@Boui :
lol
The Textures
are already compressed.
(what were you thinking ?)
Uncompressed, they would be somewhere around 2-4 GigaBytes, wouldn't fit anywhere
Without Texture Compression, nothing works anymore since a long time now.
And DXTC is basically S3TC (DXTC being a relabeled DirectX variant, but they are quite similar, as they do about the same job).
16bit Color Palette ?
Well, last time I saw that was on Quake 1 I think...
Most Games now are fully optimized towards 32bit; anything else is only for fallback Options (hence really not optimal).
UT's original 256x256 Textures don't cut it by today's standards; they looked "as good as it gets" though, since it was really optizimed for 3dfx Glide with some really nice tricks.
But now, just compare it to the S3TC Compressed counterpart in OpenGL (if available) and the difference is simply gigantic.
I do agree that some of the Textures of UT2003 didn't turn out to be as good as expected, but it rather looks like they rushed the Release, than the Texture's own fault. When I look at DM-TokaraForest at Max. Detail, though, it becomes apparent what High-Res Textures really can do
What card you choose to have fun with, is of course your own decision. I play Unreal Tournament and UT2003 "competitive", meaning I cannot accept even 0.1 Seconds delay, still I want the Option of the best Graphics existing at the same time.
And for that, there aren't many Options left that can still produce solid 100+fps at 1152x864 32bit plus Aniso and FSAA.
@ Black_out
Yes, of course I do...
However, those figures really are theoretical, always loses something to latency and overhead.
But no matter if it's 1.2GB/s or 900MB/s, the Result remains the same : progressive performance loss, increasing with the Proportion of Textures not in local VRAM, but stuck in AGP Texturing.
And you're right, 8x AGP is the current standard (doesn't look like they try to raise it again, since the classic AGP Architecture doesn't handle it anymore).
But big Problem with AGP really is, that is has to compete with other Components for the precious RAM Bandwitdh, and the simple fact that even High-End RAM can hardly deliver sustained 8x AGP Transfer rates.
All that usually results in strictly limited AGP performance, far from the maximum possible.
PCI Express will indeed replace AGP quite shortly, but I'm not sure whether this is yet another Marketing gag, or of real benefit (which I doubt to some extend).