This is what I was told by Haig. OpenGL seems grim for NT.

[Galvin]

At this time, I am told that our NT ICD will only be conentrated towards
the 3D applications. We won't be conentrating on any game issues under NT4.

We are still working on better OGL performance under NT4 but they will be
mainly towards apps like 3DS max, Lightwave, etc.

You are correct. For now, we have no plans on any kind of TGL under NT4.
There's a small chance for Win2K but not NT4.

Regards,

Haig
================================
Unfortunatly even the geforce cards have
even worse support for opengl and driver
support. If anyone wants to see the images
that show the bugs I can send them to you
maybe you have a better idea of just what
kind of bugs they are. I do know one
thing they only crop up when bus mastering
is on.

[Holerith]

As both NT and Windows 2000 are aimed toward business use and applications this should not come as any great surprise.

For games stick to Windows 9x.



------------------
Dean
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
PDP-11, Dec-writer & ZD-11 Terminal Unit, RSTS-OS

[Storm]

I'm definitely happier with new newer 4.31 NT drivers. A LOT of bugs have been fixed, and new features have been added. (i never knew the G400 had the dual plane extension support for 3d studio and other apps) I think they ARE concentrating on 3d apps and not games, after all that's what NT is mostly used for. If you want to play games, get both NT and Win98 in dual boot.

Good job Matrox (about time too)

-------------
Regards,
Storm

[LrngToFly]

I could care less about WinNT4 at this point- it's 3 months away from being end-of-life'ed as far as I'm concerned.

I sure hope they power forward the OpenGL development for Win2K. I'm quite tired of having to reboot into Win9x to play my DVDs and games.

Speaking of "powering forward"- I hope friggin' Microsoft keeps Win2K's DirectX up-to-date with the Win9x versions. I am (or make that a "was" as soon as Win2K arrives...) pissed that WinNT4 is still stuck back at DX3 (or 4?)

[Galvin]

Kind of ironic. NT stands for new technology, it should of been called OT Old Technology, because it could never keep up with new technology like DX5,6,7. USB, etc. And if anyone think win2k is not for games get a clue win98 is a toy OS, not a real OS. It runs on top of DOS 7, it can be easily crashed or frozen, heh I am not going to get into it. But I am willing to pay the 150 to get Win2K because it's worth it, nice and stable.

Also I spoke with haig somemore, it seems the problems I am getting with Quake II involves the openGL driver and not the game. But I still haven't been told why bus mastering causes this problem. But he said he saw something like that in Lightwave.

Also wouldn't it make sense to make OpenGL excellerated for PIII for professional apps so they can run faster ?

[This message has been edited by Galvin (edited 17 November 1999).]

[LAMFDTK]

Hard drives are cheap right? Hard drive caddies are cheaper... I have two HD caddies in my system and swap out many HD's with O/S's and use an IDE zip to "park" files in between. It works for me...

[Holerith]

Galvin, from what I gather from a colleague that is doing serious testing with Win 2000 it can be crashed easily too under the right conditions.

LAMFDTK, I have a work machine set up much the same way except I have a SCSI drive that serves as a data drive for the multiple OSes.

------------------
Dean
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
PDP-11, Dec-writer & ZD-11 Terminal Unit, RSTS-OS

[PaulS]

Sure, it can be crashed by bad drivers or bad hardware (as can any OS), but the W2k is by far the most stable OS to come out of MS.

Paul.

[mj12]

<soapbox>
Please explain the logic behind dual booting 9x and w2k? W9x is the biggest pile of crap. windows2000 has been in development for 3 years!! MS has stated that when it RTMs there will no major bugs. This is why it keeps keeping delayed. As for the latest 9 month cycle of 9x, millennium, this product is not quality driven, it is date driven! All I want is for matrox to finish up the w2k drivers. This is the only piece of hardware that I don't have driver support for under w2k. Anyone here is thinks 9x is in the same league as w2k needs to really stop reading trash like ziff davis.
</soapbox>

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[IceStorm]

And anyone who is clueless enough to believe NT can be used in place of the 9x line for gaming deserves what he/she gets.

[Daniel Fazekas]

>what I gather from a colleague that is doing serious testing with Win 2000 it can be crashed easily too under the right conditions.

The difference is, Win2000 can be crashed if you WANT it to crash. Win98SE, unfortunately, crashes every now and then without anyone deliberately trying to kill it...

--

>And anyone who is clueless enough to believe NT can be used in place of the 9x line for gaming deserves what he/she gets.

I was clueless enough to have played an insane amount of Quake, Quake 2 and HL online with the good old Voodoo and the Voodoo2 under NT4. I appreciated not having to disconnect from the Internet, reboot to Win98 and reconnect any time I wanted to play something.
Anyway, I don't really care about NT4 drivers any more, and find it completely acceptable to optimize the NT4 driver for applications and not for games.

Win2000, on the other hand...

[mj12]

"And anyone who is clueless enough to believe NT can be used in place of the 9x line for gaming deserves what he/she gets."

First of all Ice Ice Baby, have you even used w2k? I am running w2k bld.2184 at work and am quite happy with it. Okay, I will get what I deserve....A stable OS, no need to reboot to change settings, smp. Although gaming perf. may be a tad bit less on w2k than 9x because of NT's overhead. I will take it!

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[IceStorm]

Like I said, you deserve what you get.

If you're online, playing Half-Life (or any other game), every bit of speed counts. Win NT is not, and has never been, designed for gaming. I'm not saying that will never change (they want to merge codebases at SOME point), but for now, and the forseable future, NT is not designed for gaming.

You use an OS for what it is designed for. Complaining about no TurboGL for NT is pointness - NT was not, and is still not, designed for gaming, therefore no TurboGL for that platform.

And for the record, my 98SE box is more stable than the NT machines at the last two firms I've worked for - firms with massive NT support teams and MS contracts. I've less of a chance of crashing Explorer with 98SE than I've had at work with NT. I manage to crash NT's Explorer shell at least once a day at work, just by websurfing with Navigator or IE. I don't remember the last time IE 5 crashed Explorer on my 98SE boxes.

You'll notice I said 98SE and not just 98. 98 was just like 95 - the initial release was bug-ridden. The SE version of 98 has fixed those mysterious Explorer crashes that seem to plague the 9x line's initial releases. Until SE came out, I actually used 95's shell with 98's core. Worked much better than 98 proper.

Have I used Win2k? That question is besides the point. Win2k is still beta. One does not use a beta OS for production work, nor should one expect drivers or driver support from any company for a beta OS.

I stand by my statement.

[This message has been edited by IceStorm (edited 19 November 1999).]

[Rob M.]

Icestorm, why aren't you still running DOS for your games?
After all, if you wanted pure performance, DOS is the way to go, nothing like dedicating your entire computer to a game with NOTHING running in the background..

Now of course this is silly, as all the latest games are BUILT for win9x... just like it's SILLY saying win2k will never be as good as win9x for games.
Back when I had w2k and a TNT card, it was great, I didn't use win98 anymore, and I didn't need to reboot anywhere near as often.

Did I have as much game support as win9x? No. Most games today are still made with win9x in mind.
Was it as fast as win9x? No. It's still beta and so are the video drivers.
Expect this to change.
You may say NT is not a gaming OS because it's slower, but many Quake fans I'm sure would be happy to post benchmarks, showing you're dead wrong. NT is slower because companies don't optimize their products for games in it like they do in win9x.
Please try something before you put it down. I've made this mistake before and have learned from it. When I first heard of win95 I swore up and down that I'd only use it for BBS'ing, same as win3.1. What I didn't realize was how much better 95 was over 3.1, just like I've found how much better win2k is over win98.

[mj12]

So your only experience with NT is at your company where it is either improperly configured, or using crappy drivers for some sort of hardware. As for 98se, this is just a service pack release that any person with 98 could could the individual patchs, without also adding junk like ics! I have friends that work at MS, and trust me, the dev. cycles that get put towards the 9x platform are not even close to those put towards NT. Do you honestly think MS puts that much effort into making 9x the best it can be, btw, how good can a 32bit shell on top of a 16bit os be? Windows9x still has 3.1 code in it! To address the issue of playing games online, don't tell me you honestly believe the tcp/ip stack in 9x (a consumer os) is anywhere near the performance of the one in NT (an os built for networking)? I am also getting tired of people trying to defend any hardware manufacturer for not developing drivers for a beta os. If we followed your logic, then you would go buy your OS with NO DRIVERS native to it and then wait for your favorite hardware company to develop drivers for it?