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- Rage128 vs Voodoo2 vs 3Dfx Banshee - (Includes tweaking info/tips) 7/05/99 |
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This page has my original comments and Quake 2performance results from the recent 3D Game News. I ran Quake 2 tests on two B&W G3/400's - identical except for the graphics cards - one had a Rage128 (rev B) and the other had a IXMicro Game Rocket and Voodoo2 12MB Card. Quake 2 Performance: 3Dfx Banshee vs Rage128 I installed Quake 2 and ran some quick timedemo's on both B&W G3/400's - one with a Game Rocket (IXmicro 3fdx Banshee with today's Mesa3DfxEngine extension) and one with a rev B Rage128. Both systems had the video cards in the 66MHz PCI slot and were run at the same game settings (16 bit color, no 8-Bit textures setting). The table below shows the results:
Note: That's no mistake - the 3dfx card was slower at lower resolutions but a bit faster at 1024x768. Increasing default appl. memory from 50MB to 90MB made no difference on the scores. The Rage128 in my opinion looked as good or better and I need to adjust the gamma settings on the 3Dfx card as it was very dark. If I had to give the edge in appearance from the first exposure to the game, I'd have to say the Rage128 looked better, but I'll reserve that final judgement until later. Stay tuned for screenshots and more - I also had copies delivered to Randall and Ruffin today and they will be providing their comments and reviews as well. Quake2 Rage128 Screenshots: Since the Game Rocket screenshots in Quake 2 (and Q3test) come out with a severe blue tint (I even tried the RGB swap setting - no help), I've only included Rage128 pictures for now. Clicking on the thumbnails will load a 800x600 full size version (about 70KB JPEG files).
  
As noted at the Game News page a few days back, I ran tests with and without shadows enabled in Quake 2 for all 3 cards. The default s shadow setting is off; the command to enable them is 'gl_shadows 1' (gl_shadows 0 turns them off). You can add 'set gl_shadows "1"' to your config.cfg file to make it a default option. I did some tests to see what performance effect shadows had with the Voodoo2, Game Rocket (Banshee) and Rage128. To save space on this page I did some tests to see what performance effect shadows had with the Voodoo2, Game Rocket (Banshee) and Rage128. The table below shows the results. The Voodoo2 scores used my Voodoo2.ini file shown on the Voodoo2 tweaking page.
All 3dfx cards (Voodoo2 and Banshee) used the B3 Mesa3dfxEngine, Rage128 used the latest Apple Rage128 drivers (ATI Video Update 1.0). Both Rage128 and Game Rocket were in the 66MHz PCI slot of a B&W G3. I suspect the lack of multitexturing in a single pass that is supported on the Voodoo2 and Rage128 is one reason the Banshee is slower in Quake 2.
As noted last week in my Voodoo2 Tweaking page, Quake 1 and 2 both benefit from faster memory settings and other tweaks without overclocking the card. Since I had put the Stealth Voodoo2 cooler on a PC Voodoo2 card my framerates below include only the memory/PCI/Buffer tweaks - the card clock rate was still set to the default 90MHz. I still saw major performance gains. Without a cooler, even when used in the 9600 which has a large fan blowing on the PCI cards, 100Mhz would lock up the Game Wizard after only several minutes, and one cooled PC Voodoo2 I have will not even run 100Mhz - so overclocking is risky and not a sure thing even with a cooler. Note: the following tables of framerate comparisons were from a Apple Blue and White G3/400, but I saw nearly identical gains (% wise) from a 9600/350 as well. Gains varied by demo map and gain, but were as high as 35%, an amazing improvement.
My Voodoo2 tweaking page also has more reader tips and performance scores with various 3Dfx ini file settings. Stay tuned for more extensive coverage on Quake 2, including maps and mods from the PC.
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for the latest news/tips/reviews on Mac Voodoo/3dfx info!
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