driver with directX for Win2k

[PaulS]

Paulcs,

I follow the MS newsgroups pretty closely, both 3Dfx and nvidia have working 3D solutions for W2k, but MS disabled direct3D on the TNT's with RC2 (Voodoo3 works though). However, the point still stands, despite whatever bugs exist (and we do not expect beta drivers for a beta OS to be perfect) they both have had publically available drivers supporting 3D acceleration since beta 3.

Also, these companies already have fast OpenGL drivers for NT, so it is reasonable to expect that W2K will be equally well supported. Matrox don't, so they have more to prove.

Even my 3 year old Voodoo 1 chugs along quite nicely under W2k. On a Pentium 133 it flogs the pants off my G200 with dual Pent II 450's. That pretty much says it all!

Paul

[Rags]

Then use your V1 until the Matrox Win2k driver is up to par. Just a thought.

Rags

[paulcs]

I just yanked my G200 and installed a Voodoo3 and it appears to be malfunctioning just as well.

I've seen the fix for the V3, and it looks pretty nasty. Delete this. Copy over that. Rename this. Install that from Build 2114 which was never released to the public but was posted by some good soul who has some sort of left-side brain aphasia which severely affects his ability to communicate making his directions difficult to interpret and then he gets ridiculed for it on the MS newsgroups.

Whew!

I couldn't get W2K to assign an IRQ to either board. Any advice would be appreciated. I attempted to assign an IRQ to PCI 1 (as there is no option for AGP) in the BIOS, but to no avail.

I have available IRQ's, so maybe it's driver related. I'm using the drivers that installed with W2K.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

PIII 500 (just one for now)
Asus P2B-D rev. 1.06, BIOS rev. 1011
256 Mb RAM
Windows 2000 Professional RC2
Two 3Com NIC's (one ISA, one PCI)
Adaptec 2940 UW (nothing connected yet)
Turtle Beach Montego II
WD 8.4 Gb IDE HD
Sony 200ES 17" Monitor
G200 or Voodoo3 (I get less flicker with the G200 at 75 Hz, by the way)

[tish beta2]

<center>And in enters these firms win2k guru (whiner)</center>
<p align="justify">
Let's see now...

Then use your V1 until the Matrox Win2k driver is up to par. Just a thought.

We are not discussing how to get D3D and OGL work in win2k, we are discussing how bad Matrox are compared to the other companies on win2k "support".

A month ago I played quake 2 on my voodoo2 card while I defragged my HD, with a sustained FPS of 50. That means solid drivers.

A month ago I played the Expendable demo on my old TNT card, with a nice mostly sustained FPS of 40 (6x4).

This is hard facts, and proove both Nvidia AND 3DFX is waaaayyy better than it's Matrox counterparts.

I don't know much about voodoo3, but it seems they will work well at the time win2k get's out.

Folks, I can't belive how you go after YuppieScum! Is it nessesary? did he post any wrong stuff? did he lie undeliberately? did he call you mothers cocksuckers (damn I'm good)?

I read his post, I went on to the next, nothing more. And besides, if he really where only 14 years old, I would have looked at his post with high respect, since here's a focused and bright doude. Not like you other who just post flames back cus you're a little bores (can't imagine why else).

</defend mode>

<reality>

Matrox sucks on drivers, they have done that for two years, we must get them back on track (hell, they are as good as any nvidia/3dfx competition, right?) and really let them know that we don't want their hardware if we can't get the software working. It's sad so many people here protects them like they were gods or something...

Matrox got a bunch of arrogant old-school leaders who don't understand this new kulture known as 3D accelleration and FPS, and refuses to hire developers AND GET THINGS DONE.

I want that Alpha 2 driver


</p>

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"Welcome back from the guide to how I see things logically"

[PaulS]

Rags: Pinch the Voodoo? If only my wife would let me!

We have 4 development systems also, all with G200's - even a decent OpenGL driver for NT would be really appreciated; but 6 months of whinging doesn't seem to have gotten me anywhere.

paulcs: have you tried the drivers at: http://ntgamepalace.3dfiles.com/3dfxfaq.htm?

Not sure whether Win2K will let you assign an IRQ for display adapters, NT certainly won't.

Paul

[paulcs]

Thanks Paul. I posted my question about IRQ assignments on one of Microsoft's newsgroups and got a short, curt chastisement of the sort reserved for newbies. (I guess with things NT, I'm a newbie all over again.)

No useful information was provided, however, so thanks again for your indulgence. I stuck the G200 back in the machine, as the monitor flickering while using the V3 was far more severe at 75 Hz, the highest refresh rate I could get with either board.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[PaulS]

Hi Paul,

Yeah, I saw your question, and the polite reply - they are a touchy lot. NT has a microkernel architecture, which is basically a very small loop that decides when things should get done, IRQ signaling (from devices) is not encouraged because it forces immediate action and defeats part of the logic behind NT's design. The preference is to let NT decide when device requests are serviced.

However, some devices simply can't work properly without an IRQ, serial ports for instance; they can't be reliably serviced by polling.

Anyway, I thought your question was valid. W2K is the first version of NT to support AGP, so that may require an interrupt.

Paul

[noyanov]

I could not adore your answer. Now I have interchanged G400 to Diamond TNT in my system. I work under Win2k and occasionally I want to rest at game. Diamond has betta driver with DirecX support and I can load it (without a stupid registration). You have the driver too. But I had to change my card instead. I have used Matrox cards 2 years. And I'm tired by the driver battles. My next video card will be a Diamond card.

[Rob M.]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I seem to remember reading that companies that work with MS to build drivers for win2k aren't allowed to release those drivers to public until the OS is.
Now I don't believe everything I read, but it would seem to make sense to me that matrox, nvidia AND 3dfx all hold back their directx7 drivers so they can use MS's help to get working drivers integrated into the OS.
Of course, large companies also like to have their own utils (powerdesk) which MS wouldn't allow to be built into win2k, so there's good reason to build a 'shell' driver for win2k that doesn't have opengl or D3D but would allow for public beta testing of powerdesk for win2k.
Personally, I'm really interested to see what gets released with RC3. I think that'll be the best chance to see where all the companies stand driverwise.

This is actually not limited to video cards, try to find win2k drivers for your SBlive or a vortex2 card off of the creative/aureal websites, neither site gives a firm release date.

Just my 2 cents. I could be totally wrong, but I'd definately be surprised not to see all of ATI, Matrox, 3dfx, and Nvidia on the HCL (with at least full d3d) come final release of win2k.

[Gurm]

Noyanov,

I'm sorry your next card will be a Diamond, because that means it will have an S3 chip on it! Yes, they have in fact merged, as you would know if you bothered to ever read anything other than the Matrox board.

You'll have your DX7 drivers soon for the G400. In the meantime, the TNT doesn't work under Win2k RC2 _EITHER_, because nVidia hasn't got even Alpha DX7 drivers. So no 3D! Sorry, pal. I don't know what version of Win2k you're running, but it's not recent.

- Gurm


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G. U. R. M. It's not hard to spell, is it? Then don't screw it up!
The word "Gurm" is in no way Copyright 1999 Jorden van der Elst.

[PaulS]

Hi Rob,

The current word is that there won't be a public RC3, just a small circulation 3-4 weeks before RTM to catch any big bugs.

Anyway, I would be very surprised if nvidia and 3dfx don't have fully (3D) functional drivers shipping inside w2k. Of course they will always be slower than the manufacturer's optimised drivers.

AFAIK, the main reasons companies don't release beta drivers are:

1. They don't want to support them.

2. Marketing people are afraid of bad publicity caused by buggy or slow drivers.

There are certainly no restrictions in the DDK license agreement on releasing drivers.

Paul.