGlide and run most of them on a GF6 at a higher resolution 😀.

I never used those so I cant really judge; but even if that is so - you can still use WickedGL + Metabyte shutter glasses with V5 5500 and play most of them stereoscopically in glide 😊 (heavy artillery argument 😁 )

@PowerPie5000
Voodoo 5 5500 really does not have a competitor in your list. By far the best choice. However, keep a GF close in case you want to play something that for some reason doesnt like V5 5500 (Mech Commander 2 is one such example 😒 )