Tom does the RT2000!

[Joel]

Man, this forum has become less and less about tech help, and more and more about bickering over every minor detail.

It wouldn't be this way if it wasn't for all the f***ing trolls that are coming here lately.

Joel

[Ono Tadaki]

Originally posted by DGhost:
Acctually, it doesn't. I know people who are MSDN subscribers through their business (large database/etc. lots of money - big subscriptions). who cannot even get it (whistler).

Just follow the link and you can download it.

[Ono Tadaki]

Originally posted by Rags:
Hi Ono,

You see the key phrase in what you just said was "WIN2K". I don't see anywhere on the sight where they say these will work under whistler, and I have never seen any claims for them to. If you are a part of Matrox's developer relations program, then I am sure you would have access to other drivers.

Again, you change the point of the discussion. The original point was that Matrox aren't so quick to fix or improve their drivers are you orignally claimed there were.

In my opinion, the Matrox track record hasn't been all that good on drivers lately. The previous OpenGL fiasco is a good example of this.

Many people can't afford to wait until after Whistler ships for proper driver support. I assumed that since Whistler has been generally available for well over a month now, that there would be some drivers by now but I haven't seen any.

I really can't see what the problem is as other companies do have W2K drivers that work under Whistler at this point, including OpenGL.

As to the Matrox <a href="http://www.matrox.com/mga/dev_relations/chip_tech/matrox_g400.cfm">developer</a> drivers I haven't been able to find any Whistler compatible drivers there, have you? Who should I talk to about getting Whistler drivers?

Not supporting the OS until it is "official" is not a smart policy. I think many companies who are qualifying or testing Whislter (which is what Beta testing is all about) are not going to be all that happy about the lack of drivers if they need OpenGL. The Microsoft drivers will get you DirectX.

BTW, the current BETA Linux drivers are not supported by Matrox.

[Rags]

Oh, Ono, you seem to fail to make the draw that win2k and whistler are really two different OS's. It's not reasonable to expect any mfr to release drivers to the public for an unreleased OS. That's akin to bashing a company for not having their NT4 drivers compatible with win2k. Be smart about this, okay?

You don't have to tell me about the OpenGL deal. I was a Matrox user before the G200, during the G200 and after the G200. Yes, I was more than a bit peeved about it. But this has NOTHING to do with the way the current G400 drivers are. I think their drivers are amongst the best (if not THE best) for win2k right now. I just witnessed a single thread in Matrox Gaming where someone was complaining that Alice didn't work properly, within the month, new drivers were released that, guess what?, that's right!, FIXED the problem. This isn't isolated. If there is a problem that can be worked out reasonably, you will see a fix more times than not. There are more examples, but that's not what I am posting for.

You just need to realize that Win2k and Whistler are two different OS's. Just because a few (and, yes it's only a few) other mfr's drivers somewhat work on Whistler, doesn't mean that Matrox should be puting time into their Win2k development to fix another unreleased OS. I would rather they stick to keeping the drivers going for the one we are using right now, and have the other development builds internal until the other OS is somewhat ready. And Beta1 is NOT somewhat ready. If you really need to ask where to go to get internal development drivers, then you don't need them or shouldn't need them.

They did the same thing with Win2k, and everyone that was bitching just like you are right now ate crow when Matrox released publicly drivers that supported win2k FIRST. And they were better than any other graphics drivers for a few months afterwards. nVidia's were no where near ready when they "leaked" them, and I am sure the only reason they were "leaked" is because a certain other mfr gave their users what they wanted/needed.

I am sorry, but including a fix into the win2k drivers for running whistler isn't a reasonable expectation. It's not a feature, and it definitely is NOT a bug.

Rags

[Rags]

Oh, and I forgot to respond to this little Jewel:

BTW, the current BETA Linux drivers are not supported by Matrox.

Heh. As compared to what? nVidia has official drivers that are supported? You need to get a grip on how Linux's licensing works, and you may begin to see why Matrox wouldn't officially support them. Notice I said officially, because try asking the tech support forum sometime with help using them.

Rags

[rubank]

Casey Jones,

my rant wasn´t aimed at all the forumers, just the nutheads (which I thought was obvious).

Happy new year.
To everyone.

rubank

[DGhost]

Matrox has had far better support with Windows 2000 than any other video card manufacture so far. So what if nvidia had *leaked* windows 2000 drivers out first. 3dfx did too. none of the companies officially supported Windows 2000 until it hit RTM. so why should any company support Whistler until it hits RTM? try asking nvidia about whistler problems, do you think it is supported? they will tell you that its an unsupported platform, and that you are screwed. same w/ 3dfx.

If you are a *legit* microsoft beta tester, then you understand that companies don't release drivers for the platform until it has been released. You would know that if a device doesn't work, then it doesn't work and you wait for the manufacturer to release new drivers, hoping it will work.

I think Matrox is faster to fix its problems than any other companies - fast to release the drivers is a different story. I think they test them far more rigidly than nvidia or 3dfx does. I have only seen one problem where the matrox drivers would not work on a platform, and that was a relatively obscure platform.

The companies that are 'qualifying' or 'testing' Whistler have been through this many, many times. What they are doing right now is porting things over to the platform and getting things working. they are not basing any decisions off of the *first* beta of an operating system, nor do they hold any expectations.

And as for Linux, no one officially supports Linux - not even nvidia. Try reading the liscense agreement sometime. so whats the point w/ Matrox?

[Casey Jones]

rubank,

my apologies then.

Happy New Year to you too, and everyone else.

Casey

------------------------
Drivin' That Train...

[Ono Tadaki]

Originally posted by DGhost:
Matrox has had far better support with Windows 2000 than any other video card manufacture so far.

I think Matrox is faster to fix its problems than any other companies - fast to release the drivers is a different story. I think they test them far more rigidly than nvidia or 3dfx does.

The companies that are 'qualifying' or 'testing' Whistler have been through this many, many times. What they are doing right now is porting things over to the platform and getting things working. they are not basing any decisions off of the *first* beta of an operating system, nor do they hold any expectations.

I just want the thing to work. Too bad about that Windows 2000 dual monitor thing though... when exactly did people realize it was broken?

Fixes that don't make it out to customers doesn't do them any good. While its nice that they fix them fast, it doesn't do us any good if we can't get the drive does it?

What about SMP support? Do the latest Win2K 5.31 work well in SMP systems? Last I heard most people had to stick with the Win2K 5.04 driver package to run stable in SMP systems (at least that's what Matrox Technical Support types seems to be stating on the Matrox support forums). I didn't see anything in the release notes about SMP fixes...

As to testing, all you have to do is look at all the OpenGL problems with the previous OpenGL ICD. Lots of mainstream games broke with that driver.

Now as to the issue of officially supporting Whistler, yes of course they can't "officially" ship drivers or claim support until Whistler goes RTM. It doesn't have a name yet.

Beta 1 is now over two months old and I was hoping that the latest W2K package would work. I assumed that Matrox was working on a Whislter driver. But all I hear is that they expect to have drivers available when Whistler ships to stores. Fine, what more can you ask for? Nothing, because they never promised Whistler support.

The point is it doesn't work... but you say "It's a beta and so why should it?" Your right, and I wasn't really asking for support. I kind of expect support, but as I said basic DirectX drivers are "in the box".

My only point was that other vendors do seem to me at least, be improving their drivers at a faster rate than Matrox. This is contrary to what some others have stated.

Why? Simply because they have OpenGL drivers that sort of seem to work in Whistler.

[Rags]

I understand what you are saying Ono, but just because a set of drivers for one OS won't work for another different OS, doesn't mean the drivers are inferior. Because they clearly are not.

As far as SMP goes, the SMP stability issue was one of the first fixes in driver releases and has been fixed for quite some time now. OpenGL problems? Can you be more specific. You know, it sounds more and more like people come here and just shoot out OpenGL as an issue with Matrox drivers without really having any issue themselves, or just talking out of the wrong end. I am soooo tired of hearing how Matrox's OpenGL support sucks. How about giving specific examples?

Rags

[Pace]

Rags - give it up - I don't think he gets it...

[DGhost]

Personally, neither do i, but one last try:

The latest drivers (all since 5.20) have worked with SMP systems. i have yet to experience any problems on my system with the drivers. And i was affected by the problem in the 5.1x series of drivers.

I dunno what you are talking about. If whistler support for you is such a big deal, go buy another video card and get the same support from other companies that you would. And the same support that you would get from microsoft, as you are obviously not a legit tester.

[Ono Tadaki]

Originally posted by Rags:
OpenGL problems? Can you be more specific.

Sure, the previous drivers did not work with Alice, Baldur's Gate II, Oni and more than likely a lot of other OpenGL based games. The drivers cause the menus to be slow and result in screen corruption. The only viable solution was to regress to the previous drivers. There were some posted workarounds for some of the games, but in some cases they weren't effective.

This OpenGL issue was a <a href="http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/Forum10/HTML/002159.html">known issue</a> to Matrox Technical support and was only resolved in the latest driver released before Christmas. You can check on the offical Matrox forums and you should be able to see lots of postings from people with problems with the previous drivers in OpenGL games.

That is the specific OpenGL issue I was talking about as an counter example to the claims of slow driver released due to extensive testing. Sorry, but that testing sure doesn't seem to have occured in that case.

And as to SMP support the 5.04 shipped in Apr 2000 and the 5.20 Nov 2000. Over six months. This is despite the claims of many here that Matrox is quick to fix issues. Or does it take six months to test the drivers? I know it takes extra time and that WHQL requires SMP so perhaps only the drivers they ceritfy do they bother testing SMP support. I've not tried the 5.31 drivers (which fixes the OpenGL issues) on a SMP machine at this point since they only came out at Chirstmas, which is why I was asking if they worked or not.

As to the core issue, are Matrox any better or any worse? Obviously it depends on what you are expecting from them now doesn't it?

I don't use Linux nor do I use OS/2 or Apple computers either for that matter. So having support or drivers for those platforms don't mean a whole lot to me at this point since.

I expected Whislter drivers by now. I expected that they wouldn't <a href="http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/Forum10/HTML/002106.html">break their drivers</a>. I also expected "proper" DualHead support under Windows 2000. One could argue that perhaps due to the slow release of Windows 2000 drivers from Matrox it ended up being too late for Microsoft to change the Windows 2000 architecture to support DualHead.

Who knows, but I hope and expect that we will be seeing it at some point in an OS other than Win9x based ones, don't you?

[Ono Tadaki]

Originally posted by Rags:
I understand what you are saying Ono, but just because a set of drivers for one OS won't work for another different OS, doesn't mean the drivers are inferior. Because they clearly are not.

To me most of the extra features (most of which I haven't ever had need to use yet) that Matrox's driver package may or may not offer beyond what their competition offers doesn't outweight my requirement for some kind of OpenGL Whistler support at this point.

Hence, in my opinion, the driver support offered by Matorx is inferior to some of their competition.

Obviously, you seem to find the extra goodies Matrox's driver package offers more compelling than myself.

[Joel]

Obviously, you seem to find the extra goodies Matrox's driver package offers more compelling than myself.

That is quite obvious. Nor do we have unreasonable expectations for Matrox to support an OS that is not generally available to the public yet. I personally would rather see Matrox put their time into supporting the current OSs than trying to build drivers for an OS that is liable to change 50 times before it is ever released. If you don't like the way Matrox is doing things then you can always go somewhere else. No one is holding a gun to your head.

Joel