any such thing as 2d AGP ?

[Dr_Watson]

i've been questing for months now for a 2d agp card. ( like an ET6000 or ET6100 implementation or even a mach64)

It's reallly kinda getting to me. As even running off of a pci slot a Hercules dynamite 128 with its 2meg of ram and an ET6000 will eat up any new 2d/3d card i've seen in quake 1 software render.

so.. before i get crucified here why i'm looking for a 2d agp card is because i have an old 300mhz guy with 2 voodoo2 12meg cards eating up the pci slots so i'd like to find a good (while inexpensive) 2d card to munch up the agp.

Closest thing i've found was the stb velocity 128... 8meg AGP guy with the 128ZX ... but that has a half-assed 3d engine which always struck me as an agp ViRGE.

-Dr_Watson

*edit = grammer*

[This message has been edited by Dr_Watson (edited 12-03-2000).]

[Bob The Great]

Why would you want 2D? O well. To answer your question. No there is no such thing as a strictly 2D AGP card! At least that I've heard of. 3D is the reason for AGP. If you want good 2D graphics for your PC go with an ATI. There pretty good 2D cards. Out of the ATI's I would suggest the Radeon. Because when you come to your senses you'll have one heckuva 3D card too!

[Wozza]

Hi
Get a cheap TNT2 agp card and live in the glory of having your cake and eat it to http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif
d3d use the tnt,glide gl use the voodoo2
WoZ

[Bob The Great]

I have a TNT2 Ultra. And it's 2D image quality isn't really amazing.

The best 2D card I beileve is the 2Mb 2D/3D Diamond Virge! I love that card! I finally had to trade it for a p-3 Heatsink. But it has by far the best 2D graphics I've ever seen (the 3D was also amazing [but slow]). Come on Diamond! Get back on the horse! Pleeeease!

[falcompsx]

diamond died the day S3 bought them...(where the H*LL did S3 get the $$$ to buy diamond!??) I really miss diamond, they made high quality everything until S3 had to go and steal them. S3 SUCKS!!!! DIE DIE DIE!!!! ok, ranting over...

FalcomPSX
"Do unto others before they do unto you."

[Bob The Great]

I agree 100%! Diamond rocked! I had a Diamond monster 2, Diamond modem, and the diamond virge in my PC till just recently. Because I liked Diamonds quality so much!

Could you amagine a Diamond GeForce2! heh. I would be the first to buy it!

[jrrs]

hmm.

right, then.

seems to me he's not asking about 3d.

not hard to find a 3d agp video card, so the post couldn't possibly be about *that*.

for TNT2, TNT2 is a **** good card, but in QuakeI / MS-DOS / Mode 0, it will lose to the tseng et6000 on any pc.

part of the reason that diamond was so popular is that they also used Tseng ETx000
chips before they began to use S3. ( as in, old speedstars. )

but, whether diamond rules or S3 sucks isn't the issue. the issue is finding an AGP video card with only 2D capability.

i've heard that Matrox makes one, but matrox.. well, i won't get into whether or not they're good, but i can tell you that they made a Millenium a while ago which both
A) Did not have the Tseng ET6100 chipset
B) Claimed to have the Fastest DOS performance.

these two facts are mutually exclusive, as the 6100 was the fastest chipset for dos.

but, it seems they never stuck it on an AGP bus, which is a terrible loss to the hardware enthusiast community.

i've asked around for 2d AGP various other places, and it is amazing how *THICK* people demonstrate themselves to be by either bashing someone for wanting such a beast, or they go off on a tangent about this 3d card has better 2d than any 2d ( which is ALWAYS unsubstantiated ), or they'll find some other way to totally avoid answering the question.

wish i knew of a 2d/agp, also wish this country was a bit lighter in population of ignorance.

%%j

[Kruzin]

Matrox MillenniumII came in an AGP form. It was a 2D card, and gave great image quality and very good 2D performance. You can still find these for sale used on places like Ebay.
You'd be hard pressed to find any "current" 2D only graphics cards.

[Kruzin]

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1200269746

[Dr_Watson]

Ahh finally an intelligent response. Thanky you both for actually reading what I wrote.

I stumbled across the Millenium II AGP a few months ago, and I had to drop it as a contender due to it being a matrox card and being a 2d/3d combo card.

---------------------------------------------
MATROX MILLENNIUM II VIDEO CARD

MANUFACTURER PART# MIL2P/8NB-AGP
CHIPSET MGA-2164W
BUS 66Mhz AGP
264 MB/s peak
MEMORY 8MB WRAM
(Upgradeable to 12MB or 16MB)
250MHz RAMDAC

*3D FEATURES Hardware accelerated
Gouraud shading
Texture buffering
Alpha stippling and fogging
Double buffering
32-bit Z-buffering
Enhanced video scaler with x and y interpolation

VIDEO FEATURES True 24-bit color for photo realistic displays at 1920 x 1080 Play back MPEG and AVI video clips in full screen, full motion
Hardware accelerated color space conversion and video upscaling

EXPANSION CARD OPTIONS Matrox Rainbow Runner Studio
Matrox Rainbow Runner TV

*3D DRIVERS AutoCAD 13
Microstation 5.0 for DOS
OpenGL®
Microsoft® Direct3D
HEIDI
STANDARD DRIVERS Windows® 95, 3.11, & NT 4.0, DCI, Direct Draw, Direct Video and ActiveMovie

WARRANTY 3 year manufacturer's


---------------------------------------------

but this quote : "But for the 2D acceleration that most of us do 90% of the time in the office, under NT or 95, whether with Photoshop or Word, we don't see any other cards outperforming the Millennium II."

from a review computershopper did back in '97 kinda makes me think twice about the old millennium.

I still wish someone made an AGP Tseng labs card...

but, the quest goes on...

I thank you for your help.

[Kruzin]

Despite Matrox's marketing efforts to make people think this was a 2d/3d card, it's 3d is extremely limited, and really quite crippled. It only had limited DX5 D3D stuff, and even when DX5 was a new thing, this card did not do the 3d end of the job well at all. Matrox folks will all agree that it's really just a 2D card. There is no OpenGL support, and it will not run any of todays D3D in any mode other than software.

Matrox later came out with the PVR based M3D accelerator (a second PCI card that did no 2D at all) to handle the 3D side of things.

[Bob The Great]

I didn't know there was such a thing as a strictly 2D AGP card! So my responses were aimed as the best 2D in a 2D/3D card you could get. :0 my bad. Well at least I learned something new.

[Wozza]

Hi
Its not realy on topic but you might like to read this link before you part with the cash http://members.hyperlink.net.au/~chart/agpinfo.htm
just food for thought and I know the main reason you asked was to free up a pci slot but no sense in going backwards
WoZ