G400 still sux fer Tribes!

[Orion_UK]

Ok,so the new Turbo driver works properly, and it gives good frame rates! (75ish at 800x600 with an Athlon 700) BUT
Its laggy!
I'm on ISDN and it plays like a modem!
Firing delay, jerky animation, lag.
Both my ATI Rage and Voodoo 2 play better, even at lower frame rates!!
Matrox still got summat SERIOUSLY wrong with these drivers.
Hmmph!

[Rags]

Hmmm...there must be something wrong on your end, I am doing just fine with it on my trusty 56K.

Rags

[absalom]

Yeah man, your high on crack if you think TGL is slow in tribes in any aspect, especially with your specs. This thing rules for tribes now, and it even puts my SLI to shame. Make sure you set your network settings up correctly. Tribes will run fine on an ISDN even with the default modem setting... there's no shame there at all. The only time tribes is ever jerky (for me) is when your dropping packets like crazy and have a 500+ ping. If your setup for an extreme connection (LAN settings on a modem), then Tribes will geek out on you. Tribe's network code is based on some serious prediction so it's very hpb friendly as it is. Your framerate in tribes isn't tied into your connection speed like an id software game is. More than likely your isp sucks or something isn't configured right.

I have a CuMine @ 834, g400max, and a USR 56k. I play tribes at 1024x768x16 and have pings averaging 220-300ms. I have almost NO complaints with this game and a g400 anymore. I can barely even notice the texture thrashing when going from inside to outside anymore. On my old celery it was quite noticable. I'm also convinced now that with a fast cpu, there is no need for a voodoo2 card over anything thrown at the g400. The image quality of the voodoo2 is totally pathetic... especially on a 21" monitor. Speedwise, my SLI can't compete with my g400 in any current 3d engine, even if it's turbo-charged with glide. Tribes was its last foothold... and now that is no longer the case. Thank you matrox driver team for your TGL effort.

[This message has been edited by absalom (edited 04 March 2000).]

[vanguardian1]

Play with the v-sync setting, that sometimes affects lag during gameplay....

[Smiff]

absalom

Just wondering: what was the original clock & bus speed of your CPU?

Thanks

[absalom]

Smiff, it's a P3 600E.... I just got it. I'm running a 143 bus stable right now. I think this is far as I'm going to get with my abit bx6-2 if it's not the cpu limiting me further. I KNOW it's not the ram. My ram is unnofficially pc150 rated.

[Barbarian1[DOA]]

I have played a lot of Tribes using 2 voodoo2/SLI Piii-450 128 megs of ram G400(non-max)

While the new TGL is certainly playable (yahoo!), there are still areas in certain maps where there is a problem. The lower entrance in the standard map Broadside studders quite noticably by the inventory station. This is a big deal to me since it affects gameplay, which is the most important thing for me.

There are also a lot of white specks I believe people call 'artifacts' constantly on the screen. Annoying from a visual standpoint, but doesn't affect gameplay, so I can live with that. Hasn't anyone else noticed this?

IMO the voodoo2's still do a better job for Tribes. If you only have a G400/G400max, Tribes is now -very- playable, and looks good despite the artifacts, but I'll probably put my V2's back in if only for Tribes. My voodoo2/SLI still has the better gameplay @ 1024x768.

I agree with the previous comments about having proper net settings, but the studders also occur when I host w/o any connection.

Hopefully Tribes-2 will be out soon which will have D3D, and then I will finally remove my V2's from my machine.

[Orion_UK]

hmm, think half the problem is that Vsync is OFF whatever you do!
Its prolly the tearing that I'm seeing and not liking.
Why doesnt the PD5 reg settings fer vsync work?

[absalom]

The reghacks, to my knowledge, only work for direct3d. In opengl, v-sync is controlled through the driver via the game engine. If the game engine supports the correct opengl extention for swap control, and your driver also supports it, then you have a chance for controlling and/or enabling v-sync. In tribes it's just a toggle like anything else. In an id engine, it's a cvar (r_swapinterval). I don't think TGL correctly does v-sync (as I've noticed), and the ICD doesn't perform in Tribes very well either... so your kind of stuck for now.

"Tearing", to me, is VERY hard to see at high framerates. I can notice it at 30 fps if I spin around real quick. But at 60 fps, it's almost impossible to see, even if you spin around like crazy just to amplify the effect.

[absalom]

A good way to prove that TGL doesn't really support v-sync is to start up quake2 without turbogl. Notice the opengl initialization output at the console. It will list all the support opengl extensions that quake2 will try to use. Notice the WGL_EXT_swap_control? That's a clear sign that you will get v-sync. Now put turbogl back in quake2 and load it up the same. There is no listing of any swap control. It's pretty obvious in any id software engine that TGL doesn't do v-sync.