CD Demo V5 5500 4x FSAA WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[kverdon]

I've died and gone to heaven <G>.

Just installed my 3dfx V5 5500 Vid Card and enabled 4x Full Screen Anti-Aliasing. All I can say is WOW!!!. If you thought CM looked good before, with 4xFSAA its drop dead gorgeous!. Now to just get the full game in my hands. (Think work would get suspicious if I called in sick for a week <G>).

Kevin

[Colin]

Screenshots?

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And if we abandon any platform, I can assure you it will not be the Macintosh.

-Steve

My website!

[krm]

How much was the V5500 if you don't mind me asking?

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krm - King of useless posts;)

[Maximus]

If I'm not mistaken they are quite expensive. Something like $300 or more.

[Danno]

yeah, I'd like to see some screenshots too. Around $300!? wow...That's alot of money for a video card, to me anyway, but hey if you've got it, use it!

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"It's a hardball world son. We've got to keep our heads until this peace craze blows over."

[CoolColJ]

Well imagine playing Cm without the twinkling, the creeping and crawlies That's what it looks like

ccj

[thomasj]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by kverdon:

I've died and gone to heaven <G>.

Just installed my 3dfx V5 5500 Vid Card and enabled 4x Full Screen Anti-Aliasing. All I can say is WOW!!!. If you thought CM looked good before, with 4xFSAA its drop dead gorgeous!. Now to just get the full game in my hands. (Think work would get suspicious if I called in sick for a week <G>).

Kevin<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Your killing me, still waiting on my cards to get in, that darn recall set back my preorder it guess .

Can't wait for them to get here now, especially with your feedback on it now!

[Mattias]

Kverdon,

1. What CPU are you using?

2. Is the frame rate drop noticeable when switching between no, 2x and 4x FSAA?

Interested in this feature myself. It seems to be about the only real selling point for the V5 card right now though.

Then again, since CM is the reason for having a computer I guess Ill have to go with what is best for the game.

M.

[This message has been edited by Mattias (edited 06-09-2000).]

[bighead]

Has anyone tried Gefore 2 yet? It also has FSAA feature. I was wondering this feature would make any diffrent to CM. Guess it does ahh?

[CoolColJ]

There is a huge drop in frame rate when you go from 2xFSAA to 4xFSAA.

The geforce does FSAA in hardware too, and the difference is remarkable, but i wouldn't use it for resolutions above 1280x1024, the framerate gets mightly low.

I'd rather get a Geforce GTS 2, since the V5500, only has 16 megs per chip (32 in total) , but each chip has to have the same tetxures.

ccj

[Mattias]

Eh, Cool...

I suppose you have actually seen CM in action with a V5 5500 then? Since CM is not massively frame rate dependent I would have though it would be acceptable even at x4 FSAA, it´s not online Quake after all.

No, Nvidia does not have dedicated hardware for FSAA in any way comparable to 3Dfx.

No, it is 64 Mb on the V5 5500 board, 32 Mb to each chip.

Then again, unless the V5 5500 FSAA effect in CM is absolutely fantastic Ill probably go a Nvidia card since it is generally faster and packs more "modern" features.

M.

[This message has been edited by Mattias (edited 06-09-2000).]

[kverdon]

I had the game set to 1024x768 4x FSAA and it was perfectly smooth on scrolling about the map. I've got it running on a PIII 600 (non coppermine) overclocked to 648 with 192mb ram. Looks great too. The card will run you $250-$300 depending on where you get it. I don't yet, have the savvy to get 3D screenshots and I've heard its a bit tricky on a V5 as you have to grab the right area of the card memory to get the FSAA in a screenshot. Hopefully someone can clue me in or perhaps someone else with a V5 can do it.

With other prgrams the V5 is quite nice. Everything I've got will run at 800x600 with 4x FSAA and some programs even 1024x768 FSAA. Don't let this fool you. I cannot see much of a difference between 800x600 and 1024x768 in most games but when you enable 800x600 4xFSAA WOW!. 800x600 4xFSAA certainly looks better to me that 1024x768 without it.

Having said that, there are a few caveats. FSAA only works for rendered 3d objects. What this means is if you have a program like a simulator that has a 2d cockpit or frame, then the cockpit/frame will not get the benefit of FSAA, the rest of the screen will however. Even M1TP2 looks pretty good with 4xFSAA and its 640x480!. Did not mean to turn this post into a 3DFX commercial but I did want to let people know that CM does look GREAT on a V5 with FSAA.

Kevin

[This message has been edited by kverdon (edited 06-09-2000).]

[Malmvig]

Nvidia with their GeForce2 GTS support 400% FSAA and is in that way simulary to V5 5500 4xFSAA. It should however be mentioned that neither of these cards have enough Memory Bandwidth to rendered high resolutions with 4xFSAA. Infact no GPU's does that at present time.

Henrik Malmvig

[Juardis]

The main point is combat mission with FSAA looks great. I posted a similar observation a couple of weeks ago. No, I don't have my 5500 yet but the jaggies and shimmering are way too obvious to me. Now, which card you use is irrelevant so long as it supports FSAA in some fashion. With the GTS, it's a driver thing and I've heard, but cannot confirm, that CM looks good on that card as well. I prefer 3dfx over nVidia, but for the good of the group, I'll put aside my bias and say that either card should work fine with CM.

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Jeff Abbott

[Mattias]

Kverdon,

Thanks, exactly the kind of answer I wanted. Real world (CM that is) observations are what will decide it for me and since the card would set me back almost 400$ (accursed 25% VAT) it is vital to get info from the "horses mouth".

And no, you don’t sound like a commercial, just that as soon as you say something is good on this forum you can bet your life that someone will come along to tell you how utterly rotten it actually is. Just seems to work that way, could be me next time.

M.

[TZEENCH]

Hey Does the smoke work with the Voodoo 5500 ?

[thomasj]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mattias:

Kverdon,

Thanks, exactly the kind of answer I wanted. Real world (CM that is) observations are what will decide it for me and since the card would set me back almost 400$ (accursed 25% VAT) it is vital to get info from the "horses mouth".

And no, you don’t sound like a commercial, just that as soon as you say something is good on this forum you can bet your life that someone will come along to tell you how utterly rotten it actually is. Just seems to work that way, could be me next time.

M.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Where you at, having to pay a 25% VAT? I am here in the Netherlands and maybe I could help Being US Army and all and VAT exempt!

[Mattias]

Thanks Thomas! Ill drop you an E-mail in a bit

It’s Sweden by the way. A nice enough place but expensive, for the Swedes that is. Quite all right nowadays if you are a tourist, preferably armed with Dollars or Pounds.

M.

[Lee]

The GeForce can do FSAA but it takes a terrible frame rate hit

because it does it in software. The voodoo 5500 does FSAA in hardware

and is thus much faster at it. But the 5500 also takes a big hit when

going from 2x to 4x.

The only video card out there that can do 4x FSAA and still run silky smooth

under all conditions (even 1024x768, 32 bit color) is the voodoo 6000

(4 voodoo 4 processors onboard ). But they cost $600 and you would

need a very fast computer to keep up with the card.

[Guest rune]

Lee,

You are incorrect. It does take a framerate hit, but fsaa on GeForce cards ARE hardware. See voodooextreme.com or sharkys to read a review on the latest drivers.

Rune

[GriffinCheng+]

Agreed. Check out tom's hardware site on this issue. The latest detonator driver supports fsaa on Geforce/DDR/GTS2.

I am using it right now but only I find fsaa is not so pronounced @ 1024, even if I turn on my Geforce fsaa to the max.

Ideas?

Griffin @ home

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"+" is just the beginning. Expect to see "GriffinCheng76", "GriffinCheng(105)" or "GriffinChengA3E8" more should Forum problems occur again

[Lee]

The GeForce cards can do FSAA, but they don't have the kind of dedicated

acceleration that the voodoo cards have, IIRC. That's why the

performance hit is so severe on GF cards. I just saw benches with GF

and v5500 head to head and the v5500 was winning easily with FSAA on.

[Wolfe]

Some FSAA pics:

http://users.erols.com/chare/gifs/panth_no.jpg

http://users.erols.com/chare/gifs/panth_2x.jpg

http://users.erols.com/chare/gifs/panth_4x.jpg

http://users.erols.com/chare/gifs/m4-2_no.jpg

http://users.erols.com/chare/gifs/m4-2_2x.jpg

http://users.erols.com/chare/gifs/m4-2_4x.jpg

http://users.erols.com/chare/gifs/chur_no.jpg

http://users.erols.com/chare/gifs/chur_4x.jpg

http://users.erols.com/chare/gifs/chur2_no.jpg

http://users.erols.com/chare/gifs/chur2_4x.jpg

Please don't kill the server. Please?

The Panther non-FSAA pic has some strange white area around the text. I set it for 'Fastest Speed' in the FSAA section of 3dfx tools and it produced this anomaly. It doesn't happen in 2x or 4x mode or when setting it to use Single Chip. Oddly enough, 'Fastest Speed' is by far the slowest. I'm using the leaked Beta drivers, so that may be it.

Also, the ground doesn't look nearly as bad as it shows up in the pics. I just used print-screen, so any post filter isn't applied. Also, how does the sky compare to you TNT/GeForce users?

The V5 is very cool. Quite a leap from my old V2. I'd gotten quite sick of 800x600x16. The V5 has a very good 22-bit mode when it's running at 16-bit. I can't tell the diff between it's 16-bit (er: 22-bit) and 32-bit. What games are good for showing off color differences?

The Beta drivers don't seem to want to allow Unreal or UT to run. :-( I use the Beta so I can use the LOD bias tweak, which is very cool especially in Half-Life.

The tunnel ride into the complex in Half-Life is awesome in 4x mode. No more texture swimming (esp. canyon walls near the helicopter) and you really have to look hard to find any aliasing. 2x wasn't as impressive as I had hoped, unfortunately. It still had a decent amount of crawling edges and a bit of texture swimming in 2x mode. And 1024x768 is definitely the res you would want to run it in visual-wise. I have a K6-2 450 so the lower framerates don't phase me as much, and 800x600 in 4x didn't seem to make the edges 'solid' enough for me.

X-Wing Alliance is a whole new game. The *HORRIBLE* crawling edges on ships and insallations is 95% gone. It's a huge difference! Though I think it may take another layer of AA to get rid of it completely.

The buildings in Thief and Thief-2 are now much more 'solid' with 4xFSAA. The same can be said about the building and AFVs in CM.

2x looks pretty good in CM, but 4x is better. Though neither seemed to completely get rid of the sparkling trees (distant trees still produce this effect). The building crawlies and shimmering are cured in 4x mode, however. BTW, lots of smoke is a frame rate killer in 4x mode.

Conversely, has anyone else noticed how much CPU power the smoke and fire animations take?

Too bad I don't have any money left for an upgrade.

- Chris

P.S. The card is *huge*: 9 1/2 inches long. A few people have bought it and found out it runs smack into their hard drive cage. As Norm might say: Measure twice, insert once.

[Blackhorse]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Wolfe:

Some FSAA pics <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Wolfe,

You've convinced me I need to get one of those cards. The screen shots are outstanding.

Thanks,

Chris

[Mattias]

Wolfe,

Thanks! Good pictures, good job!

M.