Smooth polygons speed - GeForce weakness ?

[paddy]

I try using :
glEnable(GL_POLYGON_SMOOTH);
glHint(GL_POLYGON_SMOOTH_HINT,GL_NICEST);
to have some nice antialiased polygons...
Bad surprise !
On the ATI RadeON, there is no speed decrease using this feature.
But the NVidia GeForce 256 becomes as slow as software rendering !
Both cards are tested with the latest official Win2K drivers.
I was wondering if this is a GeForce 1 weakness and if the GeForce 2 corrects this ... can someone test it ?

[coco]

Well, I believe that in the field that is target for the GeForce2 (games), polygon smooth is hardly used, so we can say it supports it, but through non-optimized paths. Does the ATi display polygons correctly smoothed, or it simply ignores smoothing?

[paddy]

The ATI display the polygons perfectly smoothed, the features is really working ... on the GeForce too, but much much slower !
The reason i want to use this feature is that is looks much better than FSAA (this is REAL subpixel drawing !)
By the way, same thing happens with antialiased lines, they don't slow down the ATI but the GeForce dies on them ...

[This message has been edited by paddy (edited 01-11-2001).]

[coco]

Well, I have had weird performance in my geforce2 card when in wireframe (even without AA, about 1/10 the speed of a 100k model rendered solid), when all other cards I have tested perform faster in wireframe than in solid.
My conclusion is that, as a gaming card, the GeForce2 is not optimized for some scenarios that are not widelly used in games. I agree polygon smooth can give your far better quality, but you need to sort polys, so you end with a static scene (BSP ans stuff) or a slow scene (per frame sorting).
I would like to have an ATi radeon, it looks like a very good GeForce2 competitor (maybe a tad slower in some situations, but with an impresive feature set). How stable/bugless do you find the radeon drivers?

[paddy]

I'm quite happy with my RadeON.
I use the Win2k drivers version 3073.
What first impressed me on the RadeON is the 2D image quality. This is not a legend ! Crisp and clear image, fanstastic colors, you will think you have a brand new monitor ! Only matrox may compete in this domain.
On the OpenGL side, drivers are fast and stable, both in pro apps (LightWave, Maya) and in games.
And (that's my fun) ... 3D textures are really cool
I'm still waiting for some DX8 compliant drivers, but it seems the GeForce DX8 drivers are kinda beta too (7.xx series). The actual drivers have partial DX8 support anyway, even if all the features are not enabled yet.
Beside this, the video playback capabilities are impressive (mpeg, avi and dvd).

[coco]

Great! Well, I'm happy with my GeForce2 also (a bit unhappier since I found this wireframe issue, but well...). 3D textures are king.
No current 3D card does DX8 pixel shaders, but I believe nvidia does vertex shaders (posible in sw inside the driver), even in opengl (beta 7 drivers).

[Serge K]

> Well, I'm happy with my GeForce2 also (a bit unhappier since I found this wireframe issue, but well...).

Well, if you really need fast wireframe - you may find it interesting : GeForce/GeForce 2 -> Quadro/Quadro2

[Eric]

When I first inserted my GeForce DDR in my computer, I found out that all my OpenGL programs were running at the speed of a snail...

I soon discovered that the problem was that I enabled GL_POLYGON_SMOOTH.

After contacting nVidia, they confirmed that this feature should be avoided (not that it is buggy, it is simply slow !). They also told me that the other video cards (e.g. TNT) did not suffer from this problem because they just ignored polygon smoothing !

I am very surprised that the Radeon does not show any performance loss when using polygon smoothing. Are you sure it does what it is supposed to ??? Can you post screenshots to compare the two cards ???

I am pretty sure some people from nVidia won't miss this one!

Regards.

Eric

[Eric]

Originally posted by Serge K:
>[i] Well, if you really need fast wireframe - you may find it interesting : GeForce/GeForce 2 -> Quadro/Quadro2

Well, I am sure they won't miss this one either !

Regards.

Eric

P.S.: as far as I know, this modification works... but I would definitely not try it on a £200 card...

[coco]

About the GeForce/GeForce 2 -> Quadro/Quadro2 stuff, yes, I know, but I dont really want to doit because:
1: Its scary to take your $300 card and start soldering/unsoldering stuff.
2: I want my card for gamming, and I'm sure that quadro drivers might have issues with some games (maybe not, who knows).
It's a bit disapointing to see that both cards being so similar have so different prices.
So how does the radeon do in 3d apps? does it really shine in wireframe/high poly count? then I would buy a radeon instead of a quadro or geforce for 3D modeling and content development.