Got my MAX

[howard33]

Why don't you give us some benchmarks that matter, like Half Life blowout, all resolutions up to and including maximum, with card overclocked to maximum speed.

[Ant]

I for one have not posted any overclocking results with the MAX simply becuase my MAX will not overclock. Powerstrip reports it has something like 132/195 any amount of overclocking and it dies. It is a beta board though. Yes the MAX is 150/200 and yes it does use 5ns SGRAM.

[Kooguy]

Now that is weird. I wonder what kind of boards the other reviewers get. You have a board with lower specs than what a normal MAX has and you get better scores than they do? Do you get new drivers like the beta guys do or do you have the same drivers that came with the board that Matrox gave you? How did you ever manage to get high-30 something FPS in Quake2(3?) at 1600x1200?

[JamesA]

Don't have Half Life yet.
How do I benchmark with it anyway?

My order number was 9884.

And I don't think I will be using PowerStrip to overclock for now. I am a newbie graphics card overclocker. Don't want to kill my MAX on the first day!

And, yes, the 3DMark score seems pathetic. Oh well. It is better than the Voodoo2 or the G200 I have before the MAX.

Time to save up some $$$ for a CPU upgrade.

Let me know if you guys want me to test anything. Nothing risky though.

I will play with the bundled software tomorrow after my job interview.

Take care.

JamesA

[LAMFDTK]

Half-Life is a terrible Benchmark gauge! Good luck with your MAX James.

[Joel]

Yea, I wish it did have a good benchmark demo, because on my G400 it runs very well at 1024x768x32bit in OGL mode.

Joel

[Yeager]

3d Mark is a pathetic benchmark for the current crop of video card. Don't be dicouraged because the Max doesn't score above 4000 on the test. No card will with a 450 MHZ processor the test is completely CPU limited. It is more of a test of individual processors than graphics chips at this point. To prove my point I currently have a V2 SLI, a CL TNT , and a CL TNT2 which all score from 3890-4050 on 3d Mark 99. I am running a 300a at 463 MHZ. If you have quake and can get the crusher test, that would be interesting , or perhaps Descent3, or Expendable. Any of these tests would be great. Also, don't be afraid to overclock your card. I have overclocked every card in my system for years and have never fried a chip. Likely you will lock the system up and be forced to reboot and set your speed lower if you set it too fast. C'mon be a man !
Congrats and good luck with your new Max.
I want mine.

[Maniac]

seems like the G400 blows on celery's even ones clocked at 464 or 504, but anyway the 3dmark score stays at about 3900 until you go over 1024X768 then it drops...

[Kooguy]

I was always wondering about that too. Why does the G400s perform so much better on regular PIIs or PIIIs? I would expect the Celeron to perform about the same at the same clock speeds. The Celeron is basically a PII with less cache but full speed compared to the PIIs half speed. The PIII just has the SSE instructions and some tweaks here and there but didn't Matrox say that their drivers currently don't take advantage of SSE? The only thing I see that is bogging the Celerys down is because it has less cache but wouldn't the full speed cache make up for it? I hope it is just a driver issue as I am a owner of a Celeron 300A OC to 464. I hope by the time I get my MAX, the new Powerdesk 5.20whatever drivers would be out.

[TheMorg]

Most of the G400 reviews I've read on various web sites over the past few weeks have mentioned that you need a serious CPU to get the most from your G400 - especially the MAX.

When the MAX was beating the TNT2 Ultra, the test systems were typically based on a PIII 500 or 550.

I don't know why an o/c Celery won't cut the mustard, though.

PS. Before you start to Copy & Paste that last sentance into your next "Silly Quotes" thread, mragsdale, "cutting the mustard" is a perfectly acceptable saying in the UK!

Tim

[NotJim]

In Soho maybe.

[MikeMyers]

double post..


[This message has been edited by MikeMyers (edited 07-14-99).]

[MikeMyers]

Hmm,

Yeah, I think I will miss this generation of cards and wait till I upgrade my PC. I only have a P2-333 at 375 (75mhz Bus) on an old LX board and I don't think its going to cut the mustard. My processor prolly has not got the juice and my LX board will prolly need wiring up to supply the correct voltage.

I'll have to stick with my V2 SLI'd until I upgrade my CPU and board...

Mike

[Barf]

One thing I noticed when I upgraded my CPU Celly 400 o/c to 500, I had a 3DMax score of 4500 with a CL tnt. After upgrading to a P3 450 o/c to 558 the score rose to 8500. Seems to me that the Celly is really limited for 3D gaming/video. Hope I get my Max soon...

------------------
PP3-450(@124*4.5=558), Abit BX6-2, 256meg PC100, CL TNT 16meg, CL SB Live!Value, Mitsumi CD-R & Asus 34X CD, Fujitsu UDMA 10&6.4 gig, Aopen 56k

[Gurm]

There's nothing wrong with an o/c'ed Celery, unless you're multitasking. The lack of cache really kicks you when you're trying to run multiple processes. These drivers (G400, PD5.13xx) seem (subjective reasoning here, beware!) to be very multithreaded... even on my P3-550, things sometimes slow down a bit when I'm switching to something graphics-intensive. Of course, these drivers may just be not-very-well optimized.

Anyway, my point was, I guess, that a Celery is great in games... and not so great for anything else... I know, having switched from a 366 @ 550 to a P3-550...

- Gurm