More tribes / g400 wierdness

[KickASCII]

ok after installing powerdesk 6.01 I went into tribes (open GL setting said matrox g400 @ 16 bit or something to that effect) and lo and behold it actually works. the frame rate was acceptable, but there were a few minor graphic disturbances. I exited the game, installed turbo GL 1.3 and went back in (the open GL setting now said g-400 turboGL or something like that), the frame rate was significantly faster, and the graphic glitches had disappeared but the landscaping was all 'shifty' IE the ground had blotches that changed color. The game didn't lock up , but the crazy shifting ground color more than ruined the increased frame rate. Any suggestions??

my system:

Pentium III 700e @ 933
Abit VA-6
G-400 vanilla
196 megs micron PC133
SB live! value
WD 20.6 gig UDMA66 7200 RPM

[absalom]

Tribes has never performed or looked acceptable untill Matrox released TGL 1.3. Even then, only BX motherboard owners could reap the benefits of TGL with PD5. TGL 1.3 never completely worked with via chipsets untill PD6. Although TGL now actually works with VIA chipsets through PD6, it still has issues. I have a BE6-2 and an asus p3v4x. With the be6-2, I can run tribes with TGL 1.3 and have nice framerates and very little graphical glitches. When I run it on the p3v4x, it's pretty pathetic in terms of speed and quality. Another thing to note is that I've yet to see an ICD that performed worth a crap on either chipsets. Your pretty much still screwed right now by using a VIA chipset with tribes.

There are a few opengl settings in tribes' config file (clientprefs.cs) that can make or break the visuals. You can experiment with them if you choose to. Tribes will try to set them up with it's defaults everytime you mess with the in-game video settings. I personally make this file read-only so it won't do this. The drawback to making it read-only is that you can't permanantly change any of the other tribes settings (i.e. favorites) either. These are the settings I've found to be optimal:

$pref::OpenGL::AlwaysRGBA = "False";
$pref::OpenGL::NoAddFade = "True";
$pref::OpenGL::NoPackedTextures = "False";
$pref::OpenGL::NoPalettedTextures = "False";
$pref::OpenGL::Use32BitTex = "False";

Also to note is that your desktop color depth can have a huge impact on tribes gameplay. If you set your desktop to 16-bit color, expect a major speed increase. But also expect the visuals to deteriorate. The most obvious effect is the stairstepping effect of texture edges in the distance. It is my opinion that tribes doesn't do 16-bit z-buffering well, because I have a geforce2 GTS and it gets the same stairstepping effect at 16-bit depth. Running at 32-bit depth reduces this visual annoyance quite a bit. But you take a fillrate hit with the added 32-bit accuracy. My oc'ed g400max (170/227) will choke bad at 1024x768x32. Hope this enlightens....

[This message has been edited by absalom (edited 14 September 2000).]

[ayoub_ibrahim]

maybe time to update your beta drivers to latest release at matrox site!!

[Roo]

Do what i did go out and spend ur pay packet on a V2 and never buy a matrox again when u have to buy a new card
I PLAIN to ,word of mouth hasen`t done matrox much good round these parts of the woods
I tell everyone to stay we`ll enough away
(using my own experence)
and plain to continue telling anyibe who asks what i think!
nickm@zip.com.au


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AMD k62-400,ASUS p5a m/board,128meg 100mhz SDRAM,Aztech 338-A3D sound
card,win98

[ski]

Hey Roo that was the most stupid answer I ever heard!!! Why the hell would you step back a couple of generations. Yes I know Tribes is a glide game and a 3dfx card would give you the fastest fps and probably the best looking graphics. But because you can't set up a Matrox card to run you your POS system doesn't mean other people can't. I have ran my G400 card in a K6-2 K6-III and an Athlon system and with the right drivers my frame rates have been nothing but great. Learn to set up your shit and tweak you shit!!! Before you start telling people to not buy a produst.

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