More on 3D Cards An article by Alex van Kaam After last issue's article about 3D cards and what they do I got several comments from Sue about people who have a card but are not sure how to use it, or even what card they have. Also it seems that what I wrote about the Monster 3D (3DFX) Card and the problems it CAN cause with an S3 card got misunderstood. >>>>> Monster 3D and S3 <<<<< This is from the manual: The S3 968/868 video controller which is used in Diamond's Stealth 64 Video 3000 series of video cards, among others, contains a memory bug. This bug may cause problems with the Monster 3D card when running Diamond GT drivers. 968/868 claims to require 32 MB of frame buffer memory, but it actually decodes 64 MB of frame buffer memory on a PCI bus. Sometimes, Monster 3D gets mapped by Windows 95 into the 968 upper 32 MB of memory decode address. This memory conflict will crash your computer. What this means is that the following can happen: On your PC your graphics card runs from address say address E4000000 to address E7FFFFFF But because of the bug in some OLDER S3 chips Windows 95 will say that the card runs from: E4000000 to address E5FFFFFF Now you install your Monster 3D and since this is a PCI Plug and Play card Windows 95 will put it to the next available address: E6000000 But in reality this address is still used by the S3, and it will cause your computer to crash when you run a 3DFX game or the MOJO program that comes with the Monster 3D. To cure this all you have to do is change the address for the Monster 3D. You do this the following way: right click "my computer" select "properties" select "device manager" find the 3D card select "properties" select "resources" uncheck the "use automatic settings" box select "memory range" press "change setting" and change the start address, Diamond tell you to place it right behind the S3 chips range, but 3DFX just tells you to find an unused address around 12000000 - 12FFFFFF press OK a few times, reboot your PC and you're finished. Again this ONLY applies if you have an old S3 chipset on your graphics card and so far I have only met 2 other people who had the same "bug". >>>>> What card do you have? <<<<< To find out what card you have you should right click on "my computer" and then select properties then select the "Device Manager" tab and you will get a list of items that are installed on your PC. Depending on the driver the 3D card may be located under: + Display Adapters + Multimedia Devices + Sound Video and Game controllers In one of those you should find a reference to your 3D card >>>>>> Using your 3D card <<<<<< Your 3D card (if it is a 3D only card) or the 3D section of your 2D/3D card (if it is a combo card) will only be used when a program calls for it. So after you installed your 3D card and turned on your PC, Windows 95 and DOS will still run using your 2D card (if you have a 3D only card) or the 2D section of your 2D/3D card (if you have a combo card). Now there are roughly 3 ways programs use a 3D card: Through DirectX Through Open GL (or Glide as it is called) Through Native Drivers I will try to give some examples for all of these, but I can only be sure about the 3DFX, other cards work in a similar way but since I don't have them I cannot be sure >>>>> Through Direct X <<<<< You do not have to worry about downloading DirectX 5 itself, any game that needs it will install it for you, all you need to make sure of is that you have the latest DirectX 5 drivers for your card, Direct X 3 drivers won't do it any more these days. >>> 3DFX cards Monster 3D users can find version 1.09 of these drivers at: http://www.diamondmm.com/products/drivers/monster-3d.html Orchid Righteous 3D users can find the newest drivers at: http://www.orchid.com/support/graphics/drv-r3d.html >>> Matrox cards Matrox users can find drivers at: http://www.matrox.com/mgaweb/drivers/drivers.htm >>> Diamond 3D 3000 Diamond 3D users (S3 Virge) can find drivers at: http://www.diamondmm.com/products/drivers/driver-index.html Once you have your DirectX drivers installed you are ready for DirectX games. As I said before, most games come with the DirectX 5 engine these days so there is no need to download the 3.5mb file from Microsoft. But if you still want to install DirectX 5 to be sure you can get it from http://www.microsoft.com/directx. Just make sure you get the end user version or look at any cover disk CD-ROM for DirectX. Once you have DirectX installed (either via a game or by doing it yourself) go to "program files\directX\Setup\" and run DXSETUP and make sure you have the box "3D hardware acceleration enabled" checked. Now that you have these drivers installed how do you play a 3D game? Well this is quite simple, get a game that uses DirectX 3D and set it up to use your 3D card. A few examples: >>> Tomb Raider 2 Install Tomb Raider 2 and click on the Setup button. You will get a window on your screen with a few tabs on it. Click on the graphics tab and change the graphics card from "primary display driver" (your 2D card) to "3DFX Direct X driver" if you have a 3DFX card. If you have another brand of card you just select that one from the list. Next time you play Tomb Raider 2 it will be with your 3D card. >>> Jedi Knight Install the game, run it and go to the options screen, go to the display section and check the "Enable 3D acceleration" box. You will now play Jedi Knight using your 3D card. >>> Tomb Raider 2 Demo Run the setup program, this is done by creating a shortcut to the tomb demo and adding setup behind it. So if you have the demo in "C:\Tomb2\Tomb.exe" then you make a shortcut to "C:\tomb2\tomb.exe setup". The rest works the same as in the instructions for the full version of Tomb Raider 2. BUT note this, because it is a demo it probably won't come with the DirectX 5 engine, so you need to install that first manually (if you don't have it already). >>>>> Through Open GL <<<<< Open GL (called Glide after this) is an API developed by the software industry as a better way than DirectX 3D to access 3D cards. Glide is most used by games based on the Quake engine. To enable Glide on your computer you need 2 things 1) Glide drivers for your card, most of the time they are installed together with the drivers for your card, but to make sure you have the latest version you should check the chip manufacturer of the chipset used on your card. 3DFX is at version 2.43 and these can be found at: http://www.3dfx.com/software/download_glidert.html Power VR glide drivers (Matrox) are on their way but not yet released as far as I know, check the Matrox site for more info: http://www.matrox.com As far as I know there are no other Glide drivers for other cards at this moment in time. Installation of these drivers is quite easy, the 3DFX version you just have to double click to install. 2) The second thing you need is a game that uses Glide, if you have Quake then you can download the GLQuake from ID software at: ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/unsup/glq3_28.zip Read the manual that comes with it and run GLQuake to play Quake using your 3D card. Games like Hexen II and Quake II come with built in support for Glide so you don't have to worry about that. >>>>> Through Native Drivers <<<<< For games that run on a specific card using its own drivers you don't have to do anything, the game will come with its own drivers and you just have to launch it right program to get your 3D card used. Most older games that come with patches for 3D cards work this way, Carmageddon, Tomb Raider 1 and Need For Speed II Special Edition are a few examples. If you have any question please don't hesitate to mail me at Darkside@Euronet.nl I will include some links at the end that may be useful to you: >>>>> General Sites <<<<< 3DFX - www.3dfx.com 3DFX Games list - http://www.3dfx.com/voodoo/software/index.html Operation 3DFX - www.op3dfx.com Voodoo Extreme - www.voodooextreme.com Diamond Multimedia - www.diamondmm.com Orchid - www.orchid.com Matrox - www.matrox.com >>>>> 3Dfx Game Patches <<<<< Archimedean Dynasty patch - ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/archimedean/ad_3dfx.exe Carmageddon (US) - ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/carmageddon/carmavus.zip Excalibur2555 Rush Patch - ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/excalibur2555/Ex_Rush.zip Extreme Assault 1.21 Patch (430K) - ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/extreme_assault/XA_A121.EXE Frogger Patch - ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/frogger/froggerpatch1.exe G-Police Cyrix Fix (650K) - ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/gpolice/cyrixfix.zip GLQuake 0.97 ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/quake/glq114.exe Ignition 3Dfx French Patch (342K) - ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/ignition/fun_3dfx.zip Ignition 3Dfx English Patch (342K) - ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/ignition/ign_3dfx.zip Interstate '76 D3D upgrade ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/i76/i76v1081.exe Madden 98 3DFx Patch (2.5M) - http://www.op3dfx.com/fileareahtml/showrecord.phtml?recno=69&cnum=2 NBA Live '98 Roster Patch (230K) - ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/nba98/p98v213.zip NHL '98 Patch (1.9M) - ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/nhl98/nhl98.exe Pod v2.1 Updates OEM Update (35M) - ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/pod/10x21E.exe Pod v2.1 D3D Update (24M) - ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/pod/updatePOD21_d3d-dx5.exe Pod v2.1 3Dfx Update (24M) - ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/pod/updatePOD21_3dfx.exe Shadow Warrior Patch (Final) ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/shadow_warrior/sw3dfx.exe Shadow Warrior Patch (Shareware) ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/shadow_warrior/swsw3dfx.exe Subculture 1.16 Upgrade (30K) - ftp://op3dfx.com/pub/game_patches/subculture/scpatch.exe - o -