New review of Geforce3 and 2D issues.

[BFG10K]

PotNoodle:

Quake3 takes the easiest method of compression and ?blanket? compresses everything under DXT1.

Not anymore.

decompression of DXT1 (and the number of bits that it results in using) has no bearing on the size of the compressed texture;

I'm not talking about decompression. I am talking about the textures while they're in a compressed state. DXT1 compression has a higher compression ratio than DXT3 (because it uses less bits), hence it's faster and uses less memory bandwidth. By making DXT1 store even less stuff than their competitors, nVidia's scheme works faster.

No, they weren?t.

Um, yes they were. Lets say two companies have identical boards, but company A uses 2 bits to store textures and company B uses 4 bits. As a result, company A's textures will be half the size (while compressed) and will use half the memory bandwidth compared to company B's textures.

 

[PotNoodle]

?I'm not talking about decompression. I am talking about the textures while they're in a compressed state. DXT1 compression has a higher compression ratio than DXT3 (because it uses less bits), hence it's faster and uses less memory bandwidth. By making DXT1 store even less stuff than their competitors, nVidia's scheme works faster.

?No, they weren?t.?

Um, yes they were. Lets say two companies have identical boards, but company A uses 2 bits to store textures and company B uses 4 bits. As a result, company A's textures will be half the size (while compressed) and will use half the memory bandwidth compared to company B's textures.?

OMG ? this is getting comical.

DXT1 compression routine ALWAYS stays the same regardless, of the card or whatever that it is being compressed with. You take to cards ? Say Radeon and GTS, and a 256x256 32bit texture, compress the texture under DXT1: both cards will have exactly the same encoded texture (there is no difference in the encoding method); they will have exactly the same compression ratio on that texture, and hence the compressed texture will be exactly the same between the two cards ? the only difference being is that When Radeon decompresses the texture it does so in the 32bit format, while GTS does it in a 16bit format.

There is no difference in the compressed textures used by NVIDIA?s DXT1 compression scheme to any of their competitors hence there is no speed increase ? the only difference is that NVIDIA use less bits to interpolate the compressed texture hence they have a lower quality output.

 

[BFG10K]

This is beyond ridiculous now. All I have to say in response to your original statement of is:

First, and most importantly, the huge variation we are seeing in texture compression quality in Quake 3 is not due to faulty hardware implementations.

Link.

 

[PotNoodle]

?This is beyond ridiculous now.?

Yup ? some people just don?t listen?

?First, and most importantly, the huge variation we are seeing in texture compression quality in Quake 3 is not due to faulty hardware implementations?

Read the followup article, written 3 months later, by the same person that I showed you earlier but evidently completely failed to take note of! (LINK!!!!!!).

If you wanna play the quote game, here?s what Wumpus says three months after he wrote your quote:

?Damn nVidia for making me eat my words. I swore up and down there couldn't be a hardware problem with texture compression on their video cards. Surely, I thought, nVidia wouldn't make such a ridiculous mistake. Especially with a texture compression, a technology that will be fundamental to future games.

Color me 65,536 shades of .. completely wrong.

nVidia indeed has a serious hardware issue with DXT1, the most common kind of texture compression. All DXT1 format compressed textures are reduced to 16-bit color on GeForce cards.?

 

[LittleChief]

Time out guys!
Your going to end up killing each other over a bunch of video cards.
Take a deep breath and relax for a moment. Both of you seem to know quite a bit bout these issues, and your input is excellant to all the threads I've seen you argue in. Just dont get offensive or defensive to each other. From what I've picked up, your just arguing bout minor details. Dont let the criticism get to you.

Stay cool guys, I enjoy hearing both your points of view (especially Kyro vs GTS issues)

 

[BFG10K]

Sorry PotNoodle. I didn't realise there was a fourth article written after the third, which is the one I quoted.

It looks like there really is a problem, especially since Direct3D exhibits the same problems as OpenGL.

 

[Eug]

Group hug!

 

[PotNoodle]

BFG10K,

? Sorry PotNoodle. I didn't realise there was a fourth article written after the third, which is the one I quoted.?

Fair enough then.



LittleChief ,

? Both of you seem to know quite a bit bout these issues, and your input is excellant to all the threads I've seen you argue in. Just dont get offensive or defensive to each other.?

Puts me in mind of this article ? worth a read.

 

[BFG10K]

Fair enough then.

It would certainly help if GameBasement posted article links on their main page a bit better.