Good bye, cruel Matrox.......

[o-o-o-]

Pige, I'm with you all the way on this. I've been watching this G400 Max
situation for several months now. I've long been a Matrox 2D fan, and it
looked like the G400M finally was going to put them on the map with 3D.

Alas, it looks again to be too little, too late. When I read the info about
TurboGL I instantly canceled my order.

And before I hear lots of justifications that the G400M is some kind of
great card for gaming, let me say that: the TurboGL is still Beta (and the Max was
supposed to ship in when, June??); so even this support is in the "not ready
for primetime" file. Second it hasn't even been tested against Athlons, so
we've got no idea what code tweaks may be necessary to support AMD.
Third... if they want to get _today's_ gaming market, they've got to support
the Celeron (yah, yah, it's going to get SSE too, I know... but file that in
the "not yet" category). And, short of superhigh resolutions, other cards
exist (e.g - Guillemot's Xentor32) that match or exceed the G400M's
capabilities across the board (for a lower price, no less).

Ultimately, I see no compelling reason to buy the G400M over certain other
cards and I'm ultimately unimpressed by their use of SSE... if the history
of the G200 and G400 family is any indication, something bigger and better
will be reality by the time the G400M is *really* ready for the market.

Sorry, but it looks like my old Matrox M2 is the last Matrox card that I'm
going to own. The G400M might have plenty of reasons to recommend it, but not if you're a gamer.

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[This message has been edited by o-o-o- (edited 09-30-1999).]

[Rags]

The G400M might have plenty of reasons to recommend it, but not if you're a hardcore gamer.

what you meant to say instead of gamer is complainer. It's speed above 1024 says everything, there is no need for me to walk you through it.

Rags



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FedEx Sucks!

[[Pige]]

Hi,

Yes, I've heard that Pige = Girl in Danish and NO, I'm not female (though I do have long curly hair)..... every now and then I get some rampent 16year old Danish lad trying to chat me up, untill I give him a breif discription of my self

Hmmmm the matrox being a gamers graphix card because it has the fastest speeds at 1280x1024 and above, think not!! It may have the fastest speeds in these rezolutions but they are still unplayable.

Although people are graduly moving over the p3 450's and OCing these, the majority of so called Hardcore Gamers are still relying on OC'd celeries.

Matrox have done to little, to late and charged to much money for it. There is no way I could recommend this card to anyone in it's current state and feel that by the time Matrox correct the situation new and better cards will have been released.

I correct that.... if someone has a p3 600 and a Sony FD500 monitor then yes the G400 may be the correct card for them but for thoughs out there trying to get the biggest bang for your buck, stay well away as any PC with a lower spec will just highlight the the G400's problems.

Pige

Just hoping that this gets through to someone who hasn't already bought one.

[This message has been edited by [Pige] (edited 09-30-1999).]

[Kruzin]

I have yet to see a single game "unplayable" as you put it. My minimum res for any game now is 1024x768x32. All my Quake based games fly at 1152x864x32. Many games are playable up to 1600x1200. Hardly anything to whine about.

And don't make me pull out my HalfLife scores again to show I'm a "hardcore gamer". I frag with the best of them, and play games of one sort or another almost every day.

The only people unhappy are the ones who would rather run benchmarks and brag to their buddies about who has the bigger dic..er..FPS. Anyone who appreciates the amazing image quality, and top notch performance (not to mention all the other features) is perfectly happy with the card. Mine isn't even a MAX, and of the dozens of cards I've owned, this is by far the best one yet. And it just keeps getting better with each driver release.

Well, I'm sure you had no problem selling it. And you should have gotten your money back out of it as well, so you have nothing to complain about. If you didn't get your money out of it, you didn't try too hard to sell it. You decided it wasn't for you. Fine. Now go spead your sunshine over at the Shark Tank. You have a better chance of getting your message to a naive non-owner over there. You won't find too many people agreeing with you around here (I count 1 so far in this thread of 30+ replys). We know the truth about the card, and your ranting sure won't change our minds.

[[Pige]]

Kruzin: So your the one running the P3 600 with a high end monitor

Also have you tried any other cards ????

Pige

PS, ....and yes I do spread my message across other forums but this one is much more fun. I still have the card till the end of November and you never know, Matrox may decide to release a Win2k turbo Celery driver.....

[Kruzin]

I'm running a lowly P2-450 with an ADI 21" MicroScan.

And if you read my post, I stated I have had dozens of cards over last few years. Those included Diamond, Creative, ATI, Matrox, Number9, Voodoo2, and others.

[IceStorm]

Kruzin, UT's giving me, on average, 37FPS when I run the MAX at 1024x768x16xMedium World detail/Medium player detail/detailed textures. The good thing is that it never fell below 27FPS

The V2 SLI Rig, on the other hand, gives me on average 49FPS at 1024x768x16bitxHigh World detail/High Player detail/detailed textures. It too never fell below 27FPS. But I CAN see a difference between the 37FPS and the 49FPS

The difference between high world detail and medium world detail is that at high world detail, you can see pitted metal surfaces, rocks look like rock, not flat surfaces, and lighting is a bit different. It's half of one, six dozen of the other - do you want 49 FPS and realistic textures, or 37FPS and better colors, but flatter-looking surfaces?

Visually, except for the motion bluring of the V2 rig (hardware problem with the V2), they're not THAT different from each other at these settings. Especially if you're in a firefight.

True, 32bit gives a better picture, but then the framerate falls to 20FPS average, and with high world and player detail, it goes down even more.

When the DX7-optimized drivers come out for the G400, I'll try again, but for now, if you're a gamer that wants a consistent 45+ FPS, the G400 MAX simply can't provide it for UT.

The G400 MAX is a good card, and for those who don't need 45+FPS, or want to game at 800x600, it's fine. But to get anything out of 1024x768 or higher requires sacrificing 30+FPS performance, or scaling back the details.

Again, all comes down to what you want from your card. If you're someone who NEEDS that frame rate, absolutely NEEDS it at 1024x768, won't live without it, can't deal with anything below 30~35+ FPS, will whine and complain if you don't get it, then DON'T get a G400 MAX. :-) Go buy a V3 3000, or maybe a TNT2Ultra.

[Rags]

And I will be trying a V3 as of next week. I have also tried TNT/TNT2, and two ATI cards. No S3 yet (unless you count the Virge). My G200 does everything I need right now, and the G400 looks to give me what I want. No P3 600 here, either. I have a 17" Princeton monitor (not exactly high end), and P3 450. The G400 I had for a short time worked as I expected.

Rags



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FedEx Sucks!

[[Pige]]

Kruzin: So you havn't tried any of the current generation cards, Voodoo 3000 or TNT2.

With the processor you have, you would find that you get more fps on either of the other cards and although the picture quality in theory is better on the G400, you don't have a monitor that can reflect this.

Pige


[This message has been edited by [Pige] (edited 09-30-1999).]

[Dennis1]

Again, all comes down to what you want from your card. If you're someone who NEEDS that frame rate, absolutely NEEDS it at 1024x768, won't live without it, can't deal with anything below 30~35+ FPS, will whine and complain if you don't get it, then DON'T get a G400 MAX. :-) Go buy a V3 3000, or maybe a TNT2Ultra

When the DX7-optimized drivers come out for the G400, I'll try again, but for now, if you're a gamer that wants a consistent 45+ FPS, the G400 MAX simply can't provide it for UT.

Wrong, TNT2Ultra is giving not more perfomance than a G400 in UT. People seem to forget that even a Voodoo2 outperforms a TNT2 or a G400 in UT right now. The problem for you're people with a G400 or a TNT2 is not that you're card is not fast enough to get better FPS in high resolutions but it is how DirectX is just not as fast as glide in UT right now. Making assumptions because the UT demo does not run fast enough on G400 or a TNT2 is just plain stupid. In time when optimized drivers are released for you're card and EPIC has optimized there DirectX support in UT the performance will be much better in UT, PERIOD end of discussion

Dennis

[This message has been edited by Dennis1 (edited 09-30-1999).]

[[Pige]]

....and yet another person is talking about this mistical time when Matrox will manage to creat some decent drivers !!!

I'm sure in time that they will manage to produce some outstanding drivers... but by then the next generation chips will be out or maybe even the generation after that.

Matrox have only just got some decent drivers out for the G200 !!!!

The plain fact is, unless you have a top flight rig that can maximise the benifits of the G400M you are better of looking at another solution for your graphix card, especially if you are in to so called experimental computing such as OCing the tits of a Celery or running Win2K.

..hmmmm think that is Period.

Pige


I have seen the future and the future's Orange....

[Kruzin]

You just don't get it, do you Pige?
Not everyone counts FPS like you do.
That is simply NOT what everyone puts first on their list.
No matter how fast a TnT2 or V3 are, they still don't give the features (dualhead) or visual quality of the G400 (and yes, a 21" Microscan is certainly sufficient to see the difference). The point is, the G400 is playable in all game (ok...maybe not Tribes), and blows others away in many games, both in speed and visuals.

Then of course, there is everything else I do with my PC. CAD work on a daily basis. DVD watching. Image editing. Nope. G400 is the best around for these things, and you cannot convince me otherwise.

And I have tested a TnT2 (in a pals machine), and I was highly unimpressed. Nothing but a TnT1 on steroids. What a waste. And I won't even consider the non-AGP using, 16bit, small textured Whodoo card. Not even an option. The most recent non-M card I tested in my own box was an ATI Rage Fury. Only took 3 days to decide to take that one back.

You are wasting your posting time here, danish girl. This is the Matrox USERS resource centre. You won't find a more dedicated group around, and you won't change our minds. We've dealt with worse, louder whiners than you, and they didn't change our minds...what makes you think you will?

[Dennis1]

....and yet another person is talking about this mistical time when Matrox will manage to creat some decent drivers !!!

Who says that the current drivers are not good from Matrox, if a game (say UT) runs slow on you're computer it doesn't mean at first that the drivers for you're videocard suck, there is a another party involved such as the game developer, if there support say for DirectX isn't optimized then you get poor performance it has normally nothing to do with the performance of the videocard, judge the speed of you're card on different games.

Dennis

[[Pige]]

I don't intend to change your minds but hope to influnce thoughs minds that are not quite as predudice and are looking for advice on getting a new card. From you posts I feel that you just don't want to here that you have made a bad desision, it's a shame matrox don't run there own forum as I could work on that instead.

One of the reasons for getting the G400M was for 2D image quality at 1600x1200 as my main monitor is an Hitachi 812 (a good medium range 21"), when comparing the picture quality between this and the TNT2 that I have there is no diffrence.

Although I do see a the quality of the G400M when using my old 17" Iiyama Master Pro (this monitor is quality)running at 1600x1200 much better than the TNT2, problem is if I'd run it at this rez on a 17" I'd go blind. When I drop it down to a more readable 1024x760 the TNT2 can more than match the G400.

Pige

[This message has been edited by [Pige] (edited 09-30-1999).]

[[Pige]]

Ok, Ok.......

I'm not going to drag this out any further and I think I've made my point.

There are a few short comings and I think I have highlighted these so that people have the facts to make there own desisions.

Pige