We've been hearing all about how bad it is for 3dfx not to support AGP texturing, as compared to the TNT. Well, I've done some reading on the TNT, and discovered that they have a very serious design flaw (or feature, depending on how you think of it, of course). While 3dfx do DME texturing, it's texture format is basically linear. The TNT however, resorts to a hardware algorithm that requires textures to be preprocessed into a special format before use. This actually offsets any advantages of AGP for anything but pre-built textures loaded at load time. Things like procedural textures, and other simple formats require a software conversion pass. This (among other things) introduces overhead, and keeps the TNT from ever running at its full theoretical clip. It's surprising that while critical of 3dfx's AGP shortcomings (despite its superior performance), people tend to ignore a MUCH MORE SERIOUS flaw in the competitions architecture.
As time progresses, procedural textures will become more common place... a feature that could truly make good use of AGP, and yet, the TNT can never really benefit... how ironic :) |
