PowerMac Dual 1-GHz Benchmarks

[arn]

MacWelt.de (http://www.macwelt.de) posted benchmarks (http://www.macwelt.de/_news/200201/gigamac.html) from the new Dual 1-GHz PowerMac G4 - with comparisons to older PowerMacs including the dual-800.(English Translation (http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.macwelt.de%2F_news%2F200201%2Fgigamac.html&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&prev=%2Flanguage_tools))

Unfortunately, they are comparing OS X 10.1.2 (Dual 1GHz) vs 10.0.4 (Dual 800).

This page shows pictures (http://www.macwelt.de/_news/200201/gigamac2.html) of the insides of the Dual 1-GHz.. and shows the Seagate Barracuda and GeForce4 MX. (English Translation (http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.macwelt.de%2F_news%2F200201%2Fgigamac2.html&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&prev=%2Flanguage_tools))

Duxbury.la (http://duxbury.la/dp1g/dp1g_1.html) also posted some more realistic benchmarks (I'm assuming the same OS) between the GeForce 3 and GeForce 4MX on a Dual 1-GHz... the GeForce3 is faser... as well as some screenshots and internals.

[Sayer]

So it doesn't come with the EXACT video card you want.

CHANGE IT! For crying out loud.

The used car I bought didn't have the exact level of mileage I wanted but do I go on and on and on about to my wife? No. I accept it and drive to work and the store and take my daughter to school.

Geeze. Find a GeForce3 and pop it in place of the GeForce4MX (note it says MX, i.e. the whimpier of the line).

Sell the GeForce4 for someone who DOESN'T HAVE ONE.

Man its never good for you guys is it?

[mcbane]

question: I am hearing that the radeon 8500 is better than the gf3 (and maybe even gf3 ti500), can anybody confirm this? I ordered a dual 1ghz G4 with the radeon 7500 and I plan on replacing that with the radeon 8500.

[ThlayliTheFierce]

I'm glad to see they've got the Barracuda in there. I've got two of them, a 20 and a 60 gig, both running at ATA 100. They are both excellent drives, quiet, reliable, and fast.

[evanmarx]

of course the geforce4 mx is slower than the geforce 3 ... but that cost alone 400-500$ to upgrade ...

but the mx not only stands for "slower and cheaper" but also for "low power and low heat". if you check the images of the card you'll notice that it has no fan! so less noise ... if you ever owned a DELL with a geforce card WITH fan, you know what i'm talking about ... unfortunately the dual processor has a small fan know ... sniff

[blakespot]

Indeed, note the presence of a heatsink, but the lack of a fan on the GPU on the GeForce 4MX in those photos. Also, the memory on the board lacks heatsinks, while all GeForce 3 boards have heatsinks on the DDR SDRAM.

Glad I've got a GeForce 3 in this DP G4 800...!



blakespot

[Unregistered]

Previous tower configuration has the GF2 by default, the GF3 was an expensive upgrade.
GF4 is surely faster than GF2, so actual configuration is better.
For game benchmark remember that human eye can see up to 30 frame per second, so it's not important the difference between 120 and 150 FPS.
If someone play games with a resolution greater than 1024 GF3 can make big difference, but there is no real reason to play games with 1280 or 1600.
GF3 is too expensive and few people have a real reason to buy one, it has limited market.
The problem of the GF3 is similar to the problem of the P4-2giga, few people buy one of them because there is no a real need of that power.
Theese are the reasons that force NVIDIA to make lowered cost GF.
However Apple has always the possibility to (re)introduce the option of the GF3 or 8500 without the need to wait next cpu upgrade.

[Pants]

Originally posted by Unregistered
[B
For game benchmark remember that human eye can see up to 30 frame per second, so it's not important the difference between 120 and 150 FPS.
If someone play games with a resolution greater than 1024 GF3 can make big difference, but there is no real reason to play games with 1280 or 1600.

[/B]

Im so pleased you really know what your talking about. Enlighten us some more, please?

[Unregistered]

Human eye has a limited capability to view frames per second. I'm not sure, but I think this limit is 30fps.
This mean that human eye has not the capability to see the difference between 100 and 150 fps.
If you move as fast as you can your arm in front of your eyes you don't see the fluid movement of your arm, you see several hands.... because your eye has a limited capability in fps resolution.
So, if a graphic cards game benchmark result in a difference between 50 and 70 fps, we can suppose that in particulary hard game situation (many monster in the same room) the fps difference become visible, but if the difference is between 100 and 150...
For exaple the XBox has a GF3, PS2 has very slower graphic card, but booth play in 640x480. I've visually compared a race demo in the two consolle and I don't see any difference....
Obviously GF3 is long term graphic card, but sometimes is preferable to chose a newer chip, that makes newer special effects, instead of a chip that increase fps from 100 to 150.
So a good solution can be choose a medium cost graphic card now and save money for a newer medium cost graphic card when the one you use become slooooow.

[spikey]

If you cant tell the difference in graphics between the PS2 and Xbox then you are blind. the makers of Dead or alive3 say they couldnt have made it for the PS2 because it wasnt powerful enough. And if you look at the difference between say Project gotham racing and gran turismo3 then you will notice Xbox can process a higher level of detail because it is more powerful.
And by the way, the Xbox actually runs at a slightly higher resolution than the PS2.

And yes the graphics card with more graphics processing features is often better, but when playing a game like black and white which is GPU intensive then you will need those extra FPS to run it smoothly without getting the annoying jerkiness.

The ATI 8500 is better than the Geforce3 Ti500, and also cheaper, aswell as having GPU features that arent taken advantage of yet.

The difference in FPS will be made clear in a GPU intensive game, where the detail is so high you will need more power to run it above 30FPS.

[dim]

Originally posted by Sayer
So it doesn't come with the EXACT video card you want.

CHANGE IT! For crying out loud.

The used car I bought didn't have the exact level of mileage I wanted but do I go on and on and on about to my wife? No. I accept it and drive to work and the store and take my daughter to school.

Geeze. Find a GeForce3 and pop it in place of the GeForce4MX (note it says MX, i.e. the whimpier of the line).

Sell the GeForce4 for someone who DOESN'T HAVE ONE.

Man its never good for you guys is it?


Sayer, ... if you pay this amount of money, ... it must be good. ... And I DO NOT want to pop a GeForce 3 in place!! ... NOT!!
... that's because it's gonna cost me EXTRA!!

... Don't you get that?

dim

[PUSH]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Unregistered
"Human eye has a limited capability to view frames per second. I'm not sure, but I think this limit is 30fps."

To be technical,
the human eye visualises in Hz not FPS. The figure is 100Hz (you'll notice most good modern TVs run at this refresh rate) for humans. The closer to 100Hz the refresh rate of your monitor is, the more comfortable it will be to look at. Moreover, the higher your FPS is, the more fooled your brain will be into thinking its real as it more closely resembles the natural frequency of our eyes. Here endeth the science...

[jayscheuerle]

To the gamebox crowd: In the States, NTSC resolution (television) is 752 x 486. If you're hardware renders out higher than that, then it has to be interpolated down with a loss of information- still ends up at 752 x 486. I doubt and console manufacturer renders out to a lower resolution and interpolates up. Television is 30 frames per sec (60 fields). If your hardware is playing out 60 fps, it has to drop one frame as the television is stuck at 30fps.

On your computer, you're running into the same limits when you're talking about refresh rate. If your moniter's refreshing at 75Hz, it's having to drop every other frame if your video card is pumping out 150fps.

What the eye can see has long been the subject of debate, but some heavy hitters in the entertainment industry have toyed with movies filmed and projected at 60fps. The conclusion was that these movies were much more lifelike, almost a 3D quality. I've never seen this, so I can't comment personally.

I doubt that anything above 60fps is perceivable by the human eye, but the power of suggestion and the desire to believe are very powerful and there will always be those who are sincere in their claim that they can see the difference between 70fps and 120fps. That doesn't mean they can. It just means they're sincere...

[spikey]

the question though is not about whether the human eye can see above 30FPS.

The point is that when you play a game say Quake3 for example, when you have 4 ****heads attemting to frag you and 10 rockets travelling towards your face then you will need the extra power of the GPU to deliver enough FPS to keep the game running smoothly.

These FPS measures are not necesserally real life examples, in real life you would sacrifice the FPS for detail until you got enough detail without the game becoming jerky.

So yes the difference between 100FPs and 150FPS is marginal, but it is just to show the power of the GPU, it is an example of the power and not an example of how you would set up the detail/smoothness level of the game. And the more powerful the GPU, the more detail in the game, and also the smoother the game is when you have 5 ****heads wanting to Frag your ass.



FPS does matter.

[jayscheuerle]

Enlightening!

So if the manufacturer says a card will play Quake 3 at 70fps, then that's an average?

When you're running around with nothing to kill, it may be doing 150fps (which you wouldn't notice), but if you're dodging the death rays of 5 "ass-fraggers" it may slow to something like 15fps if your card isn't powerful enough?

On top of that, the more options you select in terms of detail, smoke, etc. will slow you down even more? How do you find honest evaluations of cards set to run on similar specs?

[Unregistered]

Ok guys, I just want to say that if Apple offers me a GF3 or 8500 instead of a GF4 for an add 100$ i can consider the option, but for 200-300 more not. This thread seems to be originated to prove that GF4 is ****. Many people that still use a GF2 don't feel any need to change it.

800x600 is a good resolution for games, ok 1024 is better but the difference is not so noticeable in action games, and I think GF4 in 800x600 can run heviest game situations.

GF4 is not ****, GF3 is too expensive.
8500 is interesting, but i don't know how much it cost.

[arn]

Hey all...

the point isn't whether or not you can get 100 or 200 FPS on a game... point is many assumed that the GeForce 4 MX would be faster than a GeForce 3... it is not... and while many may not need to see quake run at 120 FPS vs 110... in future games such as Doom 3, it will make a noticable difference.

The info is important so you can make informed purchases.

arn

[Unregistered]

FOR jayscheuerle

I suppose that Quake internal benchmark is honest, more honest than PowerPC vs Pentium Apple benchmark.
Surely there will be particulary heavy game situations that results in a lower fps in what you see in benchmark, but usually benchmark test medium-to-heavy game situations. At least I hope so.

[Pants]

Originally posted by arn
Hey all...

the point isn't whether or not you can get 100 or 200 FPS on a game... point is many assumed that the GeForce 4 MX would be faster than a GeForce 3... it is not... and while many may not need to see quake run at 120 FPS vs 110... in future games such as Doom 3, it will make a noticable difference.

The info is important so you can make informed purchases.

arn

sorry for the earlier sarcasm. Just because a tv has a low refresh rate doesnt mean to say your eye cant tell the difference (anyone get eye strain on a 60 hz monitor? yep, exactly...)....Im not sure eyes have a 'refresh rate' in the computer sense either.....and yes, gimme a 200 fps gpu over a 60 any day. UT flak is a frame sucker ... :)

Arn - agreed totally - its a rip off. but then so is the 'ultimate' over the 'fast'. The question Id like answered is why a gf3 or 4 at all? Open gl lags behind dx8/9 seriously and with a gf4 on a mac, your not going to see all those fancy particle effects any time soon. Hence your really paying over the odds for a card with capabilities that no game you have can use..... (I notice that ogl is not a supported standard on the upcoming unreal2 - its only dx8/9 - what hope a good quality port??)

[mcbane]

Originally posted by Unregistered
Human eye has a limited capability to view frames per second. I'm not sure, but I think this limit is 30fps.
This mean that human eye has not the capability to see the difference between 100 and 150 fps.
If you move as fast as you can your arm in front of your eyes you don't see the fluid movement of your arm, you see several hands.... because your eye has a limited capability in fps resolution.
So, if a graphic cards game benchmark result in a difference between 50 and 70 fps, we can suppose that in particulary hard game situation (many monster in the same room) the fps difference become visible, but if the difference is between 100 and 150...
For exaple the XBox has a GF3, PS2 has very slower graphic card, but booth play in 640x480. I've visually compared a race demo in the two consolle and I don't see any difference....
Obviously GF3 is long term graphic card, but sometimes is preferable to chose a newer chip, that makes newer special effects, instead of a chip that increase fps from 100 to 150.
So a good solution can be choose a medium cost graphic card now and save money for a newer medium cost graphic card when the one you use become slooooow.

Sorry, have to respond to this. It has been proven that the human eye can detect up to at least 80 fps. Tests were done in the military where frames would be shown at 80fps, and a single frame would contain some type of plane. The people could not only say that they saw the plane, but identify the make of it. So humans can see the 80fps.

You are getting it confused with the number of frames per sec in film and video. Video runs at 30fps, film at 24fps. This is okay because you factor in motion bluring and many other things. Added to the fact that, in video games, the frames have to match the twitch reflexes a person may throw at it, but in film it is not a person controlling the actions, so there is no sense of delay.

[BillGates]

Originally posted by mcbane


Tests were done in the military where frames would be shown at 80fps, and a single frame would contain some type of plane. The people could not only say that they saw the plane, but identify the make of it. So humans can see the 80fps.


The article I read about the military tests mentioned that the image of the plane was flashed on screen for 1/200th of a second. I wonder what the truth is?

NTSC video frame rates are 29.997 (with 2 fields/frame)
US HDTV frame rates can be 24, 30 and 60 both progressive and interlaced
I'm not aware of any US video standard having a frame rate of 80.

Being an owner of a Radion, GeForce 2MX, GeForce3 and a GeForce4MX on the way. I can tell you that faster has always been better when playing Quake and Unreal. If you have the money buy the fastest card you can get. Anyone who says you can't see the difference either doesn't have the money to buy the better card or hasn't actually seen it in action.

One reason for the faster card I've not seen mentioned is its ability to maintain high frame rates at high resolution 1280 x 1024 and up. The resolution of the image adds to the realism as much as the frame rate, maybe more. I know I hate watching NTSC now that I have an HDTV.

If your really into games with high frame rates you better stay away from LCD displays. Just like exceeding your refresh rate on a CRT is a waste. Exceeding the response time of the LCD pixels causes noticable negative visual affects on the screen. An LCD response time is much slower than the refresh rate on a CRT. A good LCD can only do about 40 FPS.

[mcbane]

Originally posted by BillGates


I'm not aware of any US video standard having a frame rate of 80.


I was under the impression it was a reel of film that was sped up to play 80 fps.

[BillGates]

Originally posted by mcbane


I was under the impression it was a reel of film that was sped up to play 80 fps.

My mistake. I miss read your post as 80 video frames. You clearly state 30.


I play Quake and Unreal at 1280 x 1024 85Hz. My GeForce3 gives me a minimum frame rate around 80FPS and it looks damn good. I'll have to see if there is some way to govern the FPS. It would be fun to experiment with slowing it to 70 then 60. I'm confident it would be real noticable.

[sturm375]

Originally posted by spikey
If you cant tell the difference in graphics between the PS2 and Xbox then you are blind. the makers of Dead or alive3 say they couldnt have made it for the PS2 because it wasnt powerful enough. And if you look at the difference between say Project gotham racing and gran turismo3 then you will notice Xbox can process a higher level of detail because it is more powerful.
And by the way, the Xbox actually runs at a slightly higher resolution than the PS2.

And yes the graphics card with more graphics processing features is often better, but when playing a game like black and white which is GPU intensive then you will need those extra FPS to run it smoothly without getting the annoying jerkiness.

The ATI 8500 is better than the Geforce3 Ti500, and also cheaper, aswell as having GPU features that arent taken advantage of yet.

The difference in FPS will be made clear in a GPU intensive game, where the detail is so high you will need more power to run it above 30FPS.

I have found that what graphics chipset you prefer depends greatly on the person's experiance. However if you look stricktly at the numbers, nVidia Ti500 blows any and all ATI stuff away. Also nVidia's foundation is in OpenGL, where ATI has just entered, I believe Rage was the first to fully support it. Also, correct me if I am wrong in this, OS X is heavy into OpenGL. Having a video card with strong, constant support for OpenGL will be very important to OS X users.

This does not apply here, but in the PC world, ATI is well known to have driver problems, in every incarnation.

Disclamer: Economic Theory - Compitition
ATI is the only ones making ATI cards, no competition.
nVidia only makes the chipset, others make the boards. Lots of competition, brings about much better tech because all manufactures want theirs to be the best.

[BillGates]

What are mac users doing with a Microsoft XBox? :)

If you want to see a huge improvement in your new game consoles video performance, attach it to an HDTV via component video cables.

I love how these message threads get off track...

[mcbane]

Originally posted by sturm375

Also nVidia's foundation is in OpenGL, where ATI has just entered, I believe Rage was the first to fully support it. Also, correct me if I am wrong in this, OS X is heavy into OpenGL. Having a video card with strong, constant support for OpenGL will be very important to OS X users.

I was under the impression that nVidia was designed with DirectX in mind and incorportated many features that openGL couldnt take advantage of. Also, I have read in several places saying the radeon 8500 and gf3 ti500 are very similar in power.

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Originally posted by Unregistered
800x600 is a good resolution for games, ok 1024 is better but the difference is not so noticeable in action games.

UhhmMM....When was the last time you played a FPS ? 1024x768 makes a BIG diffrence for an average+ player compared to 800x600!


and I think GF4 in 800x600 can run heviest game situations.

Hey, according to Apple's spechs it can even do it in 1024x768 at 115 fps, and that more than enough! It can probably do about 60 fps at 1600x1200 which is acceptable even for a hardcore gamer.

[dw1]

Man those benchmarks blow for graphics intensive applications in Mac OS X as compared to OS 9.2.2. Apple better step it up in terms of performance.

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by dw1
Man those benchmarks blow for graphics intensive applications in Mac OS X as compared to OS 9.2.2. Apple better step it up in terms of performance.

At Last! we're getting to something more interesting than Quake's FPS count ;P. I noticed this too, A dual 1ghz G4 running osX.1.2 can scroll Appleworks pages HALF as fast as a 350 running 9.1 - Shockingly bad.

[sturm375]

Originally posted by mcbane


I was under the impression that nVidia was designed with DirectX in mind and incorportated many features that openGL couldnt take advantage of. Also, I have read in several places saying the radeon 8500 and gf3 ti500 are very similar in power.

nVidia has just reciently adopted DirectX heavily (since DirX8). Once opon a time when there were 3 major competing chipsets: ATI, 3dfx, and nVidia; ATI focused on DirX, 3Dfx focused on Glide, and nVidia focused on openGL. Take a look at the "Professional" grade chipsets on nVidia's website. These are designed for the high-end 3D CAD, and 3D Rendering. Basing most of their features on openGL. By the way, rumor has it that one of these pro video boards was able to RENDER the Final Fantasy movie real time! Probably on a Solaris workstation.

"Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within Rendered in Real Time on NVIDIA GPUs
SIGGRAPH 2001 – LOS ANGELES — AUGUST 14, 2000 — The graphics industry took a quantum leap forward today at SIGGRAPH 2001 when NVIDIA® Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) rendered Columbia Pictures’ computer-generated (CG) animated motion picture, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, in real-time. This groundbreaking demonstration takes place in the NVIDIA booth (#1701) and SQUARE booth (#1927) using NVIDIA’s Quadro™ workstation graphics technology, the industry’s leading workstation 3D solutions. Square USA Inc. research and development division developed the software for the technology demo. The real-time demonstration was made possible by NVIDIA’s nfiniteFX™ shading technology, including vertex and pixel shaders, to overcome the technical challenges presented in creating realistic skin, hair, clothing and other organic attributes."

-Found on nVidia's news room section of their website

My theory: You want a mess of features, with the distinct possibility of conflicts, Pick ATI. You want a powerfull Video card, pick somebody that hasn't messed with TV tuners, and sound through-put, pick nVidia.

[midiman]

Originally posted by Unregistered


At Last! we're getting to something more interesting than Quake's FPS count ;P. I noticed this too, A dual 1ghz G4 running osX.1.2 can scroll Appleworks pages HALF as fast as a 350 running 9.1 - Shockingly bad.


Have you actuallyl SEEN a dual gig machine? Because I have one, and it FLIES!!! Please spew your uninformed, "unregistered", opinions where they belong - in the recycle bin....er, trash can.

[Unregistered]

[Quote][i] Or

[Unregistered]

Have you actuallyl SEEN a dual gig machine? Because I have one, and it FLIES!!! Please spew your uninformed, "unregistered", opinions where they belong - in the recycle bin....er, trash can.

No I haven't, I have seen the webpage quoted in the article though and it reports that a G4 800mhz/os9 can scroll 500 pages of text in appleworks in 32.73 seconds, and a G4 dualGig/osX takes 123.78 seconds. I was trying to point out that os X still lags big-time in key areas. Personally I spend more time scrolling documents, sizing windows etc. than playing quake. I was having a dig at os X's lacklustre performance DESPITE it running on the latest and greatest hardware. By the way "midiman" if you feel my "unregistered" opinions are trashworthy then why bother commenting on them?

[DavidCL23]

b/c midiman is a moron, lol!!!!

[Rocketman]

Originally posted by mcbane


Sorry, have to respond to this. It has been proven that the human eye can detect up to at least 80 fps. Tests were done in the military where frames would be shown at 80fps, and a single frame would contain some type of plane. The people could not only say that they saw the plane, but identify the make of it. So humans can see the 80fps.

You are getting it confused with the number of frames per sec in film and video. Video runs at 30fps, film at 24fps. This is okay because you factor in motion bluring and many other things. Added to the fact that, in video games, the frames have to match the twitch reflexes a person may throw at it, but in film it is not a person controlling the actions, so there is no sense of delay.

Another poster proposed targeting 100nhz vor visual arts.

I ask this, not being a big action game enthusiast.

If I wanted to harness all this power for, say 3 large screen displays for my mac, I would need 2 cards, right? 2 monitirs per card, full resolution, full bit depth, full speed.

I agree also that drivers need alot of hacking and improvement.

BTW a SMALL effort on drivers would make a HUGE difference to THOUSANDS of people, but admittedly with a small cash flow to the author.

Rocketman

:p

[Goose]

I don't know alot about frame rates within games, but I can shed some light on the human eye/frame rate thang.

This is kind of long, so bear with me here.

I'm not sure what the eyes' "maximum" perceptable fps is but:

The commonly used frame rates for video and films were produced as minimums, not maximums.

In the early days of films, 24 fps was set as a compromise between an acceptable smoothness of motion vs. the least amount of film to be shot. Mostly a financial decision.

In the early days of television the electronics were not advanced enough in consumer recievers to generate their own consistent frame rate, so they (the National Television Standards Commitee, or NTSC) locked the frame rate to the electrical current powering the set. The wall socket literally drove the frame rate. That is why we have 30fps (60 fields) here in the States (60 cycle AC) and 25fps (50 fields) in Europe (50 cycle AC).

People from the States who travel to Europe notice and are irritated by the lower field rate until they eyes become accustomed to it.

This then brings us to the main issue: frame rates and field rates.
There are two seperate issues at work.

You go to a movie and drop good money to see a 24fps film because at 24fps your brain accepts the motion as smooth enough to be believable. But if each frame were actually flashed on the screen at just 24fps, it would be unacceptably irritating
because there is a seperate issue at work. Your eyes/brain are far more sensitive to brief flashes of light than to motion So as each frame passes through the projector gate it is held and flashed twice on the screen via the mechanics of the projector. Thus what you could call an effective refresh rate of 48, close to European TV at 50 fields. Your eyes/brain see motion and light changes as two different things.

Which brings us to what fields are for.

If video frames were refreshed at 30fps you wouldn't watch it.
The flicker would be unacceptable (think strobe light). So they split the information in one frame across two 60 times per second "fields". Fields are like frames but contain only half the scan lines. All the odd scan lines were refreshed on one field and the even scan lines were refreshed on the other. That is called interlacing.
Thus a true rate of 60 fields per second but at half the resolution per frame. Also, unlike film, where the motion is fixed at 24fps, fields in video continue to update the motion at the 60 rate. This is a component of the esthetic look of film vs. video.

So you get to enjoy that new high bandwidth Quicktime Star Wars trailer over the internet at a smoothly moving 24fps while your computer screen refreshes at a much higher refresh rate to reduce any perceived light strobing. Also, your computer monitor is progressive scan, not interlaced, meaning it redraws every scan line with every refresh cycle, not just half the lines.

Whew!

Now onto higher frame rates.

If you are playing a game that is displayed on a TV (Playstation, etc.), no matter how fast the machine can produce frames, they will be downconverted to 30fps or 60 fields. If game boxes really have higher frame rates, the downconversion might look somewhat better because in video processing the quality going in affects the quality you get out. This can be seen if you watch something shot in one of the new HDTV formats downconverted to standard NTSC. It looks better than if it was shot NTSC.

Your computer screen refreshes at higher rates than TV's and may actually be able to display higher frame rates as well, but I'm just guessing there.

But,

I think the real issue for video cards and games is that as video cards get faster, game developers make the games visually more complex. The video card has to balance the frame rate of motion against its ability to process the pixels. If the game overwhelms the card, it can fall below a visually smooth motion frame rate of somewhere around 24fps and become jerky. This is a seperate issue from refresh rates on your monitor.

Lastly, a mention was made in this thread about higher frame rate films.
One of these formats is called "Showscan". It runs at 60fps and uses a large film format (70mm). It is used as a "Special Venue" medium. It is indeed exciting to watch, but the impact comes from a combination of frame rate and film frame size. A 70mm film frame has far far more detail than even 1080i HD. Your vision is blasted away by the information/detail being thrown at you by that combination of frame rate and frame size.

These alternate formats go back aways. In the 1950's, when film studios were trying to battle the loss of audiance to television, they tried alot of methods to make films more visually interesting. Vistavision, Cinerama, 3D (with the glasses) were a few. They also experimented with higher frame rates. The 1955 film "Oklahoma" was shot in a custom high frame rate format which I believe was 60fps. There were only a few projectors built to show this and the film ran in this format only at a few theaters. All the other theaters got 24fps standard reduction prints.
A few years ago, at an event I attended at the Directors' Guild in Los Angeles, they ran a short segment of the film on the only projector left that could show it. They don't even have a full print in the original 60fps format, just two reels, I think.
Even after 40 years, it was visually stunning. I swear, on the shot riding through the corn field to "Oh, What a Beautiful Day" you could see the detail on, and count every ear of corn in the shot.
The shot seemed alive.

PS

Maximimum frame rates for HDTV are:
60 frames progressive for the 720p format
30 frames (60 fields) interlaced for 1080i
and, everywhere I said video is 30fps, well it's really 29.97fps,
but that's another long story.

Enough hot air!

[Unregistered]

Whoever mentioned Doom III was right in bringing it up. Quake is old and while using it to bench new macs is okay, it is probably is not revealing that much about the hardware. Doom was tested a short while ago on top grade PCs (high 1.X Ghz, GeForce3, blah blah) whith all the effects turned on and it only ran at 15-30 FPS. The game tasks a comp so much that current hardware can't even handle it. Excessive pixel shading!!! They are waiting for more powerful chips and GPUs to come out before they can release the game. And for all those who say 70FPS is good enough for a FPS (and balk at 100-200FPS), you really need to play more games...
The human eye persistence of vision stuff is irrelevant. If you character is moving slower than another guy running at 150FPS, you are going to get hit in the head with a rocket.
goodbye...
=)

[tadpole]

You guys want real numbers?

okay:
www.anandtech.com , they have a shootout of all the hottest cards. Radeon 8500 is on top for all except the absolute highest resolution but losing by less than 5% to Gf3 ti500.



READ THE FRIGG'N article before you macnuts flame me.

Also, ATI has hardware iDCT built in, functional DVD hardware decoding, unlike Nvidia. So if you want framerates and nice video, ATI is the way to go. I have the Radeon 7500 running two 17inch monitors at their maximum refresh. Its a nice setup.

If some jackass starts a flame war over this, there will be hell to be had, I may be a geek, but right now I'm a pissed off little geek, I'll eat ur freaking pocket protectors for breakfast if i have to, to prove a freaking point.

[sturm375]

Originally posted by tadpole
You guys want real numbers?

okay:
www.anandtech.com , they have a shootout of all the hottest cards. Radeon 8500 is on top for all except the absolute highest resolution but losing by less than 5% to Gf3 ti500.



READ THE FRIGG'N article before you macnuts flame me.

Also, ATI has hardware iDCT built in, functional DVD hardware decoding, unlike Nvidia. So if you want framerates and nice video, ATI is the way to go. I have the Radeon 7500 running two 17inch monitors at their maximum refresh. Its a nice setup.

If some jackass starts a flame war over this, there will be hell to be had, I may be a geek, but right now I'm a pissed off little geek, I'll eat ur freaking pocket protectors for breakfast if i have to, to prove a freaking point.

Just call me a J@ck@ss than. Oh and by the way I don't own any pocket-protectors.

Quote from artical's final words:
"With that said we have discovered a few interesting things through this initial investigation of performance:


1) The Radeon 8500 does exceptionally well, only losing out to the GeForce3 Ti 500 at the highest resolution. The only question that remains is whether the performance will remain high with the fog issues fixed.

2) The original GeForce3, although very expensive for those that were early adopters, ends up being one of the top performers out of today's GPUs. It's good to know that not all year old technology is obsolete.

3) If these results are any indication, moving forward, GPU clock will actually play a much more important role than it has in the past. A delicate balance between GPU clock and memory clock, such as what was made possible on the GeForce3, will be ideal to obtain.

4) The low-end ATI and NVIDIA solutions don't perform very well at all, thus making it worth while to upgrade to one of the higher end cards.

There are still some questions that remain unanswered, including how effective hardware T&L actually is on slower systems. This is just one of many topics that we will be covering as our investigation continues. "

Unless I am missing something here, it appears to me that the Geforce3 is nearly neck and neck with ATI's 8500, and exceeds ATI at Higer resolutions. Not only that, but ATI's card was just released a couple of months ago, while nVidia's was releeased 1 year ago. I have no doubt in my mind that when nVidia releases the non-MX version of the GeForce4, ATI will look like the Half-Fast(say it fast, you'll figure it out) card it is.:D

My name is Doug Logsdon
email: sturm@core.com

In the immortal words of "The Rock", "Just Bring IT!!"

[pc_convert?]

sturm375 wrote,
Also nVidia's foundation is in OpenGL, where ATI has just entered
nVidia's foundation is DirectX I believe. ATi maybe new to OpenGL but they have brought up FireGL - probably one of the most respected high end OpenGL card manufacturers. Expect this technology to incorporated into the Radeon with a couple of generations.

Disclamer: Economic Theory - Compitition
ATI is the only ones making ATI cards, no competition.
nVidia only makes the chipset, others make the boards. Lots of competition, brings about much better tech because all manufactures want theirs to be the best.
Actually ATi does have card partners, as stated here. (http://www.theinquirer.net/10010213.htm)

I dont' think there is a lot between Geforce/Radeon cards, expect the Radeon has better DVD decoding hardware.

[sturm375]

Check out this site: http://www.opengl.org/users/apps_hardware/accelerators.html

It lists all the 3D Accelerator boards compliant with openGL. The first nVidia board I can remember is the TNT. If you look, the TNT is compliant. Also, like I said ATI's support started with the RAGE boards, specifically RAGE 128 GL and one integrated chipset.

More proof?:

"NVIDIA's RIVA TNT processor is the first high performance consumer desktop graphics accelerator that does everything right without having to make bone headed compromises," said Brian Hook at id Software. " Joining the ARB emphasizes NVIDIA's support for OpenGL, which in turn reinforces our confidence in OpenGL's future in the consumer space."

Taken from: http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=IO_20020114_5538