4) Conclusion

Now that weave learned several things about textures, S3TC, VQTC, detailed textures, and AGP, what can we conclude? One thing for sure is that games are going to use textures larger as 256*256; Quake III Arena is one very good example. AGP will become much more important in the future. I have tested Q3A on Voodoo 2, TNT and i740. The Voodoo 2 doesn't support AGP at all, TNT does support it but doesn't need it, and the i740 won't work without AGP. TNT is the clear winner here, but the i740 runs quite good, better than I expected. Voodoo 2’s speed is good, but image quality isn't the greatest.

So what is the best solution for the use of big textures? Are they really that important? According to 3dfx they are not as important as speed. In a way they are right. When using very large textures, you will see a performance drop. But the thing is, games like Q3A are going to the next level, but very carefully. They're making the transition from 128*128 to 256*256 or 256*256 to 512*512. Remember that game engines also use a lot of in-between textures (128*256), but I use these formats as reference. Q3A supports up to 512*512; Unreal Tournament will go beyond that. 3dfx should look at NVIDIA's TNT2. It clearly demonstrates that speed and large textures can go together. With gamers demanding better image quality in their games, the step to 512*512 is needed. We have speed now (we can never get enough), so the next step is better image quality. Large textures are clearly the way. But is the difference so big that you should avoid the Voodoo3? I wouldn’t say that. V3 is a very fast card, although image quality is not quite as good as others.

Is texture compression the solution to this dilemma? That's a little difficult to say, as only 2 cards currently support it. Because S3TC has been incorporated into DirectX (as DXTC) we can expect others to be picking up TC very soon. TC is something very special and works very well. If any of you have seen the Savage3D or 4 with the special Unreal levels, you know exactly what I'm talking about.