kostoffj on 13/12/2001 at 08:37
santaClaws - your woes are D3D based. DX simply runs like ass if you have a D3D card, regardless how much system memory you have. The D3D patch helped, but not much. My system: PII-450, TNT2 video w/32 MB, 512 MB PC133 memory. DX still runs poorly on my system. With me, the game runs great the first time I load it up, but as soon as I change to a new area (or load a save game) the game drops to like 5 fps and chugging hard drive.
Kyloe on 13/12/2001 at 11:00
I understand that any Unreal engine game, like DX and Rune, will run best on Glide. I'm not sure whether Glide is the fastest API for Voodoo cards, but it probably uses features that Direct3D doesn't support.
On my meek Voodoo3 2000 PCI, I have everything maxed out. Rune and DX and other such games run perfect at 1024 and 16 bit on a Duron 900 with 128 MB.
Now I've added a GeForce2 GTS and Rune is choppy. I did switch to 32 bit, but this really shouldn't cripple a modern GPU like that. Must be the Direct3D API.
I hope the next Unreal engine will make better use of nVidia's chips. I'll keep the Voodoo for the old games. Both cards seem to get along in my system.
Agent Monkeysee on 14/12/2001 at 00:41
Glide is most definitely the fastest API for Voodoo cards. Why? Because as I mentioned before it's the API that 3DFX
designed. Obviously they'll make their own cards run fastest using their own API <img src="wink.gif" border="0">
The reason all your Unreal games run like poop under D3D is not directly D3D's fault, it's Epic's fault. They optimized the engine for Glide and D3D support was merely an afterthought. Hence Unreal performance using D3D is really awful. My roommate has a 1.2 GHz Athlon and a Geforce 2 and Unreal Tournament runs about 30-40 fps slower than on my PIII 450 with a Voodoo 5. In open areas he simply can't play. It's THAT bad.
Given that, I do believe that D3D is an inferior API compared to Glide and am saddened that Glide died with 3DFX. I've never seen D3D do smoke and fog correctly. If I was in control I'd return OpenGL as the industry standard, but it's unlikely since no one owns OpenGL so there's no business impetus to push it upon developers. Microsoft owns and develops D3D so it was almost inevitable that it would become the most commonly used 3D API. MS is a huge fan of standards as long as it's their
own standard.
[ December 14, 2001: Message edited by: Agent Monkeysee ]</p>
Kyloe on 14/12/2001 at 07:29
I wonder about Garrett's camera eye. It looks really great on my Voodoo, but I've seen a screenshot of it, probably on some other card, that just sucks. I wonder how much the Dark Engine uses Voodoo's features through Direct3D
rhalibus on 14/12/2001 at 20:51
I have a P2/266 with 196meg of RAM and I just replaced my Voodoo2 card with a happy fun Voodoo5500 AGP just so I could play Deus Ex. Even though my machine is pretty slow by today's standards, it runs DX super-smooth with Glide. I just hope DX2 is optimized for DirectX 8 or<br />9 or whatever 'cause the next machine I buy probably won't do Glide... <img src="smile.gif" border="0">
frozenman on 16/12/2001 at 03:22
Hmm. Now that i've finally gotten around to seriously playing DX again (earlier it was just a test to see how ooh-ahh the game has become) i'm getting very frustrated.
It seems that nearly every 5-10 minutes, the game freezes up and crashes. Sometimes I can Alt-Tab out and close out of it, but most often, I cannot even Ctrl-Alt-Del, and I need to manually restart my computer.
It's happened at least 15+ times, and i'm only a little over an hour into the game (so reads the save game, although it's taken me probably around 3 hours.) I've gotten the single-player patch, which I previously didn't have, and I still have the same problems. As far as I can tell, there are no patterns as to when the game locks up (for example: it doesn't always lock up when I look at a certain type of box, or something like that.)
Any ideas?
Zerker on 17/12/2001 at 02:48
Umm, I'm not sure what everyone's problem is, must be a weird GeForce Direct 3D issue. I have an Athlon 700 with a 64 Meg DDR Radeon (not the new ones), and all Unreal Engine games run just as well or better than they did on my Voodoo 3. Try downloading the latest patch for the game(s), I guess?
buglunch on 18/12/2001 at 23:23
I went from PII 366+Voodoo 3 3000 to T-Bird 1Gig+Geforce2 MX400 32Meg and all games play well but my Glide games don't have that sparkle anymore.Deux Ex plays fast in 1024X768 but I suspect it would look better with the Voodoo. I now have 256Meg RAM.<br />frozenman: maybe reinstall DX without the D3D patch after a defrag?
[ December 18, 2001: Message edited by: buglunch ]</p>
