There are quite a few Permedia2 cards on ebay but they're usually not labeled as such. Look for Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro (the non-Pro is not Permedia).
I have one but unfortunately it doesn't work.

I remember back in the day playing NOLF first on an ATI Rage Pro, then on a TNT2 (got the game bundled with the TNT2 and tried playing it before installing the new card). The difference was earth-shattering.

Setup & planning = 20 hrs
30 cards to carefully benchmark on three systems = 100 hrs
Compiling and laying-out of resulting data = 30 hrs
= 150 hours, give or take. An hour or two per day and you'll have it done in four or five months. Tear into it and you'll finish in a couple of weeks.

No point taking screenshots, just capture everything and take your picks from the footage. Automate as much as you can.

stamasd wrote:

There are quite a few Permedia2 cards on ebay but they're usually not labeled as such. Look for Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro (the non-Pro is not Permedia).
I have one but unfortunately it doesn't work.

Good call, although I'm fairly certain that the Diamond FireGL 1000 non-Pro is actually a Permedia 1.

vvbee wrote:

Setup & planning = 20 hrs 30 cards to carefully benchmark on three systems = 100 hrs Compiling and laying-out of resulting data […]
Show full quote

Setup & planning = 20 hrs
30 cards to carefully benchmark on three systems = 100 hrs
Compiling and laying-out of resulting data = 30 hrs
= 150 hours, give or take. An hour or two per day and you'll have it done in four or five months. Tear into it and you'll finish in a couple of weeks.

No point taking screenshots, just capture everything and take your picks from the footage. Automate as much as you can.

Not sure on the calculations, but I don't have a capture card unfortunately 🙁. Good call however.

F2bnp wrote:

stamasd wrote:

There are quite a few Permedia2 cards on ebay but they're usually not labeled as such. Look for Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro (the non-Pro is not Permedia).
I have one but unfortunately it doesn't work.

Good call, although I'm fairly certain that the Diamond FireGL 1000 non-Pro is actually a Permedia 1.

Correct, it's Permedia + GLINT (aka Permedia NT) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Dlabs#/media/F … eGL1000_PCI.jpg
It's my error, I should have said "non-Pro is not Permedia2"

>can't be arsed to look for G400 MAX

things like this turn up by searching for the part numbers of dell/compaq models, it's not hard at all to find them, most of your time will be spent looking for one where it isn't some vendor trying to charge $200 for it(they figure businesses will pay through the nose for them.)

stamasd wrote:

Correct, it's Permedia + GLINT (aka Permedia NT) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Dlabs#/media/F … eGL1000_PCI.jpg
It's my error, I should have said "non-Pro is not Permedia2"

You are correct, that is indeed the Permedia NT. What a weird beast!

awgamer wrote:

>can't be arsed to look for G400 MAX

things like this turn up by searching for the part numbers of dell/compaq models, it's not hard at all to find them, most of your time will be spent looking for one where it isn't some vendor trying to charge $200 for it(they figure businesses will pay through the nose for them.)

maaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyybe

You do know, that some of the cards listed, are not from the 1990's....

No, not maybe.

F2bnp wrote:

First off, the idea is to compare videocards as regards Image Quality, DVD playback and of course Games. Well, let's talk about […]
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First off, the idea is to compare videocards as regards Image Quality, DVD playback and of course Games. Well, let's talk about the first two, as they are easy.
As far as IQ goes, I'll try each card and give my thoughts on IQ on the desktop plus I will list maximum resolution and refresh rate, when it starts getting blurry etc. I also intend to use 3DMark99's IQ tests to capture screenshots. But, IQ also refers to how certain games require certain features that cards may not support fully, so I will have a set of games with some save files that I will load and take a screenshot of. Good candidates are:

-Shogo
-Turok
-Quake 3
-Half-Life
-Gabriel Knight 3 (because why the hell not, I love that game)
-Rayman 2
-Unreal
-NOLF (using a late title to see how everything compares)

Arguably, this is not the most important part of this project, as many people have done an amazing job documenting these. Putas' exceptional Vintage3D website, Swaaye's historically important 3D Accelerator thread and subsequent Youtube videos and Vlask's Gaming Cards series on Youtube are all amazing references that you should all check out if you haven't (plus I do the voice over for most of Vlask's videos, so how's that for a shameless plug!?).

Determining IQ--particularly whether/how a game supports visual features--seems like the hardest and most important part of a project like this, not the easiest and least important. AFAIK, no one has comprehensively identified which API features games support, let alone which graphics cards support these API features. For better or worse, most developers have hardware they target to produce ideal visual results. What are these ideal visual results, in terms of features, and which cards can do them? That's the holy grail for me as a retro gamer, as I alluded to in a thread about table fog and 8-bit paletted textures. FPS data, on the other hand, is fairly easy to find.

brostenen wrote:

You do know, that some of the cards listed, are not from the 1990's....

Yes, I initially didn't want to include GeForce and Radeon, however I wanted to include the Voodoo5, so I figured, what the hell, I might as well 😀.

awgamer wrote:

No, not maybe.

I'm not saying you ain't right, I'm just saying I can't be arsed to look for one at this moment, I'd much rather look for a vanilla G400 which I can probably get for pennies. I will have to look for those serial numbers you mentioned, I have no clue where to find them.

W Gruffydd wrote:

Determining IQ--particularly whether/how a game supports visual features--seems like the hardest and most important part of a project like this, not the easiest and least important. AFAIK, no one has comprehensively identified which API features games support, let alone which graphics cards support these API features. For better or worse, most developers have hardware they target to produce ideal visual results. What are these ideal visual results, in terms of features, and which cards can do them? That's the holy grail for me as a retro gamer, as I alluded to in a thread about table fog and 8-bit paletted textures. FPS data, on the other hand, is fairly easy to find.

Someone didn't really look at the aforementioned sources 🤣 .
Seriously though what more do you need than what Vintage3D or the 3D Accelerator Capture thread offer?

All I can say really is good luck - it's quite an ambitious project, and one I'd love to do 😀

i had this idea for 15 years. however, only cards with support for both d3d and opengl count as true 3d cards, and that rule out most of them.
also, cards with dual or more tmus count as a seperated group.

I might just be onto a G400 Max for you - no response yet, but we'll see tomorrow 😉

Oh, and if you feel you don't have enough benchmarks, I'd suggest adding something non-FPS, maybe an RTS or something (Homeworld springs to mind as period-correct and demanding enough of the GPU, even if it's not exactly a typical RTS), just to give the GPU a different kind of load.

F2bnp wrote:

Not sure on the calculations.

Seem reasonable to me. Scale up the total as you add hardware, optimize the cycle of testing for repetition, and in pre-planning anticipate corner cases dominating the time budget.

I would say to get a capture card. Doing a project like this without having a video dump of it just means it has to be done again, along the same reasons you listed in your first post.

dionb wrote:

I might just be onto a G400 Max for you - no response yet, but we'll see tomorrow 😉

Oh, and if you feel you don't have enough benchmarks, I'd suggest adding something non-FPS, maybe an RTS or something (Homeworld springs to mind as period-correct and demanding enough of the GPU, even if it's not exactly a typical RTS), just to give the GPU a different kind of load.

Thanks!

Good call on Homeworld, I'll definitely keep it in mind.

F2bnp wrote:

stamasd wrote:

Correct, it's Permedia + GLINT (aka Permedia NT) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Dlabs#/media/F … eGL1000_PCI.jpg
It's my error, I should have said "non-Pro is not Permedia2"

You are correct, that is indeed the Permedia NT. What a weird beast!

Not as weird as the Intergraph Wildcat 4000 that I posted about in another thread. 2 cards with a common bracket, one AGP and another PCI connected by a cable; one is the 2D part and the other the 3D part.
https://www.okqubit.net/boards/img/intergraph … dcat4000_ce.jpg
It's almost in the correct time period (early 2000) but it has no DirectX compatibility (OpenGL only) so no reason of thinking to benchmark this one. 😀

stamasd wrote:

Not as weird as the Intergraph Wildcat 4000 that I posted about in another thread. 2 cards with a common bracket, one AGP and another PCI connected by a cable; one is the 2D part and the other the 3D part.
https://www.okqubit.net/boards/img/intergraph … dcat4000_ce.jpg
It's almost in the correct time period (early 2000) but it has no DirectX compatibility (OpenGL only) so no reason of thinking to benchmark this one. 😀

Not as weird as it looks - this is before AGP Pro and PCIe power connectors. That PCI slot's prime purpose is to supply enough power to the beast, over and above what old AGP can do.

Seconday purpose is structural - two slots are a lot better capable of keeping those PCBs with all those big chips and heavy heatsinks in place and within tolerances.

I once owned an HP Visualize FX4+ monster, similar to that Wildcat 4000 in terms of purpose and sheer size & weight, if a tiny bit older and slower. It was impressive to behold, but totally pointless to use by that time (~2005), as a low-profile Quadra could outperform it in all metrics - but if you're looking for the best 3D rendering in its day, it would have taken some beating.

Well, pulled the trigger on a cheap Permedia 2, so that's one thing to scratch off the list!

F2bnp wrote:

Someone didn't really look at the aforementioned sources 🤣 .
Seriously though what more do you need than what Vintage3D or the 3D Accelerator Capture thread offer?

Those links provide valuable insights. Heck, I wouldn't be limiting dates of hardware manufacture for my period-correct builds without Vintage3D's Matrox Mystique research. And Swaaye's thread has screenshot examples of display defects that you can't find anywhere else, let alone in one place. 😎

But neither of those do what I suggested: comprehensively list API features by supported games and hardware. Both sources mention visual shortcomings of cards, but I can't determine how complete the defect lists are. Vintage3D lists the DirectX version supported by cards and shader models (where applicable), but it doesn't tell you which Direct3D API features are supported by a given card. For some of Swaaye's images, I can't determine what defect I'm looking at. Vintage3D also stops evaluating visual details around 1997 and Swaaye around 1999, while my interest is 1997-2000.