Waouh, this one looks cool!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5152828800&fromMakeTrack=true

Will it work just as a normal graphic adapter, even if it's "professional"?

If nobody bids on it, I may take it...

I looked for specs and whitesheets about it, but I don't really understand everything about what it says ^^'

Anyone has some infos on this card/manufacturer?

:P

Well, these old Cards should work like a normal VGA Card, but chances are you won't get any Direct3D Game to work with it, only OpenGL ones probably work to some extend.

These are highly OpenGL specialized Cards with specialized Drivers (e.g. optimized for CAD Applications), intended for the professional Workstation market.

Since their Drivers never address any Problems with Games (not their market), the usefulness for a normal User is probably limited. (I think the seller wrote OpenGL 1.1 compilant, which likely prevents modern OpenGL 1.2+ Games from running)

I see, I see...
And how much d'you think this card is worth? I read a comment from a guy who's also selling the very same card, and he says that new, it was worth <<1811E>> precisely. I'd like to start a little collection of graphic cards, and this one looks pretty amazing... how much would you spend for something like that?

Thanks!

LINK TO SPECS OF THE 3DLabs Oxygen GMX 2000 96MB AGP card

What CAD and Workstation mena?!

http://content.3dlabs.com/manuals/GMX.pdf

enjoy ^^'''

BTW, is this card something like in the same segment as the Quantum ones? (Just came to my mind)

Not quite, Quantum3D IMHO sold the majority of their Retail Cards to enthusiast Gamers.

AFAIK, they never produced 3dfx Boards specifically for Graphic Workstations, although it was a part of their advertising.
Their Hardware for military Simulators I don't count since it is a somewhat different market, although they are closely related.

Since I don't collect Workstation Cards, I can't tell how much it is worth; you'll have to look around at how much similar Hardware went on Ebay in previous Auctions.

According to the Specs Document, I see WinNT, OpenGL1.1 and MCAD as the primary target platform. Perfect professional x86-based Graphics Workstation at that time.

But read this:

<<Contrary to Nvidia's claim, OpenGL 2.0 WILL be 100% backward compatible with existing OpenGL levels. This has been stated in every presentation on OpenGL 2.0 since the beginning.>>

Taken from

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,183940,00.asp

Doesn't it work the way back (older OpenGL compatible with newer)?

???

A PC is the generic acronym for "Personal Computer"

Technically, that can be a classic C64, AMIGA, a 80286 or a modern PC (Mac or x86).

A Graphics Workstation was always a System designed and built around a single purpose :
Maximum Video performance and very high reliability

One of the main fields of action those saw and are still seeing is professional CAD.
In this field, a maximum frames per second in terms of performance is not of highest interest; it is the Quality of each Image, usually with focus on absolutely error-free rendering and high Line Antialiasing performance + quality for navigating through and manipulating complex Objects or scenes.

In the past, this was the domain of 64bit Silicon Graphics and HP-PA Workstations due to their early implementation of High Performance T&L equipped and High-Resolution capable Video Subsystems.

Due to their expensive nature (specialized Hardware), the wish for 'off the shelf' and inexpensive Systems quickly emerged, and with the upcoming 3D capabilities and performance of IBM PC compatible (x86) Systems, a number of Systems were built around those.

WinNT was almost the only x86 compatible OS of choice, since Win95 was hardly suitable to manage the Hardware- and stability requirements.
(although arguably, BeOS also had its stand as an OS for serious Multimedia requirements)
------
About OpenGL backwards compatiblity :

Technically, yes, a properly coded OpenGL Application will fall back to its reference Rasterizer if a desired Feature is not supported in Hardware.
That, however, often comes at an extreme performance penalty, thus it is of limited practical value.

Most modern OpenGL Applications will therefor fail to initialize or will exhibit limited functionality, since drawing an effect-rich OpenGL 2.0 Image without Hardware support can easily take even HighEnd Multi-CPU Systems several Minutes per single Frame.

Yes, I see what you mean now. Thanks for the explanations!

In the Voodoo4/5 control panel, the functions for OpenGL and Glide (the 3dfx one I guess) are put together (FSAA...) and Direct3D is separate. Does that mean that OpenGL and Glide were (are) much similar (thta they share many similarities maybe)? When you talk about OpenGL, are you also talking about Glide, or just OpenGL?
So, in your opinion, this card may just have some "collection" value, since it's become hard to use them well in newr PCs/systems?

BTW: the price was more around 1300E new.

Although Glide is very similar to OpenGL, it was always focussed on Games, and (as an advantage) is free of any licensing or rights related issues.
See :
http://www.sgi.com/products/software/opengl/

Thus all its features were specifically optimized and limited to Gaming requirements.

OpenGL, in turn, is subject to strict and very extensive specifications and Quality Assurance by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board.
Its functionalities range very far beyond those of Glide and implementing new features into newer Standards (e.g. OpenGL 1.1 > 1.2 > 1.3 > 1.4 > 1.5 > 2.0) takes an extraordinary amount of time.

That alone forced manufacturers of Video Cards to initially support all their new Hardware features by the means of proprietary extensions, as official verification and implementation would take longer than several Generations of Hardware themself.

AFAIK, existing Glide3x Cores can actually even be used to some extend as a replacement for OpenGL, but that is imposing alot of restrictions due to lack of functionality compared to the OpenGL Reference Rasterizer (glide has no reference Rasterizer as far as I know).

well a while ago I poset a topic on AmigaMerlin's site www.3dfxzone.it about if Glide was possible on NV40, well This is what came out, as a result of also what Glide really is:

dborca said:

nVidia does not have a Glide-like low-level interface. it was 3dfx proprietary, yet the API was public.

I don't know what went wrong, but it was never adopted by other companies. perhaps it was so closely designed around the Voodoo chips.

Glide was a RASTERIZATION library, and many RENDERING libraries could have been built on top of Glide, sparing the renderer of the grossy cross-platform details.

However, Glide COULD have been a bit more lenient / general. then, maybe - just maybe - it could have been embraced by other IHVs.

So if Glide was a RASTERIZATION library, then you may be right that Glide has a reference Rasterizer.

My only question is: What in the world are IHV's  :-/


Friendly Regards,

Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Well, I never saw a Glide Reference rasterizer in Action then, as the only time would be called into action, would be when running Glide on a card with limited or no Hardware support.

(running glide Versions exceeding a Voodoo Card's hardware support always fails with an error Message, and I never saw Glide run natively for any non-3dfx Card)

IHV's I would (speculative) translate into "Industry Hardware Vendors", not sure...

wrote on 02.01.05 at 03:17:54:

IHV's I would (speculative) translate into "Industry Hardware Vendors", not sure...

Independent Hardware Vendors.

Woh, this topic's getting too hot for me  :P

wrote on 02.01.05 at 03:17:54:

Well, I never saw a Glide Reference rasterizer in Action then, as the only time would be called into action, would be when running Glide on a card with limited or no Hardware support. (running glide Versions exceeding a Voodoo Card's hardware support always fails with an error Message, and I never saw Glide run natively for any non-3dfx Card) IHV's I would (speculative) translate into "Industry Hardware Vendors", not sure...

Well that's got it's place in my topic, here my story :

I bought the NV40 because, it has everything an Voodoo5 or Rampage has, things like Motion Blur, Soft Shadows, Depth Of Field Blur, Soft Reflections, Rotaded Grid Full Scene Anti- Aliasing, and I could really gon on for days :) but ofcourse there was one little thing missing, and that was the famous API alias --> Glide.

My plan was to try and get MesaFX working on my NV40 mabe even the I could let the application detect an invisible Voodoo card,


This was my questioN:

Anyway is it possible that I could get MesaFX running on my 6800 for Glide apps?

here's dborca's answer on that:

i got it that you think mesafx will give you an invisible voodoo card in your machine? hmmm... interesting! what should be your choice, then?

mesafx doesn't care much about the underlying hardware, so as long as you get your glide dll going, mesafx will run. how to do that? there are a number of wrappers around (a very good one here http://www.zeckensack.de/), but then again, why use mesa on top of it? mesa gives you opengl, and nVidia is the king in that area...

And then I came with this as a reaction:

What I thought about this was, because the ex-3dfx engineers that worked and spent lots of time about the design of the FSAA for the NV40, that gave me an idea to try Glide and MesaFX on the NV40.

The M-Buffer of the good ol Rampage has also been placed in the architecture of the NV40 things like Motion Blur, Depth of Fiel Blur, Soft Shadow, Soft Reflections and so on.

Ondeed nVidia is The King of OpenGL, so Glide should be a worthy try.

The only thing that is missing is Glide, it should be possible with MesaFX's Glide32.dll I was thinking.


I still had hope, and Zeckensack's sort of Glide Wrapper was the finishing touch.

For easy words Zeckensack calls it a Glide wrapper, but it looks more professional than a normal Glide wrapper,that program was the sollution that Glide was possible on a NV40 based card.

and that's where I learned more about Glide, which came in this reply from dborca:


nVidia does not have a Glide-like low-level interface. it was 3dfx proprietary, yet the API was public. i don't know what went wrong, but it was never adopted by other companies. perhaps it was so closely designed around the Voodoo chips. Glide was a RASTERIZATION library, and many RENDERING libraries could have been built on top of Glide, sparing the renderer of the grossy cross-platform details. however, Glide COULD have been a bit more lenient / general. then, maybe - just maybe - it could have been embraced by other IHVs.

speaking of http://www.zeckensack.de/, i personally never tested it. but the guy knows what he's doing (also, the lib is pretty uptodate: after i pointed out a bug in his wbuffer code, he fixed the problem asap

like I posted earlyer ;)


And indeed Glide runs fine now on my GeForce 6800GT 256MB, I ran Unreal Tournament Game of The Year Edition from 1998, and the game detected 3dfx Glide For Windows. and the program ran with out problems, my settings were:

1024 x 768 x 16 @ Glide :P FSAA x8  AF Off Avr fps = 120

and

1024 x 768 x 16 @ Glide :P FSAA x8 AF x16 Avr. fps = 112

I noticed That AF has no big deal in Glide, because Voodoo's never had AF aka Antistropic Flitering, but I clearly did see a difference though, AF x16 gave a better image quallity than with out.

I will make some screenies for this if you gus wanna see my results ;)

Quote:

I bought the NV40 because, it has everything an Voodoo5 or Rampage has, things like Motion Blur, Soft Shadows, Depth Of Field Blur, Soft Reflections, Rotaded Grid Full Scene Anti- Aliasing, and I could really gon on for days Smiley but ofcourse there was one little thing missing, and that was the famous API alias --> Glide.

Obi, what makes you so sure Rampage would have had glide? It was far from done, anyway

what do you think about, er.. this 3dlabs card  :D
looks like a voodoo1 SLI with hardware TnL and lots of memory.
I find it similar to their latest one, the Realizm 800 :  geometry chip + two rasterizers, tons of memory, surely the greatest thing ever for wireframe mode but its fillrate probably sucks. (some ppl tried the realizm, the pixel shading power is abysmal)

That would be an awesome card for playing CS  and DoD 8)

Well, now that I have it...

::)

I don't know where to put it, since my PC is just too little for it!

;D

Let's say it's my first collection card!