Is OpenGL generally slower than D3D or Glide?

[linker]

That's the difference between OGL and DirectX
When MS says they are going to do something its 'Well it's in there but we don't recomend using it because it's buggy' when the OGL consortium does something 'It's in there it works. have fun.'



Cyb

Exactly.

 

[Lex]

Glide is the best!!!!!
..........
On voodoo's then

And what is n00b

 

[Smiff]

Exactly.

yah but it's fairly irrel, Dx6/OGL1.1 can do everything you'd ever need for N64 emulation. Er, I think. Haven't actually thought about that much. Maybe PD lens effects could do w/ something.

 

[neoak]

OpenGL is now at 2. Only that is on development. OpenGL is faster on some cards like nVidia. D3D is faster on others cards (don't know which 'cause i have a TNT2)

 

[linker]

yah but it's fairly irrel, Dx6/OGL1.1 can do everything you'd ever need for N64 emulation. Er, I think. Haven't actually thought about that much. Maybe PD lens effects could do w/ something.

Actually the new versions of DX and OGL add some new effects, new functions (like vertex shading) that are not needed to emulate N64. However sometimes they could be faster than the old ones.

 

[Smiff]

nah they won't be faster. how often have you noticed a speedup by upgrading DX version? quite.

About the original topic, since OpenGL was designed and is used for professional graphics applications on high end hardware, where accuracy is important, whereas Dx was designed and is used in gaming, where FPS on cheap hardware is important, and quality less so, it would seem reasonable to hypothesise that Dx would be the faster API. I have no idea if this is true or not.

 

[Cyberman]

nah they won't be faster. how often have you noticed a speedup by upgrading DX version? quite.

About the original topic, since OpenGL was designed and is used for professional graphics applications on high end hardware, where accuracy is important, whereas Dx was designed and is used in gaming, where FPS on cheap hardware is important, and quality less so, it would seem reasonable to hypothesise that Dx would be the faster API. I have no idea if this is true or not.

Now if I remember this correctly DX had the philosophy of creating a vertex buffer and spewing it out to the hardware at once.

OGL had you create the structure and let the drivers determine how to send information for 3d to the hardware. I believe the studies showed that the vertex buffer was slower because 3d hardware was designed such that the iterative process OGL uses is more efficient.

OGL tends to be more efficient, as for what hardware now does.. it would hard to guess. DX only became popular because MS made it available and pushed it since 1992 very hard. It's been catching up in quality for the last 10 years though.

OGL has some nifty features but it's only as fast as the hardware it's run on. NVidia's hardware seems to do OK with it, SGI's hardware (which the N64 is based on), was what OGL was originally developed for. I messed with SGI's in 1993 those things ROCKED, they had the same power you can get on the NVIDIA cards of today, at the same resolution. I did lots of experiments

Cyb

 

[Raging Fuel]

glide is the fastest api since its hardware specific, after that would be nvidia and its opengl, since its sort of for nvidia cards with nvidia extensions, ect. D3D is by far the slowest. Why do you think the quake iii engine was made in ogl? And the unreal engine? most games now run on ogl.

Umm... the unreal engine uses D3D.

 

[Quvack]

Erm... if I remember correctly there was a Software, D3d, OpenGL and Glide set of renderers for the Unreal engine

 

[Harteex]

As I remember the Unreal engine is based on Glide mainly...

 

[Smiff]

Unreal was Glide or Software only for a long time, they added D3D in a patch later, it was very problematic I remember. That was a (the?) real Voodoo2 showcase game.

 

[Eddy]

was, but now i heard its ogl based

 

[sk8bloke22]

ya, but even UT works best on glide. d3d with UT was slooow...and opengl was buggy. but both d3d and opengl hav improved with newer drivers and patches.

 

[mesman00]

glide was pretty *pimp* in it's prime. but, one of the major problems was that you had to have a voodoo card to use it. i remember before i had my voodoo3 there were so many games i couldn't use hardware acceleration in, becuase they were all customized for glide. also, 3dfx seemed to have a problem with updating their drivers. the updates seemed like they were few and far between.

 

[Eddy]

the d3d and ogl 3dfx drivers where horrible, but glide performance was crazy! fast! beautiful! 3dfx's fault was manufacturing the board and the chip, they should have just manufactured the chip, and third party vendors develope the boards. like nvidia is doing. I know that UT was for glide originally, but the new u2 engine is on ogl.

 

[Reznor007]

Unreal started as software only, then software+Glide, with HEAVY Glide optimizations in the core engine. Then D3D, OpenGL, S3 Metal(S3's own API), and PowerVR SGL(PowerVR's API). UT refined the engine, and made the D3D and OpenGL renderers much better. Unreal2 and UT 2003 are now heavily D3D/OpenGL optimized, with SGL, Metal, and software dying off. I've heard that some Glide code is still present, but will probably be totally removed by the time it's released.

 

[Lex]

I think Glide is the fastest?

 

[Lex]

glide was pretty *pimp* in it's prime. but, one of the major problems was that you had to have a voodoo card to use it. i remember before i had my voodoo3 there were so many games i couldn't use hardware acceleration in, becuase they were all customized for glide. also, 3dfx seemed to have a problem with updating their drivers. the updates seemed like they were few and far between.

There are some very good working 3rd party drivers on www.voodoofiles.com

 

[Doomulation]

Hmm, my best guess would be that, oGL would be pretty fast as of the new release and that it's nice for frame buffer for n64.
So I guess it's oGL.

 

[VTT]

Best plug-in video

I think Glide is the fastest?

Truly, Glide fastest video in'erfejs, because it is realized is hardware. Glide it is impossible to compare with OpenGL, DD and D3D, you see they program. The hardware interface it when video the interface is integrated in the chip on video to a card, therefore Glide the fastest. If to compare OpenGL with D3D that D3D certainly, because all "Windows" is displayed in DD (DirectDraw). On one of the Russian forums I read, that in GeForce4 interface DirectX is realized is hardware, but I am not sure in it. As when we write plug-in it as takes away speed.
For example in engines 3d the most part of mathematical calculations today already write on assembler. do not forget that we discuss emulation, we should emulate the hardware interface.