Unreal 1 : Half Life 2 is to 3Dfx : Nvidia

[Immacolata]

Hmm, I had the impression ATi were quite sizeable already, and definitely employing more workers than Nvidia, in the thousands more. ATi has been in the gritty business of producing kit for ages, where as Nvidia has always been a sort of IP company like Rambus. They still dont make the graphics cards. Not sure if ATi does that anymore, but they do at least market and support their own brand in USA.

 

[mrchimp]

I don't know if NV have there own factorys but they desighn there own cards and have more products than ATi.

 

[Athlon7]

Great post, lots of memories, and I think you are spot on.

 

[Arno]

Originally posted by mrchimp
bump mapping is DX7 not normal mapping, you don't have to worry though because I think normal mapping is very rarely used for walls and if it is, it can be substituted by bump mapping on older machines.

Normal mapping can be used to create an entirely 3D object useing non other than normal maps, but bump mapping just use hieght maps which hold x and y coordinates unlike normal maps which hold x,y and z coordinates. :afro:

I might have read the article wrong, so normal mapping might be a DX8 feature. like PvtRyan said.

Normal maps don't change the shape of the polygon, only it's appearance. That's why it's much less GPU intensive then you think. In fact, the Doom III engine uses normal mapping on almost every polygon. Both ATI and NVidia hardware can handle this without a problem.
It's the new DX9 features that NVidia can't handle properly, but normal mapping is an older, better supported, non-DX9 feature.

 

[manny_c44]

I remember playing System Shock 2 on my Voodoo3.


Good times.

 

[Zyphria]

Thanks for catching me on the normal mapping part of my post. I guess I misheard/misunderstood the use of PS 2.0 in the process. If it's DX8 then everyone can be happy then I suppose. HDR is DX9 exclusive though I believe, and from everything I have both read, and seen, that feature should really boost the immersion factor.

Lets all hope that Nvidia steps back from this round, takes a breath and does some hard thinking!

 

[Immacolata]

Originally posted by mrchimp
I don't know if NV have there own factorys but they desighn there own cards and have more products than ATi.

They have some sort of contract with a semi-con manufacturer, that Im sure of. They get their GeForce and nForce chips produced there, which they then sell to mobo and vga-card makers.

ATi has made netcards actually, dunno if they do it more. ATi has a lot of products, but they dont make chipset for computers. Not sure which company is the biggest these days, but Im pretty convinced that ATi HAS been bigger than Nvidia untill at least very recently.

 

[MaDMaXX]

there is anice thread stating the difference in maps, normal maps and dx9 precission maps, dx9 is worth it.

 

[crabcakes66]

Originally posted by Immacolata
. Not sure which company is the biggest these days, but Im pretty convinced that ATi HAS been bigger than Nvidia untill at least very recently.

Im not sure how they currently compare either but i know more a fact that ATI was once the leading(quanity) gfx manufacturer in the world.

 

[Joneleth]

I think one of Nvidia's biggest problems is the fact that they expanded their company a lot faster then they should have (they make chips for the Xbox and laptops), and also that they concentrate on speed over image quality simply to make their cards seem better. Now, speed is very important in games (higher FPS = better game experience), but if the game's graphics are sacrificed to make it look like crap, no one will be happy.

I think Nvidia just needs to suck it up and produce a kickass card they might actually lose money on initially by selling it at a lower price. They now have a lot of competition. If they want the market, they're gonna have to take it by force.

 

[Seikeden]

You know, after I bought this computer new (amd xp1700, 512mb of pc2100ddr temp. 32mb tnt2mx64), this was about june last year, I picked up a fee copy of unreal on some game demo disc. I thought "what the hell" and installed it for a quick bash. Well lo and behold, if this game did not run like pure dog. and looked like it too. this is on a card that was only a dream in some nvidia guys head at this point, which had been playing max payne, at a solid 30-45fps@1024x768 only the week before. What a p.o.s. haha. hard to believe ut2k3 is running on an evolved version of that engine. makes me wonder anyway

 

[shapeshifter]

actually I don't even think 3dfx went bankrupt, they just knew it was over, they made so many mistakes and they knew that they couldnt make any more as it was to late, so they sold themselves to nvidia.

 

[MaDMaXX]

seikeden, er, the tnt2 is so old its got a free bus pass and goes to DIY stores on wednesdays, it was never a fully compatible card to begin with, it wasn't mainstream, so to speak.

 

[Marauder]

Excellent read!

 

[Interl@ce]

unreal needed a patch to support direct3d rendering, i had a tnt2 ultra, and without the latest update unreal would only run in software mode.