Subject:
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Re: review: Radeon 7000 for BrickDraw3D, low-end Mac
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.geek
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Date:
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Thu, 11 Apr 2002 13:23:19 GMT
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Viewed:
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177 times
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At present, I am writing my own OpenGL renderer for LdGLite (Mac). In order
to spped things up I am defining the parts within OpenGL and then calling
then by their definitions. Theoretically this places the entire model within
the Graphics Card memory.
I started the process in the main memory by fully parsing the files into
thier primitives, including final vertex locations, vertex normals and color
as well (very memory inefficient - very small files require large bits of
memory). However on simple models I could achieve redraw rates of 60 fps on
my G4/400 - ATI Rage128(PCI) graphic system.
By then loading the entire model into OpenGL and calling it by definition,
the same system achieves 62 fps. Therefore in highly parsed models, my
conclusion is the system bus on the G4 is not interfering with card by too much.
However, the system is designed to work as follows, each individual brick in
the model will be saved to the graphics card by name (including color and
face normals). Then when displaying the model, the system will send the the
card inly information about the bricks orientation and spatial position. I
am hoping that this will improve the rendering speeds over those in Don's
original code used in LdGLite as to date this has been my dissapointment in
my Mac implimentation of his program.
In conclusion an approach like this should also work wonders on any graphics
card as it keeps all the rendering and model information in the graphic card
this minimising traffic to the host computer. I will keep you posted as to
progress.
Andrew Allan
In lugnet.off-topic.geek, Erik Olson writes:
> Upgrading my stock Apple G3/233 with a Radeon 7000 gave BrickDraw3D an 85%
> speed improvement. In pure OpenGL mode the improvement is 60% over the
> existing OpenGL advantage. The 2002 ATI Retail Card Update worked on G3/233
> with 9.1 but BrickDraw3D didn't gain from it (ATI says the upgrade is not
> for 9.1 anyway.)
>
> Benchmark Results (lower numbers are better)
> Apple Interactive Renderer
> 262 ms G3/233, OS 9.1 - no hardware acceleration
> 141 ms G3/233 Radeon 7000 upgrade, accelerated
> 90 ms G4/500, OS 9.2/OS X - no hardware acceleration
>
> Apple OpenGL
> 137 ms G3/233
> 85 ms G3/233 Radeon 7000 upgrade
> 55 ms G4/500
>
> Note: For some reason, BrickDraw3D lost double buffering under OpenGL+Radeon
> 7000. Probably a bug in my code.
>
> The Radeon 7000 is the lowest-end card from ATI and the only remaining PCI
> choice (no AGP) for Apple Beige G3 made in 1997-98. It still sells for
> retail $120 although the PC version is in clearance at $40. People say the
> Radeon 7000 here is CPU-bound.
>
> Since I plan to keep using my '97 Mac as a baseline machine for a while,
> this is a good investment. It was even less money to upgrade the drive from
> 4 to 40GB (zowie!)
>
> -Erik
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