Geforce DDR vs. GF2 GTS pipelines?

[bluemax]

I forget (it's been so long...)
Does the DDR have 2 pipes X 2 textures/pass and the GTS, 4 pipes x 2 textures?
Or is it 4x2 for both?

If the DDR is underclassed with the 2x2.... does it make a big difference?
I have the option of buying an Elsa Erazor X2 for a very good price (less than an MX) brand new (Onvia.ca - expired coupon I can still claim but you can't so don't ask me) for ~$175 Canadian. Elsa is the only name I trust to offer nVidia + decent 2D. ASUS sucked.

I also want good FSAA... I presume the Geforce lineup has improved in both quality and speed since its inception? Still no Voodoo5, but the equivalent of V5 2x mode is plenty fine for me- speed has to be pretty good though.

Gimme' a hand here folks... I've been video card comparing for too bleedin' long. My Cirrus Logic stinker is driving me up the wall!

(I'd have bought the Voodoo5, but "he who hesitates is lost"... I have a developer relation discount for a 1/2 price V5 card, but they're completely out of stock at www.shop3dfx.com and won't have any more AGP cards until ***MARCH!!!*** They'll have PCI in at the end of January, but by then they should have the new puppies on the way.

Hmmm... maybe I should just hang onto that developer relations thing and get one of THOSE half price... heh heh.

Gimme' a hand here folks. I've had enough of damned video card research and I want to start PLAYING with one! (Has to be affordable to a Canadian though...)

 

[StanTheMan]

DDR: QuadPipe architecture with four independent 3D rendering pipelines
GTS: 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 can process up to 8 texture-mapped, filtered and lit texels per clock cycle with fill rates up to 1.6 Gigatexels per second.

 

[Deeko]

The GF1 has 4 pixel pipelines, 1 texture unit.
The GTS has 4 pixel pipelines, 2 texture units.

GTS' FSAA is not as good as 3dfx', obviously. I don't know if they have improved it since it first appeared in the drivers though. Since 175 is normally the American cost for a GTS, in canadian, that looks like a great deal(help me out here, is that less than $150?). Anyway, it looks like a good purchase to me.

EDIT: Also, the GTS is clocked higher than the GF DDR, wasn't sure if you wanted to know that or not

 

[bluemax]

Aha! That's the difference! Obviously the GTS has a better future than a DDR. At $175 Canadian (around $115-120 US) It's still pretty tempting to a TOP quality ELSA card.
The real-world performance difference doesn't seem to be THAT great...
What do you think though... $120US for a DDR Elsa... good deal? Pass and wait until newer stuff comes along?

 

[Deeko]

Hmm....it's a pretty good deal, but if you're willing to wait, you should.

 

[bluemax]

Well, I suppose... I managed to snag an ol' Voodoo3 which should arrive within a week. I'll have that to keep me going until the new cards come along. If my developer discount still applies to the new card, I'll be one happy camper. I'm more than happy to spend $200US on a $400 video card... (or whatever it costs.)
My only problem is if I have it sent to GeoffS (who's one great guy) to take over the border for me... I might not get it BACK!
(If you got a package with an NV20 for you to ship to someone else, would YOU not want to open it?)

 

[jpprod]

GeForce256: four pixel pipelines, each capable of single-pass trilinear filtering with one texture
GeForce2 GTS: four pixel pipelines, each capable of single-pass dual texturing or single-pass trilinear filtering with single texture

GTS's pipelines were enhanced from GeForce's to be able to process textels from alltogether other texture, whereas GeForce's pipelines can only combine two textels from two mip maps of the same texture. Trilinear is essentially the same thing as dual texturing

 

[bluemax]

<< GeForce256: four pixel pipelines, each capable of single-pass trilinear filtering with one texture
GeForce2 GTS: four pixel pipelines, each capable of single-pass dual texturing or single-pass trilinear filtering with single texture >>



If I read this right, it would seem they are VERY similar! When using trilinear filtering (which Geforce owners say is so great) the two ARE equal, with the exception of clock/mem speeds. The only time the GTS can do four pipe X 2 textures is with trilinear filtering OFF. Do any games take advantage of this, and how big is the quality difference because of this?

I'm on the verge of buying that Erazor X2 having seen the light of the 3dfx takeover...
It's DDR vs. GTS (since the MX doesn't handle high-res or FSAA as well, not can I get one as cheaply as the ELSA with its very good 2D quality.

Again, advice as to yea or nay?

 

[xtreme2k]

Actually, I did have a feeling that the GTS is actually NOTHING but a .18um core-ed Geforce256.

Looking at and comparing the benchmarks, the difference between the GTS and the G256/DDR isnt huge. One might say this is due to the fact that the Memory speed is only increased from 150DDR to 166DDR. I would LOVe to see some sites comparing the G/DDR and GTS at 120/150 speed and see if the performance is very close. If the performance is VERY close, then nvidia simply didnt do ANYTHING other than just moving to a 0.18 micron for the GTS.

On the 'feature' side, those NEW 'features' could WELL be 'HIDDEN&quot; in the G/DDR and then enabled in the GTS.

 

[bluemax]

Well, I still wonder just what does trilinear filtering do?
Will games look better because of it? (of course, on a GF1 SDR/DDR, you'll use it anyways because it's &quot;free&quot;. On a GF2, you have either the option of trilinear or 2x textures...
I would imagine Quake3 (even though I don't play it) would really like the 4pipes X 2textures and show a world of improvement over a DDR card!) Anyone have these cards to experiment with?

I'm beginning to thing that ~$120US Elsa Erazor X2 is a very good deal.

 

[jpprod]

Snapped a couple of Serious Sam screens with both filtering modes, these shots should illustrate the visual difference. As you see, bilinear mip mapping shows up as an ugly border where the mip map resolution changes if there's any contrast on the texture.

Quake III indeed utilizes the single-pass dual-texturing capability (per pipeline) of GTS vs. old GeForce since it has two or more textures on opaque surfaces (color + light map layers) and it supports OpenGL multitexturing extensions. So assuming everything in drivers works as advertised in Q3, GTS should take a much bigger performance hit from enabling trilinear than standard GeForce.

 

[bluemax]

That's probably why the GTS also gets some huge framerates in the lower-quality settings. 8 texels versus 4, although in the uglier BIlinear filtering. (Whew... And I almost bought a V5-5500!) I think that since I'd prefer to use the trilinear filtering ANYWAYS, I might as well get that DDR... At $120US shipped, brand new, for an **ELSA** board... how can I go wrong?

Of course, knowing my luck... something will. I've been blessed in every area EXCEPT video cards! :|:|

 

[Deeko]

Also, isn't the T&amp;L unit on the GTS better than the GF1?

 

[Rellik]

A friend of mine got the erazor x2. It´s a good card with great drivers. However the GTS has less power consumption, so if you are on a 250 watt PS, try a GTS or even lower MX

GF DDR 20-25W
GF 2 GTS 10-15W
GF 2 MX 5w