[BENCH | WIN] GeForce 256, wow

[Sebastien Barre]

(sorry, this is a report, but the list was down at the time I sent it)

We have finally received results for the GeForce256 graphics chip (thanks
to Donald).

I guess you may have heard about this new generation of powerful 3D chips
aimed at the 3D gaming world. 

There always has been a gap between gaming board and mid-end or high-end
professional 3D board. 2 (3 ?)  years ago 3DLabs was clever enough to
release one of the first true OpenGL chip with a geometry engine at low
price (< $250). The beast called Permedia 2 was pretty nice combined with
VTK,  it was not the best stuff for gaming, but was definitely better than
its competitors in the same price range when dealing with true/professional
OpenGL. 

3Dlabs created an interesting "niche" in the "professional" market, but I
think they were unable to exploit it with their Permedia 3, as "pure
gaming" chip were getting more and more powerful. And here is one of these...

The GeForce256 follows the same path. It has a geometry engine, lots of
memory and is willing to relieve the CPU from many of the 3D computations
it had to handle before.

Here are the results :

>From: Donald_C_Power at res.raytheon.com
>To: Robert.Riviere at sophia.inria.fr, Sebastien.Barre at utc.fr
>Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 07:17:30 -0500
>Subject: vtk Simple Sphere benchmark results

>400 MHz PII X 2
>Creative Annihilator Pro (GeForce 256)

>System :
>  - intel running Windows NT 4.0
>  - VTK 2.3.0 (rev: 1.146, 1999/04/14 01:54:48)
>  - Win32OpenGL
>  - Visual is 1280x1024, truecolor/truecolor/32
>  - Tcl/Tk 8.0p2

>Best results, summary :
>   1) 256x256 : 1027.5 kpolys/s : [stripper]
>   2) 256x256 :  646.1 kpolys/s : [wireframe]
>   3) 256x256 :  523.4 kpolys/s : [small_sphere]
>   4) 256x256 :  523.4 kpolys/s : [transparency]
>   5) 256x256 :  521.2 kpolys/s : []
>   6) 256x256 :  382.7 kpolys/s : [texture, transparency]
>   7) 256x256 :  382.1 kpolys/s : [texture]

Impressive.
In a nutshell : around 520 kpolys/s, and 1020 kpolys/s stripped. And this
nice piece costs less than $250 I think.

Let's compare with some other entries in our database (I choose equivalent
systems, 2 X pentium) :
http://www-sop.inria.fr/caiman/personnel/Robert.Riviere/vtk/sphere-bench/#re
sults

The 3Dlabs GMX2000 is also around 500 kpolys/s, but is more than 2500
kpolys/stripped. Nevertheless, it has 96 RAM, and it's worth something more
than $2000.

The Evans&Sutherland AccelGalaxy RealImage 2100 is 396 kpolys/s, and 1393
kpolys/s stripped. It's also a professional card, mid-end or high-end, I do
not know about its price.

And every other low-end gaming board are far below the GeForce256 (under
200 kpoly/s). Even Permedia 3.

Seems to me that this affordable card is a good choice, and might worth a
look. Of course, our bench does not reflect a "real" use, but it gives some
clues. 


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