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

To: Michael Madden who wrote (10478)	2/3/1999 12:26:00 AM
From: Joe Pirate	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Intel developed AGP because "back then" ram prices were expensive and a 16 meg card was "sky-rocket" in price. Now we laugh at cards with 16 meg! AGP is over-rated, why transfer textures to and from main memory when the "bridge" is weak? It is more simplistic just to put all the texture ram on the card, especially now when RAM is dirt cheap.. Intel has a habit of introducing technology that will not be used for 1 or 2 years down the road. Remember MMX ? Everyone was buying MMX CPU's when it first came out PAYING a premium for it, but what they didn't know was.. "there isn't any optimized code ..YET.. to use MMX..." ha ha ha ha!!! About 1 - 2 years later, MMX code is now common in alot of software and MMX CPU's are all now standard and CHEAP! hee! AGP may die as ram drops in price, I will buy a Voodoo8 card (with 128 meg) 5 years from now <g> Pirate

To: Michael Madden who wrote (10478)	2/3/1999 1:12:00 AM
From: Michael Linov	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

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 :)