ELSA vs 3DLabs

[Morey Behrens]

Has anybody done any bench marking of the ELSA Synergy II cards against
the 3DLabs Oxygen line?

They both sound great according to the ads.

Morey

[Andrew M. Macy]

I started out using the ELSA Synergy II and changed over to the Oxygen GVX1
a month ago. Both cards are unbelievable and I would suggest going with the
lower priced one since they are so close in performance. I run large
assemblies in MDT 3.01 with very heavy programming, as well as large
graphics in 3D Studio Max. Just for the record, I use dual PIII 500's with
half a gig of ram.

DREW

Morey Behrens wrote in message <375DA2C2...@teleport.com>...

[Jeff Garcia]

Drew what did you do with the Synergy II card if I may ask?

"Andrew M. Macy" wrote:

--
>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<
Jeffrey A. Garcia, PE
Principal Civil Engineer

Bay Area Rapid Transit District
http://www.bart.org

.........
To reply remove NO_SPAM from my address

[Andrew M. Macy]

Jeff,

My fellow systems dept. employees urged me to replace the Synergy with
the Oxygen because they believed the Oxygen to be a superior card. They put
the Synergy card into one of our many other boxes.

DREW

Jeff Garcia wrote in message <37B1D6C1...@bart.gov>...

[Jeff Garcia]

So would you recommend the Synergy II for a budget CAD system? I'm thinking of
using it in my home system to replace my RIVA 128 AGP. I'm looking at the 32 MB
version.

Any advice?

[Andrew M. Macy]

Jeff,

I have no idea what the prices are for the two cards so if you have
checked them out and the Synergy is cheaper, I would highly recommend it.
On another note, I am looking into buying a new home computer, and the
system comes packaged with a RIVA 128 8meg video card. Is this what you
are currently using? If so, how does it perform overall? How does it work
running cad, MDT, graphics packages such as 3D Studio MAX, or games? Thanks
for your feedback.

DREW

Jeff Garcia wrote in message <37B1EF02...@bart.gov>...

[Jeff Garcia]

Drew,

I've got one of the original RIVA 128 4meg AGP cards (circa 1997). Its actually
an ASUS 3400 3D Explorer. The 8meg cards came with the RIVA 128 ZX chipset,
then came the RIVA TNT (16meg) and now the TNT2 (32meg) which the Synergy II is
based on. I'm running it on an ASUS P2L97 mobo, a Pentium II-266 (Overclocked
to 300 MHz), 64 MB RAM, and a 21-inch Viewsonic P810. I have the latest drivers
from ASUS installed.

For games its great. For CAD it depends on the package. Microstation (no
problems); IntelliCAD; (no problems); R14 is ok in 256 colors. At a higher
color depth it works, however if I offset a line, you don't see it until you
refresh. Also sometimes deleted elements ghost until you refresh as well. If I
need to render in R14 though at 32-bit color its fine.

I honestly think the problem is my drivers. I tried running the Quake II demo
in OpenGL and got nothing but crashes. It's my understanding that the drivers
for the RIVAs are the same, and I'm pretty sure that if I were to install
NVIDIA's latest generic drivers, my problems would go away. However, since I do
most of my 3D modeling and rendering in Microstation, and that seems to work
fine, I haven't done anything about it yet.

My currently upgrade plan calls for 128 MB PC100 RAM (purchased but not
installed); and new video card (Synergy II, or G400, or ???); and a new mobo and
CPU. I may wait to buy the video card when I do the mobo/CPU upgrade but who
knows. (Actually I'm waiting to see the new 4X AGP mobo's.)

I hope that helps.

-Jeff