Re: 32 bit framebuffer
I'm curious about this. 3dfx keeps mentioning the hit to performance it would entail. I think, and HOPE, that they KNOW this, and this is not just a waving of the hands marketing thing. They've spent a lot of time engineering their chips, and now have those nifty chip simulators. I wonder whether they have actually developed a version which does 32bit output.
If they have, and have shown to themselves that the performance hit is extreme enough to not justify the costs of incorporating it into a final design, wouldn't that be neat if they actually said: "We have protyped a 32bit framebuffer, and not only would the typical game framerate decrease by 50%, but it would require us to charge $50 per chip instead of $30 to $35. In addition, it would have pushed back the V3 by X weeks/months."
Would this type of statement be a reasonable response to the 32bit hoopla? The full-scene AA response would be encouraging were the news to have come out shortly after the infamous VE interview with developers, and not in an obscure interview on gamasutra.
From my read on the oversampling, if a V3 3000 can perform at 2X a V2-SLI rig, wouldn't 4x supersampling mean the performance would be 50% that of V2-SLI, and on par with a single V2? Granted, at 640x480, this performance should be good enough for any of the current games.
Timbur |
