My Perfect Video Card (TM)

[dulux]

A little question. Probably been answered before by someone.

If the turbo drivers are enhanced for 3D Now!! do they speed up K6-2 chips 'cause all they seem to talk about is the Athlon???

I hope so cause that's all I got.



------------------
Believe me Don't believe me no matter
Believe Bill Gates on the other hand.......

[Himself]

Nope, the Athlon is more of a 3D-Now! plus SSE clone beast. If they use all the bits in the Athlon then it won't be compatible. Also the K6-2/3 require a context switch going from x87 to 3D-Now! which if I recall correctly doesn't exist in the K7/Athlon.

[Rags]

Right now there is no way to tell what/how it is optimizing the TurboGL, I am sure that there are some 3DNow! and SSE instructions that are contributors, but with the Athlon and P3, there are many other things that can be used to optimise the MiniGL.

Rags



------------------
FedEx Sucks!

[DarkSyd]

I think Himself hit the issue on the head (the Matrox drivers are not game optimized). They just don't seem to optimized at all. There would seem to be a lot of untapped potential in the G400 chipset, which if we are patient will benefit most of us, whatever processor we are running. The TnT drivers were just as bad (or worse) when they were first released, and now are pretty good. But it certainly didn't happen overnight.
If you want an example of some nicely optimized drivers (for 3d modelling, not gaming) check out what 3dlabs can still pull off with an almost 2year old Permedia 2 card.
www.ktx.com/display/r3.html

Once the Turbo GL driver is released, which should keep the websites and magazines focused on how fast the G400 can run Quakeii/iii (yawn), I'm hoping they will focus on the drivers 'for everything else'.
--

DS-who really would like to get a cable modem out in the boonies, or even cable for that matter

[Whisper]

My apologies Greebe, for calling you Greenbe was not a slur on you, it was an honest mistake on my part which I have rectified.

[Whisper]

Believe what you want to believe Greebe, I rarely apologise, because I rarely make mistakes in technical area's, repeatedly misspelling your name Greenbe was a mistake on my part, and I apologised for it and rectified the mistakes, what more do you want??
What more would you expect to do if you had made the same mistake?

Anyway your 20 years of experience in EE, has not helped you answer any of the issues I have raised, as you seem to be too hung up on how I spelt your name, to bother analysing the content of what I had to say.

Don't bother replying Greebe, unless you are prepared to deal with the issues I have raised in some sort of intelligent fashion, where you actually address the issues I raise, and not pontificate about how much experience you have EE, or raise issues that are completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Good Luck Greebe

[Whisper]

It is Teenybopper, and you are well off the mark there.

You still haven't bothered to address any of the issues I have raised Greebe, maybe it is because they are to technical for you, or are you still upset that I misspelt your name??

All you seem to do Greebe, is try to point out my lack of maturity, in your eyes, without showing the slightest maturity yourself, all I ask you to do is give me answers to my questions, something you seemed to have avoided up to this point. Do you wish to continue?, or are you going to maintain your delusions of moral superiority, in an effort to cover up for your lack of technical knowledge?

You talk the talk Greebe, but nothing to this date has illustrated your ability to walk the walk.

[merchant2112]

here's some cheese.

------------------
why do i even bother? the world is full of backstabing lying bastards. do i resent them and wish them dead? Hell Yes!!!

[LAMFDTK]

"I rarely apologise, because I rarely make mistakes"

Man, its hard not to dislike ****OLES...

[Himself]

The world is full of them, one per person in fact. I dislike towering arrogance myself, expect when I do it of course.

Anyway, this is another silly argument with people with their buns in an uproar over nothing, if Greebe or whatever it is, wants his "name" to be spelled right, then the forum software should list at least the previous reply so that you can see what the other person's name is. Trying to remember somebody's nick like LAPWFDSF or whatever is nuts.

[Whisper]

Nice of you to quote me out of context LAMFDTK, the full quote should read,

"I rarely apologise, because I rarely make mistakes in technical area's"

To stuff something up in a technical area, you have got to either be an idiot, or you make an honest error, (note I said "rarely" not "never")

In a technical debate, you just state your points, giving reasons why you believe such and such to be true, and possibly citing the sources relevant to the discussion for your belief. How hard is that??

If you don't know what you are talking about, the easiest option is to shutup, which I grant, is probably harder than knowing what to say, when you know what you are doing.

Who is the arsehole now??

[Himself]

How about those Blue Jays?

[Maniac]

As a mostly satisfied G400 owner, I can safely say that this card was a very positive step for Matrox in becoming a true 3D powerhouse. Innovative features and a much improved(ok so the G200 had next to none)Opengl implementation. So lets see Mystique 170\220 laughable card, next to no 3D special effects(although Motoracer played very well) vastly inferior to Voodoo1/Rendition Verite boards. G200 - quantum leap in terms of functionality and speed, still provided disappointing performance when compared to Voodoo2/TNT.
G400 - finally Matrox has arrived and provides a solution that delivers top notch performance in nearly every category. Next generation - well lets just say I have it on good authority that this trend will continue and finally the others will be playing catchup.

------------------
Celeron 300A@464 2.0V, Abit BH6 G400 16meg DH@150/200, Western Digital Expert 18gig, Ricoh mp7040A, Pioneer 6X DVD slot load, Motorola Cable Modem w/DEC ethernet card, Soundblaster 32PNP

[Whisper]

You so very clever aren't you Greebe.

Pity you aren't clever enough to answer any of my questions.

Are you that much of a gutless coward Greebe, that you dare not attempt to answer any of my questions, in the likely event that you will make a fool of yourself, when you you show everybody in this forum your total lack of understanding of the technical issues at hand?

You don't answer my questions Greebe, because you can't, because you don't have a clue Greebe, because if you did have a clue Greebe, you would just blow me away with vastly superior technical understanding of the subject matter.

It is technical incompotents like yourself Greebe, I forever destined to be cleaning up afterwards.

Care to dazzel me with anymore of your brilliance?

You wouldn't happen to work for NASA Greebe?

[Whisper]

Just to remind everybody what the issues are.

Assuming that a system is using exactly the same CPU with both a Matrox G400 or a TNT2 then I think the following is true:

A Matrox G400, more or less produces similar frame rates compared to a TNT2 in Direct3D, if anything the G400 is faster at higher resolutions.

A Matrox G400 that does not use the TurboGL drivers produces slower frame rates than that of a TNT2 in OpenGL.

A Matrox G400 that does use the TurboGL driver with SSE optimisations, runs at similar frame rates as a TNT2, as long as the CPU supports SSE.

This leaves me with the following questions:

Why is it neccessary for a Matrox G400 to basically use extra CPU power for it to match a TNT2 in OpenGL frame rates, when the Matrox G400 is easily a match for a TNT2 in Direct3D frame rates?

Is the current TurboGL just a hack, in order to bring the G400's OpenGL frame rate performance up to the same frame rate performance as the TNT2?

If the TuboGL driver is a hack, are we likely to see a REAL G400 OpenGL driver, that does not require SSE, and gives us similar frame rates to a TNT2?

Finally, Is the lack of OpenGL performance a Driver/Software issue, or is it hardware related?

The inclusion of the TurboGL driver has muddied the waters in my opinion, not that I don't think they are not appreciated, but one can not say for certain why they are required, or can they?

Intelligent reponses that actually deal with the points of have raised would be appreciated, if you want to waffle on about a load of irrelevant crap, go make your own topic.

Cheers