Does Matrox really have a true ICD for G200/G400?

[The Rev]

As you might already know, I am an avid Tribes player. I've been trying to get some support from Sierra/Dynamix to have the game rid of horrid OpenGL performance/bugs.

I wrote to the suggestions and technical support at Sierra/Dyanmix about this. The following post is my letter and response from Sierra:

<a href="http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum4/HTML/001452.html">http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum4/HTML/001452.html</a>

Sierra has said some of the following:
"If you check with
Matrox they will tell you that G400 still not using a real ICD driver. It is
actually a MiniGL driver and really can not use the full potential of the
card."

"Even till now, G400 doesn't have a big enough userbase."

"If the Matrox can improbe their ICD driver and have a good user base before
Tribes 2 is finalized, that is a very good change G400 special support will
be included in Tribes 2."

Check it out. So is the ICD comment true? Whetehr it is or not, it looks as if the G400 won't be playing Tribes2 when it's released.

Thanks for listening,
A Sad G400 Tribes Player

[Electric Amish]

It sounds like poor programming on there part saying that they have to provide "special support" for each individual card on the market. I thought that was what Standards were for...so that an API can be supported instead of individual architectures.

Just my 2 cents.

[The Rev]

I thought the same thing. They're trying to say they don't fully support OpenGL with an ICD and just use a miniGL type thing. Sounds like they are BSing or getting confused with TurboGL. I don't know but what they said upset me.

[Rags]

The ICD, although not as thorough as some others, is an ICD. It sits in your system folder and interacts with OpenGL32.dll and glu32.dll. It operates acrossed a broad amount of applications, so it is an ICD. Tribes implementation of OpenGL is not the best, and requires special optimizing to get decent performance. Write them back and tell them that if they would just stick to the API, there wouldn't be problems playing their game with ALL ICD's.

Rags

[Kruzin]

My reply is in the games forum cross-post of this

[Zwisch]

hey... this is totally frustrating!!! How can these.... clain this as their damn OpenGl only work with Nvidia.... so what, no other cards have true OpenGL ICD??? gee what nerve they have!!! The Matrox ICD is a real ICD... Turbo Gl is a miniGL drivers, but the real ICD is still present...

that's it, Dynamix are now on my hit list!!