Rumour: G400 already T&L capable ??

[Gavin]

Just take a look at Gregors page, he posted the following rumour:
http://grafi.ii.pw.edu.pl/gbm/matrox/

MatroX files news
15.12

It's a rumour time, so here are some: The current Matrox chips, strarting with G200 are theoretically capable of hardware transformation and lighting (T&L). Since for many people the "hardware T&L" is a buzzword regardless of the actual results, this capability of Matrox chips should be considered important, at least from marketing viewpoint. While it doesn't make to much sense to force the G200 to do T&L, this may probably be done to G4xx line chips. It's all in drivers though, and the programmers may or may not use the capability depending on what they consider to be better/faster solution (trust them, they were wrong so many times <Alf>). So, if you have a G400-based card, you already have (unused) hardware T&L. You feel happier, dear Matrox owner, don't you?...


As he says himself, it's a rumour...it would be cool nonetheless...The G400 has a cool HW design... ;-)

[Nuno]

I hope I´m wrong but I don´t believe any part of it. So do you think any hardware manufacturer would "hide" such a hot and touted feature as hardware T&L? Why? If eventually that was true I´m sure Matrox was from the first moment bragging about it even if it was disabled in the drivers for the moment being, à la Savage 2000.

It would be nice if gbm could drop a word here, like were did these rumors come from...

[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 15 December 1999).]

[DuRaNgO]

I WANT THE DRIVERS NOW!!!
jim
just kidding, I'll wait 'til friday

------------------
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

[Nuno]

Yes, I´m positivly sure that the beta Boyz are now testing PD 6.00.323 and getting like 60 fps in Nvidia Treemark demo (in complex setting, of course)

Hopefully in a couple of weeks we can see them released

[DuRaNgO]

hehe

[Kruzin]

6.0???

We're up to 8.05!

Not only do we have T&L, there is also full screen anti-aliasing, motion blur, s3TC, and every other current buzz word you can think of!

pluh-leeeeze.

And who needs T&L anyway? For a demo like treemark or biased scores from 3dm2k? That's all it's good for at this point anyway. By the time it's in any number of games, T&L will have been completely re-done for DX8, and GeForce will be useless....

[DuRaNgO]

you forgot Hologramic projection
jim

[Jorden]

Jim, Jim, that's old already... It's using Hard Light nowadays
Jord.

[DuRaNgO]

Damn, just can't stay ahead of the curve these days

[rickn]

Well, it isnt april fools, so either gbm is smoking something or he knows something we dont. Afterall, he does know Matrox hardware.

[Randy Simons]

I don't know what's true about it all, and I sure want to know. But Grzegorz Mazur knows alot about the Gx00, and although it doesn't have to be a full-blown T&L engine, can't there be any unknown hardware in the chip?

Remember the old Millennium 1? (not that I've had such a card, but still..) That card also had some sort of 3D acceleration. But that wasn't commonly known and wasn't really used, AFAIK.

So, who knows?

[Ant]

Ouch! There goes someones NDA, bet someone is going to be mighty pissed at someone

[red2]

The G400 has two (2) CPU's on it that constitute the WARP engine whereas the G200 has one. Therefore, as a CPU, it can do T&L. How fast it will be is the question. The Linux team is having trouble getting the full WARP microcode to do the geometry setup. Someone said that the technology might be licensed and this may be true because look at how much trouble Matrox has at the low resolutions. Maybe Matrox didn't license all the microde from their IT (until now maybe?). This is just a theory though.

[rickn]

it was my understanding that the warp engine is the triangle setup engine, which is integer based

[DuRaNgO]

and it also has EMBM...WOOHOO!
jim

Matrox: "spank"
nVidea: "ouch!"
Me: "hehe"