New matrox drivers have texture compression

[Randy Simons]

Ah come on guys, texture compression is a hardware feature. The Gxx0 has no such feature.

I don't have a G400, and don't play Q3. But I guess this is the result from not using dithering in 16-bit mode.

Would be nice to have the option to select between dithering and no dithering...

[edit]
Btw: Please, don't use JPEG for screenshots! Use PNG instead. Jpeg is foro photographic and art material, and (okok) sometimes some game-screenshots work out well to. But normally, jpeg can mess up quite a lot. (make a screenshot of your browser, save it as jpeg and as PNG. notice the difference in quality AND filesize!)
[/edit]

[This message has been edited by Randy Simons (edited 10 November 2000).]

[Rob M.]

Greebe: you saw the picture I've put in my first post... Any comment on it? I'm sure you know what TC looks like in q3, so you must agree that that pic was taken on a card that's drawing compressed textures....

RS, a week ago I'd be arguing with you on the fact that the g400 will never support TC. However, it's apparant (to me at least) that M has found a way to implement this in software. I think it's the main reason for the 3dmark slowdown too.

The pic isn't visually distinguishable from the original, at least not with my eyes. There may be others in this forum who could tell, but the difference with and without (in-game) texture compression is night and day.

The best way to tell for those people who don't know what compressed skies look like is to take a screenshot and post it for those of us who can spot it a mile away..

Those of you who are sure you don't have texture compression try this (right click and choose 'save target as')

It's 500kb. it includes a map using over 32 mb of textures and the demo tests is just a 5 second AGP torture test that keeps all 32+ mb of textures on the screen. When I tested this with the 5.14's, I got 2.9 fps on my Athlon 1000. I expected this. After updating my drivers, I got 153 fps. No way it can run at 153 fps when it's gotta transfer 1+ megs over the agp bus per frame.

[This message has been edited by Rob M. (edited 10 November 2000).]

[Greebe]

repeat, there is No Texture compression. PERIOD.

[Randy Simons]

This is more rediculous than the "hardware T&L" story a few months ago. Whereas the Gx00 could be used to do something that might look like T&L, I'm confident enough to say that it CANNOT do something like texture (de)compression. It requires hardware not found on the Gx00 (if it was, it would have been a major marketing point)

[This message has been edited by Randy Simons (edited 10 November 2000).]

[Rob M.]

Hm, maybe it's not builtin to the drivers. I tried to uninstall the new drivers and put the 5.14's back in so I could show off a side-by-side comparison.

The 5.14's had TC too. I don't understand. Now all I know is that I have a G400, and my picture quality looks like I have TC turned on

[mirp]

I wonder what happens when you turn it off ( r_ext_compress_textures 0 ). This should have no effect.

[dZeus]

Rob M. I don't know what's wrong with your pc, but I get the 10 - 20 % framerate boost in OpenGL without any 'texture compression' effects.

[Borg]

yap! BEST drivers ever ! a realy good speed boost in UT & Systes Shock2 latest patches+latest drivers dont knowe about FPS but on eye looks wary fast & nice to me..GOOD JOB MATROX !.. & THANKS !

still this card should work so year ago !

[spoogenet]

Anybody try 5.20 in Deus Ex? I'm currently running 5.14 and curious how the new ones compare in Deus Ex.

Thanks,
b

[spazm_1999]

Hi,

I had the same image quality as you when running Q3 in 800*600*32*16*16 but when I changed this to 800*600*32*32*16 it solved my problem.... I'll try to send a picture of it later.
I don't beleve either that matrox implemented a software TC on G400.


Spazm

[Surfwienix]

where is the texture compression???
settings of this scrennshot:
- high quality preset, but 1024x768
- game options: all on, but v-sync

------------------
>> Surfwienix <<

My System:

AMD K6-2/400 non-o/c
Epox MVP3C-M Super7 (VIA 4.24)
128MB SDRAM(PC100), CAS2
Matrox Millennium G400 MAX
(Driver Package 6.10.013 + DX 8) AGP2x/256MB @IRQ11(not sharing) non-o/c
Terratec DMX Sound-System
20,4GB Maxtor HDD (UDMA33)
6,4GB Maxtor HDD (UDMA33)
ASUS 50x-CDROM (UDMA33)
Realtek 8019 Ethernet (ISA)
Creatix HAM V.90 Modem
19" Monitor CTX-VL950T (95khz)
21" HP A4033A (2nd Display)
Windows 98SE (IE 5.5)

[Alec]

Randy Simmons:

Good thinking about the .PNG file. I takes less disk space that a "8" compression JPG.
JPEG is a lossy compression, but, contrary of what you said, if the compression ratio is low (8 or up in Photoshop scale), you almost don´t notice the image degradation.

Oh, and other thing: When someone resizes an image using a resampling method (as this gentleman did before my post), image tends to be a little blurred... the filter Unsharp Mask in a low value takes care of the blurring caused by the resampling.

P.S. hey surfwienix, shouldn´t your monitor´s refreshrate be 95Hz instead of 95Khz?

[This message has been edited by Alec (edited 10 November 2000).]

[Randy Simons]

Originally posted by Alec:
Good thinking about the .PNG file. I takes less disk space that a "8" compression JPG.
JPEG is a lossy compression, but, contrary of what you said, if the compression ratio is low (8 or up in Photoshop scale), you almost don´t notice the image degradation.

Yah, for in-game screenshots jpeg can be fine. But oh so often I see screenshots of normal applications in jpeg... The fact that jpeg images are small doesn't mean you should use it everywhere. PNG's (or GIF's) compression is often much better for screenshots.

[WayneHu]

JPEG also has lossless mode, and it uses different algorithm... Instead of 8x8 DCT quantization, the lossless mode uses something like DPCM sampling, and then encodes these quantization values by huffman encoding...

I believe it is still better than others because the average code length is shorter than most other coding methods...


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PIII-550E@733/1.65v, P3B-F, G400DH/32MB@140/186

[Randy Simons]

Hmm never heard of it. Never seen it in any program either. PNG screenshots are really small, perhaps pushing the absoluty minimum compression size.

Which program supports writing those lossless jpegs?