Ok Murcers GIVE UP!

[Sasq]

I can appreciate up to the 80fps mark (also allows for some slow down during heavy cpu use etc etc (sorry the technical name escapes me) but i'm still confused to the benifit of 500fps i'm still hearing thrown around - a plain language technical answer would be great not the quality v's speed bit

[spazm_1999]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Using a mouse and keyboard to swing a sword is rather lame. </font>

Do you mean that you don't like Vampire / Rune game style?

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">But if you're not too used to very high framerates, 20+ fps can actually be experienced as fluid motion.</font>

True, but sometimes even trained eyes can't make the difference. I mean some animes (like slayers) has some parts rendered at 7 fps and it still gives you the impression that it's rendered at 30 fps.

Anyway, I really can't understand people whining that G400 aren't gaming cards. As long as I'm able to get 30-40 fps in either 800*600 or 1024*768 it'll be okay with me. I've tried GEForces cards and they're far from what I call a great card. It's unbelivable I wasn't able to read the text under the icon of my desktop in 1600*1200... imagine at 1880*1440!! I got rid of these cards after 1 week (or before).

Spazm

[PaulS]

Once you are used to 60-80 fps, 30 fps is pretty hard to take. How many of you notice flicker if you run a monitor at 60Hz?

I think film runs at 24 fps, you can definitely see the jerkiness in anything but a very slow pan, and games tend to move a lot faster than movies. 25 / 30 fps is less obvious on a television because of the interlacing and higher persistence of a TV CRT, but deinterlace it and play it back on a monitor or a 100Hz TV and you'll notice it very quickly. 30fps is not smooth!

It's interesting how the matrox fanatics spend so much time talking about the importance of high quality rendering, and then in the same sentence dismiss the obvious visual improvement of higher frame rates.

Paul

[Rags]

It's not just Matrox "fanatics" that do this. I see this debate on nearly every discussion board I visit. I believe you can see a difference up to the refresh rate of a monitor. I also believe that the benchmark has some validity for faster is better because of minimum framerate. But, and it's a big but, average framerate in a benchmark really doesn't tell the minimum framerate story.

I think most of the people's point right now is that the G400/G450 plays the games they are using now smoothly. Obviously if we have decided not to move to another video card, we are happy with our performance at this time, which should be no problem for other users.

I very rarely see Matrox users going into other people's forums to tell them to use a G400/G450 for gaming purposes, and talk general smack about the card they use. It's usually the other way around. We get someone who waltzes in here *cough*DosFreak/Isochar/tylau*cough* thinking they need to "save" us from our hell of low framerates. Sorry to burst these guys' bubbles, but the reality is that very few demanding games have been released since the generation of the G400/TNT2/V3 was the fastest you could get, and then everyone was happy with the speed of that generation. I am sure that with the advent of newer, more demanding games and apps, we will see a need for a new video card. But, at least in my case, there is no real pressing need to move over to another video card in my primary machine. The G450 does very well for me in the games that I choose to play, and the visual quality and dualhead features are indespensible at the moment. I just don't need a new card at the moment, and if I put another card in my system, I would be pissing my money away, because by the time there really is a need, there will be faster/more feature rich cards available, and Matrox won't be out of the game. That I am confident in.

Rags

[Himself]

Movies vs Computers again, the never ending topic.

Each movie frame has a complete interval of information contained in it, you get one 1/24th of a second worth of film exposure, not 1/10000th of a second of exposure every 1/24th of a second. The latter would be a better aproximation of a computer's fluidity or lack thereof. PC games also have this nasty effect of taking varying amounts of time to render frames, this destroys any and all hopes of smooth animation unless brute force is used to keep the frames rates limited by monitor refresh rates. PCs currently are only capable, when everything is just perfect, of the fluidity achieved by the early monster movies, where a model was filmed, adjusted and filmed again. That's why 3DFX's motion blur was a good idea, instead of swapping buffers every vsync interval they could have mixed frames to aproximate film better. Techniques such as motion blur were and are used to make this monster movie animation a bit more natural looking. If this were used in combination with a monitor's relatively high refresh rate capability, much better animation could be achieved in PC games today. But that's all for the future, today's games can only run in the 100fps ballpark on the fastest cards with the fastest cpus at the lowest resolutions, with minimal polygon detail, and realtively low texture usage. If you want to aproximate film, 500fps capability at 640x480 would only be a good start, not overkill.

[Grego]

Leech, isn't it The Nomad Soul - the game with David Bowie?

[DosFreak]

Sigh.

1. Install Unreal Tournament.
2. Install Latest update.
3. Install Loki Opengl driver.
4. Install Loki .INI settings.
5. Run UT in openGL. At 1024X768 32bc
6. Start Practice session with Morpheus Map, 16bots.
7. Do a Timedemo 1
8. At the end of the game when I have won I am getting an AVg of 57fps. (It never goes above 60...it might be my monitor..New one coming soon!)
9. WHAT ARE YOU GETTING.

[Gurm]

What am I getting? Enough to beat down the ass of the GeForce lamers who have much higher frame rates. Doesn't matter what I'm getting so long as it looks good and I can win, right?

- Gurm

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

[spoogenet]

I think the point is that we don't care what we're getting as much as you do. It will be very hard for you to be a missionary and try to convince us to do what you have done when we are happy with what we have, and do not see any real benefit or need for what you have. You are just wasting your breath if you want to keep pumping frame rates out as a valid reason.

Here's a test for you then.
1. Buy a high quality 21" monitor.
2. Install OS of choice.
3. Set resolution to >= 1600x1200x32.
4. Open a document/web page/something with text/NOT a game.
5. Read it from >= 3' away from monitor and enjoy with little eye strain.
6. How are your eyes doing?

b

[Rags]

DosFreak,

I have run UT in the maps that I play, and guess what? MY G450 is more than enough to play it smoothly.
Okay, I see what you are getting at, you need to put a specific situation where it is known to choke other video cards, such as demos that were designed to choke most cards, and then use that as an example. I see.


Rags

[DosFreak]

SO what your saying is you don't:

1. Care if you have to lower your res/settings to play latest games.
2. Don't care to have the latest feature support for said games.
3. 1024X768+ res is a no-go for games on G400. So around and below that res there is no difference between the Geforce and G400 on Games.
4. Care if you have crappy Opengl (compare to Geforce)
5. Care if you have Hardware T&L/Directx 8 hardware support.
6. Good drivers.


Sorry, still don't see a reason to stay with G400 if your a gamer unless your are very very very very stubborn.....or very cheap.

[Rags]

DosFreak,

I play at 1024X768 32 bit on everything I play, with the exception of HL/TFC, I play at 16 bit, because there is no difference. Any higher resolutions just look too small even on my 19" monitor, so until I get that 24 inch monitor, my G450 will suit me fine with the current games I play.

The latest features is a good point. I am glad there are more features being added to the mix. But the only compelling feature to be added to the GeForce series of cards was T&L, and the benefit is questionable in their application of T&L. Maybe when there are some real games that I play the need T&L to look nice and play smooth, I will upgrade my main machine to a faster card. I already stated something to this effect in my previous post.

Also, just because I don't have a faster card in my primary machine doesn't mean that I don't have one. I am using a Radeon in my secondary machine at the moment, and previously had a Prophet II, an eVga twinview, a V7700, and a V5500. None of these cards are really compelling enough for me to stick with, so I end up selling them to people like you.

Rags

[Himself]

I agree, real TCL support isn't here yet. The compelling reason to upgrade from TNT 2 class is fillrate, followed by features and current driver support (ref 3DFX). Enabling things like EMBM at 1024x768 where available would do for a start, FSAA would be nice at 800x600, you get the gist. However, if you do upgrade from a G400, what card out there would you seriously consider buying that doesn't or won't have TCL? I'm pretty sure Matrox is eventually going to get a card out, might not be this year, but it will likely have TCL built in.

[DosFreak]

Someone with a G400 check out Giants. Don't make me stick my G400 back in my box!

[Remo]

Well, I usually play RPGs and Adventure games, ocassionally a car sim. And to play Baldur's Gate, or Grim Fandango, even my G400 seems like an overkill The only reason I wait for a next gen Matrox product is... curiosity. And because I'm very satisfied with Matrox cards (previously I had a G200 Millennium), I'd like to see a new and improved G-series card. I feel the urge to upgrade, to have the newest and best card with many new exciting features to try. I'd like to test it. I'd like to test it NOW. But I know that I don't need it...

R


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Abit BH6, Cel566@850, Matrox G400DH 32MB, 128MB, Pioneer DVD103S, SBLive!(CT4830), Dell D1025HE 17" Monitor