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3D Graphics Cards: The Essentials
by vicwang | Aug 19 '00
There have been some great articles on upgrading to a new graphics card (AKA "3D card" or "video card"), but many of them ignore the fundamental question: what do you really have to gain by upgrading? Or, an even more fundamental...

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Comments on 3D Graphics Cards: The Essentials" (11 total)

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Re: TNT Ultra (Reply to this comment)
by puter
I guess now that you mention it, I don't really remember hearing of a TNT Ultra, either--even though I included it in the HTML mess that I left in my very first comment on this article. I suppose if someone really wanted, they could overclock a regular TNT and call it a TNT Ultra. :-)

- puter

Jan 09 '01
9:40 am PST

Re: Thanks (Reply to this comment)
by puter
Hi Vic,

There's a somewhat less-used special character you can add to HTML called the "non-breaking space." If you've used any Microsoft web page editors, you've probably seen it before. You can use several consecutive non-breaking spaces to indent text.

As with all HTML special character codes, you start with an ampersand, enter the "code," then end with a semicolon. I know that profiles recognize it, so I'm guessing opinions will recognize it also.   

If you can't see the special character code two times in a row at the end of the previous paragraph, then comments also recognize the special characters. In that case, you should at least be able to see this: &nbsp;

- puter

Jan 09 '01
9:32 am PST

Re: TNT Ultra (Reply to this comment)
by vicwang
"Was there actually a TNT Ultra?"

I was almost certain there was at the time of the article, but now I can't find a gingle reference to its existence (which would suggest there never was one :-). I've updated the article accoringly.

Thanks KnightRT,
-vicwang

Jan 08 '01
10:41 am PST

A curiosity (Reply to this comment)
by KnightRT
Was there actually a TNT Ultra? Or was that line in reference to the overclocked Hercules cards of the time?

I bought a system in late '98 with the original TNT.. quite possibly the best hardware acceleration card I've owned. Fond memories of that one. It's actually doing better in game compatibility than the GTS in my Dell.

Excellent article,

-KnightRT

Dec 25 '00
8:23 am PST

Good thing I waited to get my GeForce DDR card... (Reply to this comment)
by Wolf_Knight
You're not alone in your view that you should stay just one step behind the "bleeding edge" technologies so that you don't break the bank with a video card purchase.

Now, if I can just get my ViewSonic E773, PC Power and Cooling Turbo-Cool 425 PS upgrade, as well as a full version of Windows 98 ME, my new computer will be up and running...

Speaking of which... How about I E-mail you its specs sometime? I'd love to hear your opinion on how well I designed this thing. :-)

Dec 17 '00
4:14 pm PST

bottle necks (Reply to this comment)
by jjbrickley
excellent description of the various pipeline bottlenecks between geometry, fill and cpu. One I wish I had written myself, except I know less about the gaming cards than the high end professional cards....

Dec 16 '00
7:00 am PST

Re: Magnificent... (Reply to this comment)
by vicwang
Thanks Gr8ful! I think what many benchmarking articles don't quite grasp is the concept of "statistically significant". On all the benchmarks I've used, the results from test-to-test can vary on the exact same machine, sometimes as much as 10%. So if I used such a benchmark and one system outperforms another by 1%, that pretty much means nothing. Obviously benchmarks need to be done MANY times, and an average taken...

Of course, even then, many people STILL don't grasp the concept of being "humanly noticeable!" Lots of the 1 GHZ PIII vs Athlon comparisons come to mind. They tend to exaggerate to an almost ridiculous extent the extremely small differences in performance. And then they completely gloss over MAJOR non-technical aspects of the two products: the supply of 1+ GHZ Athlons is greater than the supply of 1 GHZ PIII's by a factor of 10-1, Athlons are much cheaper and more readily available, 1 GHZ PIII's often require uncoventional cooling solutions, etc.

-vicwang

Sep 27 '00
10:35 am PDT

Magnificent... (Reply to this comment)
by Gr8ful
You are one of the few computer writers that I actually learn from every time I read your reviews.

By the way, just for fun we used one of the benchmark programs at work to test a Voodoo3 3000 AGP against another Voodoo3 3000 AGP and guess what?...

It beat itself by 2.4% in 2D acceleration! Is that a gas or what? LOL. So, I guess not all cards are created equal by their makers.

:-) Gr8ful

Sep 05 '00
7:44 pm PDT

Actually, about the only thing... (Reply to this comment)
by El_Terrible
Actually about the only thing it can't speed up is the internet...

I think it depends on the card. If the card isn't that dependant on the CPU then it can speed up load times of your apps sure it can.

The bottom line is the PC will not run faster but will appear faster as the CPU isn't working as much.

Sep 05 '00
5:23 pm PDT

Thanks (Reply to this comment)
by vicwang
A huge thanks for the advice. I really appreciate the help. Unfortuantely, the only problem is that Epinions doesn't let us use HTML that advanced, so it didn't work when I tried it out ;-).

It's not so much an actual "table" that I would like to make, but just a way for Epinions to recognize spaces. It seems like whenever there's a tab, or even a series of spaces, they are automatically removed in the actual review and turned into one space. Any idea how I can do that?

As for the Voodoo Rush, you're technically right, since the VR was the product that came between the Voodoo 1 and the Voodoo 2. I guess you could say the same about the Banshee, since it actually was released AFTER the Voodoo 2. In terms of performance, though, the Rush was pretty weird since it underperformed the Voodoo 1, just like the Banshee underperformed the V2 in multitexture games (which is pretty much any game worth playing, really). That's why I stuck the Banshee in where it is, although it could really go either way.

As for the S3 Virge, that certainly brings back all kinds of memories. I guess you could consider that a 0.2 generation 3D card, considering its earth-shattering performance ;-).

Thanks again,
-Vic

Aug 23 '00
5:48 pm PDT

A missing card (Reply to this comment)
by puter
Hi Vic,

Actually, I think the Voodoo Rush is the card that should be listed in generation 1.5 instead of the Banshee. The Voodoo Rush was slightly slower than the original Voodoo Graphics, but was capable of both 2D and 3D graphics, just as the Banshee was. The Banshee was released a little bit later than the Voodoo2.

By the way, you haven't listed my first "3D" video card, the S3 ViRGE! :-p

I'm not sure if Epinions allows tables, but I think something like the following is what you're after in your "Video Card Generations" table (ignore the PRE tag if it shows up):

<PRE>

<table border="0" color="020202">
<tr>
<td>Generation</td>
<td>3dfx</td>
<td>NVidia</td>
<td>ATI</td>
<td>Matrox</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>Voodoo</td>
<td>Riva 128</td>
<td>Rage</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>1.5</td>
<td>Voodoo Rush</td>
<td>Riva 128 ZX</td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2</td>
<td>Voodoo2</td>
<td>Riva TNT</td>
<td>Rage Pro</td>
<td>G200</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2.5</td>
<td></td>
<td>Riva TNT Ultra</td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>3</td>
<td>Voodoo3</td>
<td>Riva TNT2</td>
<td>Rage 128</td>
<td>G400</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>3.5</td>
<td>Voodoo3 3500TV</td>
<td>TNT2 Ultra</td>
<td>Rage Fury</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>4</td>
<td></td>
<td>Geforce SDR</td>
<td>Rage Fury MAXX</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>4.5</td>
<td></td>
<td>Geforce DDR</td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>5</td>
<td>Voodoo5</td>
<td>Geforce 2 GTS</td>
<td>Radeon</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>5.5</td>
<td>Voodoo6</td>
<td>Geforce 2 Ultra</td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</table>

</PRE>

Aug 23 '00
5:06 pm PDT