- Joined
- Aug 12, 2001
If you have the money to buy a gf3, I highly recommend spending a little more, forego the dvi output and get the asus deluxe. Besides coming with 3d glasses, it comes with a full suite of software. Also, on the hardware side, it comes with a wide range of video inputs and outputs (no DVI, no space left for it!) so anyone wanting to get into some serious real-time video editing can do it with this card...the only other alternative is to buy a professional editing agp-pro card for over $2000 each. I tried a little mpeg-2 capturing with this card and it looked very good, with few glitches.
The main reason I purchased this gf3 over the others is for compatability, as an asus video card will no doubt have no problems being mated to an asus motherboard. The second reason I purchased this card is that all gf3 cards perform within 2% of eachother and that leaves the features/price point as the deciding factor. I reasoned that the $65 more over the least feature rich card (visiontek) would be worth what I got. I can now say without hesitation that if you are considering a gf3 card, get the Asus.
I finally got around to giving my 3d glasses a try in UT and there was one hitch: You HAVE to use them at a resolution of 800x600..any higher and the stereoscopic effect just won't turn on, I'm not sure if its a hardware limitation or a software one. Regardless of the lower resolution, the effect using 2x antialiasing makes it look incredible in 3d. UT has NEVER, EVER looked as good as it does, even at 1600x1200 resolution using 4x antialiasing on a 21" monitor. If your monitor can support 140Hz refresh rate @800x600, using the glasses will effectively cut that in half...at 70Hz it is slightly noticeable but I never felt queasy or dizzy once and played for 6 hours with little eye fatigue. Aiming works just fine as long as you use both eyes to aim, as soon as you get tired and start to only use one eye, your crosshair with then split and you will aim to the left or right of the target. After a few hours, it gets easy as you train your brain to use both eyes with no problems.
ANTIALIASING:
2x: Perfect. Edges noticeable only if you look for it.
4x: Too much fps reduction at 1280x960 resolution.
Quincunx: Not worth pronoucing the name they use for this hack. (all it does is make everything blurry and the text very hard to read, 3Dfx technology still superior to NVidias :/
3D glasses (asus deluxe only): Light weight, but keeps slipping down my nose without an elastic retaining strap. Worked well with my headset. Don't go outside with these things on when you can't find your sunglasses. They can be worn with glasses with no problems.
Software bundle: The best. Comes with 3 fairly popular games that take some advantage of DX8. (Sacrifice, Messiah, Star Trek: New Worlds), 3deep (3d game visual enhansing software), asusDVD, Ulead videostudio se, videolive mail4, ASUS gf3 12.6 drivers.
The main reason I purchased this gf3 over the others is for compatability, as an asus video card will no doubt have no problems being mated to an asus motherboard. The second reason I purchased this card is that all gf3 cards perform within 2% of eachother and that leaves the features/price point as the deciding factor. I reasoned that the $65 more over the least feature rich card (visiontek) would be worth what I got. I can now say without hesitation that if you are considering a gf3 card, get the Asus.
I finally got around to giving my 3d glasses a try in UT and there was one hitch: You HAVE to use them at a resolution of 800x600..any higher and the stereoscopic effect just won't turn on, I'm not sure if its a hardware limitation or a software one. Regardless of the lower resolution, the effect using 2x antialiasing makes it look incredible in 3d. UT has NEVER, EVER looked as good as it does, even at 1600x1200 resolution using 4x antialiasing on a 21" monitor. If your monitor can support 140Hz refresh rate @800x600, using the glasses will effectively cut that in half...at 70Hz it is slightly noticeable but I never felt queasy or dizzy once and played for 6 hours with little eye fatigue. Aiming works just fine as long as you use both eyes to aim, as soon as you get tired and start to only use one eye, your crosshair with then split and you will aim to the left or right of the target. After a few hours, it gets easy as you train your brain to use both eyes with no problems.
ANTIALIASING:
2x: Perfect. Edges noticeable only if you look for it.
4x: Too much fps reduction at 1280x960 resolution.
Quincunx: Not worth pronoucing the name they use for this hack. (all it does is make everything blurry and the text very hard to read, 3Dfx technology still superior to NVidias :/
3D glasses (asus deluxe only): Light weight, but keeps slipping down my nose without an elastic retaining strap. Worked well with my headset. Don't go outside with these things on when you can't find your sunglasses. They can be worn with glasses with no problems.
Software bundle: The best. Comes with 3 fairly popular games that take some advantage of DX8. (Sacrifice, Messiah, Star Trek: New Worlds), 3deep (3d game visual enhansing software), asusDVD, Ulead videostudio se, videolive mail4, ASUS gf3 12.6 drivers.
