Wednesday, September 22, 1999

Fill Rate vs. T&L -- 10:02 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Today Voodoo Extreme asks several game developers this musical question:

Right now (or within the next month or two, I'm talking very near future), what do you see as being more important: A card with an EXTREMELY high fill rate and full screen anti-aliasing but with no T&L, or a card with good fill rate (not outstanding, but better than current cards) with T&L? Yep, this is almost a Voodoo4 (based on rumor/speculation) vs. GeForce 256 question, but I'm trying to avoid being that direct :) So, in an attempt to avoid a V4 vs. GeForce 256 (and/or Savage2k) war, I'm just being vague, and asking a "T&L vs. high fill rate" question.

The responses are very telling. About every developer said that T&L (transform and lighting) is more important. Mike Dussalt of Monolith made the observation that on-board T&L helps overcome the PC's biggest bottleneck, the bus.

The disadvantage of a GeForce (or Savage 2000) card is that it will not scale up as well with a faster processor as the Voodoo 4 will (assuming it ever comes out). This is a great advantage for those of us on a budget, in that slapping a T&L card in our current machines will extend their life significantly.

The Master comments: And WHO really cares about the card scaling? That whole argument is a sign that your software T&L pipe has issues, especially 3dfx, since they're the one card that gets the most benefits from higher processor speeds. Bah, I still say T&L is a LOT more important than fillrate, espcially now with pretty solid fillrates but polygon render limits because of the AGP/PCI bus.

News for 09/22/1999

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