Everyone seems to have probs

[Perception]

A lot of disappointments in frame rates in Open GL are starting to scare me =) But i read a post that open gl is dead and that its only there to please id software.. well thats great to know i guess. But anyhow, how does the card run in direct 3d? like really stellar? the people who complain about half life frame rates and quality, have u tried running it in direct 3d instead of open gl? how does it perform and does it look better? opengl vs direct 3d, which is better and why? thanks hehe (btw i just ordered a g400 dh 32 and am getting it within the week i hope)

[Maniac]

The open GL is very good right now, especially in quake2. Framerates of 60 and over are common. Needless to say it runs silky smooth on a descent processor. The D3D is pretty much the fastest around right now, expect 3-4 times the performance of the G200!!

[Nuno]

My opinion:

Direct3d is awesome and with drivers 5.21 it only became better. Excelent. A vanilla G400 beats the hell out of a TNT2 Ultra in Direct3d. See http://wickedpc.com/reviews/matroxmillenniumg400/ and see for yourself.

Even Unreal d3d, that is highly optimized for the tnt drivers got a decent boost: 15% frame rate increase at lower resolutions.

Now about OGl, erm... Look, it is not bad. But compared to G400 Direct3d implementation, it is nothing to be talked about. High resolution performance (specially at 32 bit) is even better than TNT2. The ICD still needs a lot of work but at least it´s decently stable. A lot of people got a bit exalted (myself included) because of all the rumors this 5.21 ICD would fix all the performance issues, and it didn´t. Oh, well, maybe next time.

About Half-Life: see other threads talking about it. Somehow, there is a workaround to boost the OGL performance in HL (gl_texsort 1). It it boost it by 40-50% (at least for me)wich is not that bad isn´t it? That variable (gl_texsort) modifies texture management, improves image quality, but disables multitexturing. Since G400 always does 2 pixel per clock if multitexturing or not (hello voodoo3), that´s not an issue. But it somehow shows that the ICD has a problem either with multitexture or textures. Well, it works, that´s what matters.

About D3D in Half-Life, it always performed good, but I personnaly prefer OGL. It has much more crisp graphics and vivid colours. Now with that gl_texsort trick OGL is even faster than D3D, so...

And life it´s not only speed. You will be amazed with the dual-head abilities. I am. Multimonitor with one card. DVD output to another screen. Clone mode. I only try to do multimonitor with a TV (I am saving for another monitor, maybe a cheap 15´´) but it´s impressive.

In sum: I´m sure you won´t regret buying the G400.

[Scout255]

I would really recommend against buying a grafics card from matrox. I just spent $500 on my g400 MAX, then after that, i spent 75 dollers on long distance tech support calls, just to get it to not freeze. Then after that, i cannot play any opengl game PERIOD, not even quake2 will run, it will only run in software. Also, direct3d in halflife really stinks... i am getting a whopping 7.8 frames/second @ 640X480 res in 16 bit color... (my voodoo 2 got 58)

so, guess what video card is going back to the maker on tuesday (of course, they hae NO ONE at matrox their at weekend, not even tech support)

[Nuno]

If you had troubles, it doesn´t mean other people will. Most people haven´t had a problem instaling the G400. Myself included. I´m not aware the G400 has more incompatibilities than the average piece of hardware out there. (TNT, TNT2, SB Live!, rings any bells?)

[Perception]

Thanks for all the feedback, I'm not paying 500 dollars though hehe, I'm getting the 32 d/h for only 140 bucks and a tnt card, so I'm looking forward to being impressed =P Since I have my tv right next to my monitor I'm gonna use that for the dualhead, how is the quality on tv? I find it REALLY hard to believe it can do 1280 resolution on tv... I'm looking forward to play high resolution games =) even though I've always felt that I play better at 640 I hope that'll change. Oh and does changing resolution totally change your mouse sensitivity since you have to go through more pixels or something (not sure if that made sense) =P

[Perception]

also, is their a fan on the non max?

[Belmakor]

lol, nopes, changing the resolution shouldn't require you to change your mouse settings. The mouse just correlates itself from the center of your screen, which of course, moves your entire fov. So no mouse changes needed.

[Perception]

ok the wickedpc thing explained the fan, thanks nuno, and about the mouse ok hehe, i always found that i played like crap on high res in rainbow 6... hehe (how does hte g400 perform on rainbow 6 btw?)

[Zypher]

Um...are you smoking something?

"I would really recommend against buying a grafics card from matrox. I just spent $500 on my g400 MAX"

What? Uh no, not even CDN would go that high. Whose payroll are you on? Worst case its US$249 from matrox. Only other dollars I can think of offhand are austrailia and singapore. Neither are at 1/2 of US$, I happen to travel a lot, and check these things weekly.

I bought mine on 9/3/99 and it shipped for ~$7. (UPS 3-day confirm) No one else has it in stock hehe so I paid the $249 instead of all the BS $200 quotes from other places.

"then after that, i spent 75 dollers on long distance tech support calls, just to get it to not freeze."

Rule #1, esp for those not in US (who can use toll free # afaik) is USE EMAIL FIRST Been there, done that. You better be outside the US, because $75 of long distance would be a good, oh 10 hours talktime or whatever.

"Then after that, i cannot play any opengl game PERIOD, not even quake2 will run, it will only run in software. Also, direct3d in halflife really stinks... i am getting a whopping 7.8 frames/second @ 640X480 res in 16 bit color... (my voodoo 2 got 58)
so, guess what video card is going back to the maker on tuesday"

Two guesses. 1) you didn't deinstall 3dfx at all or all the way. They use a miniGL, and its likely all that stuff is still on your system.

BTW, measuring frames in HL is BOGUS. This is old hat, any framerate from HL is highly suspect, and pretty much worthless. The measuring caps at 40fps in most cases, and its mostly nuts.

(of course, they hae NO ONE at matrox their at weekend, not even tech support)

Are you working? Its labor day weekend. NO ONE IS. Anyone who is working right now is 1) getting paid a lot or 2) got the short end of the stick somehow.

BTW, sytem specs. With claims like yours, everything is highly suspect.

[Belmakor]

Hrmmm, dunno about rainbow 6... lemme reinstall it and find out.

[Kruzin]

Scout255 - you are barking up the wrong tree trying to tell us how crappy the G400 is. We have them. We know the truth.

If you took the time to troubleshoot your problem, instead of crying about it, you'd see how far off base you are.

[Nuno]

Perception: The image quality on the TV is one of the best among the video cards with TV-out. AFAIK, it´s the only one that can output 1024x768 to the TV. And that´s the max res to the TV output, it doesn´t do 1280, wich should be quite pointless. (Even the best TV is a piece of crap compared to an average monitor, most TV´s don´t have the ability do display readable text at 800x600 with default size fonts).

[Perception]

thanks, let me know on the rainbow 6 =P also, is the text readable on tv with the g400 on 1024? I used to have a ati all in wonder and it looked like crap and only ran in 640, how much of an improvement should i expect

[Perception]

oh yea, how is the installation of the cards? I shouldnt have to tweak anything early right? This is what i plan to do:
Remove old card
Insert g400 in agp
start up comp
it asks for drivers
choose the newest one that i already downloaded
and im set right?