FFXI benchmark program

[Synergy Blades]

I scored 2315 on the test.
I'm using a 1.2Ghz Athlon XP(Underclocked due to m/b limit).
512MB's of SDRAM.
32MB Geforce 2 GTS

I get about that score, sometimes less, sometimes more and I'm on:

1.3GHz Athlon (not XP)
512MB SDRAM
64MB Geforce 3 (not Ti or anything)
Windows 2000

I tried to run it on 98 as games and the like tend to be faster there, but it didn't even begin running.  

[Rubicant]

16bit and 32bit color actually have no difference to me.. I see both of them as many many colors, so it doesn't register in my eyes as much different. I'll have to admit that 16-bit looks a little fuzzy half the time. Since I play most of my games on my geforce2's tv-out feature, the screen is so fuzzy that there is pretty much no difference.

I would never sacrifice looks for performance..ever. It's just me. I know for a fact that our current gaming and 3d worlds will never become similar to "ours". So, why NOT make it look fake?!

[Lord Kane]

I would never sacrifice looks for performance..ever. It's just me. I know for a fact that our current gaming and 3d worlds will never become similar to "ours". So, why NOT make it look fake?!

Really? The Kaya project would beg to differ. I admit that at this moment in time, no, but in the furture, I wouldn't be surprised to see FF quality gameplay on home PC's in the very near future.
Every day is a step closer to the goar of photorealistic rendering.

[Goku7]

Of course, I for one think it would be ironic as heck if the first company to produce a fully-working holodeck had the name 3Dfx (obviously, this would have to be sometime after the copyright nVidia has on it had run out). :p

[KojiroTakenashi]

16-bit and 32-bit are like night and day to me. The banding is so obvious (even on a TV) it's insane!
Hehe...I wonder how 10-bit would look to my eyes?

[Aaron]

You can always take a 16- or 32- bit screen shot, and go to Paint Shop Pro and reduce it to 256 colors (8-bit) using the "Standard" set of colors (it'll use just a normal 256-color palette) and you get... really crappy graphics!  Heh.

[Goku7]

Hmm......I wonder if screen shots outputed from my V3 are actually 16bit, considering that they use a 22bit post filter, so in thery any framebuffer data being captured in a screenshot might be interpreted as a 24bit image.........

 

[Aaron]

I think its supposed to capture what's on the screen, minus the mouse cursor [and sometimes a few other things], so I think it would be at whatever color depth the screen is set to at the time of the screen shot.

[Goku7]

Well, the problem with that is when the screenshot is created by grabbing the info directly out of the v3's framebuffer.  They've been saying over at the x3dfx forums that everything in the framebuffer is being rendered at 22bit, and if that really is the case, then the image you get should be at least a 22bit image, even when you've got it set to do 16bit color.

See why I'm confused?

[Aaron]

So... you could just try it and find out

[Goku7]

I did.  Remember that screenshot of FF8 I posted a while ago that had a map of the real world in it?

Obviously, the game only runs in 16bit modes, so you would expect the image to be reported as a using 16bit colors, right?

Well, the .bmp file had been made using 24bit colors, or so it says.  Go figure.

[tekwiz99]

after processor upgrade from Pii-350Mhz to Piii-1302Mhz ("02?...:p), my FFXI bench score beamed up 3.5x higher! (28xx -- something)

[Caddberry]

i dont know much about the good ol 24bit color bitmap.. but i believe this is something like the file format.. all bitmaps have the ability to be 24 bit color.. but that doesnt mean they are.. that sounds screwey.. hang on..

uh.. ok

in photoshop for example you have the option to set bmp pictures to 24bit.. actually you have something like 1 4 8 or 24bit.. but just because the option is there doesnt mean that it is.. i think.. i cant find the proper words i am looking for here.. somebody... little help here..  

[Rubicant]

16-bit and 32-bit are like night and day to me. The banding is so obvious (even on a TV) it's insane!
Hehe...I wonder how 10-bit would look to my eyes?

Yes they are quite different, but I suppose it has something to do with the TV that I am playing on. I'm using a 20-year-old 25 inch tv (or something similar) and I have to squint to read text at 640x480 resolution. When I set it to 800x600 (which is the highest it goes), I can't read ANYTHING.

I played warcraft 3 and gta3 on the tv and I noticed no difference between 16 and 32 bit. Once I went back to using my monitor, I was like "what is this 16-bit crap?". I bet that if I played it on my new(er) tv, it would definately look different.

[Lord Kane]

Of course, I for one think it would be ironic as heck if the first company to produce a fully-working holodeck had the name 3Dfx (obviously, this would have to be sometime after the copyright nVidia has on it had run out). :p

So in more than 70 years time then, according to international copyright law. Aside from the fact that nVidia may actualy renew the copyright.

Hmm......I wonder if screen shots outputed from my V3 are actually 16bit, considering that they use a 22bit post filter, so in thery any framebuffer data being captured in a screenshot might be interpreted as a 24bit image.........

IIRC the shots are taken from the framebuffer, which is indeed 22-bit. There is however the gamma issue tat is acosiated with ripping from the 3dFX framebuffer IIRC. The Voodoo 5's had the problem that the shot in the framebuffer was not actualy antialiased, leading to misinterpreted screenshots.

[atzn]

IIRC some review sites mentioned that the Voodoo3's 16-bit colour actually looked much better than TNT/TNT2's 16-bit colour...

[Lord Kane]

That's accurate. The Voodoo's had the best quality 16-bit colour there was.

[atzn]

Hmm I re-ran the Benchmark and I got a score of 2504....  

1.2GHz Athlon (Thunderbird)
1 GB SDRAM
64mb GeForce2 Pro
WinXP Home Ed

[Goku7]

That's accurate. The Voodoo's had the best quality 16-bit colour there was.

But, the ONLY reason that is the way it is, is because of the 22bit post filter it does on its output.  Take away that, and it would look like every other card's 16bit output, correct?

[atzn]

But, the ONLY reason that is the way it is, is because of the 22bit post filter it does on its output.  Take away that, and it would look like every other card's 16bit output, correct?

I don't know about this filter stuff, but I think you're right.
Still, kinda surprising how fast Voodoo3 was in 16bit vs TNT2....

[Goku7]

I don't know about this filter stuff, but I think you're right.
Still, kinda surprising how fast Voodoo3 was in 16bit vs TNT2....

Well, that could be attributed to the 256x256 texture size limit.  The TNT2 could do the standard 2000x2000 size textures, but it would do them dog-slow....

[Lord Kane]

They also had excellent dithering, but pretty much, yeah.

[dgp9999]

I agree with LordKane: V3s had the best 16bit colour. I remember running my V3 3000 on ePSXe w/ dithering and it looked almost as good as 32bit on my GeForce 2. Without dithering it still looked pretty poor compared to nowadays 32bit cards. Keep in mind V3s can't do hardware Alpha Multipass, Alpha something anything, the one in Pete's GPU options, that's gotta effect soemthing.

[Goku7]

Which is why us V3 users prefer Lewpy's plugin.   Due to it using Glide for its graphics processing, it gets a nice performance boost compared to using Pete's plugins.

Not to mention, it seems to do the FF9 screen swirl thing better, both speed and graphic-wise.

Oh, and V3's can do Alpha Blending, at least standard Alpha Blending.  They just can't do "Advanced Blending", IIRC.

[Aaron]

Hrm... benchmark gave me 4675...
Athlon XP 2400+
512 MB RAM
GeForce4 TI 4600