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Archangel · Jan 25, 2001, 09:19 PM

I recently had my soul possessed by Diablo 2. (and I had been thinking I was an upstanding, righteous UT player. . .) Anyway, I have both a 3dfx card and an ATI card. Which one will Diablo 2 run better under? I could just change the preferences and find out for myself, but I'm lazy and am hoping somebody has already done this.

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"Elvis has left the building!"

blizzard · Jan 25, 2001, 11:27 PM

To post a really obvious question: which of each do you have, exactly? Hard to make a recommendation without knowing what ya got.

Archangel · Jan 26, 2001, 02:44 AM

Hmm, I guess I should have included that. Silly me. ATI Rage Pro 128 and Voodoo3 3000.

Cipher13 · Jan 26, 2001, 03:10 AM

Heh, graphics aren't Diablo 2's strong area anyway. I wouldn't imagine it'd make much difference.
Even at its best quality it looks pretty crap

Cipher13

Chimpmaster · Jan 26, 2001, 07:38 AM

If you have both id experiment a little. Ati Rage 128 will probably look a little prettier, but 3dfx glide will probably give you better frame rates. Thats from my experience anyway...

Im pretty sure that running the ati card will mean running via rage mode. If you have the voodoo 3 i imagine it would be better - then again if its a pci voodoo card it may have disadvantages over an agp rage 128 card.

If you can try em both out and let us know...!

ShortcutToMoncton · Jan 26, 2001, 10:04 AM

Huh. This is Diablo, Chimp. Like Cipher says......the difference will probably be unnoticeable. "FPS" doesn't really spring to mind when I think of DiabloII......

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Though the day's been
really long
I still feel I'm close to
nowhere....

Jan 26, 2001, 01:14 PM

Angel;

I don't have quite your set-up, but I have found that my Voodoo 3 2000 outperforms both my ATI cards (Rage Pro and Radeon) in terms of D2 performance. Although I can run D2 in millions of colors with the Radeon.

So the Glide does seem to be a little better a renderer for D2...

Dev

Cipher13 · Jan 26, 2001, 06:49 PM

So you get what, like 63 frames a second when standinf still, 43 when its raining, and 36 when some little sprite is chasing you around the screen spitting 7-pixel-long white lines at you?

Cipher13

[This message has been edited by Cipher13 (edited 01-26-2001).]

mac freak · Jan 26, 2001, 08:38 PM

Cipher:

G4/450(2)/128MB/Radeon...

239 FPS with my stash and inventory open.
103 FPS standing still.
67 FPS while fighting.

Couldn't get rain numbers.

To get an in-game framerate and ping readout, open a chat box by hitting return, and in it, type "fps" and then hit return again. Voila. Repeat to make it go away.

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Be Happy.

Archangel · Jan 27, 2001, 01:23 AM

Thanks guys. I'll switch over to the voodoo card.

Diablo2. . .an interesting game. I haven't decided what to think about it yet. . .I don't know if it's a great game or a dumb game. Anyway, I'm playing it with my friends on the floor so it's fun to be in a cool group of guys.

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"Elvis has left the building!"

Archangel · Jan 31, 2001, 03:18 AM

Well, I've done some switching back and forth. Here's what I've found.

My system: G4 400, 320 RAM, ATI Rage 128 Pro AGP, Voodoo3 3000 PCI, default memory setting on D2, thousands of colors, D2 only program running, and all graphics settings on high

ATI card: frame rates hoovered around 20-25 while running around w/ few foes. During heavy battles rates dipped below 20. While just looking at inventory, as high as 65 (higher? I can't remember)

Voodoo3: now, this one was weird. Sometimes the framerates would be the same as the ATI card, but won't slow down as much. However, sometimes it would be twice as fast with the framerates staying well above 45. I don't get it.

Because of the strange fluctuations of the voodoo, I'm going to test it a little more. I'll report back if I find anything new.

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"Elvis has left the building!"

mac freak · Jan 31, 2001, 04:11 PM

Comparing my numbers with Arachangel's go to show how much of an improvement the Radeon is over the Rage 128 Pro...

67 vs. 25 !!

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Be Happy.

Archangel · Jan 31, 2001, 05:52 PM

I just got the updated ATI drivers. I'll see if they help any. I'm actually pretty disappointed in the frame rates. I mean, D2 isn't that graphically strenuous. I should be getting much higher frame rates I'm thinking. . .I'll post new frame rates soon.

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"Elvis has left the building!"

Feb 1, 2001, 04:13 AM

I tend to turn almost all of the graphical enhancements anyway. In particular, the Perspective deal. The game movement isn't very smooth. The screen updates in segments. Fast enough so that everything is updating frequently, but slow enough to notice a waviness in the screenupdate. I gain about 20 fps by turning that off. It's a cool affect, but I don't need it.

Archangel · Feb 1, 2001, 05:59 PM

I tried it out w/ the updated ATI drivers. They must have done something really cool with them because it basically doubled my frame rates. Now, my ATI card gets over 45 fps in all but the thickest of fighting. I'm still trying to figure out why my voodoo card gives me strange performance.

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"Elvis has left the building!"

olePigeon · Feb 2, 2001, 03:00 PM

I found that software renderring was faster and better on my G4500 than the ATI card, but it required a LOT of memory. If I didn't have enough, it was slower loading each level than if I had the graphics card. But it handled the prites a lot better in software than the ATI.

The VooDoo3 was better than my ATI by about 10 fps, but I took it because my DVD player wouldn't work with it. Grr.