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

[PaulS]

IceStorm,

MS has intended for years that the NT architecture would be their only platform, games and all. Win9X was extended for another generation mainly because of delays with W2k. Do you know that Dreamcast and the new MS Games Console are based on DX running on the NT Kernel. Where do you think that technology came from?

OpenGL games have always been faster on NT than Win9X (Matrox excepted), so I see no reason to believe that won't extend to DX on W2k. Important (OpenGL) game developers are on the record saying that NT(4!) is not only their preferred development platform, but their preferred gaming one as well.

Paul

[Rags]

OpenGL games have always been faster on NT than Win9X (Matrox excepted)

Forgot the other exceptions too, there Paul: S3, ATI, 80% of the games for nVidia, 3dfx, and Intel. OpenGL games have not always run faster under NT, OpenGL applications maybe, but games---sorry not true.

Rags

[IceStorm]

Rob M. said, "Icestorm, why aren't you still running DOS for your games?"

Because Win9x is the preferred gaming platform. Witness DirectX, USB support, etc.

Rob M. said, "... just like it's SILLY saying win2k will never be as good as win9x for games."

You're right. That would be silly. That's why I didn't say NEVER. I said, "but for now, and the forseable future, NT is not designed for gaming. " The CONSUMER version of W2K isn't coming out anytime soon, and as far as I know, THAT is the version that is supposed to be the next step up from the Win9x code base. The Win2K version coming out first is Pro and Enterprise, I believe. Those are not for "gaming."

Rob M. said, "You may say NT is not a gaming OS because it's slower."

I did NOT say NT was slower, mj12 did, "Although gaming perf. may be a tad bit less on w2k than 9x because of NT's overhead." I didn't say WHY NT wasn't a good gaming OS, I said it isn't for gaming. WHY is NT less than optimal for gaming? Perhaps because of the HAL layer, the lack of DirectX above DX3, the lack of USB support, driver support, the fact that the thing takes so freaking long to start up, the fact that PNP support blows, the fact that apps can spike CPU to 100% for no apparent reason, etc, etc, etc.

mj12 said, "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."

Well, when both companies are MS partners, and invest millions in NT rollouts, you'd expect Navigator and IE to NOT crash Explorer. And Dell/Compaq desktops are not normally considered "crappy hardware."

mj12 said, "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!"

Yeah, and 95's patches can be downloaded from MS and give you 95 OSR2. If you believe that 98SE is the same as 98 with patches, well, I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you. And when you install 98SE, you DO NOT have to install ICS, or any other "junk" that you do not want - that's what the Custom install option is for. You do use the Custom install option, don't you?

mj12 said, "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!

They obviously have put quite a bit of effort into 95 and 98. The number of patches, Knowledge Base articles, and drivers available for 95/98 show that.

mj12 says, "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 didn't say, nor do I believe, that 9x's network code is in any way better than NTs. Then again, how much actual bandwidth do you need to play games online? Standard Ethernet wirespeed is more than enough right now, and 9x does that just fine.

mj12 said, "I am also getting tired of people trying to defend any hardware manufacturer for not developing drivers for a beta os."

If you were a hardware developer, would you go out of your way to keep your drivers up to date against an ever-changing standard? I wouldn't. Nor should anyone EXPECT any other developers to do so. If they do, great, they've got a leg up on the competition. If not, oh well.

mj12 said, "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?"

I did not say that. I said, "nor should one expect drivers or driver support from any company for a beta OS." I'm right. You should not EXPECT developers to develope drivers for a beta OS. I EXPECT drivers for whatever OSes the company says will be supported by the hardware. Many developers have stated that they will have Win2K driver, WHEN THE OS IS RELEASED. Is it released? No. End of story.

PaulS said, "MS has intended for years that the NT architecture would be their only platform, games and all. Win9X was extended for another generation mainly because of delays with W2k. Do you know that Dreamcast and the new MS Games Console are based on DX running on the NT Kernel. Where do you think that technology came from?"

Intentions mean nothing. Win2K isn't out, and NT4, as it is now, is NOT suited to gaming, for the reasons I mentioned way up above. NT4 is not a gaming platform, therefore it makes sense that there are no plans for TurboGL on NT4. By the same token, it makes sense that the TurboGL is written for 98 and not 95 - 98's supposed to be the next step towards the unified code base, right?

PaulS said, "OpenGL games have always been faster on NT than Win9X (Matrox excepted), so I see no reason to believe that won't extend to DX on W2k. Important (OpenGL) game developers are on the record saying that NT(4!) is not only their preferred development platform, but their preferred gaming one as well."

And this would actually mean something if OpenGL was the only gaming API in existence right now, but it isn't. You're forgetting that huge, Microsof-Driven DirectX API, which is 3 generations ahead on 9x vs NT. From what I've seen, DirectX is used in many more games than OpenGL.

NT is the future for MS. The future is exactly, that, the future. It isn't the present. For present day gaming, the 9x train supports more games, more hardware, and more APIs than NT, period. Is this a good thing? Irrelevant. It is the current state of MS's software.

You wanna use that TurboGL? Install 98SE. Don't expect Matrox to write it for NT until the consumer version of NT comes out. After all, it isn't like Win2K can't coexist on FAT32, so I don't see what the big deal is. You lose a gig to 98's install files and other gunk. Hey, here's a better choice - BUY ANOTHER MACHINE.

P.S. if you couldn't tell, that last paragraph was flame bait. :-)


------------------
Primary System: Athlon 550, MSI 6167 mb w/BIOS 1.3, 3x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, G400 MAX in multi-monitor mode, Two Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitors, Intel Pro/100+ Management Adapter, SoundBlaster Live!, DeskTop Theater DTT2500 DIGITAL Speaker System (Sweeeeeet!), WDC WD20 5AA 20GB HD, WD AC310100 10GB HD, Toshiba SD-M1212 6x DVD-ROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, Epson Stylus Pro, OptiUPS PowerES 650, MS SideWinder Precision Pro USB joystick, Gravis Xterminator gamepad (no DX7 drivers yet), Logitech 3-button mouse, Mitsumi keyboard, Win98 SE, Belkin OmniCube 4-port KVM, 10/100 5-port Linksys Ethernet switch, Epson 1200u scanner, Epson Stylus Pro printer, Logitech QuickCam Pro with the little stand and the lense kit (cool).

Secondary System: PIII-450, Soyo 6BA+ IV, 1x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, Millennium G200 AGP, V2 SLI rig, Intel Pro/100+ Management Adapter, SoundBlaster 32, WD AC41800 18GB HD, Creative Dxr3 DVD decoder card, Hitachi GD-2500 6x DVD-ROM, Win98 SE

Tertiary System: PII-266, Asus P2B BIOS 1008, 1x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, Millennium II, 3Com 3C905, 3Com 3C509, ADSL Modem 640kbit down/90kbit up, Mylex BT-930 SCSI card, Seagate 2GB Hawk, Seagate 1GB Hawk, Quantum DLT 4000 tape drive, NEC 6x CD-ROM, Linux distro S.u.S.E. 6.1 (IP Masquerade works!)

Quaternary System: Ocean Rhino 9 motherboard w/Intel 430HX chipset, P200MMX, 4x64MB EDO Parity RAM, Millennium II, 3Com 3C590, SoundBlaster 16 MCD, Fujitsu 3.5GB HD, WD 1.2GB HD, Haven't chosen an OS yet.

And a JetDirect EX print server that bootp's its address from the Tertiary System.

All specs subject to change.


[This message has been edited by IceStorm (edited 20 November 1999).]

[noackjr]

Well, hardcore gamers are moving more and more to multiple processors. Right now Linux and NT (soon Win2000 Pro) offer the only real options for multiple processors. Linux OpenGL is coming along, but isn't quite there yet. This means many hardcore gamers are running NT. Guess what? They aren't running Matrox cards. Know why? The drivers suck. Now arguing what the intended uses of operating systems are means nothing if you're Matrox and losing customers because of it. Until I read this thread I was seriously considering purchasing a G400 MAX to complement my dual P3 setup for use in Win2000 Pro. However, if Matrox does not intend to aggressively support OpenGL for games in Win2000 Pro as EVERY OTHER MANUFACTURER is, then I can't choose a Matrox card. Maybe I'll be more happy with a Voodoo(insert number greater than 3) or GeForce(T&L is rather intriguing). But this business decision by Matrox, if true, will cost them my business and maybe others. I'm a 3rd generation Matrox customer (Millenium, Millenium II, Millenium G200) and have demonstrated my loyalty - but what has happened to the Matrox I once knew? The ones with the best drivers of anyone - always adding features and pushing the envelope with their drivers. They fell behind with OpenGL but I stuck with them. But now they are choosing not to support a market which their cards appear to be designed for: the hardcore gamer. I'm already not real pleased that my "upgrade" from a P2-333 under Win98 to dual P3-500s under WinNT with everything else remaining the same has reduced my Quake 3 performance with the same settings from 23 fps to 6 fps(32-bit everything, lightmap, texture slider at 3/4). Is this the result of the NT HAL - NO!!! This is the stupid Matrox NT OpenGL drivers. I can get the same speed now by using the "Fastest" settings. Image quality is worse for the same fps and 3 times the processing power. 4.31 has fixed some issues and increased speed some, but we're still way behind, even taking into account a bunch of NT overhead and the second processor not being used!!!

If the information in this thread is correct, Matrox has chosen not to be my graphics card manufacturer. They can no longer other a product that fulfills my needs. If it comes to that Matrox will have lost a loyal customer and a big spender.

Jon

[Rob M.]

please, just try win2k. it has dx7 support, ogl support, more stable than win9x and DOES have dual-boot capability on fat32, in fact I'm running rc3 with win98 right now, when matrox gets dx7 drivers for win2k then I'll kill win98. It is NOT NT. it is to games for NT like win95 was for 3.1
As for not being the next major consumer OS, I have my doubts. I've yet to try millenium (just downloaded THAT) but I don't see any reason why I'd want to go to that, as long as I get those video drivers from matrox (which supposedly ARE coming along nicely for dx7 at least)

[PaulS]

Rags,

Give me the name of an OpenGL game that you think is faster under Win9X and if I can get hold of it I will do comparative benchmarks (NT vs 98SE) on a TNT2 and a Voodoo 3000. I don't have an ATI or S3 card, though I believe the ATI ICD for NT is well written - I would very surprised if it wasn't faster than 98.

IceStorm,

NT 4 Wks is a general purpose OS, like 95/98 and W2K Personal (whenever that is released). MS doesn't place any restriction on its "purpose", and it is designed to be as fast and as stable as possible, features that work very well for games. Win9X was written for backward compatibility, not speed. OK, NT 4 has no dx hardware support for sound or 3D. That is not because it is a "business OS" and Win9X is a games OS. It is because those parts of dx came out after NT 4 was released, and rightly or wrongly MS decided that they would put them into NT 5, which is running a couple of years late! Your observations about the HAL slowing things down are only true for NT 3.x, starting with NT 4 video has direct access, and dx in Win2K is the same. This is one of the reasons why bad video drivers are a much bigger problem under NT4 than 3.x, but MS wanted top notch performance in NT. I think that is a good example of why NT is not just a business OS.

Paul.

[noackjr]

My point about the drivers was that I don't want to get a card that isn't being supported as well as other cards. Maybe I am way off base and nobody else is going to optimize their OpenGL drivers for Win2000 Pro, but I seriously doubt that. I think that for a while Win2000 Pro is going to be the OS of choice for high end systems, gaming or otherwise. And as such manufacturers are going to deliver drivers optimized for gaming. If I am wrong then I guess I'm just talking outta my a$$. But if I'm right then Matrox isn't delivering like they used to - like they haven't been for some time. I sincerely hope I am wrong and Matrox delivers some awesome drivers. DH and good drivers would be quite nice...

[Rags]

Paul,

Why don't you post some links to these benchmarks that show how much faster NT is in gaming??? I am not talking about Win2K, either...I am talking about NT4. I have used all different kinds of cards in both OS's and there is no way in hell you can tell me that a hardcore gamer is using NT right now. I know that nVidia's OpenGL performance only goes up when using dual processors, nothing else does no matter what card you are using.

[Compton]

IceStorm said, "Well, when both companies are MS partners, and invest millions in NT rollouts, you'd expect Navigator and IE to NOT crash Explorer."


I'd expect Navigator to crash

[red2]

Matrox sleeps with Microsoft. They will have the drivers for Win2k. Since Matrox is silent about everything, you do not know how aggressively they are developing the drivers.
Just because they haven't said anything about it doesn't mean they aren't doing anything about it. They would be stupid not to develop a driver for Win2k.

[Filmgeek]

I have to agree with noackjr. There are other cards with NT drivers (as well as 9X) that are superior to Matrox's. And you can talk about NT/2000 being a "business OS" all you like, but people are going to use it for what they want. If Matrox isn't giving them the driver support they need, they'll simply go elsewhere.

Matrox may sleep with Microsoft, but they don't seem to get anything out of it. NVidia definitely sleeps with Microsoft, and their drivers show it. Ironically, their OpenGL drivers are top notch as well, which wouldn't necessarily go hand in hand with being in close collaboration with Microsoft.

Filmgeek

[IceStorm]

PaulS said, "NT 4 Wks is a general purpose OS, like 95/98 and W2K Personal (whenever that is released). MS doesn't place any restriction on its "purpose", and it is designed to be as fast and as stable as possible, features that work very well for games. Win9X was written for backward compatibility, not speed. OK, NT 4 has no dx hardware support for sound or 3D. That is not because it is a "business OS" and Win9X is a games OS. It is because those parts of dx came out after NT 4 was released, and rightly or wrongly MS decided that they would put them into NT 5, which is running a couple of years late! Your observations about the HAL slowing things down are only true for NT 3.x, starting with NT 4 video has direct access, and dx in Win2K is the same. This is one of the reasons why bad video drivers are a much bigger problem under NT4 than 3.x, but MS wanted top notch performance in NT. I think that is a good example of why NT is not just a business OS."

1) Fast and stable are, for the most part, mutually exclusive when it comes to OS design. You're not going to get a stable OS if you let apps run rampant. Likewise, you aren't going to get speed if your OS is double-checking every move of your app. It's a trade off, and NT, when it isn't busy crashing the shell, seems to do this ok for the first day or so of uptime. Again, I've never argued that NT is slow. I've argued that for gaming, the necessary APIs and hardware support aren't there. The HALs that exist in NT do limit its gaming performance. Video is not the only thing covered by the HAL that NT uses - audio and gaming input devices come under the jurisdiction of the HAL, too.

2) Win9x has backward compatibilty. Win9x also boots faster than NT. Win9x also has less OS checking of apps going on, and therefore allows apps to run faster (in theory). 9x's kernel is also therefore, in theory, less stable. In practice, I can crash NT's shell more easily than I can 98SE's. Without a decent shell, you can't access the kernel, so the point about NT being more stable than Win9x is moot.

3) I've never seen MS position NT as a gaming OS, have you? Meanwhile, they push DirectX on game developers. The DirectX they push only runs under Win9x. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that Win9x is the prefered gaming platform, and that NT is not, in Redmond's eyes. This is in the PRESENT DAY. What happens AFTER the release of Win2K is up in the air. My argument is from the point of view of present day. The future is undecided.

4) MS can want top-notch video performance for NT. That's fine. Games are not visual alone, though. Gaming audio under NT typically has issues from what I've seen, and the lack of USB support for joysticks and gamepads is definitely not a plus for NT. Again, 9x has the drivers and the hardware support here that NT utterly lacks.

PaulS, you've proven my point - NT _IS_ positioned as a business OS. Good video support, lack of gaming API support, lacking audio support, no USB suppor - almost exactly what I've already said in this thread. By default, the gaming OS must be the 9x codebase, which supports the latest gaming APIs and hardware.

noackjr, I've never seen anything about Win2k pro supporting the current gaming APIs or hardware. Why you'd dump Matrox for not putting out a TurboGL for a business-centric OS, I don't understand.

Rob M., I've tried Win2k Beta 3 before. I may try it again, but I probably won't. Like I've said above, Win98SE is quite stable, runs fast, and supports all the APIs and hardware I want, while Win2k is beta.

I still stand by my statements. No one has any reason to complain to Matrox for not releasing a TurboGL for NT. If anything, you should be asking for a faster ICD - something that all apps could take advantage of.

[PaulS]

IceStorm,

I have never asked for a mini driver for OpenGL (on Win9X or NT), actually I think mini drivers are (to some extent) the sign of a weak OpenGL development program, at least coming this late in the cycle. Most of the optimisations should be equally applicable to the ICD.

Regarding stability and performance being tradeoffs, I think you are way off base here. Computer programs (games too) need to synchronise many I/O operations with program logic. You could write a game, specified right down to the exact speed of the processor, type of motherboard chipset, sound card and video card and come up with a mind blowingly fast implementation (like a console game) but that isn't how it happens.

I need to synchronise the sound coming out of my speakers with my game logic and generating and displaying visuals - while checking what the user is doing, and I am using stacks of API calls to keep it all non hardware specific, and I want it happening in real time. It just so happens that a microkernel architecture is one of the most efficient ways to do this, both in terms of stability and performance. Win9X hits a big problem here; sections of non re-entrant code (not mention that they are usually 16 bit; segment/offset thunking takes a big performance hit on PPro/PII and PIII chips) leave an application stalled, waiting for an earlier call to complete. Win9X is not a good architecture for games. In fact it is not a good architecture for anything except dragging people up from DOS and Windows 3.

All modern OS's use some kind of an abstraction layer, whether is an API call to a Vxd or something as sophisticated at NT's HAL. Traversing an efficient translation layer does not have to have any major impact on performance (unless you are using a 386). I guess it is also worth noting that with the demise of Alpha and Mips then MS can take all sorts of liberties with the HAL if they feel it is a bottleneck.

Rags,

I know of a couple of sites dedicated to NT gaming enthusiasts, but I have never seen benchmarks posted. ID Software did have some interesting articles, though it is at least a year since I read them.

Anyway, I'm not trying to argue that anybody should be investing heavily in NT 4 technology, Matrox included. I am trying to point out that there is nothing about the basic NT architecture that makes it unsuitable for games, the exact opposite actually. And I am very confident that we will see this fully realised in W2k.

Paul


[This message has been edited by PaulS (edited 22 November 1999).]

[noackjr]

Paul - Wow... I'm impressed and I agree.

Win2000 will bring together DX and OpenGL and will be multithreaded. How could any hardcore gamer not want that? Even if the overhead vs. Win98(SE) is very large, it's not going to offset the gains that will be made with the second processor. It's as simple as that. We can argue about this for as long as we want, but even if it's less efficient it will still outperform.

Other things:
I'm running Quake 3 Arena Demo Test under NT with dual P3-500s and a G200. I consider myself a hardcore gamer (I spend 3 to 4 hours a day playing). Most everybody I frag is running Win98(SE). Didn't seem to help them much... Anyway, the second processor is great for big deathmatches on "The Longest Yard". All the networking stuff can be offloaded to the second processor, leaving the other one with more power to tackle the huge clouds of blood from my quad-damage gaunlet kills. I love the line they added for gaunlet kills: "Humiliation!" I guess this has degenerated into a ramble. Oh well.

Jon

[motub]

People, this is no longer a MHW topic (if it ever was).

I'm suggesting Ant move it to the SoapBox... please look for it there to continue this discussion if you're so inclined.

I hope you are, actually; I find it interesting, since I know next to nothing about NT...

------------------
Holly

[This message has been edited by motub (edited 21 November 1999).]