Alot of Hype on new cards-

[DigitalWelfare]

Greetings MURC world. I had to evade the 3dfx forums, because I was up to my ears in nvidia Chit. Man- I cant get any support without hearing about the damn Geforce.... I hope the G400 out performs it... that will show those little fUCers. Anyway- I had a genral question, that is a critical issue for me..... I want to get the V4, or the G400.... but are these cards going to be available in PCI? is PCI dead? SHould I go shoot myself in the anus now, or continue to be optomistic?

[Snake-Eyes]

Hi DigitalWelfare. To the best of my knowledge, Matrox has no plans to come out with a PCI version of the G400. Think about it this way- the card only really struts its stuff on higher end machines, and most, if not all, of those have AGP slots now.

As far as the V4 goes, it's anybody's guess as to whether there will be a PCI version. However, it looks like it's going to be a while until those hit the shelves (it IS a next generation card, even more so than the GeForce, IMHO). I'd look into getting a motherboard with AGP support and a G400 for the time being. If money's an issue, you could always get an nVidia TNT2 based card. You won't get all the features, but the performance is okay (please- no flames, I love my G400Max, but my buddy has an Ultra, and it works nearly as well as my Max).

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Ace

[DigitalWelfare]

Thanks Man.. well i have a G200 agp, but Its connected to my motherboard I think.. I would love to have an AGP slot for the newer chips, but so far looks like the V3 3500 just got released in PCI, but I wont drop my V2 SLI rig for a V3.


Assuming the G200 agp I have is built into the motherboard- Than I can assume I have no AGP slot available huh? I dont want a TNT2 although I hear their pretty... I need to keep my Glide Support.

Thanks for the response.

[IceStorm]

Open your case and see if you've got what looks to be a PCI slot, only further away from the back of the case than the PCI slots. If so, that's your AGP slot.

Unless you really want the features of a G400 DualHead or G400 MAX, stick with your V2's. I got the G400 MAX because I had to get the card count down in my machine, and because I wanted faster D3D performance (Rollcage goes faster now. :-) )

V4 isn't coming out until March or so. GeForce without DDR DRAM isn't worth buying (unless you like trees...). V3's a good compromise, but you already have V2's, so why bother? TNT2 - bah. A pox on nVidia - always releasing products that are half baked, then get fixed 6 months later.

Just my $0.02

[Zwisch]

Hi

All newer cards will only be made available in AGP, hmm the new S3 should be also PCI but... So it might be a good idea to consider a new motherboard...

Z

[DigitalWelfare]

hmmm... Thanks in advance. I will check for the slot, but I know the Matrox card is built in... to the motherboard. I just bought my Cpu not 10 months ago- so swapping the motherboard most likely wont be an option... I am really pleased with the performance of My SLI especially using the WICKEDGL ICD, it made a shitload of diffrence in HL and SIN and QuakeIII. -(damn WWFE IPO is being released today, and everyone is calling in on it) Anyway: Ice Do you still use your V2's?? If so- try the wicked Gl... I was stoked..

I dont think the newer genration cards will support PCI- But assured of this- If a V4 comes out PCI its mine... or any card with 32 bit OpenGL support with PCI (non-nvidia)

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a digital display of evolution
(G200 with aid of Diamond Monster 3D II-SLI)

[IceStorm]

Wicked MiniGL refuses to run when I've both displays enabled, hence I don't use it.

I was using the eyeScream drivers, and they're about the same. Stuff looks better on the G400 MAX, and the TurboGL is fast enough for HL (after turning on r_mmx 1 - forgot to set that initially).

[DigitalWelfare]

ICE- when playing Half-life with dual monitors- where is the gun?


So the Eye-Scream are pretty good? Im going to try those... any performace increase I can get would be great- So your still using your V2's then. Thats cool... what do you have your gamma sliders at>? and do you use any Tweak utilities?

[IceStorm]

1) The game only uses one monitor. The second head displays my Win98 deskop (the other half of it).

2) I haven't used the V2's since the TurboGL came out. I'm waiting for the V2's I ordered from Creative to come in (today or tomorrow), because the eyeScream drivers can't be updated.