Tuesday, November 23, 1999

GeForce 32-Bit Slowdown -- 11:28 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

One of the big gripes I've heard about the GeForce is that it takes a big performance hit at 32-bit color. I never really knew why until Anand gave the answer in this page of his review of the Savage 2000.

The Savage 2000, in spite of its 155MHz memory clock, managed to outpace the GeForce 256 in the memory bandwidth dependent 32-bit color tests. The reason behind this is because the current Savage 2000 drivers only support a 16-bit Z-Buffer while the GeForce 256 is using a 32-bit Z-Buffer in this test. The 32-bit Z-Buffer used on the GeForce eats up some of that precious memory bandwidth while offering a small improvement in visual quality and thus the Savage 2000 comes out ahead. You can't really penalize S3 here because the sacrifice in visual quality is minimal for a decent gain in performance.

I don't know if there is a way to use a 16-bit Z-Buffer in 32-bit color with the GeForce or if that's determined by the hardware. Whatever the case, that explains the slowdown.

News for 11/23/1999

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