> > That's actually very interesting info, Bart, thanks for sharing that with us.
> It
> > seems in a way quite analogously similar to older 2D tile/sprite-based arcade
> > architectures - the main CPU itself only manipulates some registers and some
> > pointers, and the actual graphics tile/sprite data remains in ROM and is
> > processed by the hardware to generate the display. Except in this case, the
> ROMs
> > contain model/texture data, and the graphics hardware is a 3D rasterization
> > pipeline. Adding RAM-based model storage, would be like RAM-based tile storage
> > for 2D arcade hardware.
>
> Yes, that's a good analogy. I've heard that Namco System 11 (or 22 or both?)
> also stored data in ROM. In the case of Namco hardware, textures were usable by
> the rendering hardware while in ROM.
>
> > > No way. By the time the Riva TNT hit the scene, Model 3 was obsolete.
> >
> > That seems slightly a stretch. I've used a Riva TNT (16MB PCI) before, to play
> > UT, and ... it doesn't even seem in the same world as a Model3 arcade game, as
> > far as the graphics go. No way. Enabling AA would make it far, far worse in
> > terms of comparative performance.
>
> If not Riva TNT then definitely GeForce. And I still don't know if Voodoo 2 and
> Riva TNT generation hardware was that far behind. The Voodoo cards were
> basically just polygon rasterizers AFAIK and I think this limited their
> performance -- even if they could draw polygons fast there was still a lot of
> time wasted sending all those polygons every single frame.
>

ALL consumer-gaming PC 3D chips were simply rasterizers, up *until* the NV10 / GeForce came out in the fall of 1999 with on-chip geometry processor (T&L). all low-cost consumer PC 3D chips before the GeForce, including the TNT and TNT2 were rasterizers like all the Voodoo cards. although there are many differences between Nvidia TNT / TNT2 and 3Dfx Voodoo, Voodoo2, Banshee, Voodoo3 and VSA-100 (Voodoo4/5), they were all rasterizers without any ability to generate their own polygons (they relied on the CPU for that) if you wanted a PC 3D card with on-board geometry processing / T&L, you would have to purchase an expensive $1000+ board from 3DLabs with GAMMA (geometry/T&L) plus Glint (rasterizer) or a Real3D-100 (lower end than Real3D Pro 1000) or similar expensive card. thus, gaming cards in the $150 to $600 range all lacked geometry processing, until GeForce.

> I imagine by the time the Riva came out, and certainly the GeForce, the cards
> were capable of caching display lists. From my limited experience with 3D APIs,
> the usual programming model is to just send draw commands every frame but OpenGL
> (and I'm sure Direct3D) has always supported display lists and nowadays vertex
> buffered objects are the way to go.
>
> My guess would be that by the time these features began to appear in consumer
> cards, Model 3 had been out-done.
>
we did not see PC *games* outperforming Model 3 across the board until after the 1990s were over -- Even if *some* PC 3D chips had *some* features that were beyond Model 3. the fact remains that Model 3 was unrivaled from 1995-96 until late 1999 or 2000 on the PC side (not counting dreamcast) that's about 5 years, give or take.


> > Well, that's not surprising. I think UT pushes probably around 10K poly/scene
> > too, roughly, except that Model3 can add all kinds of nice texture-filtering
> and
> > full-screen AA effects too, without any noticable slowdown that I can see.
> Try
> > doing that on an TNT - bad idea.
>
> Model 3's texture filtering is just tri-linear filtering (mip-mapping.) Besides
> that and AA, there really isn't anything else going on. And as for the AA, keep
> in mind that Model 3 games run at 496x384 on a medium res screen.
>
> It's difficult for me to tell how much benefit the AA really gives. In
> Supermodel with its numerous graphical glitches, slideshow framerate, and
> full-bright rendering, everything looks awful. Lighting makes a huge difference
> and things look a lot better when running at 60FPS.
>
> > > Model 3 had 8MB of texture memory. Max texture resolution was 256x256.
> >
> > Texture space in ROM or RAM or both? I wonder how / if they handled modifiable
> > textures, or supported render-to-texture? I'm surprised at the limited texture
> > resolution though, considering VivoNono and the Namco Sys22 stuff. (Voodoo2
> > hardware was also similarly 256x256 limited, of course.)
>
> Model 3 could only render textures from its 8MB memory. Textures could be stored
> in ROM but have to be DMA copied to texture memory to be used. Note also that
> the CPU has no access to the ROM space and can only send texture upload commands
> to the GPU.
>
> > I was always of the opinion that the Model3 was just ever-so-slightly
> higher-end
> > than the straight-up Naomi or DC systems, although I think they could connect
> > multiple Naomi boards in parallel to increase the rendering capability.
> (Doesn't
> > HOTD2 or something use two Naomi boardsets? I'm not super-familiar with that
> > hardware.)
>
> No way. DC is vastly superior to Model 3. There's just no comparison between
> DC/Naomi games and Model 3. PowerVR was a much better piece of kit.
>
>
> > on what is effectively an XBox inside the machine. I guess that 512MB RAM /
> > media-board really helps with that. One little thing that seemed strange to me
> > though, when I first saw that game in the arcade, was that the attract-mode
> > movies were some sort of MPEG or something, rather than rendered in realtime
> > such as most other contemporary 3D racers, like Scud Race / Super GT was.
>
> Don't forget that these polished Sega games have excellent artwork. Model 3
> games can still look very nice today, I'll admit, but when you take a closer
> look, you'll see that the 3D hardware has been pitifully outdated since the late
> 90's.
>
>
> ----
> Bart
>