David Gillett wrote:
>
> On 29 Mar 98 at 22:18, Drew Dunn wrote:
>
> > As a standalone card, the NVidia based cards are fine, but they
> > won't come close to the performance of a Monster II in 3D mode.  If
> > you can afford it, get both.
>
>   This has been the conventional wisdom for some months, based on the
> STB card (which Drew referred to earlier in this message).  Over the
> weekend, though, I saw a Riva card (which I understood to use that
> same nVidia chip set), and its performance, straight out of the box,
> was about 70% more than anyone had expected based on benchmarking the
> STB card, and quite competitive.
>
> David G


  I haven't seem a 3dfx2 card yet, but my Diamond viper 330 is roughly as fast
as a 3dfx (forsaken on this card is *AMAZING*).  The 2D is extremely good both
under win95 and Linux.  I'd like a 3dfx2 based card, but the fact is, I
haven't seen a game that runs too slowly on my DV.  This will change with
Quake 3 etc. but you may be better off getting a NVidia card now and upgrading
later when the prices drop, and the games require more horsepower.

  The price on the Monster II is going to be artificially high for quite a
while since diamond & creative bought up all the stock, but should drop as
other vendors get into the game.  3dfx is also facing competition from several
fronts (intel, nvidia, etc) which they didn't see with their original chipset
(since it was so far ahead of the pack).  This should bring prices down quite
a bit.

  I would recommend a NVidia card for now, and when you want faster 3D, get a
3dfx2/whatever else is out at a cheaper price.

Kerry