Introduction

Hidden surface removal

Earlier this week, 3dfx released new Win98/ME beta drivers for the Voodoo4/5 series of cards. Rivastation was one of the first sites to report that the beta Hidden Surface Removal (HSR) features available in the drivers.

It's obvious that 3dfx never intended for these undocumented settings to be scrutinized, but you can find several discussion threads about the HSR feature on the 3dfxgamers.com message boards: enabling the 3dfx tools HSR option in the registry, general discussion and troubleshooting. We decided to take a look at the drivers, and find out if the rumors of incredible framerate gains are true.

Directions

1. Download and install the new Win98/ME Voodoo4/5 1.04.01 beta drivers.

2. Download nAuTiS1100's registry hack here.

3. Go into your registry (type regedit in your run box). Go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services
\Class\Display

and find the number for your 3dfx Display. It should be 0000, 0001, 0002 or a similar number.

4. Change the display number in the registry hack to match your 3dfx Display number.

5. Execute the registry hack. You should now be able to find a "Hidden Surface Removal" option under OpenGL/Glide in the 3dfx Advanced Features display menu.

Display

Regedit

HSR setting present!

Testing

HSR is currently only a OpenGL/Glide setting. So far, we're only able to get the HSR feature to work in Quake 3. If you know how to enable HSR in MDK2 or Unreal Tournament, feel free to drop us a line.

3dfx offers five different levels of HSR. Disabled(0), Conservative tiling(1), Non-agressive tiling(2), Semi-agressive tiling(3), and Aggressive tiling(4). We benchmarked all the different levels in our Quake 3 testing. Let's take a look at the results.

Test System

Intel P3-700E (7x100MHz)
Abit BE6-2 Motherboard
Mushkin 128MB PC133 CAS2 SDRAM
Western Digital Caviar ATA-66 hard drive

3dfx Voodoo5 5500 AGP
Driver version: 1.03

3dfx Voodoo5 5500 AGP
Driver version: 1.04.01
HSR=0, HSR=1, HSR=2, HSR=3, HSR=4

Win98SE

Benchmarks

Quake 3 1.17 - 640x480 Fastest, High Quality
Quake 3 1.17 - 800x600 Fastest, High Quality
Quake 3 1.17 - 1024x768 Fastest, High Quality
Quake 3 1.17 - 1280x1024 Fastest, High Quality
Quake 3 1.17 - 1600x1200 Fastest, High Quality