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OK. I just spent the weekend at a local lanparty. I got my G400 boxed on friday as I mentioned in a post (it wasnt OEM, I just didnt notice all the installers on teh CD, ny fault). At the lanparty I setup with the latest 5.13 drivers off the webpage, and using the ocasion of having a bunch of monitors handy, procedded to show off the dualhead. Everybody was oooing and aahhing pretty good. As I also mentioned I was only able to get the board to 177Mhz (with cooling so it isnt temp related), but I figured OK, now for the games and stuff. Loaded up 3dMark99 Max and at 800x600 showed off 5036 3dmarks. Not bad I though, since I am running a P3-450 OC to 556 (totally stable for the past 3 months). I then loaded up Kingpin, and was astonished at how great it looked at 1024x768 in 32 bit colour. No FPS counter in the game but it was very quick. Noticeably faster than my Creative Labs TNT. And image quality was just super on my Viewsonic PS790. But then after about 2 minutes of play time, SERIOUS crash, had to power off the computer and try again. Figured I was OC it too much and removed that. Same exact problem. Between 1 and 2 minutes after starting kingpin it dies eitehr back to the desktop (but screwed up) or hard crash. OK I though. Time to try something else. Loading up Dethcarz (oldish car battle game) that's D3D I then set it to 1024x768x32 with extreme gfx detail (my tnt can only hit 800x600x16 with high detail before it starts to lag the controll's) and played for a few hours just amazed at the beuty of it all. I then decided to risk losing face and laoded up Q3test at 1024x768x32 with all the quality settings loaded to the max and saw amazing frame rates. Even the TNT2 guys where shocked since I was getting (according to the admitidly not exact fps counter in Q3) on the longest yard map anything from 29 to 65 fps. Very smooth the whole time entirely playable. Very happy there too, and it didnt crash. Just a couple times it wouldnt load, but a reboot qould fix that.
But THEN came the bad part. I am a monster Half-Life fan. SO I loaded HL up, started to play and gawd does it not work. Beta type people, I hope the newer drivers fixing this come out soon. Pity I cant be a beta tester. I would love to try to help get this thing working. Oh well. Maybe someday.
Oh, and before I forget, I also (obvously) tried out the DVD player. First I had MAJOR problems getting it to install, but I discovered that the software Matrox is using is from the same company I got my old MPEG2 decoder board ( a Cinemaster 1.3) that I use for watching movies. So I had to remove all it's drivers by hand AND physically pull the board OUT for the Matrox player to even install. This kinda anoyed me. Although the decoder board isnt all that great, just use it to watch movies while online sicne it causes only about a 15% cpu hit instead of the larger hits most DVD playback software causes. So I get the software installed and it was perfect. No dropped frames, output to a TV was clean and nice, resize windows, burn a CD, everything worked great while watching the movie. Forgot to check CPU hit but the machine felt snappy the whole time so I am assuming that it wasnt over 50%. Only other problem with the DVD player is that I normally use my desktop at 1280x1024x32 but it wouldnt let me. I had to drop to 16 bit desktop to get the DVD player to run. Not a major issue but one I would like to see corrected.
So there you have it. I will definitly be seeling this board when the MAX comes out
but let me tell you, if you like FPS games, wait until the ICD matures a bit. If you can live with so-so opengl games running from well to poor to not at all, then get it. The speed is truly very good in D3D games, and applications on yer desktop also move as fast as we've gotten sued to for Matrox (lets face it, just how fast can you move a word window? no point benchmarking that) DVD playback is a trip, dualhead will amke everybody envious, and for the cost it's pretty good. I mean, 2 TNT board would run you 200 bucks for getting 2 monitor output right? think of it that way . but I REALLY REALLY REALLY hope to see a more stable ICD soon as I NEED tog et my HL fix and if I dont I am likely to put the TNT back in until the drivers work well with HL.
Just my .02
OK, more like $15.82 but there ya have it.
Yuri
P.S.
PLease excuse the momentary lack of coherence. I just played games for the past 36 hours with no sleep and am brain frazzled
[This message has been edited by Genom (edited 07-11-99).]
But THEN came the bad part. I am a monster Half-Life fan. SO I loaded HL up, started to play and gawd does it not work. Beta type people, I hope the newer drivers fixing this come out soon. Pity I cant be a beta tester. I would love to try to help get this thing working. Oh well. Maybe someday.
Oh, and before I forget, I also (obvously) tried out the DVD player. First I had MAJOR problems getting it to install, but I discovered that the software Matrox is using is from the same company I got my old MPEG2 decoder board ( a Cinemaster 1.3) that I use for watching movies. So I had to remove all it's drivers by hand AND physically pull the board OUT for the Matrox player to even install. This kinda anoyed me. Although the decoder board isnt all that great, just use it to watch movies while online sicne it causes only about a 15% cpu hit instead of the larger hits most DVD playback software causes. So I get the software installed and it was perfect. No dropped frames, output to a TV was clean and nice, resize windows, burn a CD, everything worked great while watching the movie. Forgot to check CPU hit but the machine felt snappy the whole time so I am assuming that it wasnt over 50%. Only other problem with the DVD player is that I normally use my desktop at 1280x1024x32 but it wouldnt let me. I had to drop to 16 bit desktop to get the DVD player to run. Not a major issue but one I would like to see corrected.
So there you have it. I will definitly be seeling this board when the MAX comes out
but let me tell you, if you like FPS games, wait until the ICD matures a bit. If you can live with so-so opengl games running from well to poor to not at all, then get it. The speed is truly very good in D3D games, and applications on yer desktop also move as fast as we've gotten sued to for Matrox (lets face it, just how fast can you move a word window? no point benchmarking that) DVD playback is a trip, dualhead will amke everybody envious, and for the cost it's pretty good. I mean, 2 TNT board would run you 200 bucks for getting 2 monitor output right? think of it that way . but I REALLY REALLY REALLY hope to see a more stable ICD soon as I NEED tog et my HL fix and if I dont I am likely to put the TNT back in until the drivers work well with HL.Just my .02
OK, more like $15.82 but there ya have it.
Yuri
P.S.
PLease excuse the momentary lack of coherence. I just played games for the past 36 hours with no sleep and am brain frazzled
[This message has been edited by Genom (edited 07-11-99).]
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