Newsgroups: rec.autos.simulators
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From: dripton@netcom.com (David Ripton)
Subject: Re: what flavour?
Message-ID: <driptonF2MvsJ.282@netcom.com>
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Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 20:05:07 GMT
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In article <72nv9f$f42$1@black.news.nacamar.net>,
MeatWater <meatwater@home.globe.de> wrote:
>At this point, AGP means no improvement for games. Anyhow, I'd recommend you
>to buy an AGP board as other applications might need it sooner or later.

Pretty much the whole point of AGP is allowing games that use lots of 
textures, more than can fit into a video card's texture memory, 
without slow thrashing.  It's a chicken-egg thing: we won't see many 
games that really require AGP until the vast majority of 3D cards 
support AGP.  Since the Voodoo 2 is so popular, very few games 
require more than 4MB or 8MB of texture memory.  The hardcore flight 
sim crowd ("Yes, we'd like to put a complete texture map of France 
in the game and ship it on 3 DVDs.  Do you have a problem with 
that?") will probably be the first to really need AGP.

>From my experience I would recommend you NOT to buy a no-name board, as my
>friends who thought to be wise buying some no-name stuff now regret not
>having bought the "real" thing right away. I learned that it's better to pay
>more than to be sorry.

Depends on the product.  I refuse to buy truly generic no-name stuff
because there's no contact point at all for drivers or warranty work, 
but second-tier Voodoo 2 cards, for example, work just fine (same 
reference design, interchangable drivers) and cost less.

>Diamond and Creative Labs rule.

Gack.  IMO, both companies suck rocks.  Both produce excellent Voodoo- 
and TNT-based cards, though.  I give most of the credit to 3Dfx and 
nVidia, not Diamond ("What?  Support that six-month-old card?  No, buy
our newer one.") and Creative ("It's 100% SoundBlaster Compatible.
Who cares if it sounds horrible and costs a mint?") Labs.

A tip to anyone using a suitably powerful newsreader: the new 
"/----/a:j" entry in my trn killfile makes this group a ton more 
readable.  (It'll kill this post, for example.  :-> )

-- 
David Ripton    dripton@netcom.com
spamgard(tm): To email me, put "geek" in your Subject line.
