OpenGL Performance Using 3DNow! Quake II Version 3.20
Even though the TNT2 was the clear winner in the Direct3D-testing using the Expendable Demo, the same doesn't hold true for 3DNow! Quake II v3.20. For the Quake II testing we used the 'industry standard' CRUSHER.DM2 demo created by Brett Jacobs a.k.a. "3Fingers". For the Voodoo3 based board we installed the MiniGL v1.48 drivers and renamed the 3DFXGL.DLL file in the QUAKE2 directory to OPENGL32.DLL to take advantage of the 3DNow!-optimization for Voodoo3. All testing was done at 1024x769x16bpp.
Voodoo3 pulls into the lead under 3DNow! Quake II overtaking the TNT2. This is mainly due to the special Glide-driver of Quake2, which is optimized better than the default OpenGL-driver. It's still interesting to note that the TNT2 sticks up pretty well against Voodoo3 running Glide. Savage4 is surprisingly already edged out, the frame rate scored with K6-2 is identical to the K6-3 frame-rate results. Matrox needs to improve its OpenGL-ICD for G400. The Direct3D-performance of G400 is certainly excellent, however under OpenGL-games it takes a big hit when the CPU is working hard. Rage128 is sticking up quite well actually, particularly if you compare it to the Matrox G400.
Summary
One thing is certainly still true, an owner of a K6-2 or K6-3-system can hardly go wrong with a product from 3Dfx, at least Voodoo2 and Voodoo3 are good performers with an excellent 3DNow!-support. NVIDIA has indeed managed to do an excellent work on their new drivers as well. TNT2 is the best 3DNow!-performer in Direct3D, which is still the platform for the majority of 3D-games. It's very impressive to see the difference between the old and the new drivers for TNT2. The OpenGL-performance of TNT2 is not quite as high as Voodoo3's Glide-performance under Quake2, however, it's not far behind. This story looks very different with Quake3. Id's upcoming game requires a real OpenGL-ICD, which is the strength of NVIDIA and the weakness of 3Dfx. Once the new Q3test-version is out you will see that TNT2 performs better than Voodoo3 in this OpenGL-game as well. In regards to compatibility, we recommend hanging tight before installing a NVIDIA TNT2 based graphics adapter into an ALI-V based motherboard until both NVIDIA and ALi get all of their drivers working together. If you own an FIC PA-2013 and an AMD-K6 III 450 MHz we advise to wait until FIC understands how to fix their onboard power supply before installing a Voodoo3 3500 (183 MHz). The real surprise in this comparison was the Matrox G400 MAX. It is not quite true that G400 is simply requiring a lot of CPU-power, it performed very well under Direct3D even with a K6-2 400. Once Matrox can bring the G400-OpenGL-ICD up to speed, we'll have another tough competitor in the 3D-graphics market for Socket7. 3Dfx do certainly not own this market alone anymore.
In the works at Tom's Hardware Guide is a complete review of the Matrox G400 using a variety of processors and game titles followed by a complete performance comparison of all the 3D graphics adapters.
