looks like i finally took the step and moved one from my beloved voodoo5 to a radeon 9800se. i never wanted this to happen. i am almost 100% satisfied with my voodoo5. almost, because LOMAC doesnt run on a voodoo5, and i want to play LOMAC.
i wonder if i can get the softmod to work on my radeon 9800se. also wonder how high it will clock, what its 2d image quality will be like, what its FSAA will look like, and what this thing called "Anisophric Filtering" is all about...

anyway, i wont ditch my voodoo5. i will keep it, or put it in my little brothers pc... not sure yet which ill do....

is there someone who can clock his voodoo5 more then 10% (183mhz and above) and do some benchmarking? i can overclock my voodoo5 just a bit (180mhz on a cold day... ) but i have never seen an increase in performance. some people have their voodoo5 running at 190mhz, so they should have a measureable performance increase.

state what voodoo, what bios, what OS, and what OC software you use.

When you think the DRMA (erm, that US law that is so much talked about) is bad, check what the french just did:

http://www.materiel.be/viewnews.php?n=4016#0
dutch translation: http://www.tweakers.net/nieuws/30557

well, i guess most people here dont speak french, but what this law means is that all internet traffic will be filtered at the borders of France for illegal content. also, not only owners of a website are responsible for their content, but so  are the ISPs. there already was a strict law on e-mails, but now they removed the word "private" from it and now even private e-mails can be censored.
this law means that websites have to avoid having words like "mp3" and "divx" in their content, which is the death sentence for many websites obviously.

there is an online petition, which everyone can sign. perhaps it will change this awfull law.
petition: http://www.odebi.org/boycothon/

i got it running just yesterday. it runs flawlessly. but it did need a little bit of tweaking.
when the game came out, people soon found out that they saw through walls. the alt-tab trick fixed that (alt-tab to windows and back, and you have your walls back).

i am running windows 2000 professional + SP4, and amigamerlin 3.0 driverset.

when i installed renegade yesterday, i tried i at the very lowest resolution first. i used the alt-tab trick, but still ad an enormous flicker problem. luckily, 3Danalyze has a "Voodoo Flicker Fix" option. total stable image after using 3danalyze.
i then upped the resolution to 1024x768 and 2xfsaa and maximum settings... still smooth as silk, its just i could see through wall again... alt-tabbed like ten times, only to find out i had to lower the detail settings a bit for the alt-tab trick to work.
also, 2x fsaa slowed down a lot when i zoomed in with the sniper rifle.
so:
alt-tab back and forward to fix the see-trough-walls-problem
use 3danalyze flicker fix to fix the flickery image
dont use maximum detail settings (will try to find the exact option)

Yes! you can apply AMD's cool 'n quiet technology to your athlon xp!!! check this link:

http://www.cpuheat.wz.cz/html/Tweaks.htm

i just saw it hasnt been posted yet, but www.hardware-tweaker.de has received a production model of a duo V8 with the first official driver from XGI, Reactor 1.0.0.0.

the direct link to the review: http://www.hardware-tweaker.de/HTML/Home_4/Overclocking/Artikel_Teil1/XGI_Volari__duo_V8Ultra_Part1/xgi_volari__duo_v8ultra_part1.html

it is in german, but im sure you guys know how to find a site translator. and the benchmark graphs speak for themselves.

what is also curious, is that there isnt 1ghz memory to be found on the card, but the same 900 mhz ddr2 as on the beta card reviewed earlier (www.tomshardware.com). also, the cores are 20 mhz lower clocked at 328mhz. the card also gets really hot, despite a huge copper heatsink on the front and back. (80 degrees celsius was measured, and more then once).

Pixel shader performance is holding the XGI back when compared to the 9700 and 9800. Anisophric Filtering still isnt available in the current driver, but FSAA is. Hardware-tweaker.de finds the XGI FSAA a bit better the ATIs which is good, but ATIs FSAA a bit sharper (which is, erm, bad) but the most important thing is that even 2x FSAA slows the XGI way to much down.


a link to this review was also posted on the dutch computer news site www.tweakers.net and they asked XGI to comment on the review. they didnt post the whole comment of XGI, but just a part, and the rest was translated by them. the quote from XGI:

QuoteThe Club3D graphics board you referred to incorporates high speed DDRII technology, which consumes more power than regular DDR memory. Without suffering performance loss, the engine clock of graphics processors was reduced by 20 MHZ to enhance the stability of graphics board. This way, users who are using Club3D Volari Duo board can enjoy both fast and stable performance while playing heavy 3D applications. [...]

Regarding the issues with FSAA and Pixel Shader speeds, we have made an improvement with driver version 1.01.05, which will be released next week.

but, ddr2 doesnt consume more power then ddr, it consumes less. at the same speed there is absolutely no difference in performance (link: http://download.micron.com/pdf/flyers/ddr_to_ddr2.pdf ). also, if the core can be clocked 20 mhz lower without suffering performance, in my opinion, the card has a bottleneck at its memory bandwidth.
i do think the FSAA perfomance will be better, and i think AF will be available too. i just dont know how much of perfomance loss both will cause with later driver versions.

Quote
Wat betreft de warmteontwikkeling wordt gesteld dat voor het komende jaar de stap naar een kleiner procédé gepland staat, wat de enorme hitte zou moeten doen afnemen. Voor de huidige generatie videokaarten wordt er gewerkt aan een programma dat het stroomverbruik moet inperken. Wat betreft de sterk wisselende prestaties weet de woordvoerder te melden dat komende week versie 1.01.05 van de Reactor-driver zal uitkomen waarmee de FSAA en pixel shader prestaties naar verwachting zullen verbeteren:

a direct translation: As for the heat development, XGI says they will introduce a smaller production process then its current 0.13 micron, which should decrease the heat development. for current cards, there is software in development to lower the power consumption. the 1.01.05 Reactor driver should enhance the FSAA and pixelshader performance, and the new driver should be available next week.


okay, so we now have a card which is priced around a 9800 pro, and it performs around a 9800pro, when no pixelshaders or fsaa is used. it also gets really hot!
good thing is: FSAA looks good, and there is definatly a progress in driver development (no fsaa in beta --> good, but slow fsaa in first official driver).... now lets all wait for more reviews and driver releases.

voodoolizer 1.05.03
3dmark 2000         :4021
Counterstrike      :60.9
Unreal Tournament      :82.1
3dmark2001SE      :2330
quake3arena         :75.6   
Enemy Territory      :52.2
UT2k3            :44.4   

voodoolizer 1.05.00
3dmark 2000         :5495
Counterstrike      :63.1
Unreal Tournament      :81.0
3dmark2001SE      :2426
quake3arena         :47.5
Enemy Territory      :53.2
UT2k3            :68.2 + flicker error

3dHQ 1.09.00 beta 10
3dmark 2000         :4383
Counterstrike      :54.5
Unreal Tournament      :75.1
3dmark2001SE      :2355
quake3arena         :83.8
Enemy Territory      :44.9
UT2k3            :67.5 + flicker error

Amigamerlin 3.0
3dmark 2000         :4065
Counterstrike      :53.1
Unreal Tournament      :78.1
3dmark2001SE      :2351
quake3arena         :81.0
Enemy Territory      :48.79
UT2k3            :66.2

Voodoolizer 1.05.03 + x3dfxgamers 1.18a bios @ Quake3
166.1            :71.7
170.4            :73.7

on a XP 1825+ (147mhz FSB), 256mb pc 133, voodoo5 5500 agp 1.18 bios, win2k + SP4.
funny thing about that x3dfxgamers bios: overclocking actually shows in benchmarks, but you will need very good cooling...

A german site, the Tecchannel received a beta board of the Volari duo V8 ultra.
http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/1271/index.html

some benchmarks numbers for all of you who dont read german:
http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/1271/images/0014169_PIC.gif
http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/1271/images/0014162_PIC.gif
http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/1271/images/0014166_PIC.gif
http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/1271/images/0014167_PIC.gif
http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/1271/images/0014168_PIC.gif
http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/1271/images/0014163_PIC.gif
http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/1271/images/0014164_PIC.gif
http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/1271/images/0014165_PIC.gif

the used system is a P4 3,2 GHz mit 512MB pc3200 memory.
the Board and drivers are still beta. the memory (DDr2) on release is supposed to run at 500 mhz (1ghz effectively) instead of the 450mhz memory used on this board.
the drivers are still beta too, and havent got any FSAA or AF options in them.... that does make me a bit weary of the FSAA and AF quality and performance hit.
good thing is that there werent any artifacts during this admittedly small benchmark run...

the lomac demo starts up normally, but when inflight, the plane is black, and so are others planes, tank and trees.... i suspect it might be something with texture compression?

it is a directx 8 game, anyone got any ideas?

i downloaded the C3 demo and it will start up. the text in the menu and the game itself isnt visible, just black bars.
in the 2d-part of the game (it seems to be 2d (outside) and 3d (inside)) you cant see any interactive objects, such as yourself, soldiers, or turrets. 3d view works perfect apart from the black bars where there should be text.

i made a screenshot, and benchmarked with Fraps:
2003-09-04 14:52:16 - Commandos3
Frames: 7013 - Time: 286047ms - Avg: 24.516 - Min: 5 - Max: 27

this was aquired with 2xfsaa on... since i cant read the text in the menu, i dont know the resolution, but judging from the screenshot it was set at 800x600.

i tried 3DAnalyzer as well to try and fix the garbled text, but if it did anything, it made it worse... (tried several options)...

perhaps it will work with the amigamerlin 3.0 driver, cant remember if it had new directx code right now....

does anyone know how to run this game? i downloaded the demo, but it gave me very bad graphical distortions. i also couldnt quit, but had to reset to get back into windows.

or has anyone found out some trick with another EA Sports game, recent one?

im using the 3dhq beta 10 drivers with win2k + SP4... i'd really like to play this game...

like the title says, if a demo runs with a voodoo5, how propable will the game run?

hmmmz, dont know if this is allowed, since this forum is working on its own drivers, but the x3dfxgamers team has released a final set of drivers.... it has some new glide portions, and full directx9 compatioblity.... downloading them now, so havent got any results....

url: http://www.voodooalert.de/x3dfxgamers/files/Voodoolizer_1.05.00_WinXP_2K.zip