90FPS and it's so jerky

[Liquid Snake]

Hmm. But TurboGL doesn't work under Win2k. Well, if you're happy with the FPS, I guess you're OK. And no more jerkiness, right? But what exactly solved it? Did you try backing the clock back down? Or was it really Win2K? Don't make a bunch of changes at once, you can't see which one solved your problem.

[DuRaNgO[MU]]

perhaps win2k reloaded the SbLive! drivers
or not
jim

[Smiff]

Lol I just got the funniest reply over on the Matrox gaming forum. I posted my test results showing the performance nose-dive in 5.10, and here's what they said:

Unfortunately, Tech Support does not do any benchmarking.

lmao That's got to be the best support response of all time. I'm speechless

[Smiff]

Liquid Snake,

Erm I agree with not making loads of changes at once and I really would like to know what was causing the problem, but I've got a LAN party this weeked and now I'll be able to kick some booty so that's what matters right?! Also, er, how exactly do I install a new operating system without making lots of changes at once?! My clock speeds are just the same as before, Win2k seems happy (touch massive amounts of wood) And most importantly, the jerkiness is gone yay!


Durango,

I didn't load any SBlive drivers, should I get some from Creative? The sound just worked (magic!)


Cheers guys

[Smiff]

OK things are going well

'Poota has been up for two days now without a crash, this is amazing

Yesterday I noticed that MGAtweak wasn't applying the clock rate changes as it claimed to be (why not?!), so I remembered about a utility "PowerStrip" and tried that. Then I found that PowerStrip can set refresh rates! yay! I like it much better than Matrox's controls too

So by turning on gl_ztrick, and getting the clock rate up, and turning off v-sync, i'm up from 53 to 66 FPS in my little demo! That's faster than WinME/PD6/TGL!

So right now (touch wood!) my poota seems to be faster, smoother and more stable than it has ever been before Grooooovy.

Just a few niggles left:
[list=1][*]Why is 5.10 so much slower for me? Will Matrox fix this? I don't want to be stuck with 5.04 forever! (even with Powerstip...)
[*]Texture corruption. This used to happen to me a while back in Win98 but I'd forgotten about it with newer drivers. Now it's back and it's bad I'm running at the same clock speeds as I did in Win98, maybe I need to go lower for some reason?
[*] Dynamic Lighting problems (maybe related to the texture corruption problem?), i.e. maps which use dynamic lighting effects show severe distortion - big black blotches which come and go. It's worse than it sounds, really makes it hard to play sometimes.
[*] Mouse movement in Win2k doesn't seem quite right. It feels a bit jerky and lagged. Nothing to do with Matrox of course but any ideas please? [/list=a]

Thanks again everyone We're nearly there!

Smiff

[Smiff]

OK scrap numbers (2) and (3), this appears to be a fault with the maps, which the Matrox drivers aren't handling properly. So most maps are ok, it's not a big deal, but it makes things interesting for the maps that are affected! I'll get some screenshots to show you what I'm talking about.

Only two problems then
[list=1][*]PD5.10 so sloooow[*]Mouse movement in game a bit jerky. Also messed up (yes you guessed it - jerky!) in windows after exiting HL. Required restart of Win2k to restore to normal. This is annoying!

and i'll add one more:
[*]Half-Life sometimes crashes with an error saying "no error"! what the hell?! Might be happening as a result of disconnection from ISP, or might be causing the disconnection. Hmm. Probably not Matrox-related but maybe someone here will know what that's about [/list=a]

Thanks alot for any tips, this is minor stuff compared to the trouble I was having before

Smiff

[Ali]

That mouse thing in Win2000 might be your USB resourses being capped. Im on a 98 machine here at the moment, so cant quite remember, but in control panel somewhere there is a way to set the bandwidth for different USB devices. If you are using a PS/2 mouse, then ignore this.

About the lines on half life, have you downloaded the patch thingee from microsoft? It fixes lots of problems with lots of games. Cant remember what its called, but have a look around the live update site.

With your winME pause problem, try running msconfig from the start>run menu. Go over to "start up' and turn off all the crap that you dont want. (works on 98SE, dont know about ME).

Another thing, your SCSI card is designed to share IRQ with Video (strange but true). So if you want/need to you can set them up togeather.

Good luck

Ali

[Liquid Snake]

Hey Smiff, can you send me your little demo? I'd like to see what fps I'm getting. I think my settings are screwed somewhere. My friend just got a G400MAX, and he is getting better fps. He runs 1024x768, I run 800x600. I have a P3-750, he has a P2-450.

[Smiff]

Righty then

• Mouse problem sorted (i'm not going to say what the problem was, too embarassing )
• HL crash problems not sortable - bug in HL, Valve need to fix this I guess.

[*]Lots of Matrox driver issues remaining, though none are critical.


I've found the best quality/speed balance is to run with 32 bit zbuffer and gl_ztrick 1. It looks pretty damn fine to me


Ali,
Yeah it's PS2 but never mind i've got it sorted now Good tip about the patch, didn't help HL but did get lots of other games working BTW those lines are a known bug in Matrox's drivers (I know now). I tried disabling all startup items, doesn't help (i think this is an actuall hardware conflict, or WinME lacking proper multi-tasking like 2k has). Good tip about the SCSI irq sharing, v. usefull to know, thanks!

Liquid Snake,
My demo is very boring but for comparison you're welcome to grab it here. It's just a quick solo run into cs_assualt that I did in a hurry, but I choose this map for it's high r_speeds so it shows up hardware weaknesses OK. Better though to use a demo with explosions, smoke etc. (The matrox drivers handle smoke grenades shockingly badly speed wise )


Sooooo... well I guess that brings this epic of a thread to a close, unless anyone has anything else to add?

Hey, you've been a wonderfull audience! Good morning, good evening and good night.

Smiff

(nah, that's not really the end, I'll be back tomorrow with another problem...

[This message has been edited by Smiff (edited 14 July 2000).]

[Liquid Snake]

Thanks Smiff. I'll see if my hardware has any actual problems.

And I finally got TurboGL to work (yay!). Seems my opengl cfg was at fault. And yes, it is about 15-20fps faster! So now I've got to go through my opengl cfg (it's based on Kruzin's cfg, with some options added to improve visual quality).

[Freddy Jones]

I don't want to sound Dumb but how do u actually see your frame rate in Quake 3, Half Life and UT

[xortam]

Just look at the speedometer that's mounted by the G400 chip.

[Freddy Jones]

What Speedometer??
Where??

[Sgt. Matrox]

I think you need to take the case off to see it

[xortam]

Freddy, when/where was your card made? What's the model number? Maybe you got stuck with one of those that didn't ship with the meter. You might be able to ask for an exchange