g400 theoretical limitations

[nufan]

I have a dual cpu setup, and while i'm waiting for matrox to get their nt (4 or 5, i dont care which) GL drivers to work with SMP and just be fast in general (20 fps is not fast!) I was reading around on the net for others with similar setups. It seems that with dual cpus, the bottleneck becomes the vidcards, ie if the vidcard is busy, it doesnt matter what the cpus are doing.. so i ask:

What are the limits for the G400 on q3 at say, 1024x768 or 800x600 resolution [or higher]? I currently get about 42fps at 8x6, (dual celeron 550, 128 ram, 98, turboGL)

If it is a little lower than expected, what features of q3 are cpu-intensive and not vidcard intensive, so if i'm maxed out on videocard performance, it can at least look nice...

nufan
"Do vegetarians eat animal crackers?"

[Compton]

As for maxing out the card, you might want to ask Greebe about this. I don't know if he reads in this forum or not but I *think* he had something like a 900mhz Athlon and he still didn't have his card maxed out. As for NT4/5 a friend of mine is using Win2k + G400MAX + the beta drivers on matrox's page and he's getting over 100fps in almost everything on a PIII. So you might want to look into ditching NT4 for Win2k. Also, I don't think that Matrox are making gaming performance a big priority in their NT4 drivers. But I could be wrong!

[nufan]

what? 100fps? in what mode?
i get like 20fps on high-q gfx on my dual 550 (yes, on win2k)

that just aint right

nufan

[This message has been edited by nufan (edited 27 January 2000).]

[Compton]

i dont remember exactly, i think he was getting over 100fps on normal quality on a pIII 450 o/ced to 600.

[paulcs]

I did seem that everytime Greebe bumped up the speed on his processor, he got a nice speed increase. I'm not sure if he's posted Quake3 benchmarks, however. I believe he's posted results using the Mad Onion programs and UT.

If you want to see the G400's limitations, using the High quality settings is the way to go about it. With any OS. I think the game looks nice with the Normal settins at 800x600, but if you want a nice spike in framerates, disable Marks on Walls and Dynamic Lights. Check your sound settings. The 3D sound feature is a real framerate killer as well.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net