The "name of the game" in 3D animation is realism, with the look and feel of objects depending on the ability to render an adequate likeness of the material from which it is formed. And as stated in the Introduction, we chose to review two reasonably priced 3D graphics cards (Apocalypse 3Dx and Winfast 3D L2300) and one very expensive card (Intense 3D Pro 2200S) in an attempt to not only have a comparsion with two cards from the point of view of competing prices - Apocalypse VS Winfast, but to also illustrate the main differances of cards purely from the point of view of performance, with one card being much more expensive than the other - Intense VS Apocalypse/Winfast.
The Apocalypse 3Dx and the Winfast 3D L2300 graphics cards are very similarly priced with the Apocalypse currently selling at just �55 (the cheapest package) and the Winfast at around �100 and so you wouldn't expect that much of a difference in performance. One of Apocalypse's main advantages is it's simplicity and cheapness to build combined with it's power to deliver high quality 3D effects at very high frame rates.
Both the Apocalypse 3Dx and the Winfast 3D L2300 user Bilinear texture filtering.Bilinear filtering is a method of anti-aliening texture maps. A texture-aliening artifact occurs due to sampling on a finite pixel grid. Point-sampled telexes jump from one pixel to another at random times. This aliening is very noticeable on slowly rotating or moving polygons. The texture image jumps and shears along pixel boundaries. To eliminate this problem, bilinear filtering takes a weighted average of four adjacent texture pixels to create a single telex.
However, these two similarly priced 3D cards use slightly different
Memory Configurations - with the Apocalypse using SDRAM (synchronous
dynamic RAM) memory and the Winfast card using SGRAM (synchronous
graphics RAM). Sending data from main memory to the system processor
is consistently one of the biggest performance bottlenecks in
any PC. SDRAM allows it to keep pace with bus speeds as high as
100 MHz by allowing two sets of memory addresses
to be opened simultaneously. Data can then be retrieved alternately
from each set, eliminating the delays that normally occur when
one bank of addresses must be shut down and another prepared for
reading during each request. SGRAM contains the same speed-enhancing
features of SDRAM and adds graphics capabilities that enhance
3D graphics performance, and like SDRAM can also work in sync
with system bus speeds of up to 100 MHz. SGRAM is also able to
execute a small number of frequently executed operations, such
as buffer clears, specific to graphics applications independently
of the controller.
At �1,491, the Intense 3D Pro 2200S is definitely not going to be very popular with your average gamer - it is more suited to creative and technical professionals who work with 3D graphics on a regular basis. From our research, we now feel as though it may not have been very fair, for any of the cards, to have included the 2200S within the same 3D card project as the Apocalypse and Winfast cards. This is due simply to the fact that the Intense 3D Pro 2200S is in a totally different league to the Apocalypse and Winfast, and as it happens is one of the main leaders in the mid-range category. With full-screen, 24-bit true colour and double-buffering at all resolutions, the Intense 3D Pro 2200S maintains smooth dynamics for interactive modelling, animation, and simulation. But probably, the main technical reason for the Intense 3D card's superiority over our cheaper reviewed cards is that it uses Trilinear texture mapping whereas the Apocalypse and Winfast cards use Bilinear texture mapping.
Texture mapping is based on a stored bitmap consisting of texture pixels, or texels. It consists of wrapping a texture image onto an object to create a realistic representation of the object in 3D space. The object is represented by a set of polygons, usually triangles. The advantage is complexity reduction and rendering speed, because only one texel read is required for each pixel being written to the frame buffer. The disadvantage is the blocky image that results when the object moves.
Disclaimer
We declare that each group member contributed equally in the production of this 3D Graphics Card web-page report. This report is based on our interpretation of the information gathered from the sources listed below: -
Acknowledgements