New Parhelia Drivers!

[JaG]

No big suprise that they're concentrating on OpenGL. It's the most important point now, when 'going pro' with Parhelia and perhaps the upcoming 'P-series'...

But it's clever. Living in the professional corner was always a good way for matrox to survive the swinging fights of those who tried their luck in the consumer & pure gaming segment...

By the way, chr_79, where do I get the GleXess bench?

[chr_79]

Originally posted by JaG
No big suprise that they're concentrating on OpenGL. It's the most important point now, when 'going pro' with Parhelia and perhaps the upcoming 'P-series'...

But it's clever. Living in the professional corner was always a good way for matrox to survive the swinging fights of those who tried their luck in the consumer & pure gaming segment...

By the way, chr_79, where do I get the GleXess bench?

official web site : http://www.glexcess.com/

[albatorsk]

- Fixed slowdown in Counter-Strike in certain areas

And they said that they weren't able to reproduce the slowdowns!

Note: This is not a complaint, this is a "Yay! Finally!"

[Chrono_Wanderer]

"Fixed problem in Rightmark where the girl's eyes are popping out"

hmm... isn't that's a selling point? j/k

"Wow they were really concentrating on that OpenGL! "

So... Matrox finally know how to make OGL ICD

[borat]

generally nice for me but one gripe - operation flashpoint resistance the cursor stays on the in game screens always which also happened with previous drivers, the last set finally solved it but its back again with these.not sure if its a problem my end or with the drivers but it happened as soon as i installed the new ones(in surround gaming - have yet to try it in single head mode).

[JaG]

Originally posted by chr_79
official web site : http://www.glexcess.com/

Oh, nice! - That's quite simple enough, thanks.

Seems to be an interesting piece of sw-tech.

[MaartenLierop]

yes and this application showed to me what banding looks like. My god!
I have never seen it before, not even when using 3dmax or combustion or windowed games. But in thsi app. when you point the camera to the ground the horizontal disturbs appear. and how....
I've got my parhelia for more than six months, and I really haven't seen it before. It proves for me that the whole banding problem is a bit overdone. When i should have this banding the whole time, i should be angry to, but it's a very rare fenomena, at least on my computer.

[JaG]

That's exactly my thinking. So clear as here in the crypt with all that glowing lights are circumstances commonly not...

[Wombat]

Originally posted by MaartenLierop
It proves for me that the whole banding problem is a bit overdone. When i should have this banding the whole time, i should be angry to, but it's a very rare fenomena, at least on my computer.

Be careful about judging all Parhelia based on observation of your card. The problem ranges from almost nonexistant to very bad, on a unit-to-unit basis.

[JaG]

Yes, Wombat but they all appear in scenes with a big delta between the high actually displayed fps and the physical refresh rates of the analog display or monitor.

And this crypt scene, with it's extreme contrasts, seems to bring it to life although on that systems / cards which could be classified to 'almost nonexistant' ones...

In my case you can stop them again by reducing the fps (and so the 'delta'). I increased Parhelias processing grade by selecting 4x FSSAA, permanent anisotropic filtering and active VSync.

[chr_79]

To check if this is really "the" banding problem, choose run multiple benchmark, uncheck the Fullscreen mode box, select a low resolution then start the benchmark.

Now, if the banding is visible on all screen, not only on the application's window, this may be the real banding problem.
If not, it's simply another VSync problem.

[Kusa]

- Fixed slowdown in Counter-Strike in certain areas

Originally posted by albatorsk
And they said that they weren't able to reproduce the slowdowns!

Note: This is not a complaint, this is a "Yay! Finally!"

Not only CS, but all HL MODs!!
I'm very happy with that.

[chr_79]

a screenshot of banding effect :



And the Point Sprites sample from directx sdk if you want to see it :
PointSprites.exe

(force texture to trilinear or aniso first; i don't know why, but on my computer, this sample run at 60fps only if i don't force a filtring texture mode )

[JaG]

Hi chr_79,

I think we do have both here.

Now, after intensive testing as well on my second, dvi-d display (with the old drivers, too), I came to this conclusion.

No. one is the well described 'classic banding issue'. Although you more have to suspect than to view, I know what you mean with your photograph. Thank you for it. We're talking from the same thing...

So far to the 'classic bandings'. The problem is, that this 'classic issue' doesn't appear (at least with my card, and those I checked...) on digitally connected displays, whereas the 'crypt issue' is shown on dvi-d devices...

Further more, the bandings you may see in the crypt scene with all that glowing fog aren't synchon to the 'normal bandings'.

(Silly describtion, but hoping you understand me... )

So we do have two problems, here. The interesting point is, that you have one solution for both. Everytime you reduce the often quoted 'delta' and increase the real refresh + reduce the displayed fps by increasing the difficulty level for Parhelia (by selecting 4x FSSAA, VSync...) both issues become less intensive and finally disappear.

ps. An other good example for reproducing the 'classic issue' is the 'BumpEarth.exe', the BumpMapping Demo of the DX9 SDK.

pps. Did you recognize, that although you may select the second, independend display as primary and D3D or OpenGL applications / windows are running much faster than, the second display still lacks some features, like AGP texturing? In addition it has only limited memory: 32 MB!!! - That may be critical, sometimes...

[joonie]

Hey, I don't know what BANDING ISSUE is right now, and I searched the forum and couldn't find anything about it.
What exactly is it? I don't think I have ever experienced it before.
And the picture above, I don't see any problem with it
Don't see any horizontal lines or anything...