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Radeon Owners...we told them(the other guys) didn't we?

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At least my Geforce booted into Windows just fine with the Irongate chipset (although 3D was a different story). My ATI Rage Fury Pro wouldn't even boot into Windows once the drivers were loaded. Don't blame video card manufacturers for problems with AGP controllers if they are following AGP specs. Poor AGP timing mechanism is a known issue with non Intel chipset boards.
 
I had an ELSA Gladiac 32MB and switched to the Radeon 64MB. The colors are definately brighter, however my main driving reason to switch was the fact that by the time ELSA got around to supplying the VIVO module, pigs would fly. In the case of performance, 32-bit is on par with my old card, and I heard as drivers came out and games to support all the new features I would surpass the GTS at high resolution 32-bit modes.
 
Yea oldfart please show me some pics. I would swap out my Radeon now as i used to all the time but i now have a whole list of registry entries for the radeon that i dont want to type back in.Im a slow typer. Guess i could back that folder up huh? Also sombody tell me how to get the smoke in counter strike to look good. Ive tried it all at raged and still cant get it to look like my 5500 makes it look.
 
Oldfart:

BFG, too dark with Glide??? That's very strange. I had a Voodoo2 SLI, and a Voodoo3 and neither were dark at all in Glide. In fact, I didn't even have to move the slider very much to get it bright enough, maybe half way.

Well I have both the game slider and control panel slider on full and the game is still too dark.

To be honest, I never even tried Unreal or UT in D3D on a Voodoo. I would imagine its quite a bit slower.

Yes there is a speed hit. 48 FPS vs 65 FPS. I would use Glide if I could, but I can't stand the game when it's that dark.

Oldfart, does the Radeon's control panel have gamma settings so that you can increase the brightness of games? Are you able to control the brightness of your old games (Unreal, Quake 2 etc) to make them bright enough?

Doomguy:

BFG10K: Crappy TC? Thats ID'S fault. What do you people not understand about that? Elite Force uses the Q3 engine but does not compress lightmaps and does not have a problem.

I don't care who's fault it is. All I care about is that ATi/3dfx look good and nVidia look crap. When I use nVidia's boards it becomes my problem.

NVidia's release drivers are perfectly stable as are many of their beta drivers.

Remember, this is me you're talking to. False statements like that don't work on me.
 
ATI does not use TC in OpenGL which is why you see a nice looking sky. I would agree that the NVIDIA beta drivers are not stable but they are beta you know. The released drivers have always performed very stable (much more than ATI ever were). ATI does look the best of all 3 cards but I am more concered with stability and performance and the difference between NVIDIA and ATI are big enough for me to want continue to use NVIDIA. I will probably try the Radeon 2 when it comes out. Next year should be interesting. Its like the last three years have been a playoff race and each year, someone gets eliminated. We are now down to the last two and 2001 should be very competitive.
 
"Where the hell were you when AMD first released the Irongate mobos? Never a problem, my ass."

There was/is a probem with Irongate mobos, the AGP strobe is too weak. Doomguy's statement was correct. All boards that follow AGP specs have no problems with GeForce based boards, unlike the Voodoo5(try it on a i850 mobo).

BFG-

"I don't care who's fault it is. All I care about is that ATi/3dfx look good and nVidia look crap. When I use nVidia's boards it becomes my problem."

It has been fixed. If you are running the latest version of Quake3 then the problem is gone, it was also fixed in the shipping version of RocketArena. Like I have been saying for a long time now, it was id's problem and they should(well, they did now🙂) fix it. What about Evolva or Sacrifice on a Voodoo5(well, that is lacking features) or MBT on a Radeon(game issue)? Blaming a game bug on a video card is FUD.

"NVidia's release drivers are perfectly stable as are many of their beta drivers.

Remember, this is me you're talking to. False statements like that don't work on me."

It isn't false. If you like, I'll pull up quotes from 3dfx employees on this board stating that your HD should be formatted when going between nV and 3dfx boards, no matter which you start with. nVidia's drivers are extremely stable, I hit over a month uptime on Win98 on a regular basis before I reboot, and even then reboots tend to be either because I'm changing hardware or I'm installing software. nVidia's drivers are considered the best by the overwhelming majority of people, including OEMs. Just because you had problems installing one after a 3dfx part was in your system certainly doesn't mean the drivers are at fault.
 
BenSkywalker:

It has been fixed.

Has it? It was established that Quake 3 has texture compression turned off by default.

Just because you had problems installing one after a 3dfx part was in your system certainly doesn't mean the drivers are at fault.

I don't blame the drivers for my monitor troubles. I blame the driver for problems like the blacked out start menu which members of this forum have said happened to them, even after a complete hard disk format and clean install of windows.

Just browse the video/hardware forums and see how many people have problems with nVidia's drivers/boards.
 


<< ATI does not use TC in OpenGL which is why you see a nice looking sky >>


pidge, once again, absolutely not true. You really should start checking facts before you post. Its obvious you know nothing about these cards, but regularly post mis-information.

Q3 version 1.25 and up has TC turned off by default. Nothing else has changed.

BFG, I was just looking at my box with the V3 card. You must have something WAY wrong. You should be able to play in Glide with plenty of brightness. I have mine set up with the glide/opengl gammas all set to 1.30 (default) in the 3dfx tools. Here are some settings in the Unreal.ini file:

[WinDrv.WindowsClient]
WindowedViewportX=320
WindowedViewportY=240
WindowedColorBits=16
FullscreenViewportX=800
FullscreenViewportY=600
FullscreenColorBits=16
Brightness=0.600000 <----------------this is the brightness for the game (duh)
MipFactor=1.000000
UseDirectDraw=True
UseJoystick=False
CaptureMouse=True
StartupFullscreen=True
CurvedSurfaces=False
LowDetailTextures=False
ScreenFlashes=True
NoLighting=False
SlowVideoBuffering=True
DeadZoneXYZ=True
DeadZoneRUV=False
InvertVertical=False
ScaleXYZ=1000.000000
ScaleRUV=2000.000000
SkinDetail=High
TextureDetail=High

[GlideDrv.GlideRenderDevice]
Translucency=True
VolumetricLighting=True
ShinySurfaces=True
Coronas=True
HighDetailActors=True
DetailBias=-1.500000
RefreshRate=75Hz
DetailTextures=True
FastUglyRefresh=False
ScreenSmoothing=True
Resolution=Default
DisableVSync=True

The maximum the brightness can go to is 1.0. The default is .5 I find that .6 looks good. Unreal has sort of a dark &quot;always twilight&quot; look to it.

No the Radeon does not have the excellent feature of separate gamma adjustments for desktop, OpenGl and D3D. It is a great feature that 3dfx has...had 🙁.
 
EvilDonnyboy-

&quot;ATI does not use TC in OpenGL which is why you see a nice looking sky

can somebody else comfirm/disagree with this 4 me?&quot;

The Radeon is using TC, but they are not using the S3TC/DXTC method called for, at least it looks nothing like the actual S3 implementation. They also have compression disabled on 128x128 texture maps(which match the size of the lightmaps used in Quake3).

BFG-

&quot;Has it? It was established that Quake 3 has texture compression turned off by default.&quot;

And you turn it on and the problem is gone. You can verify this by using the r_lightmap 1 command at the console.

&quot;Just browse the video/hardware forums and see how many people have problems with nVidia's drivers/boards.&quot;

Are there any with people using the 6.31 drivers? Haven't seen any that I can remember that involve drivers. I have seen people having issues on mobos with poor AGP implementations.
 
Oldfart:

The maximum the brightness can go to is 1.0. The default is .5 I find that .6 looks good. Unreal has sort of a dark &quot;always twilight&quot; look to it.

In my config file, the brightness line is set to 1.00000. In addition I have set the Glide slider in the control panel to the maximum (4) and I have tried running the game from an 8, 16 and 32 bit desktop. The only thing that affects the brightness is the game setting, but the maximum (1) is still far too dark.

No the Radeon does not have the excellent feature of separate gamma adjustments for desktop, OpenGl and D3D. It is a great feature that 3dfx has...had

So how do you control the brightness in games? Does it use your 2D desktop gamma or something?

BenSkywalker:

They also have compression disabled on 128x128 texture maps(which match the size of the lightmaps used in Quake3).

Yes but other textures (ie walls) are larger than 128 x 128 and look perfect on a Radeon. Yet nVidia's walls bleed.

Are there any with people using the 6.31 drivers? Haven't seen any that I can remember that involve drivers/

Lots. 🙂
 
BFG, don't know what else to tell ya bud. My old SLI, old V3 3K and the V3 in the kids PC all worked fine. Never a brightness problem in any of them. On the Radeon, I just use the brightness settings in the game. I just tried it out with your settings. It looks like the Glide gamma adj in the 3DFX color controls don't do anything in UT. I guess the game overrides them? Anyway, with brightness set to 1, it looked brighter, but all washed out, not very good looking at all. It may just be a personal preference thing. Maybe you like a brighter look. On my Radeon, UT is set for .7.
 
Oldfart:

On the Radeon, I just use the brightness settings in the game. I just tried it out with your settings.

Yes but some older games don't directly control the gamma themselves. Instead they use a percentage of the gamma that your video card is set too. I'm scared that if I get a Radeon those old games will be far too dark to play, since I can't see any way to control the gamma with the Radeon's drivers.

Unless the 2D gamma also controls brightness in 3D games. Oldfart, can you crank up the 2D brightness of your Radeon, run an older game (like Unreal 1 or GLQuake) and see if the brightness has increased?

It looks like the Glide gamma adj in the 3DFX color controls don't do anything in UT. I guess the game overrides them?

That's why I run the game in Direct 3D, because the driver slider *does* affect the brightness. I have the Direct 3D brightness set to 2.07 in the driver control panel and the game set to a brightness of 1. The game looks nice and bright. 🙂

Maybe you like a brighter look. On my Radeon, UT is set for .7.

Even with a brightness of 1 in Glide you tend to miss a lot of things, especially in dark/shadowy areas. Like I said above, I use a gamma of 2.07 in Unreal. In Quake 3 I have the gamma set to 1.65.
 
Yes but other textures (ie walls) are larger than 128 x 128 and look perfect on a Radeon. Yet nVidia's walls bleed.

No, not anymore. The &quot;bleeding&quot; was caused by corrupted lightmap textures. Lightmaps should never be compressed, this has been fixed.

Lots.&quot;

Where? I see people having problems that happen to be using the 6.31s, where are there any problems people are having because of the 6.31s? I'm sure I can dig up at least one thread of someone that caught a virus and is using the Voodoo5, doesn't mean that the board caused it. Read through those threads with people having problems and see if you can find one that is an actual driver issue.
 


<< Whew, glad I made a good choice to choose GTS over Radeon DDR. >>




Nvidia has 3dfx w/ Gigapixel, plus the XBox, ATI has ArtX, strong OEM relationships, own card production, and the Gamecube. If any of that console tech trickles back to us, the next two years are going to awesome for video cards! (and I'm rooting for the Cannucks (ATI) this time!)
 
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