G200 - G400 Upgrade? (or V3!!!?)

[CraigP]

Hi all,

I currently own a G200 card in a Celeron 300A (@464) 128Mb system. I am now starting to find newer games struggling to keep up with the pace :-<

I want to upgrade the video card to either the G400 16Mb OR (Sorry!) the V3-3000. I never thought until recently I would even consider the V until seeing it in action the other day on a P3-450 ... although colours weren't as good (and I'm not talking just about 32bit here) the gameplay seemed much better owing to the speed.

I haven't yet seen the g400 in action so I am REALLY in a dilema which way to go. Can anyone who has seen both cards in a similar setup please let me know their own experience.

BTW I don't want to spend much at the moment and will probably upgrade the vid card again in 6 months or so so I don't see much point in spending lots on the Max.

Any advice would be most appretiated!

Cheers

Craig

NB Oh yes .. I also have a SB Live ... (is that a factor???)

[This message has been edited by CraigP (edited 03 November 1999).]

[Rags]

Hi Craig,

You are in luck. I just happened to have had an extended comparison in my systems (ABit BH6's, Celery 300a@464/P3 450@558, 128 PC100)between the two cards: the G400 SH 16meg, and the V3 3000 TV. The V3 has two advantages over the G400:
1. Need For Speed 3 plays smother and looks a bit better than the G400 (although the G400 is more than acceptable).
2. Tribes is flawless.
The G400 has the Following advantages:
1. In Half Life, the colers are more vibrant and contrasted with the G400, making it easier in TFC to see in the distance what team a player is on, and what team a sentry gun belongs to. And on my P3 runs faster.
2. Q3 looks MUCH better and crisper, and on my P3, runs faster.
3. Mechwarrior 3 runs better and looks WAY better than the V3.
4. The G400 looks better in windows at higher resolutions, I can notice a difference starting 1024X768.
5. The G400 is faster all around in Direct 3D games all the way around.
6. The G400 is maybe a tad slower in OpenGL, but holds the frame rates better, and if you upgrade to a P3, the G400 smokes the V3 in OpenGL games.
7. The G400 is cheaper than the V3.

Rags

[paulcs]

I've used both boards as well, and I like both of them. The G400 has great 2D image quality, although the Voodoo3 surprized a lot of people with its 2D performance.

I think the G400 is a better all around board. It certainly is more feature rich. To add to what Rags has already said, the Voodoo3 is probably better with Unreal engine games and a number of flight sims. Some things just run better with Glide, 3dfx's proprietary API. I think the Voodoo3 3500 is a bit overpriced. It's multimedia features are, apparently, not great, and the Voodoo3 3000 and the 16 Mb G4000 are a lot cheaper.

In my most humble opinion, and with apologies to my many fine fellow Matrox enthusiasts on this forum, if you intend to keep that Celeron, and you're a big first person shooter fan, I'd go with the Voodoo3. If you intend to upgrade your processor soon, and if you can afford it, you probably should, then go with the G400. (This is assuming the image quality limitations related to the Voodoo3 don't bother you.)

What games do you play?

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Neil]

I just upgraded from a V3-3000 to a G400max.
No comparison, the G400max's colors are richer, sharper. For speed, the G400max runs 1024x768 at 32bit colors faster than the v3-3000 at 16bit colors.
The only game I have that was better with the v3 is Unreal.
I mostly play flight sims and space combat games. Draken, howver, is great with ebm enabled.

If you are looking for a v3-3000, send me an email as I am selling mine (only 4 months old, only overclocked it once to see what it could do (runs at v3-3500 speeds fine w/o extra cooling).

[Rags]

Try using Matrox's uninstaller to rid your system of the old drivers, then re-install the drivers, it will detect your P3 and put TurboGL manager in quick desk.

Rags

[Rags]

Also, your mother board has to have an up to date bios that recognizes your P3 (I presume), and you will also NEED win98 (win95 doesn't support the P3's extended instruction set).

Rags

[CraigP]

Thanks guys for your excellent advice (especially Rags who has helped with numerous emails as well!).

I thought you might be interested to know that I went with the G400 in the end.

On the whole I am very pleased (I would recommend this card to any existing G200 owner who feels the need for a performance kick) and would (from my limited experience) agree with the comments made about the card.

One question though ... I managed to borrow a PIII-450 last night but am unsure whether I actually used the Turbo ICD or not. Rags, you mentioned in another thread to right click the Powerdesk icon and select TICD Manager. I don't have such an option :-<

Just in case I removed all traces of PD and reinstalled (as instructed by Matrox). There was still no such option.

I discovered a seperate G400ICD.DLL file that I had downloaded prior to PD5.30 and used this (in Windows\System). Definiately an increase however the version number was before 5.3 (4.1 something!).

Was/is this the turbo ICD or am I missing something (probably).

Thanks again! There are a lot of great people on this board!!

Craig