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I guess if you're not happy with the OpenGL performance, and there's certainly room for improvement, then that's that. I've noticed that with Matrox products, most of the "hype" actually comes from sources outside of Matrox. As far as I'm concerned, no one is worse than PC Magazine, which confirmed the G200's OpenGL capabilities repeatedly, and continued to do so after "Black November."
Matrox's marketing department, I think, showed rare restraint about the G400's OpenGL performance, saving the hyperpole for it's D3D capabilities. Online reviewers, even those enamored with the board, were fairly cautious this time around.
Anandtech, May 1999:
"The G400 is finally here, and it is definitely not a Voodoo3 or TNT2 killer. The hard core gamer that simply wants performance will probably want to stay away from the G400, however if you don't mind not having the absolute best in 3D performance then the G400 quickly becomes a viable option.
"Owners of slower computers will want to stay away from the G400, instead you'll probably want to explore 3dfx's solutions, or maybe NVIDIA's TNT2 depending on how "slow" your computer happens to be (in terms of CPU speed). Mid range systems should be fine with the G400, however don't expect eyebrow raising performance out of the card, even the MAX version. Higher end systems will prove to close the gap between the G400 and the more performance oriented alternatives, the G400 has some room to grow, so the faster your CPU, the better your G400 will perform, that's a given.
"Matrox definitely has a winner on their hands, the G400 is much more than everything the G200 should have been, and it's no surprise that such a combination of features, performance, and outstanding image quality will be making its way into the hands of quite a few anxious users that have renewed faith in Matrox. Myself included
Let's just hope that Matrox can iron out the last few bugs with their ICD, and work on improving performance. Although the G400 will probably never reach TNT2 Ultra levels of performance, the closer Matrox gets, the better. The cards are ready and out in the open, you make the decision."
Sharky Extreme, May 1999:
"Guess what? No FINAL ICD was available with the review unit. Matrox really does need to sort this out in time for the product launch (it even says a FULL ICD is supposed to come with the retail part). Clearly some work needs to be done. Quake 2 performance, whilst acceptable (especially at the higher resolutions), was still some way off from a Voodoo3 or TNT2. Half-Life was even worse. The performance was way below par. We understand that the OpenGL drivers we were given were in BETA so we'll update these scores as and when we can. On the other hand, Quake 3: Arena at 1024x768 and in 32-bit was very playable and again, we'll update you with scores when id Software releases a WORKING version of the timedemo benchmark. At this time, there's no support for Windows NT either.
"The OpenGL Verdict: The slower OpenGL Quake 2 scores force us to dock a point off of the final score. Should Matrox get around to improving the performance- we will re-evaluate.
[A big snip]
"Matrox has entered the 3D gaming scene. The G400MAX is lighting quick in some D3D games but when multitexturing comes into play, the architecture doesn't seem quite as efficient as the Voodoo3's or TNT2's and the OpenGL really needs improving. So really hardcore gamers that live and die by Quake 2 (let's see how Quake 3 performs when the timedemo is released) might still want to go for a Voodoo3 3000 or a UltraTNT2.
"If you're a gamer but all about 'image' rather than frame rate, the G400MAX wins hands down. It did outperform a Voodoo3 and UltraTNT2 in some D3D tests and it also shows that 32-bit rendering can be used at a minimal performance loss. Alongside the UltraTNT2, the G400MAX harbors the best image quality and with bump mapping enabled (where possible) it creeps ahead. Whilst on the expensive side at $249.99, we were still left pleasantly surprised and do recommend this card to gamers and end-users who would make use of some of the more innovative features such as DualHead."
Thresh's Firingsquad, *July* 1999
"No benchmark suite would be complete without a little bit o' Quake 2! The G400 does not do as well in Quake II. In the G400 vanilla's case, we strongly attributed the lower benchmark values to the lack of a fully robust OpenGL ICD. As of now, we're unsure as to the stage of the OpenGL support that the latest drivers had. However, keep in mind that the G400 MAX is not fully slated as the gamer's card.
[snip]
"A word of warning, though. While a fast CPU will yield impressive results, the flip side of the coin also applies. A slow CPU will yield poor results. The most likely reason why the G400 MAX and the G400 chipset in general is so CPU dependent is because triangle setup is not done 100% by the video card, whereas on most of the other current generation video chipsets we see 100% hardware triangle setup. Because the CPU is involved in the pre-rendering process, a fast one will aid the rendering process, while a slow one will become the bottleneck."
I apologize for the length of this post. What I'm attempting to demostrate is there appeared to be a fair bit of concensus about the G400. No review that I read claimed the G400 was the best gaming solution, only that it was a fine, innovative, multipurpose board with a lot of neat features. OpenGL performance remained a sore point, and, *hopefully," things would get better with driver upgrades (and they have).
The board was (and remains) very CPU dependant. Your CPU would be the bottleneck. This was pointed out over and over again, and no driver upgrade is going to fix this. It should come as no surprize. The more capable your CPU, the faster your scores would be.
If you're looking for an extremely fast board, go elsewhere. This was implicit in every review I read, except, when it was explicitly stated.
I just don't know where this alleged "hype" came from. Usenet? The big fat liars at PC Magazine?
Sometimes I think we all have a problem with prepositions. We read "when" when we should be reading "if." ("When the drivers improve, the G400 will be an excellent OpenGL performer," as opposed to, "if the drivers improve...")
Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net
Matrox's marketing department, I think, showed rare restraint about the G400's OpenGL performance, saving the hyperpole for it's D3D capabilities. Online reviewers, even those enamored with the board, were fairly cautious this time around.
Anandtech, May 1999:
"The G400 is finally here, and it is definitely not a Voodoo3 or TNT2 killer. The hard core gamer that simply wants performance will probably want to stay away from the G400, however if you don't mind not having the absolute best in 3D performance then the G400 quickly becomes a viable option.
"Owners of slower computers will want to stay away from the G400, instead you'll probably want to explore 3dfx's solutions, or maybe NVIDIA's TNT2 depending on how "slow" your computer happens to be (in terms of CPU speed). Mid range systems should be fine with the G400, however don't expect eyebrow raising performance out of the card, even the MAX version. Higher end systems will prove to close the gap between the G400 and the more performance oriented alternatives, the G400 has some room to grow, so the faster your CPU, the better your G400 will perform, that's a given.
"Matrox definitely has a winner on their hands, the G400 is much more than everything the G200 should have been, and it's no surprise that such a combination of features, performance, and outstanding image quality will be making its way into the hands of quite a few anxious users that have renewed faith in Matrox. Myself included
Let's just hope that Matrox can iron out the last few bugs with their ICD, and work on improving performance. Although the G400 will probably never reach TNT2 Ultra levels of performance, the closer Matrox gets, the better. The cards are ready and out in the open, you make the decision."Sharky Extreme, May 1999:
"Guess what? No FINAL ICD was available with the review unit. Matrox really does need to sort this out in time for the product launch (it even says a FULL ICD is supposed to come with the retail part). Clearly some work needs to be done. Quake 2 performance, whilst acceptable (especially at the higher resolutions), was still some way off from a Voodoo3 or TNT2. Half-Life was even worse. The performance was way below par. We understand that the OpenGL drivers we were given were in BETA so we'll update these scores as and when we can. On the other hand, Quake 3: Arena at 1024x768 and in 32-bit was very playable and again, we'll update you with scores when id Software releases a WORKING version of the timedemo benchmark. At this time, there's no support for Windows NT either.
"The OpenGL Verdict: The slower OpenGL Quake 2 scores force us to dock a point off of the final score. Should Matrox get around to improving the performance- we will re-evaluate.
[A big snip]
"Matrox has entered the 3D gaming scene. The G400MAX is lighting quick in some D3D games but when multitexturing comes into play, the architecture doesn't seem quite as efficient as the Voodoo3's or TNT2's and the OpenGL really needs improving. So really hardcore gamers that live and die by Quake 2 (let's see how Quake 3 performs when the timedemo is released) might still want to go for a Voodoo3 3000 or a UltraTNT2.
"If you're a gamer but all about 'image' rather than frame rate, the G400MAX wins hands down. It did outperform a Voodoo3 and UltraTNT2 in some D3D tests and it also shows that 32-bit rendering can be used at a minimal performance loss. Alongside the UltraTNT2, the G400MAX harbors the best image quality and with bump mapping enabled (where possible) it creeps ahead. Whilst on the expensive side at $249.99, we were still left pleasantly surprised and do recommend this card to gamers and end-users who would make use of some of the more innovative features such as DualHead."
Thresh's Firingsquad, *July* 1999
"No benchmark suite would be complete without a little bit o' Quake 2! The G400 does not do as well in Quake II. In the G400 vanilla's case, we strongly attributed the lower benchmark values to the lack of a fully robust OpenGL ICD. As of now, we're unsure as to the stage of the OpenGL support that the latest drivers had. However, keep in mind that the G400 MAX is not fully slated as the gamer's card.
[snip]
"A word of warning, though. While a fast CPU will yield impressive results, the flip side of the coin also applies. A slow CPU will yield poor results. The most likely reason why the G400 MAX and the G400 chipset in general is so CPU dependent is because triangle setup is not done 100% by the video card, whereas on most of the other current generation video chipsets we see 100% hardware triangle setup. Because the CPU is involved in the pre-rendering process, a fast one will aid the rendering process, while a slow one will become the bottleneck."
I apologize for the length of this post. What I'm attempting to demostrate is there appeared to be a fair bit of concensus about the G400. No review that I read claimed the G400 was the best gaming solution, only that it was a fine, innovative, multipurpose board with a lot of neat features. OpenGL performance remained a sore point, and, *hopefully," things would get better with driver upgrades (and they have).
The board was (and remains) very CPU dependant. Your CPU would be the bottleneck. This was pointed out over and over again, and no driver upgrade is going to fix this. It should come as no surprize. The more capable your CPU, the faster your scores would be.
If you're looking for an extremely fast board, go elsewhere. This was implicit in every review I read, except, when it was explicitly stated.
I just don't know where this alleged "hype" came from. Usenet? The big fat liars at PC Magazine?
Sometimes I think we all have a problem with prepositions. We read "when" when we should be reading "if." ("When the drivers improve, the G400 will be an excellent OpenGL performer," as opposed to, "if the drivers improve...")
Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net
, but ultimately my point was that the OpenGL situation wasn't overlooked, simply downplayed in most articles.
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