the Ultimate card?

[mm2k]

I just bought a Radeon 64 VIVO, and although 3D performance is pretty damn good, I'm still left wondering how it would compare to the new GeForce 3 and all those Pro cards out there. (Image qality above frame rate).

Games like Severence: Blade of Darkness and American McGee's Alice look stunning, but how good could they be?

I was wondering how a card like 3D Labs Oxygene or the Elsa Gloria III Quadro II would look? Are these sorts of cards only really suited to rendering 3D images or are they top-notch for gaming too? I don't know if these cards support all the latested 3D gizmos - the T&L and Bump Mapping etc... and can they produce high frame rates?

The cost considerably more than even the GeForce 3, so what do you get for the money? Is it overkill or is there some serious ground to be gained in terms of quality?

Quality is a bit of a vague term, so I will just clarify: Colour, Resolution, Anti-Aliasing, Detail of Textures, and overall most importantly, realism.

With games like Colin McRay Rally 2.0 you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching real video replay when looking over your last lap with the Radeon (obviously not if you look closely but that it what it takes).

How far can you go with a card? And is when do you reach the point where the quality of the actual game programming becomes an issue or is this the limiting factor all along?

 

[Guest]

Here is what Tom said in a review of the original Quadro a while back:

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One thing right at the beginning: If you think that buying an expensive OpenGL graphics card gives you a better performance for games, think again. Generally the graphics cards we tested are optimized for professional applications. Quake players still get a very good price/performance ratio with GeForce graphics cards and should not expect a significantly better performance from our test candidates. On top of that the manufacturers of the products tested below have very little interest in supporting Direct3D games. Accordingly there are not even any Direct 3D drivers for Windows 95/98 and 2000 available for the Diamond Fire GL 1 Pro and the Evans & Sutherland Lightning 1200. The main reason is the OpenGL API for applications and also the operating system architecture. Windows 95/98 does not support multiprocessor systems; for this you need NT 4.0 or the recently launched Windows 2000. Additionally many high-end applications do not run under Windows 95/98. However, even though it might not seem to make any sense from a theoretical point of view, there are quite a few practical reasons for the lack of support for Windows 9x.
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Also, the game engine has a lot to do with how the graphics look, and is at least as important as the card you are running.

Regards,
Warden

 

[noko]

I agree, the 3d rendering of the Radeon has to be seen in order to be appreciated. Was playing Serious Sam (again) last night and the evening sky looked like a photograph, much more vivid then a movie or video. The rooms with reflections on the floor and objects look like they were raytraced. Drivers have come a long way and the biggest improvement has been the quality I've seen. ATI just released/leaked three new W3K drivers in the last 2 weeks.

 

[mm2k]

Sorry, I must be thick but what are W3K drivers? Do you mean W2K (like Windows 2000) or is this something else?

Just struggling a bit with hardware settings to get Armoured Fist 3 to run without crashing for more than 10 minutes. Though it seems to be down to 2 minutes now

 

[mm2k]

Cheers for that, I didn't see that review, also hadn't thought of the Direct3D issue, but you're right, most games I've got and have seen only support Direct3D, few offer OpenGL and even if they do, you also get the choice of Direct3D.

If these pro board manufactures can put together powerful rendering cards, couldn't they put they're minds to appling the technology to a modern games card with Direct3D support?

We could do with a bit of competition, after all, we've lost 3Dfx to nVidia, and ATi just have the Radeon to compete at the high-end gaming level, it pretty much an nVidia market - doesn't anyone else want a slice of the cake? Or is nVidia just too good at what it does?

 

[Guest]

The link to that article is here:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/00q2/000515/

Sorry I forgot to include it in my last post. If you read this article, it becomes apparent that for professional rendering applications, you simply don't need the same high texture handling capabilities that you do for games. The Quadro has this as its roots are in gaming, but the other cards do not. Now I don't do any professional graphics work and don't own any professional cards. But I got the impression from the article that some major architectural changes would be needed in the professional level chips to make them good for gaming.

Regards,
Warden