A kickass 11 fps with the new drivers?

[Kruzin]

Kinda works the opposite of what that definition states for the G400

[Nuno]

hey take a look here: http://halflife.pcgame.com/console/video.html

"enables brighter and more vivid textures, but slows performance"

Slows? SLOWS? No it doesn´t, actually it runs about 50% faster. Go figure...

[Tjalling Hattink]

Meaning of gl_texsort (see http://home.kamp.net/home/k12716/H-L_2.html)


Controls scene sorting (either by BSP order or texture order). When it's 1, the scene is drawn in texture order. Since the texture-order pipeline doesn't support multi-texture, turning this on gets you the gl_overbright lighting(but doesn’t enable it, it merely allows gl_overbright to be called. You’ll still need to set gl_overbright to "1" manually) on your Voodoo2. If gl_texsort is off, your Voodoo2 will ignore gl_overbright because it's using multitexturing.

Conclusion: The OGL of G400 can't handle multitexturing properly or the texture uploading code is buggy. It should be a performance loss when turned on so I think there's still something terrible wrong in the OGL.

[Nuno]

Oh I see... now when you actually do something that turns off multitexture, the frame rate goes sky-high. So something is wrong with multitexturig. In single texturing, the G400 still renders two pixels per clock, that´s why the nice performance. The voodoo 2 only renders 2 pixels per clock when multitexturing, If single-texturing, it can render only one.

[Nuno]

Just one more thing: how to disable multitexture in quake2/3 (if possible)?

[IceStorm]

Why are you all playing HL with OGL instead of D3D?

On my system, D3D FLIES in multiplayer! Complete with vsync off, high quality models, and 1024x1024 textures.

The only problems I see:

1) If you try to hit ESC to the desktop, you may get corrupted menus, but ONLY if you're in multiplayer. I just disconnect first from the console and it works fine.

2) Occasionally texture painting problems - little white lines in the side of an object, and if you move they go away.

Other than that, it plays extremely well at 1152x864 (as high as I can go in D3D). The reason it wasn't working to begin with was because _snd_mixahead wasn't set to 0.2.

OpenGL is nice, but when you've two heads, you can't use it. Win98 turns it off on all adaptors.

Just my $0.02


------------------
Primary System: PIII-540 (450@4.5x120), Soyo 6BA+ III, 256MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, Millennium G200 AGP, Millennium II, Voodoo2 SLI, Two Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitors, 3Com 3C905, SoundBlaster 32, Altec Lansing AC5 spkrs, 2nd Parallel Port, WD AC41800 18GB HD, WD AC310100 10GB HD, Toshiba XM-6102b CD-ROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, Epson Stylus Pro, Sharp JX-9400 LJ-II compatible, OptiUPS PowerES 650, MS SideWinder Precision Pro USB joystick, Logitech 3-button mouse, Mitsumi keyboard, Win98 SE, Belkin OmniCube 4-port KVM

Secondary System: PII-266, Asus P2B BIOS 1008, 128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, Millennium II, 3Com 3C590, ADSL Modem 640kbit down/90kbit up, 3Com 3C509, Mylex BT-930 SCSI card, Seagate 2GB Hawk, NEC 6x CD-ROM, Linux distro S.u.S.E. 6.1 (IP Masquerade works!)

Tertiary System: DFI G568IPC Intel 430HX chipset, P200MMX, 96MB of non-parity RAM, Millennium II, 3Com 3C900, SoundBlaster 16 MCD, Fujitsu 3.5GB HD, WD 1.2GB HD, OS of the week

All specs subject to change.

[Kruzin]

I use OGL over D3D because it looks better, especially in TFC. The picture is clearer, and the colors more defined. Plus, the D3D in HL is nothing more than an OGL wrapper. There is no "real" D3D support in the game.

In TFC, with D3D, you cannot see the engineer's, spy's, or medic's special greneades explode. You just hear a "fizz" or "pop" sound. In OGL, you see a cool looking visual effect when those grenades go off.

I also see sprite borders and other little things in D3D that are not nearly as apparent in OGL...

[Nuno]

I agree. I was nagging about OGL because it is so much better looking. Direct3d in Half-Life always looked like washed-out and blurry, compared to OGL. Now with that gl_texsort tweak it is actually faster than D3D!!!

But this issue in G400 performing better in HL with multitexturing disabled (or with so kind of diferent texture management) is interesting.

Anyone tryed to disable multitexturing in Q2/3? (no, gl_texsort doesn´t work)

[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 09-04-1999).]

[Scout255]

hey Sander Pilon, you should be glad you are getting elevin, i am getting a whopping 4.5 @ 640X480 @ 16 bit coloR!!
this really pieves me off, matrox stole all my money and now not only am i broke, but i have THE SLOWEST card i have ever seen!
my friends voodoo rush goes faster than that!!!!!!!!!

[Kruzin]

Scout - instead of whining about it, try to figure out what is wrong with the setup. It should be obvious to you by now if you read this thread that it can and does work. If you are getting scores that bad, something is obviously wrong in your system (whether it be a faulty card, or a config problem).

[Smiff]

Nuno:

I've done some experimenting with Quake2 (my fav. game BTW cos of its superb mods!). When I first turned off multiltexturing I thought I was getting an increase of 10%. Actually turned out that every time you run the timedemo it gets slightly faster anyway (caching I guess). Something to bear in mind when benchmarking! Anyway, here's my results:

1152x864, 32bit colour, 16bit Z, demo1.dm2

Multi-T ON: 55 FPS
Multi-T OFF: 43 FPS

the command is gl_ext_multitexture
(0=off, 1=on). Don't forget to vid_restart after changes!!

About HalfLife, thanks a lot Kruzin! I copy/pasted your stuff in and went from av. 25 to 35 FPS!. Looks mucher better too...
BUT this would be fine if it was a steady 35 but its not. Im sure you understand that I'm not just whining! I can't use D3D cos it goes into two little pink windows at the top of the screen (!) For once I think this is a problem with the game not the G400! Valve got a bit TNT happy!

People getting single figure FPS should stop posting to this forum and start fixing their PCs

Hope i've made some sense here 'cos im a bit out of it

Smiff

[Scout255]

the techs are stumped, and basically said "don't call back now, you hear"
after a combind total (just got phone bill) of 4 hours, 35 minutes spent chatting with a tech, i have just given up
i tried reformatting with no floppy connected, no second hard drive connect, no cd rom installed, no soundcard, and no network card... guess what... SAME THING HAPPENS

[Z_Morris]

I've noticed you have to have all these commands to increase the frame rate. What do you tell the other 80% who don't mess with configs then?

To say you have to add these commands to boost the frame rate in 5.21 is cop out to Matroxs Driver division.

Most of us expect an increase in frame rate regardless of having to add these commands to boost frame rate.

I myself is tired of all these games. To do an honest benchmark of a driver. You install a game and run the benchmark. To add these commands to get a higher rate is redundant in testing driver improvements.

That's great people are getting increase in frame rate when they add these commands. But to say the drivers have increased in performance because of these little add-ons to configs is not cool.

Matrox should get on the ball here, This is really stupid if we have to alter stuff to get faster frame rates, it should've been already present.

Another thumbs down to matrox. This isn't to good representing the slogan, "For the No-comprimise gamer".

[red2]

Ummm "The no compromise gamer" knows generally knows how to tweak. I am sure if the stupid worthless MS WHQL certification process didn't exist, Matrox drivers would be much more tweakable with written explanations. And if enabling something gives more detail AND is FASTER, why would you want it off?

[Z_Morris]

The point I was making is that, The drivers should of been faster regardless of adding tweaks.

If you compared 5.13 to 5.21 with a fresh install of Q3a and QII and ran the benchmark, You would see that the 5.21 is slower than the 5.13.

Adding tweaks to configs and what not is all part of the gamer tweaking his computer to go faster.

The point is, it should of been faster than 5.13 with out adding tweaks.