Hmm... When will there be a TurboGL driver that works with K6-IIIs?

[Gurm]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Athlon is supposed to have SIMD (much like the P3), whereas the K6-2 and K6-3 DON'T.

- Ash

------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[aNtHrAx323]

well, i just don't have $350 to burn on an Athlon 500 and a K7M... (i would go for the 500 because it has EXACTLY the same core as the 650, all i have to do is make one of those little overclocking doohickeys for it and it'll run at about the same temp as a real 650... only the new ones are like that). and i had no idea about TurboGL when i bought it. and NO, i am NOT getting another card. cash is very limited for me. and the G400 puts out the most beautiful graphics i have ever seen (hell, coming from a Voodoo3, anything is beautiful). i really wish Matrox would consider the "minority" and go for customer satisfaction, even if it requires going the extra mile. if they would, i would be a committed customer for life... does anyone know DLL programming? i would pay them to make a TurboGL driver for K6-IIIs if they could get their hands on the source! heh

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-Campbell "aNtHrAx323" Krueger
anthrax32@yahoo.com

[Kruzin]

How much ya gonna give me if TGL for P2/P3/K6/K7 comes out in the next week?
How much more if it's tommorrow?

Not that I can make that happen, I just wanna know what it's worth to ya

[DuRaNgO]

I may just start a "non-athlon/p-3" fund to quiet this place down!
jim

------------------
PIII-500mhz @ 620 ! with an Abit BE6 mobo
128mb pc-100
Mill G400 (YAHOO!!!) 32mb @ 167/208 with MGATweak-417mhz, (2.5, 2, 2.5), PD 5.41 & bios 1.5-22
Maxtor 14.3 gb Uata66 hdd
SB Live!
Winblows 98se & DX7
32 lbs. of fans, heatsinks and aluminum ductwork
3DMark Result 5954.69 3DMarks
Synthetic CPU 3D Speed 9325.69 CPU 3DMarks
Rasterizer Score 2791.72 3DRasterMarks
Game 1 - Race 65.07 FPS
Game 2 - First Person 54.89 FPS
Fill Rate 268.79 MTexels/s

[aNtHrAx323]

it depends on how much you will charge (within reason, of course)

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-Campbell "aNtHrAx323" Krueger
anthrax32@yahoo.com

[Rags]

Careful what you wish for, for Matrox may sometime make it come true, given the last 3 months and last 5 years

Rags

[Himself]

Yesh, yeah, keep it under your NDA.

JWilliams,

Here in Canada it would cost almost twice as much to upgrade to a Athlon 500 as it would be to get a T&L card. Until the Athlon motherboard situation has shaken out more, I am not interested, but I probably will get one eventually, just don't want to pay $250 CDN for prototype motherboard with compatibility problems.



[This message has been edited by Himself (edited 10 December 1999).]

[aNtHrAx323]

well, i e-mailed matrox, and they have replied twice, but this last time i asked them about the difference in the instruction sets (K6-III and K7) and if a K6-x TurboGL driver is in the works, but they haven't replied yet... i am getting kinda pissed off at them. after all, what good is image quality if the framerates blow ass? i only get 24 fps in 1152x864 Quake 3! (highest texture quality, high geometric detail, 32-bit textures, 32-bit output, etc.)

oh, and i went back to try the 1.08 test, and when it is starting, that little blue console searches for the CPU and detects an "AMD 3Dnow! cpu", while in the final release it only recognizes an "x86 P5 Pentium2/MMX cpu". that makes me wonder about Quake3s 3Dnow! optimizations... is there a way to manually enable them? i think i should ask id, but it'll probably take a while to reply, unless someone here could help me.

oh, and one more thing... kinda off the subject of problems, but how can i record demos? i read somewhere, but i can't seem to remember where, let alone how.

PLEASE help!

------------------
-Campbell "aNtHrAx323" Krueger
anthrax32@yahoo.com

System specs:
AMD K6-III 400 at 112x4.0 at 2.3V
Asus P5A
96 MB SD-RAM (the old 66 MHz... stable enough tho =)
Matrox G400 AGP 32MB Dual-Head
Diamond Sonic Impact S90 PCI
Linksys LNE100TX WOL PCI Ethernet adapter
Processor is a peltier/Alpha cooling combo, avg. temp is around 85 F.

http://anthrax.home.texas.net

[Buuri]

It never occurred to you to drop geometry and texture detail to gain speed? Has Matrox promised you that you can run it 60FPS on your system with all the features on? Or at all?

_
B

[Kruzin]

"i only get 24 fps in 1152x864 Quake 3!"

And you think a TurboGL will help that?
No.
TGL is for lower resolutions. Once you hit 1024, the ICD and TGL run about the same speed.

Besides, 24fps with all those details, res and color depth is not bad for a K6. TGL is not going to turn a K6 into an Athlon. If you want it to go faster, turn the res down a notch or two, and a couple of detail levels too...

[aNtHrAx323]

i've lowered all the detail levels, including geometry and texture detail, but the thing is i only get an increase from 24 to 27 fps! this just isn't right. i lowered it to 800x600, and guess what? 29 and 32. the differences between those are not all that impressive, and DEFINATELY not worth bringing down the detail level.

do you think upgrading from my 66 MHz SD-RAM to 128 MB PC133/PC150 SD-RAM would help? i'm running at a 112 MHz bus speed, and 120 MHz just isn't stable with this old RAM.

and one more thing: what type of Athlon mobo should i get if i end up getting an Athlon?

------------------
-Campbell "aNtHrAx323" Krueger
anthrax32@yahoo.com

System specs:
AMD K6-III 400 at 112x4.0 at 2.3V
Asus P5A
96 MB SD-RAM (the old 66 MHz... stable enough tho =)
Matrox G400 AGP 32MB Dual-Head
Diamond Sonic Impact S90 PCI
Linksys LNE100TX WOL PCI Ethernet adapter
Processor is a peltier/Alpha cooling combo, avg. temp is around 85 F.

http://anthrax.home.texas.net

[rylan]

Reaqd my post earlier in this thread, or below about the differances between K6-x and Athlon, and why I feel that a TurboGL won't happen for P-II.

The Athlon has some enhanced 3DNOW! instructions that the K6-2 and K6-III do not have, so that is why the turboGL driver works on an Athlon and not the K6-x line. I'm assuming it uses the extra enhanced single instruction streaming 3DNOW set on the Athlon and the streaming SSE on the P-3 to do the job.
Basically, the TurboGL uses the enhanced 3DNOW set on the Athlon and the enhanced SSE instructions on the P-3 to speed things up. These are all called SIMD instructions, and yes, the K6-x (k6-2 and K6-3) line has some of these implemented in the original 3DNOW set, while the P-II and older just have MMX. The drivers are already (I hope) optimized for MMX, which all non-ancient processors have. So, I can possibly see the K6-2 and K6-3 get a TurboGL since they have some 3DNOW code, and the P-II and older probably won't, since they are already maxed with MMX optimization.
Also, I wouldn't expect the same speed increase if one shows up for the K6-x line, sicne they don't have some instructions that the Athlon and P-3 have.

[aNtHrAx323]

oh, i posted this earlier, but no one seemed to notice...

"oh, and i went back to try the 1.08 test, and when it is starting, that little blue console searches for the CPU and detects an "AMD 3Dnow! cpu", while in the final release it only recognizes an "x86 P5 Pentium2/MMX cpu". that makes me wonder about Quake3s 3Dnow! optimizations... is there a way to manually enable them? i think i should ask id, but it'll probably take a while to reply, unless someone here could help me."

can anyone help me with that?

------------------
-Campbell "aNtHrAx323" Krueger
anthrax32@yahoo.com

System specs:
AMD K6-III 400 at 112x4.0 at 2.3V
Asus P5A
96 MB SD-RAM (the old 66 MHz... stable enough tho =)
Matrox G400 AGP 32MB Dual-Head
Diamond Sonic Impact S90 PCI
Linksys LNE100TX WOL PCI Ethernet adapter
Processor is a peltier/Alpha cooling combo, avg. temp is around 85 F.

http://anthrax.home.texas.net