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3DLABS PERMEDIA2 vs PERMEDIA3

"This is a comparison between the 3DLABS Permedia 2 and 3DLABS Permedia 3. They aren't designed with games in mind but for serious applications, 3D rendering and computer aided design."

GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION

PROCESSOR	AMD DURON 750 MHZ
VIDEO CARD	DIAMOND FIRE 1000 PERMEDIA 2 PRO 8MB AGP
	3DLABS PERMEDIA3
PERMEDIA2 DRIVER	FIREGL1KPRO_W9X_7
PERMEDIA3 DRIVER	v21070828R
MOTHERBOARD	JETWAY 663AS PRO
MEMORY	256MB PC-133 SDRAM
OPERATING SYSTEM	WINDOWS 98 SE
DIRECTX VERSION	v8.0a

3D STUDIO MAX

1024x768x32

	260
	220

DIAMOND FIRE 1000 PERMEDIA 2 PRO 3DLABS PERMEDIA 3 CREATE

COMMENT - "When it comes to 3D rendering the difference is very clear, here is a chart showing the performance of the two video cards in 3D Studio Max (OPENGL) at 1024x768x32bit, a faster lower score is obviously better. As you can clearly see the difference in performance was 40seconds, it might not sound like much but when some scenes take days to complete that 40second different will become huge. The Permedia 2 is ok for light rendering but for serious work the Permedia 3 will give much better performance."

WINTUNE 97

800x600x16

	81
	117

800x600x32

	51
	93

DIAMOND FIRE 1000 PERMEDIA 2 PRO 3DLABS PERMEDIA 3 CREATE

COMMENT - "The Permedia 3 takes a commanding lead of 36mps over the Permedia 2 at 16bit and 42mps at 32bit, both cards gave good 2D quality. The result was pretty much as expected, the Permedia 3 is the more modern video card."

PC PLAYER DIRECT3D

640x480x16

	51
	60

640x480x32

	48
	59

1024x768x16

	29
	42

1024x768x32

	27
	34

DIAMOND FIRE 1000 PERMEDIA 2 PRO 3DLABS PERMEDIA 3 CREATE

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Direct3D HAL
Gourad Shading Model
Solid Model
Textures Enabled
Fog Enabled
Dithering Enabled
Antialiasing Enabled
Bilinear Texturing Enabled
Transparent Textures Enabled
Perspective Enabled

COMMENT - "The Permedia 2 does alot better than expected at the Direct3D test, both video cards gave average performance. The Permedia 2 was never more than 13fps slower than the Permedia 3, an impressive showing by the Permedia 2."

QUAKE 2

640x480x16

	19
	60

640x480x32

	16
	51

1024x768x16

	N/A
	31

1024x768x32

	N/A
	25

DIAMOND FIRE 1000 PERMEDIA 2 PRO 3DLABS PERMEDIA 3 CREATE

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
3dnow OpenGL Driver
Demo1.dm2 benchmark
Fullscreen enabled
Texture Quality Full
8Bit Textures Disabled
Sync Every Frame Disabled

COMMENT - "I expected good frame rates from the Permedia 2 after the good result with the Direct3D test. However it didn't go so well, with Quake2 the Permedia 2 was very poor indeed. The Permedia 3 had a huge 41fps advantage over the Permdia 2, the Permdia 2 could only manage 19fps at 640x480x16bit."

QUAKE III ARENA

FASTEST

	27
	51

NORMAL

	8
	34

HIGH QUALITY

	N/A
	20

DIAMOND FIRE 1000 PERMEDIA 2 PRO 3DLABS PERMEDIA 3 CREATE

COMMENT - "After the very poor showing by the Permedia 2 in Quake 2 I wasn't holding any hope for the Permedia 2 with Quake 3 Arena. If it gave such poor performance with an old game like Quake 2 then it couldn't perform better with Quake 3 could it? I was shocked to see that the score for Quake 3 at it's fastest setting was an impressive (for the Permedia 2 atleast) 27fps, it's almost playable. If your using either the Permedia 2 or 3 for games then you deserve to be shot!"

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Default GLdriver
GL Extensions on
Fullscreen on
Demo001 Benchmark

FASTEST QUALITY
512x384 Video Mode
16Bit Colour Depth
16Bit Texture Quality
Vertex Lighting
Geometic Detail Low
Texture Detail 50%
Bilinear Texture Filtering

NORMAL QUALITY
640x480 Video Mode
16Bit Colour Depth
16Bit Texture Quality
Lightmap Lighting
Geometic Detail Medium
Texture Detail 75%
Bilinear Texture Filtering

HIGH QUALITY
800x600 Video Mode
32Bit Colour Depth
32Bit Texture Quality
Lightmap Lighting
High Geometic Detail
Full Texture Detail
Trilinear Texture Filtering

CONCLUSION - "The Permedia 3 is vastly superior to the Permedia 2 when it comes to games, neither cards were designed for games but the Permedia 3 gave playable frame rates, it's 2D quality was also very good."

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3DLABS PERMEDIA2 vs PERMEDIA3

"This is a comparison between the 3DLABS Permedia 2 and 3DLABS Permedia 3. They aren't designed with games in mind but for serious applications, 3D rendering and computer aided design."

GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION

3D STUDIO MAX

WINTUNE 97

COMMENT - "The Permedia 3 takes a commanding lead of 36mps over the Permedia 2 at 16bit and 42mps at 32bit, both cards gave good 2D quality. The result was pretty much as expected, the Permedia 3 is the more modern video card."

PC PLAYER DIRECT3D

QUAKE 2

QUAKE III ARENA

CONCLUSION - "The Permedia 3 is vastly superior to the Permedia 2 when it comes to games, neither cards were designed for games but the Permedia 3 gave playable frame rates, it's 2D quality was also very good."

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