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New Video Cards, Direct 3D vs Open Glide

jacktesterson

jacktesterson

Diamond Member
Just wondering whats the difference in Direct 3D and Open Glide. A video card should be purchased to support both these days right. I am wondering whats better, for example,running Half Life with a Athlon and a Kyro II 64 MB video card, what is better for running half life?
 
First of all, I take it you mean Direct3D and OpenGL, right? Glide was the old 3dfx API that is no longer supported by any graphics card on the market; it essentially died with 3dfx.

There's a lot that's different between the two APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), too much really to go into great depth here. Direct3D is produced by Microsoft as part of DirectX. It's 2D counterpart is called DirectDraw. OpenGL, on the other hand, is developed by these guys. Think of them as somewhat "competing" standards for the way 3D applications should be written. If you want more information on them, either read the linked pages or I'm sure someone else will be along shortly to explain the difference in more detail (it's past midnight where I live and I'm rather tired 🙂).

As for what's faster running Half Life, my guess would be Direct3D, but the only way to be totally sure is to benchmark both modes and take a look at the results.

Good luck,
Nick
 
Generally OpenGL is prefered, but DirectX is moving much faster than OpenGL and might over take it soon. With each new DirectX release it gets more and more competent as a competitor to OpenGL. At this point, I prefer OpenGL, and most people do. It's quite a bit faster. 2 years later, who knows. In half life, OpenGL should be faster than Direct3d on almost any graphics card.

(Pssst! Edit your message/title quick! It's Open Graphics Language. Thus, OpenGL. )
 
oh by the way, the difference is that OpenGL is just that. Open. You can modify it and stuff. OpenGL has maybe 10 companies on it's board, and was founded by SGI or Sun or someone. But yeah, Direct3d is owned exclusivley by microsoft and they just buy their technologies. OpenGL is free...
 
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