Q3+G400= No SMP?!!

[Rattledagger]

No luck, AFAIK the Turbo drivers is ONLY for Win95/98.

[tish beta2]

Stop beggi'n. it's useless. remember g200's ICD?

If you want to use win2k to play games in go buy a TNT2. or a Geforce. I'm tempted...

[DJ Watts]

I remember a while back when i was faced with all these same questions on the G200, no OpenGL support, yet it said it on the box, drivers buggy etc. The Forums just keept on repeating the same old questions from the end users without a thought of how this would effect their buisness.
Then the G400 came along and people thought that they would get it right this time?
(Did they............?)

Why do Matrox insist on releasing products which are clearly not ready for Future aps and enviroments, this is a serious lapse on their behalf.
Now i am not having a go at the hardcore Matrox fans as i have a G200 in one of my machines and i find Matrox give the best detail in any card, so i would be flaming myself otherwise eh?, its just i cannot understand why Matrox insists on treating us end users like we don't give a dam what they do so we will put up with it, or that we will hang on until they get their finger from out of their arse!
It really can't be that hard a problem to address, take a look at Nvidia do they have these same problems as Matrox have? No, Why? Maybee its because they employ staff which will commit to working on future platforms or that they care about their product more and that it doing well, or that they realize they are running a buisness and that they care about the end users, cuz without us they wouldn't be in one.
Whatever the reason, my point is that it really can't be that hard to realize what they are doing wrong and correct it before people lose total respect for Matrox, which will eventually happen if they keep on this course.
Every video card has their iffy driver here and their but Matrox take the buiscuit!
Since i bought my TNT 2 i have had nowhere near the problems i have with my G200. Now its fine when i use my main pc, but when i play networked with my G200 and start up a game, i have to hope the driver i have on my G200 is going to work with a certain game i am running. I mean honestly, is this what the future of owning a Matrox video card holds?

At the end of the day Matrox HAVE TO get their act together with their drivers, cuz at the moment they just plain STINK!!

Well thats my two 2 cents worth anyhow, i can only hope Matrox read the Forums now and again and come across the posts from us end users with problems, (and there are a lot of them) and do something about it!

"MATROX SORT IT OUT NOW!" ,)

DJ Watts

[tish beta2]

I like your way of whining, DJ Watts. reminds me about myself

Haigh actaully answered this one question, and it was "I'll get right on it!". At first, I thought "wow, does this mean he's going to speak with the leader-hut and suggest a re-setup of the driver dev?". Later I understood he was merley making fun of me and my post.

Just as Matrox is making fun of it's gaming consumers. I will not retract this opinion until I see the turboGL work in win2k. Og dermed basta!

I'm hars here, but I now Matrox can do better.

[Statik]

I would be really surprised if Matrox didn't support turboGL with SMP support in Win2k. They may just forget about NT4 because they see it's life-cycle ending with the debute of Win2k in just a couple months. I expect Win2k to be extremely popular, replacing both Win98 and NT4, and to not have the best possible support in place for it would be suicidal.

Not to say that that support will come quickly, I owned a G200, I remember waiting forever for opengl support under NT, but it did eventually come, and I expect P2s, SMP, and turbo GL will eventually be supported in the Win2k drivers. But please matrox, the sooner the better.

[This message has been edited by Statik (edited 10-08-1999).]

[tish beta2]

http://guru3d.com/news.shtml#768

Not far now... Hey if M does it's job, then I'll be able to enable a VIS plugin on my TV and playing MP3 files. And at the same time frag asses in Quake3 with no FPS loss cause of dual cpu's... It's a dream .... that may come true

PS. OK WHO DISABLED HTML?!

[This message has been edited by tish beta2 (edited 10-11-1999).]

[RanDob]

The G200 and G400 NT ICDs in the 4.22 drivers do support SMP. If the app is multi-threaded, it should perform better on a dual-CPU machine.

[Statik]

Do you mean 4.22 and higher or just the 4.22 release? I don't see why Q3 would by multi-threaded on some video cards, but not on others, but it is just beta, maybe the final release will fix it.

[Statik]

heh nevermind, 4.22 is the latest release, for some reason I thought it was 4.25. I'm sure I've tried these before (I'm in Win98 right now, so I can't check) but I'll give it another shot.

[noackjr]

<random>
You know, if you ever want to set up a Quake 3 server, dual processors is the way to go. I just had a full 16 person game with weapons stay going on my dual P3-500 machine and it maxed out at 24% CPU usage. I enjoyed watching both CPU usage graphs do their little dance as they take on more or less of the load... In any case, the real kicker is having two Quake 3 servers going at the same time (using different ports) while actually playing in another game. That rocks...
</random>
<rant>
Except the darn NT OGL driver sucks!!! The quality looks worse than a Riva 128 and it's even slower in 32-bit. Ok Matrox, that's the worst insult I could come up with. Got anything better Tish?
</rant>

Jon

[noackjr]

<apology>
Sorry, I must have been smokin' something cause I forgot to include the reason I posted in the first place.
</apology>
<useful>
I benchmarked Quake 3 w/ NT4 w/ SP5 w/ Powerdesk 4.22 a while back. I got an average increase of 1.4 fps with "r_smp" enabled in Quake 3 over it disabled. This was just timedemos, so there wasn't a whole lot of background stuff to eat processor time. In actual use, this will probably be greater. However, I would expect this number to increase <b>WHEN</b> (not if - I believe...) Matrox releases NT OGL drivers that don't suck.
</useful>
<NT vs Win98>
The drivers suck so bad, I got better Quake 3 timedemo scores in Win98 with my old P2-333 and PD 5.25 w/ beta ICD than I do in NT4 w/ SP5 on my dual P3-500 and PD 4.22. Everything else is the same.

These numbers are so sad I think I will go cry...
</NT vs Win98>

Sorry about all the tags - too much xml lately,

Jon

[Statik]

You wanna know whats really sad? I'm getting fewer fps now in Quakeworld (I still play TeamFortress) with my Dual Celeron 550 w/G400 then I was 2 years ago with my P200 w/ Voodoo 1. This is all under NT of course. I couldn't believe it when I saw it, but it's true; same resolution, same color depth, and I'm getting 25 fps in Quakeworld now, and I had 31 with my Voodoo1 back then.

[tish beta2]

You betcha I have something better, Jon. Always, always...

On with the show:
Here's some e-mails I've gotten from "big" M, asking around about win2k drivers...


Dear Sir,
I can tell you that we are getting hammered on this subject, and I really
can sympathize with you but unfortunately the drivers are in a very early
Alpha stage right now so there is no way they will release them like that.
Please be patient they are working very hard to get those drivers ready.

At 07:50 AM 9/22/99 +0200, you wrote:
> >Dear Sir,
> >There are no drivers for the G400 under Windows 2000.
>
>That's too bad... too bad. Say, would it mean anything if I said that, if
>you're employer (matrox) released win2k drivers, it would make the G400
>series quite much more popular!
>
>I don't know how Matrox as a company is organized, but could you slip the
>above sentence in some conversation with the leader for driver dev?
>
>You see, the win2k is the most popular "un-released" OS in the history,
>with a total of 650.000 betatesters, and many more users. It's also said
>(90% sure about this) the only known errors left in the RC2 is some bugs in
>Active Directory and DNS Services.
>
>To sum it up, the NT 4.0 4.12 drivers work brilliant in win2k. No D3D or
>OpenGL though... But for 2D, flawless as far as I've tested them
>
>I know the win2k isn't "released" but it IS generally available through
>microsofts homepage (you can buy the latest beta).
>
>Guess I just wanto play Expendable in Win2K, just like I did with my old
>TNT video card. And this time with EMBM, of course ¦)
>
>
>Regardily,
>Jon.


And another konversation:


Dear Sir,
Unfortunately I have no information on Windows 2000 issues.

At 08:05 PM 9/26/99 +0200, you wrote:
> >I can tell you that we are getting hammered on this subject, and I really
> >can sympathize with you but unfortunately the drivers are in a very early
> >Alpha stage right now so there is no way they will release them like that.
> >Please be patient they are working very hard to get those drivers ready.
>
>Just what I wanted to hear I guess
>I have one final question for you... The PowerDesk series in win9x /winNT
>defaults the screen's refreshrate to highest the monitor support, is there
>anyway to make win2k do this? PowerdDesk can't be installed in win2k....
>so... when I play Total Annihilation at my G400 with the NT 4.0 4.12
>drivers, it defaults to 60Hz. Horrible on those "arctic battlearenas"
>
>
>Regardily,
>Jon M.


I whish they at least could release some PD drivers that did just that, default the refreshrate to highest monitor can handle. Hey it's not that hard you know...

A little more...

I'm very pussled about something Ant said. He's been around Matrox for years and years you know, and he said they've always had good 2d drivers and support. It's just "now lately" they kinda screw a little up. But they've been very very good oh yes. So why the hell, as they are absolutely at least as big as, and as rich as, don't they have drivers as good as Nvidia?

Just wondering. And why I'm wondering you say? Well, when I ask this question, or questions related, the MURC people kinda "slips away" Anyway, this is bad, we need to rant a little and get Matrox back on. Hey, they're good enough, right?


/kill job id#4211 <"TrueAntRant">
.....Success

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"Welcome back from the guide to how I see things logically"

[Snake-Eyes]

Ok Tish, here's something for you to think about. How long has nVidia been making REAL 3D cards? A while longer than Matrox, right? And no- the original Millenium doesn't count- the card had very little in the way of acceleration and features. Matrox's first REAL accelerator was the G200, or maybe the Mystique (although it lacked a bit too). nVidia/3DFX beat them by over a year. That time adds up as far as experience and driver development goes. How long has nVidia had these terrific openGL drivers? Prolly a year (the 128 didn't have 'em, if I remember correctly). Hmm. Too much to be a coincidence. Yes, I do empathise with those that had the G200 and no OpenGL, and those running WinNT/Win2000 (alpha/beta), but drivers don't grow on trees. Somebody has to write 'em. Matrox has had their hands full with drivers to write, what with D3D/OpenGL/Win95/Win98/WinNT/Win2K all in the pipe at once. nVidia and 3DFX already had well established drivers to build on when Matrox released the G400, so half of their work was already done. In case you haven't been reading other sites news, even G-Spot uses a lot of the same stuff (combined distribution of the latest 3.34 beta nVidia drivers for TNT/TNT2/GeForce).

Give Matrox credit for doing so much of this so quickly now. I also hope they don't fudge it up, but at least give them a chance. They've made a lot of progress in just the last three months- their drivers have actually had more substantial improvements in that time than nVidia's, even though nVidia releases more (I have a TNT, buddy has a TNT2U).

Bottom line, we all see your point, and feel your pain, but you need to lighten up, Matrox has made a lot of headway in a short time, and appears to be trying real hard to satisfy all of us. Give 'em a chance. Win2K isn't shipping YET.

------------------
Ace

[tish beta2]

Ace, I see you're point too. you're actually saying Matrox are allowed to be easy on the OGL drivers for winNT/win2k because they're one year "behind" the competition. That's crap

Let's see now...

Riva 128 = M3D/Mystique = Voodoo1
TNT1     = G200         = Voodoo2
TNT2     = G400         = Voodoo3

I belive the reason why the G200 never had any OGL is folks sat around and said "hey, be easy on them, they're actaully behind competition, ya know. That's crap

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"Welcome back from the guide to how I see things logically"