New 3dfx WHQL V4/5 drivers

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Right here

There have been some rumours of new drivers offering a nice performance boost. Anybody try these out? Any performance difference?

 

[Deeko]

I'm downloading them now...in new features it says geometry assist....what's that?

 

[NFS4]

T&L according to VE:



<< Now with T&amp;L! 3dGamers has the new Voodoo 4/5 drivers up on their page for your downloading please -- this brings the version count up to 1.03.00. There is a tab for T&amp;L support (That's Transform and Lightning, not Tits and Legs) and better performance (For all you quick shooters). Check em out, unless you don't have 3dfx, in which case it would be stupid to download them. >>

 

[EMAN]

Tell us what kind of performance increases you get or none.

 

[Soccerman]

hmm... my guess is software T&amp;L support (so if a game doesn't support normal non T&amp;L, the 3dfx card can still run it, though how fast depends greatly on your CPU).

either that, or they've got something up their sleeve.. that'd be hilarious if they got that past everyone! but really, it wouldn't happen..

or it could be like those metabyte drivers, which use spare CPU cycles to help the card out in higher res, where the CPU would be waiting for the Video card to finish scenes..

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

<---- still waiting for benches

 

[NFS4]

It's just PR BS:

http://www.voodooextreme.com/comments.taf?postID=6692

 

[Leon]

There is absolutely no mention of &quot;hardware T&amp;l&quot; on 3dfx website-just geometry assist. It's VE who is spreading FUD.

Basically, these drivers is like Matrox TurboGL.

Leon

 

[Wingznut]

Ok, as much as I dislike benchmarking... I did it anyway.

My system:
P3-600e, overclocked to 800mhz
V5-5500
256megs RAM
WinME


Q3, HQ, 1280x1024 resolution

Old drivers = 44.0 fps
New drivers = 54.5 fps

 

[Soccerman]

heh the Rev made that T&amp;L part up..

but my question is this.. HOW does it speed things up? they mention that it's got SSE and 3DNow! optimizations.. how come they didn't have it already? Matrox already has it...

 

[Adul]

Nice increase, Maybe anand will want to do a update did his reveiw?

 

[Soccerman]

heh I'll be waiting for Firingsquads benchmarks.. they always do good comparisons between drivers..

 

[Wingznut]

Ah, what the h*ll... Here's some 3dMark scores.

Default benchmark

Old drivers = 3654
New drivers = 4188

 

[Weyoun]

i could see how it could actually improve performance. at higher resolutions, the video card is becoming the bottleneck, so inherently, the CPU is actually being used less. although this sounds like bs when you first think about it, i saw a page which explained the video card/cpu scalability in detail, and it showed that since the video card was pushing so much, the cpu literally had to wait for the vid card to catch up with it. likewise with the cpu and vid card at lower resolutions. at lower resolutions, im willing to bet those drivers don't do very much..

wingnut, please oblige me

 

[Wingznut]

Sorry, but I didn't run any low-res benchmarks prior to updating the drivers.

I'm not a big fan of benchmarks, anyway. Let alone ones that aren't realistic. I mean, who plays games at 640x480 resolution, anyway?

 

[Wingznut]

From what I understand, 3dfx isn't claiming to have hardware T&amp;L. It's just that these drivers improve the T&amp;L in software.

It's just a driver update. Not a magic wand.

(However, they are nice improvements, eh?)

 

[Weyoun]

people with REALLY screwed monitors

 

[yo2tup]

i installed the new drivers, and ran 3dmark2k. i use to get around 3700, now i got 4000. but the wierd thing is that the 64mb rendering test really crawls, like 2 fps. what's with that?

 

[BFG10K]

I just tried them with my Voodoo3 and they are slower than the Beta 1.05.01 drivers at all resolutions. That's three driver updates that have lowered my perfomance.

 

[Dug]

Has anyone tried the latest Wicked GL driver with these? They say it now supports V5. And I don't know why anyone would bother writing extra drivers if they didn't increase performance.

 

[Wingznut]

Hey brainiac (BFG10K), they are V4/V5 drivers. Not intended for the V3.

I'll install the WickedGL drivers a bit later this morning, and check them out.

 

[Wingznut]

I just ran the same Q3 benchmark, with the Wicked3D drivers. I lost about 3fps. The maps did load faster, for what that's worth.

 

[RagingGuardian]

Visual Quality is better with the Wicked GL drivers. The 3fps is a decent trade in my opinion.

 

[snow patrol]

Wow, those are very impressive increases...

 

[IBMer]

&quot;Visual Quality is better with the Wicked GL drivers. The 3fps is a decent trade in my opinion.&quot;

Wicked GL drivers do NOT make it look better than the default OpenGL for the V5. The difference is night and day. Wicked GL is limited to 256x256 textures which with Q3 512x512 textures make the V5 look like the old V3. It is no contest. WickedGL is useless.