#3d cards vs regular
5 messages in this thread
I am considering buying a new video card. I know all about the new 64-bit video
cards (matrox, ati, #9, etc.) I also know about that the best cards nowadays
are for the vesa and pci buses. However, i am upgrading the card on my old isa
machine so I won't be able to buy one of them. What is a good isa card? I will
be using windows alot but i also need good speed for dos (all my dos based
games <G>). I will be spending ALOT of time in 3d studio and autocad, modelling
and rendering.
One of my main questions is: Should I buy a standard accelerator card (e.g. Ati
Graphics Turbo) or should I spend a bit more to buy a card with 3d acceleration
(e.g. Matrox Impression Pro)? If I decide to buy a 3d accelerated card, I won't
be buying the $1000+ cards; I'll wait until i see some compuserve member
selling a used one <G>. What is the actual speed increase if i use a 3d
accelerated card? I heard in CADENCE that Autocad 12 Render took 12 hours to
render a picture without a 3d card but it took less that 5 minutes with a 3d
card. Is that true? How is it with 3DS? Someone told me that rendering speed
will not increase. Is that true? I think that if the rendering speed will not
increase, it will still be a good deal because I can use Pavel K.'s SANDRA to
do realtime previews, which I think will save me alot more time than if
rendering time was shorter.
Can anyone answer these questions or give any advice? Thanks in advance.
Anthony.
The hardware 3D cards do not, at this time, affect 3DS rendering at all. 3DS
rendering is done on your computer's CPU only, so whatever you've got there is
the deal.
You will be able to use Pavel's SANDRA, and it is nice to be able to see the
whole scene in 3D, with lights, cameras, etc…
I use the Matrox Impression, and really love it. As a matter of fact, all my
graphics cards are Matrox MGA's, I got so sick of the other buggy cards that I
got rid of them.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie, inc)
If Matrox ever decides to, could they (theoretically) write a driver for 3DS
that will let it take advantage of the MGA's 3d chips during rendering? How
does the new Matrox Impression Plus differ from the old Impression? I heard
that the new Impression has 3d functions integrated while the old MGA's have
the 3d functions on a separate chip. What type of difference will that make?
How is the MGA performance in windows or dos or os/2? What bus is the matrox
you have? I'm upgrading so i'll need an isa card.
Thanks. Anthony.
(Sorry to pester you with so many questions)
From what I understand the plus is 1.5 times faster than the old Impression, it
comes in PCI, and probably has better VGA support than the Impression. I have
no idea if the MGA chipset could do anything with the 3DS renderer. I highly
doubt it. The only software I know that does final renders using hardware is
VisLab which runs on the SGI platform and uses the geometry engines to render
stuff. I don't think it looks nearly as good as other renderers like 3DS and
Renderman, though.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie, inc)
Hello,
>If Matrox ever decides to, could they (theoretically) write a driver for 3DS
>that will let it take advantage of the MGA's 3d chips during rendering? How
No, as far as I know. I am affraid, that it is not possible to use the 3d chip
for acceleration of the 3DS renderer. But you can use MGA chip for the fast
Gouraud shaded realtime preview inside the 3D editor. The preview is
implemented as a PXP IPAS module.
PavelK