New video card

I’m about to head off for a couple days of relaxation over Christmas, but as I was sitting here watching a recording of a Dalai Lama presentation I’d recorded a few months ago on TiVo (I’m SUCH a devout Christian), the doorbell rang and the FedEx guy showed up with my new video card. Yay!
You may have heard that Sony and Nvidia have done a deal to work together on a chip for the next-generation PlayStation. Well, I figured it would be good to become familiar with programming shaders on the latest Nvidia hardware, so I ordered a GeForce 6600 GT from NewEgg. Yeah, I might have been able to get one by calling up Nvidia, but frankly I hate doing that kind of shit.

I was replacing an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, and I didn’t expect a huge performance increase. I’m pleased with the results though! (And the fan isn’t very loud either, which also pleases me…)
My 3Dmark 2005 score went from 2205 to 2968, and Doom3 at “Ultra Quality” more than doubled its frame rate at 1600×1200 (16.7 to 35.7). Half-Life2 tests didn’t change much, though. I think HL2 must be CPU-bound. In fact, some of my frame rate tests even went down a smidge for Half-Life2. That’s okay, I already finished it. 🙂
Anyway, that was fun, and now I’m looking forward to writing some Shader 3.0 stuff. Exxxxcellent.
I hope you all have wonderful holidays!