What's the deal with G400/opengl/3d accel.?

[Dana Hague]

Just got my G400 installed yesterday. I note the readme for NT says don't play opengl games under NT. Well, I'm doing CAD, not games, but it's opengl..... and if "3D acceleration" is turned on, NT locks up, either immediately (before rendering) or shortly after. Anybody know what's going on, or a workaround (other than the obvious of turning 3D accel off)?

TOH, the opengl screensavers work fine.

I'm running at 1800x1440/32bit, on a PII/266/128mb. Same problems at 1600x1200/16bit (don't wanna go any lower).

-Dana

"Calvin, we will not have an anatomically correct snowman!"

[Redmo]

Dana,

My god, another NT user. I thought I was the only one...

Well, this is (almost)total speculation since I don't have a G400 only a G200, but I would point a very accusing finger, once again, at the NT OpenGL driver. It's crap on the G200, and I would be surprised if it's any better on the G400. To back this up a little, I'd like to say that I've read more than enough sweaty, excited posts about G400 Quake frame rates and incredible benchmarks and all that jazz, but the thing that's been conspicuous by it's absence is ANY kind of decent tests with pro NT apps (and I mean something a bit more demanding than 3DSMAX). None at all. And until someone can say yay or nay to whether it works with SoftImage or Maya or whatever, I won't even vaguely consider buying one.
You can't really blame Matrox I suppose, the big money lies in OEM deals and home/games under 95/98 and as such their cards do very well - superb 2D and image quality, good 3D for most things and competitively priced. However, they obviously haven't spent much time or money on NT support (a very small part of their market I would expect), and having working OpenGL screensavers does not mean a fully working ICD. Many pro apps use much more of the OpenGL command set than any game or screensaver, and it's here that the Matrox drivers fall down. These things may be remedied in future driver releases, but given Matrox's track record in updating drivers, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting.

And if I don't get flamed for the above comments, this statement will surely get me roasted by the Matrox devotees - if you want a card primarily for NT CAD stuff, return the G400 and get pretty much anything by 3Dlabs. BTW, what software are you using? The Oxygen VX1 is less than $200, and comes with extremely robust and FULLY featured OpenGL for NT, as well as software to give Autocad a 300-400% speed increase on the already blistering VX1 performance. Image quality is as good as a G400 and it can still play games on a par with a Voodoo2. There are problems with some motherboards, but 3Dlabs have looked into this and have fixes available for pretty much all of them.

In case you're wondering, I don't work for 3Dlabs. I just like the products I buy to do what the manufacturers claim they do . If you only play games and use MS Office, get a G400, TNT2 or Voodoo3. For NT 3D stuff, don't. I only say this in the hope that others won't be mis-sold a product that doesn't fit their needs, like I was with the G200.

(This would be an appropriate point for someone to tell us it's a simple driver setting to be changed, and make me look like a right divvy...8)

Redmo

[Dana Hague]

Well, it's too late. The card is now completely dead. Not even a text boot screen. Matrox says the VGA BIOS is probably corrupted, and I should return the card. Of course nobody hase replacements in stock anymore. Before that, they also said that OpenGL lockups under NT were a "known problem". Sigh. I've always liked Matrox for the superb image quality, but I guess it's time to look at something else, probably one of the 3DLabs cards.

I'm using Cadkey, and I've heard good things from other Cadkey users on the Oxygen cards.

-Dana

Always keep clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

[Gurm]

The only glimmer of good news that I have to report here is that Matrox seems to be focusing quite intently on getting Microsoft certification for all their new drivers. And Microsoft won't give that certification until and unless they support all current MS Operating Systems. So if, for example, they want to get Win2000 certified (which they will, since 9x is going away eventually), they will need to 100% support NT4 or MS just won't oblige them. That's the only good news. Now, how soon will that happen? I dunno.

- Gurm

[Ant]

Gurm that is not true at all and anyway Matrox have been granted self certification status. If they want their latest Win 9x driver MS certified it has to pass the MS WHQL lab tests, none of those tests include looking to see if they have a quality driver for Windows NT 4, DOS 6 or any other MS OS.