5.21: Thanks for nothing

[Nuno]

Now this was a bad day. A storm fried my modem and I went along buying other just to dl those damn 5.21 drivers.

Celeron 450, 96 mb Ram, G400 32Mb DH @150/200

3DMark Max
5.13, 800x600x16: 3800
5.21, 800x600x16: 3800
5.13, 1280x1024x32: 3200
5.21, 1280x1024x32: 3200

Quake2:
5.13, 640x480x16, demo 1: 66 fps
5.21, 640x480x16, demo 1: 66 fps
5.13, 640x480x16, crusher: 35 fps
5.21, 640x480x16, crusher: 33 fps
5.13, 640x480x16, massive: 47 fps
5.21, 640x480x16, massive: 49 fps
5.13, 1024x768x32, trilinear, demo 1: 57 fps
5.21, 1024x768x32, trilinear, demo 1: 57 fps

Half-life

Same story. Didn´t even bench it, OGL is slower than it was. D3D is playable.

Quake 3:
After seing this, I didn´t even bother:


WTF hapenned to this????:
G400, ICD OpenGL 5.13.021 G400, ICD OpenGL 5.13.020, Diamond Viper V770

640x480@16bpp 62.0 47.7 78.9
800x600@16bpp 55.5 46.5 73.2
1024x768@16bpp 52.2 43.9 57.5
640x480@32bpp 61.2 47.1 77.1
800x600@32bpp 56.3 45.9 67.5
1024x768@32bpp 51.3 42.6 49.7

(that was a preview of the new drivers to come, it was july)
http://www.ixbt-labs.com/archive/july99.shtml

These 5.21 drivers a a joke. And one of very poor taste. I can´t believe 5.2x were hyped for months and now this.

Sorry if I sound a little bitter. I´ve not slept, I´ve seen smoke coming out of my modem, and now these drivers.

Please post your results, if they are alike, it´s 5.13 again for me.


[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 09-01-1999).]

[franksch3]

Damned Matrox. Their opengl driver seems to be newer, because the size is smaller. My scores on a overclocked 150/200 G400 on Quake 2 on a PII 450 MHz:

Quake 2 - demo1.dm2
600x480 - 68.2
800x600 - 67.1
1024x768 - 61.5
1280x1024 - 50.2

Quake 2 - crusher.dm2
640x480 - 32.7
800x700 - 33.1
1024x768 - 32.0
1280x1024 - 30.1

All in 32 bit color. Now gues what... these scores are still exactly the same as the 5.13 drivers. I have followed the exact uninstall instructions they have posted, and all drivers report as newer version.

If this is a joke, then it is a sick joke. Also the scores from Quake 3 are exactly the same. If Matrox per accident posted the wrong drivers then I can live with that. If this is really the new driver release then within a few weeks my computer will be filled with a GeForce 256 of a Savage 2000 or a Rampage.

I'm haven't waited patiently for about two months and get a OpenGL which isn't faster, while 3dfx and others release new drivers each week with ever higher growing framerate.

PS: Done ranting. That feels much better. Now I'll patiently wait for Matrox comments.

[SCompRacer]

These OGL drivers are new. With the previous drivers, I would get blue screen/memory parity error crashes in OGL apps, such as Quake II and 3D Studio MAX R2 with my ECC memory enabled. Now I can enable my ECC memory in BIOS with my ASUS P2B-LS and use OGL without a problem.

Quake II seems to look better to me with the the new drivers too.

--------------------------------------------
Quake II 63 FPS @ 800x600, was 72 prior.
Forsaken 84 FPS @ 800x600, same.
P III 500 w/16MB OEM G400

SCompRacer


[This message has been edited by SCompRacer (edited 09-01-1999).]

[Nuno]

Damn, Give us that 5.13.021 ICD people were benchmarking!!!!!

What a joke! I thought I had screwed up somehow, but everybody is getting those results... wich is far far worse than I possibly screwed up, because I eventually would manage to fix it.

[Nuno]

I bencmarked my system with 5.13 and 5.21 and here it is the detailed results (the above were posted by memory, but they weren´ wrong)

(5.13/5.21)

3dmark max(triple buffer, Z-buffer 16)

800x600x16 3799/3786
1280x1024x32 3211/3234

Quake2 3.20

640x480x16
demo1 64.7/67.0
crusher 34.0/33.0
massive1 48.0/49.2

1024x768x32, gl_linear_mipmap_linear
demo1 57.8/58.4
crusher 32.0/32.0
Massive1 47.6/45.6

Q3test 1.06

All at max settings,
1024x768 22.1/10.8
High quality 34.2/34.1
Normal 36.0/35.5

Unreal 225

1024x768x32, all settings on
24.1/24.9

640x480x16, all on except use trilinear and vertex lightning
36.8/42.6


Unreal D3D is getting its act together, but where is that 40% crusher/massive increase 5.2x should give? And why can´t I play Q3demo at 1024x768x32 as I used to? Hey, they correct the changing color depth bug, but the above screenshot is what happens if you modify anything in your grapgics settings and do not restart Q3demo. But about this Q3demo, I may be wrong I got 1.06. But it was working with previous drivers.

You want specs? Here: Abit Bx6, Celeron 300A @450 2.2v, 96 mb pc100, Matrox Millennium G400 32 Mb DH retail, SB AWE32, Isa scsi board(scanner), PCI motorolla winmodem, cdrom phillips 40x, hdd fujitsu 6.4 gb, monitor nokia 447zi. All with newest drivers and bios. Using Windows 98, IE 5.0, DX6.1.

I´m not complaining about the present G400 performance. It´s more than enough and I stated that here more than once.I have no stability issues and my system is proprely configured. I am just disapointed with these new drivers, they don´t do what we seen in all those "sneak previews" of 5.2x ICD.

[tish beta2]

Indeed. If they were so good, why do you have so much difficulties getting them right, just as so many others here.

Smiff proclames he get a "big boost" by disabling v-sync. Another one got +5 fps in Quake3. And you got a little more fps in Unreal. But that's all...

Now at Ants news page it says "This released contains the improved OpenGL ICD I previewed a couple of weeks ago."

So whassup Ant? how do we get those nice performance boosts like you did? re-format our harddrives? Upgrade our G400 bioses?

Please tell us, we will listen carefully and do whatever you say

Ragardily,
Fish.