View Full Version : 3DFX Glide and GeForce?
As we all know, 3DFX created the very bada$$ Glide software rendering. Nvidia created the very bada$$ GeForce chipset. Then, Nvidia bought 3DFX, and I would assume the rights to Glide. Does the latest drivers for the GeForce chipset, both 2 and 3, support Glide? I have it as an option, but I replaced my Voodoo 3 3000 with a Hercules 3D Prophet II MX without formatting, so I don't know if still shows Glide as an option in most games because I didn't format with the upgrade, or if Glide is an option because I downloaded the latest drivers, and the GeForce now is supported by Glide.
The real reason I ask, is I went from my 16MB 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 AGP with 3DFX Glide software rendering to a 32MB Hercules 3D Prophet II MX AGP with Direct3D Software rendering. In most games, I've noticed a severe drop in performance from the Voodoo 3, and I'm wondering if I'll get a boost from using Glide instead of Direct3D. But before I do that I want to know if anyone else has Glide as on option on a GeForce 2 card after installing the latest drivers.
Mictlan
07-25-01, 12:08 PM
Instead of using a software rendering option you really sound enable the hardware rendering. This will increase you performance.
I haven't seen an option to use glide with the GeForce. Even if nVidia bought 3dfx Glide engine, it has fallen to the side to leave the nFinity engine as the new king of the hill.
You might also want to try OpenGL. Go to http://www.glsetup.com and download the driver support (its 50MB, but supposed to be good). See if it supports your card first.
Mictlan (Jul 25, 2001 12:08 p.m.):
Instead of using a software rendering option you really sound enable the hardware rendering. This will increase you performance.
My bad, I am using hardware rendering. I just kept calling it software rendering. Long day.
Super (Jul 25, 2001 04:57 p.m.):
You might also want to try OpenGL. Go to http://www.glsetup.com and download the driver support (its 50MB, but supposed to be good). See if it supports your card first.
Isn't glsetup just an application that finds their recommendation of the best drivers for your card ?
It would be much better just using the detonator 12.90s..
My guess is the glsetup drivers are outdated.
Mord-Sith
07-25-01, 10:39 PM
ok first of ditch glide and use openGL secondly DONT go to the openGL page get the 12.9 dets
The only way to get glide to work on a geforce would be to use a wraper and I dont know if there is one. The only reason why you would ever want to use a glide wraper is so you could use glide only aps on your GeForce. I still have an old voodoo2 12mb setting around just incase I want to use glide. The only ap that ive ever found that I would want to keep my voodoo2 for is ULTRA HLE which is still IMHO the best n64 emu.
RRRrrrriiiiiiiggggghhhhhhtttttttt.......that's way too much work.
What confuses me is I went from a 13MB V3 3k to a 32MB GF2, and I'm getting less performance. I'm using Direct3D on the GF2. I'm thinking of yanking the GF2 and replacing it with a Voodoo 5 5500. 64MB and Voodoo for less than $125. And I don't care what anyone says about 3DFX cards. They're solid, and I've NEVER had a problem with them. So I don't care if they don't have support anymore now that Nvidia bought 3DFX.
The advantage with the geforce cards are their ability to play well on all types of (specifically) direct 3d enabled games/platforms. The voodoo is unable (and lacks some of the umph needed) to work in direct 3d or even openGL. Bottom line: the geforce cards are more flexible (and the MXs are quite affordable).
Glide is/was great for games like UT that developed their software for that rendering. I had a voodoo 3 3000 myself, but found most of the other games I was playing lacking in framerates, etc. I have been very pleased with my gf cards (geforce 256, geforce 2 MX, and now the GF3), and I don't hesistate to buy whatever game I want.
I'd love to get a GeForce 3, but that's kinda outta my price range right now. But I was impressed with the Voodoo 3, and the Voodoo 5 is a 64MB card, which should be plenty good for what I run for now.
Hey I was in the same boat you were about a month ago. My situation was i wanted to upgrade my old voodoo 3 16meg agp card and get a nice geforce 2 card. I ended up buying the geforce 2 gts pro 64 meg ddr at best buy just to ttry out and then i would bring it back no question asked if i didtnt like it. Well i installed it and the damn computer had driver conflicts with the voodoo 3 drivers so i reinstalled win98 se and everything worked. Well The graphics look alittle better with decent framerates but to me i dont think it was worth the money just yet. I reinstalled my voodoo 3 and overclocked it to 197 mhz no problems and counterstrike looks just as nice to me compared to the geforce card. Plus right now i use a play station emulator in 3dfx which looks a hell alot nicer than opengl or directx. Unreal T looks about the same with the 3dfx card and is faster than the geforce card. I even think my windows is quicker when running my voodoo 3 card overclocked. Keep in mind now i had my geforce 2 card overclocked to 236/448 the whole time. I decided to return the geforce 2 pro card and stick in my old voodoo 3 card and im much happier now. I think the only thing that will be worth upgradeing for me right now is the geforce 2 ultra or geforce 3 mx. If the ultra was like 150 with shipping id probbly get one now. I think the geforce 3 is a waste of money until the mx version comes out. I am just waiting for the prices to drop but since nvidia owns everything now it dosnt seem to happen much nowadays. To me i think Nvidia just brought the video card industry back a year or two when 3dfx went out of buisness. I would buy the vodooo 5500 right now, but to me 100 or more dollars without shipping is just too much. I would definitly buy one for 60 +shipping because those cards are actually just as good as the ultra when it comes to the games right now. But in another year the benchmarks wont be favoverd anymore because of all the graphic engines that will utilize geforce and mainly geforce 3 i.e Doom 3 Unreal 2
Hope that helps
I dont understand why you dont see a dif between these cards. I went from a v3 2000 to an asus v7700 pro 64 meg and the dif is like WOW. Im using the 11.01 drivers with the coolbits reg to unlock vsync in d3d which makes a huge dif.Quake2 crusher demo gave me 68 fps with the v3 and 101 with v7700@2x aa.Ut averages 135 fps in d3d.
Oh, I do see a difference. A bad difference. I LOST quality upgrading to the GF2. The ONLY game I saw an increase in is American McGee's Alice, and that's because it wants 32MB of video memory. UT, ST: DS9 - The Fallen, Diablo II - Lord of Destruction all see a significant and noticable loss in framerate. And I was pretty much running them at the same settings on the Voodoo 3. Which confuses me. I figured the 32MB GeForce 2 MX would outperform the 16MB Voodoo 3.
[Oc]Wa11y (Jul 27, 2001 08:35 p.m.):
Oh, I do see a difference. A bad difference. I LOST quality upgrading to the GF2. The ONLY game I saw an increase in is American McGee's Alice, and that's because it wants 32MB of video memory. UT, ST: DS9 - The Fallen, Diablo II - Lord of Destruction all see a significant and noticable loss in framerate. And I was pretty much running them at the same settings on the Voodoo 3. Which confuses me. I figured the 32MB GeForce 2 MX would outperform the 16MB Voodoo 3.
The GF2 MX very well should, but the geforce are very driver dependent and I would bet that the drivers you used were outdated and were not performing well...
If you search for reviews of the GF2 cards and comparison benchmarks (as well as image quality comparisons) with the voodoos on the web, you will find the geforce winning all of them all the time. The reason is the bandwidth and pipeline advances Nvidia has made since the days of voodoo 3. Perhaps UT looks nicer, but I couldn't tell... and I ran everything at 32 bit from the get-go, which the geforce does well... If I remember right, the voodoo didn't even know what 32 bit was.
Right, Voodoo only does 16 bit, whereas the Geforce does 32 bit. That's the ONLY change I made to video settings in UT. I was running 1024x768 video resolution in UT, with every video option cranked up to full, and it was smooth as buttah. Pop in the GF2, download and install the latest GF2 drivers from Hercules (12.40 load), reinstall UT, use Direct3D as my driver, set the option to the same as with my Voodoo, except for 32-bit, and it's slower. The one thing I need to double check is anti-aliasing. The Voodoo didn't have any, but I'm not sure what it's set to with my GF2. Maybe I'll drop that, but I'm pretty sure it's low, maybe 2x. I might shut it off completely. Jaggies never bothered me.
Chief (Jul 27, 2001 11:14 a.m.):
I dont understand why you dont see a dif between these cards. I went from a v3 2000 to an asus v7700 pro 64 meg and the dif is like WOW. Im using the 11.01 drivers with the coolbits reg to unlock vsync in d3d which makes a huge dif.Quake2 crusher demo gave me 68 fps with the v3 and 101 with v7700@2x aa.Ut averages 135 fps in d3d.
First at the time it wasnt worth the money to upgrade, second i have a voodoo 3000 running at 197 mhz your voodoo 3 2000 is slow , 3rd you dont see much difference going from 16 to 32 bit and my FPS werent much an improvment from my video card.
[quote][Oc]Wa11y (Jul 27, 2001 08:35 p.m.):
Oh, I do see a difference. A bad difference. I LOST quality upgrading to the GF2. The ONLY game I saw an increase in is American McGee's Alice, and that's because it wants 32MB of video memory. UT, ST: DS9 - The Fallen, Diablo II - Lord of Destruction all see a significant and noticable loss in framerate. And I was pretty much running them at the same settings on the Voodoo 3. Which confuses me. I figured the 32MB GeForce 2 MX would outperform the 16MB Voodoo 3.[/quoteI
To me i didnt see much better framerates than my voodoo 3 using a geforce 2 pro 64 ddr. Its not worth the money to upgrade right now to a geforce 2 pro from a voodoo 3 that is overclocked to at least 190 mhz. I tried the kyro 2 and it sucks totally compared to my vooodoo 3 overclocked . The only thing i would take right now is the Geforce 2 ultra or geforce 3 when they come down to at least 150 then i will upgrade. Dont waste you r money on anything less than a ultra trust me. A overclocked ultra will defitnetly satisfy me for 150 bucks from a voodoo 3 overclock .
Most times you won't see a difference in frame rate, unless you turn up the resolution. That's when you'll see the difference. Sure, my voodoo 3 3000 might be good at 1024x768, but try turning it higher, and you get slowdown. That's the ONLY reason to get a better video card: to get high resolution with a good framerate. The only reason I went from 16MB to 32MB, was I was getting low framerates in American McGee's Alice with my 16MB card. Alice recommends 32MB. What I'll end up doing is getting a Voodoo 5 with 64MB card. I'm really impressed by Glide, and like using it, which is why I'm going with a Voodoo instead of GeForce. That and a GeForce 3 is out of my price range (or at least how much I WANT to spend) whereas the Voodoo is cheap.
Wait just a sec before you do that ,
I would go ahead and buy the gainward geforce 2 pro for like 150+ship because this card comes with 4.5 ns ram. You could overclock this card almost to ultra specs. I mean am impressed with glide too but the voodoo 5500 is 110 w/ shipping and i still think thats alot of money for the card which has no support. http://www.atacom.com/program/atacom_www.cgi?cart_id=4642028_141_152_167_62&USER_ID=www&Pagecode=2|VIDA|MEMV
There is the link to this new card which has 4.5 ns ram called golden pro made by gainward and the speed is like 220/450 for 147 without shipping and its NEW and HOT. I would buy this card right now because this card will beat the leadteak which only has 5.5 ns ram plus its cheaper. If you can get a voodoo 5500 under 90 bucks with shipping id go for it. Ebay is the best place to check as i have been checking there often too for one . If you want really good FPS right now and in the future games probbly the gainward which i listed is the best bang for the buck right now. Unless you want to spend 199+ship for a visiontek ULTRA with 4ns ram. I have a feeling though with this new Gainward 4.5ns ram others will show up and eventually reduce the price of the ultra probbly in a few weeks.
I think i might actually buy that gainward this week for 150 i think that might be a good upgrade from my voodoo 3. The visiontek costs 200+ 11 for fedex. The gainward is 147 and 10.38 for using ups post ground which stinks. So for 160 bucks you cant go wrong unless you want to spend 55 more dollars and get the ultra with 4ns ram or you could go for the v5500 3dfx for 110 with shipping. If you go to best buy or comp usa they sell a gts pro card made by PNY with 5ns ram for 250 bucks +tax .
Richard
07-29-01, 01:17 AM
I have a GeForce2 GTS (64 MB) and a V5 5500 PCI.
Which one do I use for games? Why, the V5 of course! :) In just about every case, the V5 is the peer of the GeForce2 in speed. If it was just a matter of speed I'd give the nod to the GeForce2, but that's not what its all about. The V5's image quality is generally speaking superior to that of the Nvidia cards. Take Diablo2 for example. Looks 10x better with the V5. Like Unreal or Unreal Tournament? Booyah. V5 all the way. How about CounterStrike? 2x FSAA 1024*768*32 looks incredible with the V5 and is smooth as silk pajamas on satin sheets.
Granted, people will exclaim that the V5 lacks T&L. Ok, this is true, but for every game that I play it has yet to make a lick of difference. Will future games look better with a T&L engine? More than likely, and lemme tell ya something. I used to believe in the idea that X card was more future proof than Y card. Well, let me assure you that there is no such thing as a more future proof card. The only card that is currently out that I would describe as "future ready" would be the GeForce3, and even then; by the time games actually utilize the GeForce3's GPU you'll have even better cards available.
Moral: Don't buy video cards based on what is to come. Buy them for the now. The V5 play a TON of games very well, and in many cases better than the GeForce2.
[Oc]Wa11y (Jul 28, 2001 08:27 p.m.):
Most times you won't see a difference in frame rate, unless you turn up the resolution. That's when you'll see the difference. Sure, my voodoo 3 3000 might be good at 1024x768, but try turning it higher, and you get slowdown. That's the ONLY reason to get a better video card: to get high resolution with a good framerate. The only reason I went from 16MB to 32MB, was I was getting low framerates in American McGee's Alice with my 16MB card. Alice recommends 32MB. What I'll end up doing is getting a Voodoo 5 with 64MB card. I'm really impressed by Glide, and like using it, which is why I'm going with a Voodoo instead of GeForce. That and a GeForce 3 is out of my price range (or at least how much I WANT to spend) whereas the Voodoo is cheap.
I was getting some good fps in direct x with the geforce 2 pro card but i know your right with the voodoo 5500 card. I might goahead and buy a geforce 2 pro 4.5 ns ram and then get the pci version of the v5500 later on . although i might not because as cpu power goes up and motherboard speed increases why would a voodoo 5500 matter now. With a geforce 2 pro card you should be getting more FPS with a 1500mhz cpu than with the v5500. Like i said i would buy a voodoo 5500 right now if it was cheaper than 100 bucks which it might be in a week or 2. But right now i just noticed that for 160 bucks with retail box i can get a geforce 2 pro card with 4.5ns ram and has 200+/450 speed
tough call i think. I think the only thing i will miss with my voodoo card is the unreal T smoothness and this playstation emulator which runs off glide and direct x and opengl and i tried all 3 but for some reason glide looks way better and even almost looks like ps2 graphics.
Your problem is very common. You upgraded from a voodoo to a geforce , and there are registry entries that are causing conficts w/ your geforce. Go to:http://guru3d.com/ , articles and guides> Voodoo to geforce upgrade guide , and follow the instructions closely ( not hard), then you will get a "clean install" of your drivers for the MX. 3dfx had a much better driver install (exe.) than the Nvidia drivers, (more involved driver install procedure). After you get this done , then get the geforce tweak utility from the same site to maximize your settings. The big dofference between 3dfx and geforce is that with the 3dfx based cards you can just toss em in and away you go. With the nvidia cards you can get close to the image quality , and alot more speed. I know, because I have owned every video card ever made. Also, when following that guide, remember that when Windows says "finished searching registry", that doesnt mean that it has found everything. You should triple check, by exiting regedit and re-entering. Windows is not very thourough at searching the registry. But dont worry, just follow the guide closely , and it will work.
You are the MAN, JTC! That's exactly what I was looking for! I'll go print that page, and download the tweak. Too bad I already ordered a Voodoo 5 on ebay. Well, another video card in the hardware stack can't hurt. But again, thank you JTC.
Voodoo 5 5500 are only a tiny bit slower than a Geforce MX, but the image quality of the V5 is better. With a good clean install and the GTU (Geforce Tweak Utility) , you can get the image quality of the MX close to that of the V5. Dont get me wrong, the V5 is a great card. The MX is a pretty good card, in comparison. Now the Geforce Ultra , when tweaked, can absolutly blow away a V5. I can run Q3 in 1600x1200x32 bit color with all detail maxed and still get 40+ FPS. When tweaking the MX, dont use any Anti-aliasing, cause it slows it down too much. But rather put "mipmap level" at 12, and "mipmap detail" at 0. This will improve the mx alot. Play with the GTU to dial the rest of the settings in . Also , I always disable Vsync to speed things up abit.
If you want to sell your voodoo card let me know . I will trade a vodoo 3000 that can be overclocked to 197mhz and 40 bucks for the v5500
Mord-Sith
07-29-01, 11:16 PM
Hey I dont realy care about the voodoo vs geforce debate because well its not going to go on much longer. I use to love 3dfx, can still remember drooling over the voodoo2 12mb. But any hoo on to the question. Have any of you voodoo owners played max payne yet. I just want to know how your computer handleing the software t&l. Im sure if you have a processor over 1 gig its probably doing ok.
Im playing it on my celery 566 (usualy clocked at 876 but max payne crashes it so its at 650 I think) with a geforce1 256 ddr slightly overclocked (145/325). I have all detail setings maxed but no aa. Ive been playing at either 800x600x32 or 1024x768x16 (cant get 32 to work for some reason). In either case my game play is pretty smooth.
I have found faith, I have found hope. And it is with JTC.
Dude, that registry cleanup worked. I run UT at 1024x768 at 32 bit color and it's smooth as buttah. I haven't used the tweak yet, but I will soon.
The only time I take a performance hit is when I turn on anti-ailiasing. I only set it to 2x for testing, but I turned it off. Jaggies don't bother me too much. I'm usually moving too fast to notice. Maybe after the tweak. We'll see.
Mord-Sith
07-31-01, 08:27 PM
bumpage I realy want an answer to my question... another one ... anyone ever try runing spec view perf on a voodoo5500 to see what the profesional benchmark is like.... I would like to take the pepsi challenge against that
dozier768
07-31-01, 09:28 PM
on the gl note, Glsetup simply upgrades yor ogl api to the most current one it in no way changes your drivers it simply makes the ogl API the most current but if you have windows 98 or ltaer chances are its current
Mord-Sith (Jul 31, 2001 08:27 p.m.):
bumpage I realy want an answer to my question... another one ... anyone ever try runing spec view perf on a voodoo5500 to see what the profesional benchmark is like.... I would like to take the pepsi challenge against that
Isn't Spec view an OpenGL app? Did 3DFx every really develop a full OpneGL driver or were they still using that miniGL wrapper thingy they called a driver that only supported Quake and Quake engine based games. If not then I doubt you could run Spec View on a voodoo card or if you could you would only get software rendering and horrible results.
Mord-Sith
08-02-01, 07:25 PM
Ya your right I dont know if they ever did develop a real gl driver. Ouch well I know never try to render anything with a voodoo. I hope no one found out the hard way.
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