Voodoo5 5500 and T&L

[Killroy62175]

I have a voodoo 5 5500, and I was wondering if it actually has hardware T&L. I ran a video benching mark (3D Mark 2000), and it says that it has hardware T&L for the 5500.

I know you can turn on the geometry assist, is this what is talking about?

[Mykex]

I dont realy know about all that but what I do know, If it makes the game faster or smoother I smile. If it does not I promptly uncheck the box, shake my head and say oh well. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/biggrin.gif

[RobRich]

Yes, Gemometry Assist is indentified as Hardware T&L by 3DMark2000.

BTW, 3DMark does not really show the full potential of the GeoAssisi option. A better benchmark for this would probably be nVidia's TreeMark demo.

Robert Richmond

[Killroy62175]

Thanks for the help.

[Dputiger]

The V5500 does not have Hardware T&L. Only video cards with a GPU (GeForce and Radeon) have a hardware T&L implementation.

There are four steps in displaying a pixel: Transform, Lighting, Rendering (I think), and one other I forgot.

The GPU on the other two cards does the T&L steps automatically.

[Killroy62175]

So is it actually software that does T&L for the Voodoo5500?

[RobRich]

Yes, the T&L of the V5 is emulated through the software Geometry Assist engine. GeoAssist can produce varied results depending on your configuration and the 3D code actually being rendered. However, when properly utilized it can produce quite decent results as compared to tradition floating point transform and lighting. GeoAssist is streamlined for SIMD instructions, thus it designed for processors with extended 3DNow! or SSE.

Robert Richmond

[Dputiger]

Rob,

Why, then, do Geomety Assist Options not appear on my K6-2+ chip w/Voodoo5 installed (I do have latest drivers).

The K6-2+'s DO carry the extended 3DNow! instruction sets--but the V5 doesn't seem to recognize them.

[RobRich]

Geometry Assist first searches for compatible processors through the CPUID extension. 3dfx did not take into account that the V3/4/5 would ever be used with the K6-x+, as this processor is marketed as a "mobile only" solution by AMD and 3dfx does not product mobile Voodo chipsets.

Noting 3dfx's position regarding the K6-x+, the Geometry Assist only recognizes Athlon-based processors as possessing extended 3DNow!. It would be nice if 3dfx would have released a new revision or patch for proper recognition of the K6-X+, as many desktop users are now converting their Socket7 systems to this mobile processor. Considering 3dfx driver developement is now basically dead, I doubt we will ever see this option properly implemented.

Catch ya' later,
Robert Richmond

[Killroy62175]

Thanks all.