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Technology Stocks : 3DFX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tae Spam Kim who wrote (9277)	11/26/1998 2:38:00 PM
From: Chip Anderson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16960

More TNT and Half-Life thoughts: Well, I got the latest TNT drivers from STB two days ago and have been playing Q2, Half-Life, Sin, and Shogo both in single and multiplayer modes, switching between the TNT and my Voodoo2 SLI setup. Two things are clear: 1.) The TNT looks _much_ better than the V2s in all games. There is a much wider range of colors and contrast on the screen. For example, on the opening Q2 demo that you see by just running the game, look at the shadows at the bottom of several large crates that are near the wall on the left. The V2s show this as an almost uniformly grey area while the TNT shows is as a range of colored darkness going from almost black to dark amber and on up to the room's yellowish orange. Now try to imagining that additional color detail _everywhere_. That's what I mean when I say it looks better. By comparison, the V2s screens look bleached and "washed out." The quality difference is huge in Quake 2 and in Shogo. It is not as noticable in Half-Life or SiN. 2.) The V2's at 1024x768 are faster and smoother than the TNT at 800x600. The V2s feel _crisp_. Point and rail. Bang he's dead. That's what Q2 is ultimately about. The TNT feels slightly more sluggish and that does make a difference in your game play. I've also mentioned a "vsynch-like" horizontal screen break that occurs during quick turns - the new drivers haven't fixed that problem and it occurs at both 1024x768 and 800x600 resolution. I'm going to do more investigation into it later today. It's important to recognize that this performance difference is not huge and may only be noticeable by hard-core gamers that are accustomed to high framerates. It's enough though, that I'll continue to do the majority of my gaming using my V2s. On the Half-Life front, I've admitted defeat! I'm now playing through the rest of the game in God mode. Believe it or not, it's still not simple to get through it all. I'll have a lot of respect for anyone that makes it through the entire game without cheating because there are _tons_ of hard battles and ambushes to get through with very little ammo, health, or suit-armor. The most impressive level I've seen so far is one where you are plunged into a pool with a huge shark-like alien - twice! The first time, the water is very clear and you have a cross-bow. It's very intense. The second time, the water is very murkey - this is even more scarey and intense! The murkey water is very well done. Not unlike Aliens-TC. Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! Chip "/GOD" Anderson