2D quality of Nvidia

[vlieps]

At work we always got a Nvidia Vanta in our computers and everything seemed OK. But then, one day, we got a new PC with a Voodoo3 inside. The same monitor, everything the same. It was just amazing to see how big difference there is between those two cards in 2D quality. Nvidia was fuzzy and blurry...3Dfx was extremely sharp picture and text. I do not really get why Nvidia is trying to get those 666 fps in games at the same time for years they stick to their awful 2D-engine which is the same in all Nvidias cards. Anyway, most of the time PC users spend not in 3D but in 2D - Word processing, web browsing etc. I was considering a Geforce MX myself but when I saw the difference -wow, I go for V5.
You actually never think about the 2D quality until You see the difference side by side. Just for information....

 

[han888]

agree with u here! i swap my asus v7700 with voodoo5 and i see the big difference

 

[RobsTV]

Since you mention a V3 as the card you are comparing too, I thought I must correct you, as I too have a V3 and a nVidia card.

Since all 3dfx cards come from the same company, yes you can throw them all in the same class, and say great 2d. But, since nVidia cards come from many different companies, and some make great 2d, you can NOT throw the nVidia cards into the same class. Blame the cardmaker, not the chipmaker. Sure, some of the most popular GTS cards come from Creative and Asus, which by all accounts do have bad 2d at certain ultra high resolutions, with certain monitors (the same monitors that show lines no matter what card is used). But GTS cards coming from Elsa and Visiontek have great 2d, (just as good as 3dfx), and with the Visiontek cards being one of the cheapest you can get, there is no reason not to have great 2d in a GTS card, like many of us do have.

I only bring this up because I replaced an 18 month old V3 3k with it's great 2d, with a Visiontek GeForce2 GTS, which has 2d that is just as great as the 3dfx card was. In fact, the V3 is installed in the wifes machine right next to mine, and I see it everyday. There is ZERO difference...

As to gaming, which is the reason we upgrade, the 3dfx card blows chunks. I'm talking compatabilty, not speed. Sure, it was great when game makers used Glide, but OpenGL and D3D don't cut it with tis card anymore. I see examples everyday, (Wifes PC compared to mine). Same game gets installed in both machines. This weeks 3dfx failure was NFS,PU. The V3 kicks back to desktop from the games menu, unless you make choices within 10 seconds. Of course GTS card worked flawlessly from the get go. I know I can probably go through the 14 drivers that I have downloaded for the V3, and get 1 to work, but you would think the latest drivers should be good enough. Never was before with the V3, so why should it be now? And trust me, as one of the first to get a V3, I know every trick in the book to make this thing work. Can't say the same with the GTS card, as I've only had it for about 6 weeks, but I haven't needed to do any tricks with this card, as everything I throw at it works right out of the box.

 

[Zucchini]

vanta = very low end chip, makes sense for it to have low quality

 

[cockeyed]

RobsTV:

You made some interesting comments and now I might be inclinded to try an nVidia card. I currently have a Voodoo3 2000 and for the games I play, it works well. I do have to say that the 2D quality is outstanding and since this is very important to me, I have been reluctant to part with the V3.

AnandTech has a review of the VisionTech MX card but did not mention 2D quality. I found a comment of his in the review "VisionTek is a major manufacturer for many retail companies, such as ELSA," that took me by surprise.

I just wish that the reviewers of videocards would provide some objective rating for 2D quality of cards. It seems that their main focus is always the 3D speed and little else.

 

[imNAKED]

I used to own a Hercules TNT, Diamond Viper TNT2 Ultra, Asus V6800, and Elsa Gladiac GTS and form what I've seen the Vooodoo5 has far better 2D than the Geforce cards. I've notice lately that some people on the buy/sell forum are looking to trade/sell there Geforce card for a Voodoo5. I guess 3dfx must be doing something right or the fps trend is getting old.

 

[subhuman]

Rob, that's interesting but I definitely notice the nVIDIA card's trends with bad 2D on a 21" viewsonic (non-*tron). This is with Creative, ASUS, and Hercules cards with nvidia chips. Unfortunate as I'd like to use these cards over anything else out there. Matrox all the way though (too bad it's lame for games)

 

[Brian23]

Radeons have 2D that's just as good as Matrox and 3Dfx, but they also have great 3D power.

 

[spidey07]

I'd really like to see this debate to be put to rest.

I took both a voodoo 3000 and creative gts on a viewsonic 21".

gts sucks at high resolutions.
voodoo looks nice
permedia two on the compaq workstation at work looks even better (somebody tell me I'm smokin crack!!)

My limited opinion, however I can't seem to find any consensus on the Nvidia 2d quality issue. Think about this though guys...remember when you had to buy a special card that ONLY DID 3D? Now we expect fabulous 2d and 3d. I love this industry...we're never happy.

my .02
spidey

 

[RoboTECH]

please also note, RobsTV apparently got the worst V3 ever put into action.

He has problems with his V3 that very few other people seem to have.

So take his comments on the V3 with a grain of salt. His situation is NOT the norm, rather is an isolated incident.

That being said, the V5 smokes the V3 in everything, including 2d.

 

[RobsTV]

Sorry RoboTech, but I got the cream of the crop, not some dud.
As a system builder, the 3dfx cards "were" the card of choice, due to there low cost and being the most compatable at the time. While I did keep the best card, dozens were installed in systems for resale, and as upgrades. We all had the same problems. 3dfx newsgroups and web sites like voodoo3.net were some of my favorite hangouts, and all of us 3dfx V3 owners had many problems with the card. Most were for non-Intel motherboards, but even Intel chipsets had many problems. But, owners of the V3 3500 were the ones that complained the most.

What pissed me off the most, was that some of my customers yanked the 3dfx cards, instead of doing what we all did, (play driver swappola), and switched to a nVidia based card. They would not tell me, as they knew my loyalty was with 3dfx, but I would eventually find out. This also cost me business, as the card I installed had issues that nVidia cards did not have, so it made me look bad by supplying these. Most of my friends still have a V3, and a visit to there homes, turns into a "please fix this" V3 debugging visit. Most are not hardcore gamers, and do not want to be bothered with downloads and updates, so how do you tell them they need to replace the card that you told them they needed, in order for the real problems to go away???

spidey07 wrote: ""I'd really like to see this debate to be put to rest. I took both a voodoo 3000 and creative gts on a viewsonic 21". gts sucks at high resolutions.""

Well one way to put this to rest is to stop what you are doing. You say Creative GTS and GTS cards like it is the same thing. It is not. That would be like me saying GTS has great 2d. Some do, some don't. In your case, I believe you were trying to say:
I'd really like to see this debate to be put to rest. I took both a voodoo 3000 and Creative gts on a viewsonic 21". Creative gts sucks at high resolutions.

 

[Adul]

I Don't see how rob has so much trouble with 3dfx cards V3 serious. I have installed and used quite a few in machines I have built for people over time. And I have had not a single one come to me and complain about it. In fact I very rarely have a computer come back to me with any issues at all. So RobsTV, just what type of aprts are you using?

 

[spidey07]

ROBSTV
Thanks for the input. So it is true that GTS cards vary between manufacturers? I thought they all followed the reference design pretty much to a tee, same chips, etc.

If not then I can understand why 2d quality would vary so much.

Thanks for the clarification. Maybe a final post ranking the GTS cards from top to bottom in terms of 2d clarity/quality with a breakpoint of which ones are unacceptable could "put this to rest" Anybody have this info? Review?

cheers
spidey

 

[RoboTECH]

aside from RobsTV, I've heard tons of people bitching about the 2d quality on their Elsa cards.

I also find it humorous that RobsTV seems unable to do anything with his V3, yet pretends as though he likes it.

Dunno, quite an interesting (pile of pucky) to me

next he's going to say he had problems getting UT to work with the V3.

 

[RobsTV]

No problems with V3 and UT.
Unreal and V3, well yes, there was major problems.
Most were corrected with patches and driver swapping.
Same holds true with most EA stuff like NFS3.
Still, it was not an out of the box gaming experience by any means.
Anyone that says a V3 works out of the box with one set of drivers, on most games, without patches, never owned one long enough to know. It requires, drivers, after drivers, after patches, after patches. Try NFSPU lately?

I think 18+ months of personal use, trying each of 3dfx's monthly driver updates, and with access to any game published, gives me ample testing expertise with the V3. 18 months ago to 12 months ago, it "WAS" the best thing going if you did not mind tinkering with patches and drivers, but is a far cry from todays cards, and I only bring it up to say "YES, IT AND THE VISIONTEK GTS HAVE GREAT 2D, WITH NO VISUAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE 2".

BTW, I have never heard 1 bad word about Elsa's 2d (except from 3dfx owners that is). Sorry, I take that back. I did hear about 2 terrible lines on trinitron monitors when used with an Elsa card, but even 3dfx owners attributed that to the crappy monitor and not the Elsa card, and those 3dfx owners said it appeared on there cards as well. Maybe that's what I need? A Trintron monitor so I can rag on nVidia too!

BTW (part2), I never said I could not do anything with the V3. On the contrary. I said the v3 required patches or driver swapping to make it work. If you had the correct combination of patches and drivers installed for a particular game, it would work GREAT!!! Fast, smooth, and great looking. Problem was 3dfx admitted that they do not plan on making a 1 driver does all solution (words from ALF, if you know 3dfx you know who I mean), but instead consider a problem solved if 1 set of drivers works with it. Doesn't matter if you must switch drivers, as long as switching between games fixes it, problem is solved.

Funny how you always see RoboTech jumping into a nVidia post to bash the card, and tell all how they should switch cards, yet when people ask about V3 stuff, I offer help instead of telling them to get a nVidia card, even though from my personal experience, the V3 has been no walk in the park. It's called sticking to the issues.

 

[imNAKED]

RobsTv,

First, there aren't any video card that are "out-of-box" gaming experience. You have to tweak the card and game to your liking. If your VisionTek card is an "out-of-box" gaming experience than I need to have a piece of that VisionTek card and some crack for the 2D image that you've experience. Do you play DeusEx? Well, let make this short. Somewhere in the game you must meet a character name Harvey Finbin in a bar, if you were using a Geforce's Harvey has no arm. If you are using a Voodoo's Harvey look perfercly normal. Is that what you call an out-of-box gaming experience. LOL. I'm not bashing on any card, both card are great. You stated that most of your client have problem with there voodoo's card even the non-gamers(normal usage, web browsing, etc....). My girlfriend brought a computer from dell last year which had a voodoo3 2000 and she has not had one single problem and she is a non-gamer. She doesn't even know what are drivers. I don't even think she know how to update the drivers for her system. She is still running drivers that were supply by Dell right out-of-box and everthing look and run beautifully. I can't figure out what the hell you are talking about.

 

[RobsTV]

There have been many 3dfx users that make posts saying everything works everytime.
If you actually think this, pay a visit to 3dfx's own site 3dfx gamers.com

Some neat stuff you would find links too:
"Voodoo3 registry editing for beginners"
or due to the heavy traffic from owners with problems, they have another site devoted to helping users trouble shoot there card and get it running again:
WWW.Voodoolinks.NET Your source for Voodoo3 troubleshooting information
Even with this additional site, the main 3dfx site listed above is still flooded with users unable to get the card going.

These sites back up my statements about the 3dfx cards troubles..
Yet, no one but me ever heard of problems, and no one here knows what I'm talking about.
O.K., whatever you say. Do as RoboTech says, and take what I say with a grain of salt.
Also, tell that to that 1000's with problems at the 3dfx sites??

Now if you 3dfx owners really do have zero problems or issues, why don't you head on over to the 3dfx site and lend a hand helping the 1000's of 3dfx owners that do indeed have many problems with this card. They can sure use your fine expertise over there, as they need all the help they can get.

 

[Ahriman6]

RobsTV:

And if Nvidia, ATI, or Matrox had a site like 3dfx Gamers, how many 100s or 1000s of people would they have asking for help?

I owned a V3 for 15 months and the only problem I ever had was when I first installed it (upgrading from two V2s) Starsiege 3 wouldn't run (Glide version incompatibility, and the fix for this, using the Glide.dll from the Banshee drivers, was known and circulated two days later). That is THE only problem I ever had out of 15 months worth of using my V3 (Porsche Unleashed included). If you're having this many problems and you're convinced that it isn't your specific board, I suggest you get out of the PC building business.

 

[hans007]

a lot of the problem is nvidia's reference design, which most manufacturers either implement wrong , or its a flawed design (i'm leaning toward flawed design, as i've heard visiontek just lowers the EMI filter thus no bad 2d). Anyways, they used the same design on the 2d filter part for many cards and its still aweful. Its not the chips fault, as even though i've never seen it done, i'm positive that if you took an nvidia card witha dvi out and put it on an LCD panel it would be perfect (or a analog monitor with DVI connector and in monitor DAC conversion)

 

[Zedfu]

it's no big new to everyone that matrox makes the best 2d cards out there, although it descent 3d quality. this is when the radeon comes in. prividing both superior 2d and 3d quality, even though it doesn't pump out as much frame as most nvidiabased video cards. vlieps's right. as for most people they don't even spend nearly as much time in 3d mode than in 2d. although having nice 3d is important, it's mostly 2d that people uses.

 

[vlieps]

I do not agree that the 2D quality is strongly dependant on the manufacturer. Remember Banshee card ? It had the same 2D engine as all the newer Voodoo cards, but Banshee was manufactured by MANY companies. All of them had EXCELLENT 2D quality. I think it has to do something with Nvidias bad 2D implementation. And...by the way...I never ever edited any registry entries for my Banshee card and never ever had any problems over 1,5 year having it. I tried more than 40 games over that time and everything was OK. Not a single problem.
I think most problems arise when people do not install the card correctly from the very beginning (drivers etc.), and do not really know what they are doing....:Q