>>Nobody has mentioned this, but how long can SIII possibly stay in business? Another casualty of the bloody graphics wars...let them die a peaceful death...DIMD not making a Savage board was music to my ears.<<
Ehem...what do you think all my ranting about there will be only 3~5 graphics makers left with ATI, Matrox, and 3Dfx being 3 of them meant? Not only siii, but also tdddf, trid, and a host of others will not be around soon. That should simplify the survivors' life.
>>One last point, Ballard says they keep the roadmap secret so that it doesn't hurt sales of current products- competitors all know what each other are doing. Tony T says that they keep the roadmap secret so that competitors don't know what they are doing...Ultimately, I guess they will be successful in at least not providing shareholders with any info...<<
Couldn't have agreed with you more on this. When it comes to publicity, 3Dfx sucks so much, it can suck-start a CERN cycletron. Unfortunately they set on their evil ways and the only way to change this, IMO, is to keep sending Ballard polite emails that point out how their competitors' score publicity points without giving away much in the way of hard info and ask that 3Dfx should do the same.
On a personal note, I have some questions for all you PC gurus (I'm a unix guru :D). Last night I installed my newly acquired Guillmot Phonix Banshee card. The installation was a breeze and it seems to work fine (except for the start up and shut down win98 screens) though I have not tested it with any games yet. The drivers and the software however have not impressed me. Here are my questions/problems:
(1) The driver installation said that my existing glide.dll and glide3 driver (glide3.dll?) were more recent than what shipped with the box. To be on the "safe" side I chose to replace everything I had with what came from the box. Was this a mistake?
(2) The driver software allows only for RGB gamma numbers of -0.3~1.7 This range is too narrow and should go up at least to +3. Personally my green gamma should be +1.84. Can anyone suggest a solution?
(3) The software driver does not let me define (or know) the refresh rate; only the resolution and color depths are set. My previous drivers let me define all aspects (gamma, resolution, refresh rates, color depth) even if it was against monitor's manufacturer's suggestion (I'd get a warning). Are there any drivers out there that let me have the same level of functionality (and I can use them with the Phonix card)?
(4) How "bad" is it if my refresh rate is faster than the recommended level?
(5) I have the option to disable Vsync. Why would I or not would I want to do this?
Thanks in advance.
Sun Tzu |
