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FOR NEWBIES TO TECHNOLOGY |
3D GRAPHICS CARD-DETAILS |
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First of all if you have a PC with anything other
than i810 motherboard, you have a SIS 6326 or a Trident
display card under your hood.These cards are just 2D cards,
they are supposed to have 3D support for Direct 3D but the
support is not proper so the 3D special effects are either
not shown properly or are completly missing and the performance
is so low that almost all 3D games are unplayable expect for
a few oldies.
Now some info about the cards avaliable in the Indian market.
Intel i740,i810,i820,i815:
i740 card supports almost all major features of direct 3D
and OpenGL.It is was one of the popular 3d cards but it's
not readyly avaliable anymore.It's perfomance is not good
enough to run newer games like unreal tournament in direct
3D although it runs quake III at a playable framrate on a
good processor. The other problem with this card is that
updated drivers for this card are no more avaliable the
lastest driver avaliable is the pv4 which supports only
directX 6.0 where as current version of driversX 7.0a
and version 8.0 with a lot of new features is just around
the corner so newer games cannot run on this card.The
intel series of integrates display cards i.e i810,i815,
i820 are based on enchanced i740 core(i752).
Their performance is in the same league as I740.These
cards are inbuilt in the motherboard and hence there is
no scope for upgradeation as these boards, with the
exception of i815 dont have a AGP slot the other problem
is insufficient memory ,most of the boards are shipped with
only 4MB ram which is far too less by gaming standards.
These cards are only for occassional gamers who run games
at low resolution and are not interested in detailed
graphics,the only benifit is cost.
Nvidia Riva 128:
It is one of the older are from the Nvidia stable and now
its avalibility is sparce .It supports most of the standard
Direct 3D and openGL features .The good thing about this
card is that updated drivers for this card are still
avaliable .The performance of this card is similar to that
of intel i740 hence the card is only good for ocassional
gamers.
Voodoo 2:
This card is from 3Dfx the first manufacturer of 3D cards
for the intel platform and till rescently was the most
preffered gaming card.It is a pure 3D card and it requires
a classic 2D card to work .It is even possible to attach
two Voodoo card in sli to get a superior performance .The
performance of this card is in the same league as the Riva
TNT or Voodoo Banshee.It supports Direct 3D and 3Dfx Glide
api.There is some amount of openGL support in form of miniGl
(openGL MCD) with the help of which it is possible to run
games like quake 2 & 3 but the per formance is not that good.
The other problem with tis card is they dont support true
(32 bit) colour and no agp support.Voodoo range of card give
the best performance in games based on 3Dfx glide api.It is
avaliable in 4MB and 12MB form.
Voodoo Banshee:
It is the second 2D/3D card from the house of 3Dfx afte their
first atempt Voodoo Rush failed to take off.the performance
of this card is similar to Voodoo 2 and Riva TNT.It has the
same problems as the Voodoo 2 and is on the way out as it is
replaced by Voodoo 3 .It is avaliable with 16MB SDRAM
Voodoo 3:
It is based on he all new VSA-100 core which is also used in
future proucuts of 3Dfx voodoo 4 (it has two of these )and
Voodoo 5 (it has 4 of these).The performance of this card
is in the same league as Riva TNT2.It has the same problems
as other Voodoo cards.It is avaliable with 16MB.
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