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So what is TurboGL and why does it give such a dramatic performance gain in Quake 3? Basically TurboGL is a newer mini OpenGL ICD from Matrox, and it includes specific tweaks for 3Dnow (Athlon) and SSE (Pentium III) instructions. Those tweaks are what give it the extra oomph to get really high framerates. The downside is that if you're using a Celeron or P2, then TurboGL isn't going to help you at all. However, if you're using a P3 or an AMD processor (K6-2 and K6-3 support is coming, supposedly), then these new TurboGL drivers are going to give your system a fat kick in the arse in games like Quake 2, Quake 3, and Half-Life.
The performance gain from TurboGL is nothing short of eye popping - my personal system with a P3 450, 128MB of RAM, and a vanilla G400 jumped from 53 fps to 76 fps in Quake 3, after installing TurboGL drivers. And you can see how a P3 600 jumped up about 50% in framerate at the lower resolutions where G400 was lagging behind before. The comparison tests show G400 series cards actually blowing the doors off the competition!
The numbers speak for themselves - until the GeForces and Savage 2000s arrive, the G400 Max looks like it's the card to beat if you run a P3 or Athlon system. Not only are you getting Matrox's superior image quality in 2D and 3D, but you're also getting great 3D framerate in OpenGL now, and the luxury of bump mapping and DualHead. Have your cake and eat it too!
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/dualhead/
Sean
So what is TurboGL and why does it give such a dramatic performance gain in Quake 3? Basically TurboGL is a newer mini OpenGL ICD from Matrox, and it includes specific tweaks for 3Dnow (Athlon) and SSE (Pentium III) instructions. Those tweaks are what give it the extra oomph to get really high framerates. The downside is that if you're using a Celeron or P2, then TurboGL isn't going to help you at all. However, if you're using a P3 or an AMD processor (K6-2 and K6-3 support is coming, supposedly), then these new TurboGL drivers are going to give your system a fat kick in the arse in games like Quake 2, Quake 3, and Half-Life.
The performance gain from TurboGL is nothing short of eye popping - my personal system with a P3 450, 128MB of RAM, and a vanilla G400 jumped from 53 fps to 76 fps in Quake 3, after installing TurboGL drivers. And you can see how a P3 600 jumped up about 50% in framerate at the lower resolutions where G400 was lagging behind before. The comparison tests show G400 series cards actually blowing the doors off the competition!
The numbers speak for themselves - until the GeForces and Savage 2000s arrive, the G400 Max looks like it's the card to beat if you run a P3 or Athlon system. Not only are you getting Matrox's superior image quality in 2D and 3D, but you're also getting great 3D framerate in OpenGL now, and the luxury of bump mapping and DualHead. Have your cake and eat it too!
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/dualhead/
Sean
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