Don’t remember exactly, but under the Display settings (where you select resolution etc), there is usually an ‘Advanced’ (or ‘Properties’) button, which brings up a set of tabs. nVidia has its own tab (or is it the video card tab?), which has yet another button called ‘Additional Settings’ (or something), which brings up a whole range of interesting settings. VSync is selected individually for DirectX and OpenGL (separate tabs).
[EDIT]
Sorry, didn’t read your post properly… You say you have installed the latest nVidia Detonator drivers correctly? Strange. You should find an nVidia tab under the display properties. Does OpenGL run accelerated?
Hi, got the problem. There is a group policy in force to prevent any card specific tabs being accessed via th econtrol panel.
Our system admins don’t want anyone to fiddle with any graphics settings. Mainly I guess because they want to force a simple common standard irrespective of the graphics cards in use!
As the graphics programmer/coordinator for the whole University (my job is an applications programmer in the Computing Service), I help everyone and anyone with anything to do with programming and especially graphics/multimedia. So it cna be helping draw a complex graph to coding up an OpenGL animation package - anything in fact!
So, I now find myself restricted and unable to access the special features of my card.
Vsync is enabled by default. And tghe default setting for all the other params are in force.
So, should I fight to get access to these - could be a nasty battle … or will I find the defaults OK to work with.
Ultimately I will be defining a new classroom system which will be replacing our aging Silicon Graphics O2’s (20 of them!). My system on my desk now is:
Windows 2000
P IV 1.6 GHz 512 Megs
GeForce 4 TI4600
17" monitor
etc…
What I am looking for is something to support all our graphics applications (which run under IRIX at present) as well as provide a platform for high performance graphics, audio, video programming. The above is my first stab at it …
Any ideas? We might look at dual boot with
linux too!
Thanks for the replies guys … I guess this goes down to “user error” … bah!
Vsync is enabled by default. And tghe default setting for all the other params are in force.
If you do your own apps, you can wglSwapIntervalEXT( 0 ) (wgl extension supported by nVidia, among others) - but of course that only has effect for the running app / context.
Ultimately I will be defining a new classroom system which will be replacing our aging Silicon Graphics O2’s (20 of them!). My system on my desk now is:
Windows 2000
P IV 1.6 GHz 512 Megs
GeForce 4 TI4600
17" monitor
etc…
If price is important (I guess it is), I would rather go for Athlon XP 1600+ or better (my personal favourite - often quite competetive too since the FPU rocks), and the TI4600 might be replaced by a TI4200 or TI4400 (they are only marginally slower, but much cheaper).
Any ideas? We might look at dual boot with linux too
Then it should definitely be nVidia (their Linux drivers are the best).
I agree with Marcus: if price is an issue, go for Athlon processors.
I just got a new Dual Athlon MP 2000+ station in which I plugged a GeForce4 Ti 4200 and the system really rocks. The price for the equivalent machine with Intel processors was quite higher.
One thing you may want to look at is memory: 512Mb may not be enough these days (it really depends on the applications but I manage to get hd swap with 3DS Max even with my 1Gb memory…).
As for the graphics card, I would definitely recommend an NVIDIA one if you are planning to use Linux.
Regards.
Eric
[This message has been edited by Eric (edited 07-03-2002).]
The only reasons I can think of for using a P4 instead of an Athlon are: 1) You need the fastest CPU (the top of the line P4 @ 2.53 GHz is faster than an Athlon XP 2200+) or 2) You intend to run software that is optimized entirely for the P4.
As for 1), I don’t think this is the case (or you would not have thought of the P4 1.6 GHz in the first place, right?). Actually, the Athlon is generally faster than the corresponding P4 (e.g. XP 1600+ vs. P4 1.6 GHz), especially if we’re talking traditional FPU apps. The only thing speaking for the P4 is that the fastest P4 is actually faster than the fastest Athlon, but you get much more performance per buck with an Athlon (for the price of a P4 1.6 GHz you get an Athlon XP 2000+).
Regarding 2), it seems like you will be porting alot of IRIX apps to Windows/Linux, meaning that the software is hardly P4 optimized in the first place. To make P4 optimized sofware yourself you either need to get down and dirty with SSE/SSE2 assembly language, and/or use the $$$ Intel compiler. The Athlon is generally faster with standard x87 FPU ops than the P4.
Ok, enough of the AMD propaganda
By the way. I would go for at least a 19" montior. Very few things increase productivity like a large monitor - an issue neglected too often. For development, design (2D/3D), composing music, writing documents and other creative work, I much rather use a 500 MHz system with a 21" monitor than a 2 GHz system with a 17" monitor.
[This message has been edited by marcus256 (edited 07-04-2002).]
Processorwise, we would go for the fastest
at the time.
yes, I had already reckoned on 1 gig mem
2 huge disks … boot win2k off one
boot linux off the other
Major concern for programmers though may be the sciences maybe IEEE floating point precision.
Anyone know (for sure) what is the position on the Intel processors vs others.
refs may be useful, i.e. good technical pages as opposed to bits of hearsay and waffle!
Thanks again guys,
I will sort out my GLUT code up to the latest rev (honest). You can see how long I have been using GLUT (sorry Marcus!!)
Had long chats with Brian Wyvill (blobs etc)
from Calgary a couple of weeks ago (he was invited speaker at my graphics conference, EGUK !). He uses qt for his cross platform stuff.
