What I want from Matrox

[Drizzt]

Hope this is the right forum...
Well, A friend of mine has a few PC, two of them are side by side, one of these two has a G400 and the other a GeForce.

I thought all people saying that Matrox graphics quality was unreachable were idiots.
Now I think I'm an Idiot. We have played Re-Volt the last week.

G400: 15-20 FPS
GeForce: 100-200 FPS

Never seen something horrible like GeForce video quality!!!!
And I started asking myself if 200 FPS are really necessary...and if a random loose of 100 FPS sometimes is a good index of quality...


So, this is my hope for Matrox:
I'd like to have a new GFX card, a card that gives me 30 fps ever, in each game from now to the next two year; a card that has the quality of the G400; a card that support EMBM; a card that cost the same price of the old G400.


Well, the response to this seems an extreme overclocked G400

Seriously, while playing a few games on the two systems, I've understood that it's better to have a good graphics and an apprezzable frame rate, than a low video quality and a useless frame rate.

Uhhh...my english has just decided to go on holidays, so this is the end of the mex. Sorry



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Italian Guy, Bad English

D'ya want an Italian version?

[Maggi]

... and then there was light ...

[rylan]

I just want some fixed OGL drivers so that BG2 doesn't have corrupted graphics/text (damn thats annoying).

Then I'll be looking for the next gen card

[Electric Amish]

Hallelujah Brother!!!

Amen!!



amish

[Novdid]

Videoquality is the thing that counts for me. But when you do have the power to enable some effects that you maybe can´t do with the G400 you can get a graphics that the G400 can´t handle.

[Oracle]

all i add is a t&l engine and ddr ram to the g400 then it would be great

:0)

Oracle

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P3 600e @ 660 (6*110)
128mb 100mhz sdram
abit be6-2
Radeon 32ddr (biding time till the g800
voodoo 3 2000 pci (166)
soundblaster 16pci
4.3gb seagate udma 33
15.3 wd udma 66
creative modem blaster 56k ext
win me
ie5
direct x 8.0
4013.71

....................

[cjolley]

Screw that stuff...
I WANT STICKERS!
chuck

[Galvin]

Also something to avoid overdraw, that right there is a frame rate killer

[Himself]

More than any one product I'd like to see a change in policy direction from Matrox before I consider buying a 3D card from them again. Matrox comes across like a typical taiwanese oem card maker. All silence and a few driver updates that don't do much. You give them the cash, they give you the card, end of story beyond the quarterly minor maintenance drivers. They need to be seen as an exciting, friendly company for the gamer market, giving you value in every way they can, not the grimly stolid, silent, elitist, and prudish one they use for oems. More Richard Simmons (minus the gay factor) and less Al Gore.

[Maniac]

I think we're trying to justify a little too much. 15fps is really unplayable, even with top notch image quality. Why should we settle for this?

Matrox decided to go for the 3D gamers market with the release of the G400(thus for the first time, they put the 3D before 2D) Now they have left us high and dry.

I think they should go after Nvidia, not run away into the business segment(boy there sure is alot of progress to to be here - how fast can you drag a window anyway?)with their tale tucked between their legs.

[Borg]

yah!...MATROX G400 is a dam good card even now without T&L it performs better in 32bit then my CreativeLabs Gforce2MX 32megs of DDR cooled & O/Ced on CORE:210 MHz & MEM:320mhz for exemp :
3Dmark2000 1.1+DX8 1024x768x16 =4780/G400(150/200)=around 3120
3Dmark2000 1.1+DX8 1024x768x32 =2970 /G400(150/200)=around 2350

PIII650@720,P3bf(fsb112),128mb

as for UT there is no way to play it 32bit because of havy performance lost with GF2MX still 16bit RULES even @1280x1024 ofcourse FSAA is always OFF because if ON again BIIIIGGG performance lost & its not playable even @ 800x600x16 so NO FSAA WITH GF2MX cards

as of NvidiaOGL ,heh!..there is lots of GRAPHICS corruption in UT ,decals flickering,seeing thru textures if far away from object ..for exemp castles in CTF maps I can see whole BOT or player behind window still i should see only half the boddy.

G400 has SUPERB texture quality FLORS & WALLS looks more reall then with GF2MX still with GF2MX im able to play @1024x768x16 ,16bots CTF ,HGH TEXT,TRILINERA,VOLUMETRIC LIGHTS & FOG withoth performance lost when LOTS of BOTS/PLAYERS are in same place dont knowe if it is because GF2MX has a FILLrate of around 700mTEXT/s & the G400 around 265 & because of DDR..well so far so good, but LOOKING forward of NEXT GEN MATROX card (G800 or what ever)

FOR ALL YOU G400/MAX THERE IS NO NEED TO UPGRADE TO GF2MX if then it should be GF2GTS Ultra 64mb, but its too much money for me..

[Gurm]

rylan,

Have we worked on your BG2 problem in the gaming forum? I have no problems with BG2 (neither do a lot of people). There seems to be a specific system configuration that has problems.

- Gurm

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

[Nuno]

Himself:

I disagree. Matrox has one of the best driver suport for win2k. Period. I don´t think a OEM taiwanese-like manufacture would do something like that.

In the present time, I will not upgrade my G400, and that kind of support in win2k is one of the main reasons.

[XHotKolaX]

Agreed. I don't know what everyone is complaining about on Win2k drivers. They happen to have less glitches than my Win98's. Maybe minor flicker once and a while but nothing major.

Also, OGL works fine for me. It doesn't glitch up like DX either. Mayb it's just me=)

[Himself]

[Mild rant warning]

Nuno,

Put it this way, I never saw a single digit speed increase from drivers while I had the G400. After several months they were kind enough to give us an overclocking applet, but so stingy as to only include one tweak option, disabling VSync. I'm sure the code took them only a day or two to write, if not they are incompetent. You feel like you are in a line up in Russia to get a half loaf of bread. No extra features implemented in the drivers, it's all about bug fixes and maintaining the code for changes in Windows, which they have to do anyway to keep selling products.

They support business use of the card, they don't use the drivers to compete in terms of features or added value as they should for the gaming market. There are the odd experimental spurts like the TurboGL drivers, which are now depreciated because the normal OGL drivers work better, but it's all half hearted and they take forever to do it in the first place. They need to take things out of neutral or get somebody out in back to start pushing, they are just too slow. Half of the gaming market is about it being a hobby, there are few new games worth the upgrades out there, it's about tinkering. If Matrox wants to compete they have to make it entertaining as a hobby. Out of curiousity, why is MURC the only real Matrox related web site on the internet? Why did it take several months for Matrox to create their support forums?

They only reason for 3D on a video card for me is games. If Matrox just wants to service their business interests, good for them, but I won't buy from then for the purposes of playing games. Not unless I am willing to put up with the great silence or they cut the price down to pay for the lack of gaming support and entertainment value other companies provide.

[Larger Rant warning]

As for Win2K, I couldn't care less, until MS gets their act together with one code base it's just an annoying not quite compatible OS I have to deal with when programming.
Things like not being able to recursively progress through the registry because the open key function isn't reenterant so you have to build lists and traverse them later. The fact that the OS refuses to support RLE bitmaps so all bitmaps have to be uncompressed. What was yesterday's tidbits? Oh yes.. Did you know that the size returned from loading in a string from the registry is the size of the buffer used when saving data to it and not the length of the string as under Win9x? Did you know that changing the wallpaper under Win2K doesn't notify all applications of a system change like it does under Win9x? I think WinNT and Win2K might as well be OS/2 for all the common behaviour I see between the two.

[rant off]