Vertex Shader 2.0 on Parhelia

[WyWyWyWy]

Originally posted by [GDI]Raptor
I'm satisfied if they start implementing it when DX9 games starts to apear!

If they don't do it now... chances are they won't do it when DX9 games start to appear.

[az]

Face it, P will be too slow for those games anyway, so what'd be the point?

AZ

[Maggi]

dunno, but as posted earlier I was reading this page

http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/parhelia512/technology/supersample.cfm

Dual-textured pixels with 16-sample anisotropic filtering at comparable performance to dual-textured pixels with trilinear filtering on competing GPUs

and it made me believe they had more to offer than just 2-tap ... surprised ?

[TdB]

well, 2-tap anisotropic filtering is actually using 16 samples, 8-tap is using 64 samples etc and 16-tap is 128 samples.

the "64 super sample filtering" means that it does 64 samples PER CLOCK, which means that each of the 4 pipes is doing 16 samples (2-tap) in parallel in one clock, but on 4 different pixels.
hence a pixel doesn´t get more than 16 samples (2-tap).

tricky "word game"!

That whitepaper is(IMO) too full of fancy confusing marketing terms.

[Maggi]

indeed tricky ... doeen't make me feel any better though.

thanx for your insight, very much apreciated !

[Kuriton]

OK. I sent a e-mail.

Subject:Vertex Shader on Parhelia.

Dear Matrox.

I'm one of Japanese Matrox Parhelia users.
And I love Parhelia.

As you know, you might have received several e-mails about Vertex Shader 2.0 on Parhelia.
This e-mail belong to them too.

Currently, Parhelia has Vertex Shader 1.1(VS1.1) and Pixel Shader 1.3(PS1.3), doesn't it?
I asked whether Matrox has a plan for improving VS or PS.

And Matrox Graphics Technical Support Manager, Haig said
"Pixel shaders will stay as is and Vertex shaders can up updated depending on the amount of requests that oru sales staff receives", and
"I remember a while back I stated that the Vertex Shaders will be improved but unfortunately, from that time till now,
the amount of requests for other features have surpassed the Shader request, which is why the priority for it is low at the present moment".

Is it true that the amount of requests of VS is lower than other features?
I guess it's not true.

Because you received many e-mails requesting VS2.0 from Matrox Parhelia users.
And I also hope that ardently.

I know how difficult improving VS, so I don't hope we are going to get VS2.0 as soon as we can.
I hope Matrox will complete getting VS2.0 on Parhelia with enough time to improving it.
And I hope Matrox understands we can get more 3D perfomance and quality by it improving.

I like Matrox, so I hope Matrox become a very good company.

Thank you for reading.

Kuriton.

I wish the dreams would come true.

[TdB]

yeah, one would think they were trying to trick people into believing it could do 64-samples anisotropic filtering, with that name.

It "tricked" alot of people into believing that(including me).

[leech]

Well, they do have one point that is quite valid, not much uses the VS2.0. On the other hand, they advertised linux drivers "shortly after" and indeed they released some half-assed ones that has done nothing but infuriate any Linux/Parhelia users.

Then again I'm not TOO pissed, considering that other graphics card companies have their mounds of problems too. Could be worse, I could have waited and had airplane take off inside my computer every time I tried to play a game. I already have some scsi drives in my PC, I don't need any other high-pitched whining coming from it.

Parhelia is a good card, and has the great potential to be a great card. Eventually Matrox will have to listen to it's consumers otherwise they'll not get us back again. I know I'll think again before I buy another card that says "linux drivers soon" Unified drivers is the way to go, across platforms......

Leech

[drslump]

Face it, P will be too slow for those games anyway, so what'd be the point?

well, lets say that I want to develop a demo using VS2. I have the Parhelia but since it doesn't support it in the drivers I can't test my code

and if we follow your line of thinking, surround gaming shouldn't had been supported on the drivers since few games support it, few people have 3 monitors to use it and lastest game titles will run too slow in tri-head setup.

but you are right that maybe implementing VS2 will make us miss some other good features. Matrox should put an official poll in their site with all the features they can add, so we can choose what we want them to implement first.

ciao, ivan

[DGhost]

drslump - i believe you can enable CPU emulation of VS2.0 in DX9... it might be in the debug versions only though...

[Jon P. Inghram]

Yeah, with the SDK you can run DX9 apps s l o w l y on your m3d!

[leech]

Originally posted by Jon P. Inghram
Yeah, with the SDK you can run DX9 apps s l o w l y on your m3d!

But they DO run on an m3d.....

A little off topic but, Maggi, your new Avatar kicks BUTT (pun poorly intended.)

Hey, I say if they advertise a feature, they better damned well support that feature. Like linux drivers, faax16 that worked great with all games, and anisotropic filtering that didn't kill performance.

But hey, what do I know, it's supposed to have a huge amount of bandwidth if I recall correctly too, but some things it just craps out on.

Leech

[Wombat]

Hey, this is all part of the tradition for Matrox. Remember how long it took to get the ICD promised on the box?

[DedicatedFan3D]

Never bought from Matrox, never will.

IMAO, whoever shelled out more than 170 bucks on the P got ripped off royally.

Matrox has the worst problems of promising a boatload of stuff and then delivering a wad of shit with the boatload of stuff by the time the competitors have delivered twice as much as Matrox originally promised.

I didn't buy the P I'm runnin on.

I wouldn't have spent very much on it anyway considering ATI and nVidia will have a triplehead solution out within the next two product cycles that will offer performance that will be faster than Pitou can dream of.

[Hazmat2k]

Originally posted by drslump
Matrox should put an official poll in their site with all the features they can add, so we can choose what we want them to implement first.

ciao, ivan

How about Matrox just give us what they advertised and sold us?
Partial DX9 compliance, VS2 etc etc.
This is starting to feel like the Savage 2000 and T&L debacle all over again.
Very disappointed Matrox.
If they were a New Zealand company they'd be facing court charges for breaching the Fair Trading Act/Consumer Guarantees Act.