What does TurboGL drivers do? (technical stuff)

[antdude]

Kruzin: Yeah that screen shot is just minor. Try the later level, bam all over! In the train level (level 2), the sky had the wrong textures and other walls flickered like heck! I had to refresh the graphic cache.

Quake 2 and HL did this too. TurboGL drivers fixed them.

[Ruslan73]

Very strange problems. I had not such probs in HL, when used PII-350, so think, that this is not SSE problem. Looks like textures cannot be properly drawn because of some driver probs or because of AGP memory shortage.

The fact, that TurboGL had solved this prob in HL, shows that driver problem has highest probability.

Think reinstallation of drivers may help. Or, better, at first try to change AGP apperture size to 256M if it's not set so already. When reinstalling, drivers @ 1st should be deinstalled with Matrox uninstaller, then delete PD*.* files from SYSTEM diectory, Remove Matrox entries from registry, matrox... .inf files from "Windows\inf" and "Windows\inf\Other" directories, reboot and then install matrox 5.52 drivers.

Removing of VooDoo card also will make U sure, that this is not IRQ-sharing problem.

And about resources, Windows 98 SE looks 2 me much more stable and fast than original Windows 98 (but it's just my opinion).

But reinstallation of Windows should be the last way, of course.

Hope this helps.


[This message has been edited by Ruslan73 (edited 18 April 2000).]

[antdude]

Ruslan73: How do I fix or determine the AGP memory shortage?

I already tried uninstalling and reinstalling the Matrox drivers. As for Voodoo, without it still does it.

[Rohde]

I too had a problem which I could swear is exactly the same. It was the same texture flickering/texture-"rainbowsation". (check a shot at http://trsdomain.homepage.dk/quake_bug.jpg)

I posted about it several time, but never got any answer/solution, so my guess is the problem is quite rare. I never got any solution since the TurboGL wasn't around in those days.

It was on my old 333 K6-2 system, but with my Athlon sys. it has gone away.

Torben R.

[antdude]

Rhode: I had that problem in Quake 2. Remember the level you started out from your crashed ship? Those explosions and all those special effects made flickers all over! TurboGL fixed it for me.

Argh! Why do all Quake 2 engines have this problem rather than other games (i.e. X-Wing Alliance, Force Commander [yucky game], UT, Q3A, Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed)? Is it because of the poor OpenGL driver? If so, how come this problem is rare or is everyone having this problem?

Thanks.

[Ruslan73]

2antdude

What version of matrox drivers do U use? And what's about Windows 98? Windows 98 SE or not?

As 4 me, I have no probs with SOF on my machine with Powerdesk 5.52 (W98SE), but may be it's because of my PIII-450.

[IceStorm]

I had to disable the second display because the rule under Winblows 9x is that you cannot use hardware accelerated OpenGL if more than one video adapter is present.

I have a Millennum II in to drive my second display, and the G400 in to drive the primary display. To use the ICD, I have to go into the Display control panel, then Settings, then disable the second head.

[ParaKnowYa]

Hi all,

I'e been playing SoF with the openGL drivers which come with the 5.52 pack and it works without a problem. I'm not sure whether or not my cfg file differs but this game runs perfectly with the full OpenGL drivers. TurboGL drivers for it would be good though, just to try and see which is faster and nicer! =)

regards
PKY

[antdude]

Oh my gosh! I tried disabling the dualhead feature and my games are faster!!!!!!! WHY? I can play SOF at 1024x768 faster! [drools]

Thanks, Icestorm!

[Jazza]

I'm sure I read it somewhere on here, that enableing dual head, halfs the video memory. i.e G400 32Mb, 16Mb on each head. So disableing it would mean more video memory is available

Jazza

[antdude]

Is there a speed improvement, with disabled dualhead, with non-games events? Will it speed up my DVD playbacks? I noticed in WinDVD 2000, it is a little choppy.

I look forwarding to receiving replies.

[This message has been edited by antdude (edited 19 April 2000).]

[ph0rk]

Re: Speed boost from disabling the second head.

From what I understand, the G400 uses 2 128-bit memory buses to form it's "256-bit DualBus." When you are using only one head, then one bus is used for reads, the other for writes. When DualHead is enabled, each head uses one of the memory buses as a normal 128-bit 2-way memory bus. The 32 mb of RAM is also segregated into 2 16 mb pools, one for each head.

So with DualHead enabled, you not only cut your available memory in half, but you also cut your memory bandwidth in half.

I've done some informal game and DVD playback tests with DualHead enabled/disabled on my 32 mb G400 DH, and I noticed a sizable difference in performance with DualHead enabled/disabled.

Of course, this is just my take, and my explaination for the performance difference could also be wrong

Perhaps Gurm or Ant or Kruzin, or one of the other Matrox gurus could provide us with some more information about this. I've not seen many (or any) other threads that deal with this.

Cheers,

Cory

[antdude]

I only notice speed improvements in games. I can't tell with DVD movies and other stuff. Wow, a new reply with an old thread .

I just read one of Raven's plans and the load crash in SOF was fixed. I wonder if it fixed my texture corruptions and flickers. We'll see.

[This message has been edited by antdude (edited 13 June 2000).]

[ph0rk]

I guess it's possible that I could have been imagining the difference in DVD playback. We do tend to see what we want to see, after all...

It was definately there in 3D games, however.

Wow, I didn't realize this thread was over 2 months old. But I guess since it's in the FAQ Forum, it will see a lot of traffic over time, anyways.

Cheers,

Cory

[antdude]

Woah! The new v6.0 beta driver fixed SOF's corrupted and flickering textures. Now, I can get back to it!

However, Half-Life v1.1.0.0 and its addons still have issues...

With the new v6.0 beta drivers (CS = CounterStrike v6.5 beta; OF = Opposing Force v1.1.0.0):

With TurboGL:
CS mod v6.5 doesn't work very well. I get corrupted texts and graphics in the maps big time. It no longer kicks me to desktop like in 5.x drivers.
OF has no texture glitches as far as I noticed.

Without TurboGL
CS mod v6.5 works on the first map. However when I try a new map, I get corrupted textures on walls.

OF has texture glitches a few seconds later, especially after hitting esc to menu and back to game. It's mainly on walls.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!