Review: ATI vs Nvidia for Stereo-3D

[SamualT]

ATI vs Nvidia for Stereo-3D

Background
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I already had an ATI Radeon 9700 graphics card. While it is supposed to be top of the line, it has zero stereo-3d support from ATI. Leaving all ATI users to have to scramble for third party drivers. So, I bought a real cheap ($57 total) Nvidia FX 5200 to test the stereo drivers that Nvidia makes. They support stereo-3d on their cards! Everyone kept telling me how good the stereo drivers worked on Nvidia cards. So, I just had to try it. The rest of this review tells what I found.

My system
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CPU: AMD 1800XP
OS: Win98
Monitor: Daewoo 19"
3d Glasses: EDimensional wireless/wired shutter glasses.
Graphics: ATI Radeon 9700 vs Nvidia 5200

First of all, I'm not comparing the two cards for speed. That would just be silly because the ATI Radeon 9700 is clearly much faster. I am comparing them for stereo-3d. The tests I'm interested in are much more subjective. Mainly, how good does stereo-3D look on both the ATI and Nvidia and how easy is it to use. My tests consist of trying to play 3 games: Decent-3, Unreal Tournament, and Need for Speed III. Also, I wanted to see some graphics demos in stereo-3d.


ATI Radeon 9700
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The ATI Radeon has zero stereo-3d support from ATI. Shame on ATI for that. So I had to use third-party drivers to test stereo-3d. Some of them I could only use in demo mode because I don't have a registered copy. (When buying an ATI card just add $50 to the price for third-party drivers that you'll need).

1. EDimensional drivers. These are beta drivers that you can get for the EDimensional shutter glasses. I found their drivers adequate, but the over/under format makes the viewable screen smaller. Although it does have the advantage of no-flicker at all. On my machine it had some odd effects in that turning sideways in a scene caused things to look fat. That is, if a narrow road went into the distance and you rolled left till you were viewing the scene sideways then the road now looked fat. Kind of scrunchy looking. Their drivers would be great for FPS (First Person shooters) where you usually arn't sideways. You also have to copy little files to the game directories to make it work. I have heard many people say those drivers are perfect, but I can only report what I see on my machine. I will say they are decent drivers and will probably just keep getting better (cut them some slack, their beta drivers). I have great hopes for these drivers in the future.

2. Winx3D/VRCaddy. They were also pretty good drivers but didn't support the games I wanted to play (Descent 3). And I disliked having so many programs running in the background just to see stereo-3d. There were some crashes, freaked out screens, and lots of incompatibility for the weird stuff I wanted to do, like just view some 3D Graphics demos in stereo-3d. Also, Winx3D is now defunct. You can not get that program anymore. I think VRCaddy can still work in interlace mode without it. Interlace doesn't look very good compared to page-flip or over/under mode.

3. Other drivers: Wicked3D, etc... Don't even think about it. These are old drivers for old video cards and probably won't work with your modern gear. They are defunct. Forget about it! I have walked down that path and it is a dead-end!

VRCaddy doesn't work with Descent 3. And, I could only get interlace working on Need for Speed III. I also couldn't get the graphics demos to work with it. I got bored and gave up. The Edimensional drivers faired better in that I did get Descent 3 going, but again the screen looked scrunchy to me and being over/under format made the viewable screen much smaller. I still couldn't run the graphics demos in stereo-3d. And, I got tired of copying their little openGL files to program directories which you have to do to make them work. Hey, they're beta drivers. Give them some time. Overall, I was not terribly impressed with third-party drivers that worked with ATI cards. They were OK for "some" things.


Nvidia FX 5200
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I got the Nvidia FX 5200 card by Fedex and promptly set about removing all trace of the ATI drivers (eegads!) I installed the new card, changed the bios settings to reflect the new hardware, mainly that it was AGP 4X and had only 64Megs memory, and then quickly installed the main drivers and the Nvidia stereo drivers. At first I was a little disappointed because there was lots of flicker, but setting my monitor to 100hz Refresh solved that completely. I don't see any flicker at all in Page-flip mode, which is what the Nvidia stereo drivers use. Their little test screen looked fantastic! Full screen, no flicker, and good stereo depth. I then tried Descent-3 and was completely blown away. Again, no fiddling with extra programs, no settings to mess with, no files to copy somewhere, just full screen, no flicker, stereo-3d paradise! And the drivers are very stable! Of course, I got wacked good in the game because it's much different then playing in 2d, but it is much more fun also! In all I tried 3 different games: Descent 3, Unreal tournament 2003, and Need for Speed III. All looked perfect in stereo-3d. Need-for-speed did need minor adjustment with the hot-keys to make the car cockpit easy to view. Then I tried some weird stuff, like running graphics demos in stereo-3d. This works on about 75% of them. Some didn't go into 3d (might have been 2d programming) and one crashed. But the others that did work were just unbelievable. 3D Screen savers also worked great. I can't believe how much stuff you can view in stereo-3d with the Nvidia, and with no fiddling around. It's like having another computer altogether. Just about anything that uses DirectX or OpenGL can be viewed in stereo-3d if they are programmed in 3D. Some do look better than others, but WOW!


Conclusion for ATI
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1. + Edimensional has over/under mode which some people prefer.
2. + Edimensional is still writing code. Could get interesting!
3. - Must use Third party stereo-3d drivers. Bummer!
4. - Lots of finagling to make the third-party drivers work.
5. - Adds cost because most third-party drivers arn't free.
6. - Compatibility is lacking. Drivers don't work with everything.


Conclusion for Nvidia
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1. + Stereo drivers are free for all Nvidia users.
2. + Ease of use is 10 out of 10. Set it and go!
3. + Drivers work with just about everything made with Directx or OpenGL.
4. + No flicker at all if you can set your monitor to 100hz Refresh.
5. + Could be used with anaglyph Red/Blue if you don't have shutter glasses.
6. + You can use Edimensional drivers for Nvidia also!
7. - Nvidia drivers have only page-flip or anaglyph mode.


Overall conclusion
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Nvidia wins hands down! It is easier to use, does more, and looks better than any other method I have tried. I will never buy another ATI card. I will always buy Nvidia as long as they support stereo-3d; Are you listening Nvidia? Also, if the Edimensional drivers end up being better than the Nvidia drivers you can still use them with an Nvidia card! You have the best of both worlds. I am very impressed with the Nvidia as you can tell.

[Glidefan]

The nVIDIA drivers may have support for page-flip or anaglyph "only" but if you use eDimentional's "E-D activator" you can also use "Over/Under" mode and "Interleaved". I do
And a 5200 is really not up to a Rad9700 for comparison.

[SamualT]

Glidefan:
"And a 5200 is really not up to a Rad9700 for comparison."
Sure it is. The lowly Nvidia FX 5200 blew away my Radeon 9700 when it comes to stereo-3d, which is what I was comparing. I wasn't comparing speed or graphics features like shading, textures, etc...

[Glidefan]

Oh. Because you included the 3DMark benchmarks, it was like comparing the performance of the two.

[Glow Worm]

Bit of a dumb comparison between those 2 cards, thus making the tests somewhat irrelevent...!

[SamualT]

Glidefam and Glow worm:
You were right. The 3DMark data didn't belong in there. I removed it. I don't know what I was thinking. I said I wasn't comparing them for speed and then gave allot of data about speed. Too much coffee I guess ;-)

I think it looks better now.

[Glidefan]

Tried the eDimentional screensaver in Stereo?
If not, TRY IT! NOW!

E-D Screensaver??? DID that come on the E-D support disc that never got used? I don't see a download for a screensaver on their webpage. -Bios

[Glidefan]

Think so. If i ever find my CD, i'll let you know.