Rampage will be out at summer 2001 its too late for 3dfx?

[Chad]

Dude, that is pathetic. Anyhow... just look at your signature for crying out loud. My goodness.


Furthermore, calling the Voodoo 5 "a waste of money". That's such a dumb statement. Exactly how far into the future are you looking bro?

 

[Hardware]

BoberFett
Because a t&l has the same price as a non t&l !

 

[ElFenix]

you can't really say that 3dfx was forcing you to take no t&l with the v3, since your idol nVidia didn't have it either at the time (remember the twintexel 2?)

you also can't actually say 3dfx was forcing you to do anything, since its your choice on which card to buy or whether ot buy one or not.

to whoever said you're not going to find any 4500s in the retail market and passed it off as some sort of insult, why would 3dfx even bother making the things? the 5500 is a much higher margin product. i doubt anyone but nvidiots will ever care if that card doesn't come out.

parallel processing and shared memory architecture is the key to high performance, witness any supercomputer or even graphics or financial workstation. 3dfx has a leg up there. granted, the processors don't share all 64 megs of ram, but its not split exaclty in half. so effective ram is somewhere else. 34 meg for 640x480x16, 37 meg for 1280x1024x32, and even more for fsaa. 3dfx also bought out gigapixel's tiling engine, so it has a bandwidth-reducing tech in its inventory too. plus the fact that each texture need not be repeated in each texture buffer. building a t&l unit shouldn't be all that difficult, its simply an fpu attached to the graphics processor. lastly, i'd like to see where those memory prices came from.

 

[Burn]

I just thought I would venture into this fight, (lol) and say a few things that are on my mind. Keep in mind as you are reading that I have played on a machine with a Voodoo5 in quite a few games, and my current video card is an Asus V6800. (Geforce 256 32mb DDR)

1. One comment I hear in this thread is that the Voodoo5 is too much money. I don't agree with that. While $300 is a lot of money, that is pretty close to what you would pay for a GTS or a Radeon. All three of which perform pretty closely. One beats the other at this and this one wins at that, etc... So my point is that for $300 you get a card that performs as fast as a GTS, V5 5500, or a Radeon. I personally don't feel that for the performance you get from the V5 5500 compared to the other cards on the market that it is overpriced. Obviously I would like to see all the cards cheaper priced...lol Who wouldn't?

2. Another thing that gets me mad is when people say that the V5 5500 is too big, it has 2 friggin' chips, it puts out so much heat, or it needs extra power. My answer to those complaints is: Why should I care? The V5 5500 fits into my case so I don't think it is too big. "Big" yes, "too big" no. As for the two chips I don't see why they can't design a single chip solution, but if they want to give me a top-performing card I really don't care if it has 1 chip or 20. As for the heat it puts out, yes that is a reality. But I don't see people saying that because the Thunderbird 1000 puts of 72W that it is suck. No, they say that it is hot, or that it is friggin' hot. And sometimes they burn them up like Kyle at HardOCP did...lol The V5 5500 puts out a lot of heat, but that doesn't mean that 3DFX is suck. As for the additional power connection to the power supply, I actually appreciate that feature. When Hercules (?) did that with the original Geforce (only available over seas) everybody thought that was cool. Now when 3DFX does it they suck. Huh?

3. FSAA - hmmm... This is the one issue that I am still confused over. But I did love it on my friend?s computer with his V5 5500, but I still feel that in FPS the slow down is too much. How about other games? I love FSAA in NHL2000, Midtown Madness, Monster Truck Madness 2, Motoracer 2, etc... The list keeps going on. 3DFX does this reliably nVidia doesn't. One up for 3DFX...lol

4. I type so slowly that I am forgetting what I am typing about...lol I guess I will just end my post here with few more words:

I love speed; I will buy the fastest card that gives me the most performance regardless of brand name. I won't criticize other companies for their lack of features, extra features that I think I don't need, etc... I will anticipate all of the companies? next products because competition is what got us here, and I want to see prettier, faster running games.

There I have said my piece, and probably made a complete idiot of myself with my brainless ramblings.

 

[Chad]

Burn, exactly man. I feel the exact same way. Well spoken (written) I might add.

 

[OneEng]

Ok....I'll bite.

First off, as I have repeatedly stated $300.00+ for a video card is WAY out of my pain tolerance. I purchased my current V3 2000 for $135.00 the first day it was released from Best Buy (Not exactly a bargin hunter that day). This was 1 full month ahead of the TNT2 which I had done much homework on. As it turns out, the V3 is quite happy in a MVP3 chipset mb where the TNT2 was often not. The bottom line....Compatibility DOES matter and so does price, at least it certianly does with me.

Secondly, anyone that thinks the UT engine is outdated....wow. I don't know what percent of the FPS population I speak for, but I predominantly play UT over Q3. IMHO it is simply a better game....and has better graphics. Glide support for me is a must have until the UT engine scores come up with the other API's.

I believe 3dfx is somewhat behind in technology (certianly in the release schedule). T&L....has anyone but me noticed that in high bandwidth situations, T&L sometimes slows the frame rate down? Since the current limitation on frame rate is bandwidth, and T&L seems to further congest the bandwidth on the card and thus lower the frame rate, I really don't see how it is usefull unless you play 16bit low resolution.....hardly the sort of settings one would expect to see used on a $350.00 video card.

32bit...well you have me there, although the 22bit effective did look nice in most situations, it was not as pretty as 32 bit.

For me, the bottom line is still what works best with the stuff I use most. Right now it would be the V5. Now if it comes down in price about $100.00 I may actually buy one.

3dfx dead.....not for some time if ever IMHO.

 

[Chad]

Besides, hating a Company because their PR department made their product sound better than it actually was?

LOL. How naive are you?

You would have to hate every known Company in the world if that's your basis!

I'll let you in on a secret... THAT IS THEIR JOB!

 

[Chad]

<< Doesnt everyone just hate it when someone is thinking for you, telling you what to do and when to do it? Thats what 3dfx is doing, and then they have the most noying PR people in the world.

Think about it this way, you dislike Microsoft for at least this reason, it forces you to like install IE, it forces you to use Media Player 7 in WinME. This is why Linux is so popular. Errr.. I think I´m getting a bit carried away. >>



Well, what do you think about Nvidia's PR now because of the whole their whole scandal? I sure hope you just wrote the name &quot;Nvidia&quot; on your banned list. Otherwise you would be a hypocrite, right?

 

[Prodigy^]

I agree with Burn. Some of you people whine about factors that are completely irrelevant.

SCREW the people with small cabinets or those who for some reason don't wanna put an extra fan in their case to make up for the extra heat the V5 generates. I really don't care about you! The people who can fit the V5 in their case and who have several case fans (that's me) can use the V5 (and I will soon when I get it), and you GTS llamas can leave us alone, thank you.

I don't give a rats ass about how 3dfx PR is, if they make a good product, then it's fine by me.

I also don't care if the Voodoo3 (a 1 year old card, maybe older) doesn't support 32bit or large textures. the V3 is an old product, the V5 is 3dfx's main product now. I also don't need AGP texturing. Excactly how tough do you think it would have been for 3dfx to implement it in the card? It would have been no problem for the people who founded the 3d industry as we know it today, so there's probably a good reason why they aren't doing it.

WHEN IT ALL COMES DOWN TO IT......there are only a couple factors that *really* count......

speed - the GTS wins here.

image quality - V5 wins here

FSAA, one of the biggest visual enchancements since the V1 vs. software - V5 wins here, both on quality and speed

Compatibility - V5 wins here, glide &amp; 3dfx is king when it comes to running old 3d games

Future compatibilty - GTS wins with its T&amp;L


But seriously.....what do you want? 30% extra fps in 16bit color? Big deal. I want image quality so the V5 is for me. and I can't keep stressing the fact that the V5 is FAST ENOUGH for the games I play, so I don't need the extra fps at loss of image quality.

and you can stop using the T&amp;L as an arguement - it STILL isn't a valid reason to get a GTS with so few games out that support it.

 

[Wingznut]

Here here, Prodigy.

Although, the V5 doesn't put out enough heat to require an extra case fan.

 

[Hardware]

If you do lightning via CPU it takes more then 30% (e.g. MDK2 116 FPS VS 42 VPS)
Just compare same image quality!

 

[Wingznut]

Well, there's one game.

 

[Hardware]

The newest NFS has good lightnig effects!
V5500 is just discarding them -> lower visual quality!

(I am not speaking for FSAA here)

As I said the V5500 will be choking with all NEW games!

 

[LordFrogi]

I have a computer to play a game with and I buy a video card to make it look better a mouse to play better monitor to ease our eyes. When are they going to come out with a keyboard that allows idiots to be able to debate.....

 

[Captain Ginyu]

prodigy: Sorry the GF2 has better nonfsaa image quality. OneEng: You have to be an idiot to say Ut has better graphics than Q3. The unreal engine is a pos compared to q3's. UT may be a better game but it has far inferior image quality and movement.

 

[damocles]

The V5500 is a damn good card which 99% of PC gamers out there would be happy with. It does have good FSAA and Glide is nice, play Diablo 2 or UT on a glide card and you will see and 'feel' the difference.
Would i buy one at the moment?, no. I would buy one of the competing cards, because it offers me other features which are a higher priority to me. Although i have played NFS5 in FSAA on a V5500 and that alone almost changed my mind.
For many people a V5500 would be the correct solution to their needs.
Personally i dont look too far into the future when looking at most new Video Card features, often i will be in the upgrade pipeline long before the new features are implemented. So far T&amp;L has been virtually useless 6+ months after its inital fanfare. Of course now it is a feature that is well worth looking at.
I dont think we can deny that 3dfx has missed out on a number of key features on their recent cards. 32 bit means ah heck all to me, but i too would like the option to run it.
Anyway, if i am going to buy a $300 US video card, i am not going to read a review and then run out and buy it. I will try the competing cards, talk to friends and way up the pros and cons of the competing cards (yes, they ALL have cons. Most buyers would do the same.
Obviously Wingnut is happy with his card, as is Hardware, etc etc. We look like zealots when we try and force our opnions down the throats of others, disregarding that they may have thought long and hard about their purchases.
It wasn't too long ago that many people scoffed at those that praised the Radeon's merits.
Have some consideration for others guys