What is the Benefit for Me with 32mb G400 ?

[fubardn]

I wanna buy a G400 Matrox card. My monitor is an Acer 54 E http://www.acer.com/aac/products/a_view/ 15 " . I can't see the benefit and
getting the 32 mb card as the monitor won't support anything above 1024 x768
(am I correct here?) I am basically looking at 3d performance for Unreal
Tournament , according to Matrox Website http://www.matrox.com/mgaweb/product...0/features.htm I can get with
16 mb card 16.8 M @ 1600 x 1200 for 3d resolutions which is probably more
than my monitor can handle. So I can't see the extra expense for 32 mb ram..
If anyone can tell me what justifies the additional cost for more Ram then
please do.

[Kruzin]

If you want to use detailed textures in games like UT, you might exceed the 16meg onboard, and the card will have to x-fer some textures to system RAM. Doing this is slower than using the RAM on the card. With 32meg, you are far less likely to use all that memory, eliminating those texture swaps.

You won't see this in most games, but some like UT and Q3 are starting to push the envelope...

[fubardn]

Thanks for quick reply, I have a Diamond Voodoo 2 with 8 mb ram and when I play online I turn off all the eyecandy anyway so I can get a lower ping.. The game runs fine and the picture quality is good enough for me. The problem is I need a good 2d/3d combo card because my MB is being replaced as previously I had onboard SIS6326 agp which took care of my 2d Windows now I am getting a Abit Bp6 Dual CPU MB and therefore no on-board video.. So anything better than a Voodoo 2- 8 MB will suit me a 16 mb G400 will obviously give me better picture quality than the Voodoo 2 won't it ?

[Kruzin]

It will seem like there was an inch of goo on your monitor that got washed away when you compare a V2 with a G400 image-wise...

[impact]

Yes Kruzin, that's pretty accurate description. I myself would have used 'culture shock' to describe that.

[Maggi]

You also gain room for use of triple buffering and 32bit Zbuffer ... both need onboard RAM.

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Cheers,
Maggi

Despite my nickname causing confusion, I am not female ...

[Travis L. Knodel]

DON'T BUY THIS CARD FOR A BP6 SETUP!!!
DON'T BUY THIS CARD FOR A BP6 SETUP!!!
DON'T BUY THIS CARD FOR A BP6 SETUP!!!
DON'T BUY THIS CARD FOR A BP6 SETUP!!!
DON'T BUY THIS CARD FOR A BP6 SETUP!!!
DON'T BUY THIS CARD FOR A BP6 SETUP!!!

Okay, now that I've said that, let me explain.

Check with the other threads about SMP and the G400. It's a total disaster in NT4 and Windows 2000. You will be faced with one of two situations on this board using two processors:

1. Game runs, but will crash when bus mastering is enabled. Disable it and watch as the games slowly pump out frame by frame... almost as fun as watching the turtle cross the road.

2. Game just doesn't run and if it does, the drivers will cause all kinds of tearing and weird artifacts.

Drivers for this card are total shit and Matrox doesn't seem to be responding to the community.

*IF* I were you, I'd got with either a TNT2U or a Geforce depending on what your cash flow is like.

I've been working with this setup for quite a while and no one from Matrox has made an attempt to fix this problem. Otherwise your going to be just as miserable as me and every other Matrox user with SMP.

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Travis L. Knodel
ICQ 5570732

Abit BP6
Dual Celeron 366@523 Mhz
Matrox G400 16MB SH
IBM ATA66 15.2 GB HD w/ 2MB cache
WD UDMA33 4.3 GB POS HD
Acer 40X CD Rom
Memorex 1622 2x2x6 CD-RW
Internal NEC Zip100
Netgear 10/100 Ethernet
Diamond Monster Sound MX300
Altec Lansing ACS 295
Proview 17" Monitor
224 MBs generic PC100 RAM