Optimizing OpenGL/3D Graphics on G400 Marvel?

[TurboCMinus]

(Marvel G400, Win98FE)

I used to have a Graphics Blaster Riva TNT1 card, before I got my Matrox Marvel G400 (which says it has TNT2). Not certain, but it seems like the 3D performance is actually SLOWER?? How can I optimize? I tried installing detonator drivers, upon which it told me it didn't see any nVidia cards installed. I thought TNT2 made it nVidia... anyway... any advice?

[Maggi]

uhm, I don't know which dragon you're riding, but:

TNT 1& 2 => NVidia
Marvel => Matrox

so why in the world are you trying to install NVidia drivers on a Matrox GFX card ???

Who says the Matrox Marvel G400 would have a TNT2 ???

[Chrono_Wanderer]

ROFLMAO!!!

So Matrox didn't learn the lesson after m3d?

I would like to see a tri-head parhelia using a radeon 9800PRO

[TurboCMinus]

Well apparently it was false advertising by the people that sold me the card. At any rate, what can I do to speed up its 3D performance? Don't you think it should have better 3D performance than a 16M TNT1?

[Chrono_Wanderer]

Assuming you have Windows 98FE/SE/ME...

Make sure you have the latest drivers. Unfortunately, Matrox stop making drivers for the Marvel lines since it's discontinued...

Graphics Drivers: PowerDesk 6.28:
ftp.matrox.com/pub/mga/archive/win_9x/2001/w9x_628.exe


Video Tools: 1.55.043
ftp.matrox.com/pub/mga/archive/win_9x/2001/w9x_vt155e.exe

Side note: I have never used any marvels before, but does anybody has luck using the G450 eTV drivers (PDesk 6.82) with Marvel G400TV

[Chrono_Wanderer]

Originally posted by TurboCMinus
Well apparently it was false advertising by the people that sold me the card. At any rate, what can I do to speed up its 3D performance? Don't you think it should have better 3D performance than a 16M TNT1?

For your information, any graphics solutions after the extremly ancient m3d (an add-on for the first-generation Matrox graphics cards), Matrox have been designing their graphics cards from top-to-bottom, including their MGA Graphics processors, PCB, and drivers (of course except for RAMs and discreet electronic components ). That's the beauty of Matrox: full quality control to the end user.

When the pre-Millenniums were around, nVIDIA was like nothing . AAAHHH the good old days. hehe

edit: o yea. IMO the G400 line was better than the TNT2 lines anyways.

[DrP]

Running 588.061 + VT2.10a here on a marvel 400 just fine. Didn't even have to edit the .inf to install.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

5.88!!! i haven't been hexing the drivers lately. but i thought those drivers refuse to work with Marvels.

Okay. My bad.

[TurboCMinus]

Originally posted by DrP
Running 588.061 + VT2.10a here on a marvel 400 just fine. Didn't even have to edit the .inf to install.

Under what OS? And did you notice any kind of improvement for doing so?

[Maggi]

Originally posted by TurboCMinus
Under what OS? And did you notice any kind of improvement for doing so?

5.xx drivers are for Win2k & XP

you should go for 6.xx drivers, listed under W98

Also, make sure you use the uninstaller standalone to get rid of previous drivers.
ftp://ftp.matrox.com/pub/mga/utils/pd_unin201.exe

This utility is used to uninstall all Matrox software, including display drivers, Powerdesk software and video capture/editing software ("Matrox Video Tools") in Windows 95, 98, ME, NT and 2000.

Finally, running W98, you should give the Marvel an own dedicated IRQ of 9 or above through your BIOS setup, for making it work properly.

[MovingBox]

Hey!

The Game Speed is a matter of the CPU.
You have a faster CPU as let's say an AMD 1800+ to run bigger games of today.
I have experienced that Max Payne with an AMD1600+ run faster on my G400max as with a NVIDIAG2MX400-64MB card in the same PC, in 32bit and better qualtity mode. I think that's not so bad for the G400max (and the smaller brother's ;--)) and with faster CPU's it will be more ....

[Nowhere]

yeah, what about smaller brothers with 16mb of ram?

[TurboCMinus]

Originally posted by MovingBox
Hey!

The Game Speed is a matter of the CPU.
You have a faster CPU as let's say an AMD 1800+ to run bigger games of today.
I have experienced that Max Payne with an AMD1600+ run faster on my G400max as with a NVIDIAG2MX400-64MB card in the same PC, in 32bit and better qualtity mode. I think that's not so bad for the G400max (and the smaller brother's ;--)) and with faster CPU's it will be more ....

Umm. Not to be rude, but not only is that something everyone already knows (or believes), it's not even that accurate. With insufficient RAM or a poor video card (or other factors like bad drivers, bloated OS, etc), even a fast CPU will be crippled for gaming. At any rate, this is not the issue here. I am running a OpenGL demo that I designed. Everything is the exactly same as before when I had my TNT1, except that now I have more RAM. And the demo seems to run significantly slower with the Marvel G400. I remember the detonator drivers working wonders for the TNT1 speed, so I was looking for a similar solution here. Maybe the Matrox doesn't have as good hardware OpenGL processing? That might just be it. I'll try people's suggestions though.

[TurboCMinus]

Originally posted by Maggi
5.xx drivers are for Win2k & XP

you should go for 6.xx drivers, listed under W98

Also, make sure you use the uninstaller standalone to get rid of previous drivers.
ftp://ftp.matrox.com/pub/mga/utils/pd_unin201.exe


Finally, running W98, you should give the Marvel an own dedicated IRQ of 9 or above through your BIOS setup, for making it work properly.

I already have installed the 6.28 drivers and 1.55 video tools as listed as "most recent" for my setup. The Marvel is already assigned to IRQ11. I do notice that 11 is also listed with "IRQ Holder For PCI Steering" in Control Panel. I hope that isn't something that would interfere or slow down the video card. Do you think it could be that the Marvel is somehow slower at processing OpenGL than the true TNT1 I had? That's all I can figure out.

[Maggi]

usually the G400 should be on par with a TNT-2 and the G400MAX should match a TNT2-Ultra

it's been quite q while since I had to deal with W98 and G-series cards, but as I posted, make sure you don't have any traces of previous drivers left over on your system and therefore you should run th euninstaller at least once and reiinstall the drivers.

the IRQ holder should not cause any problems, but other cards like NICs or soundcards that use the same IRQ as the Marvel, most likely will cause problems, ranging from slowdowns to complete system instability.

Btw, what DirectX version are you using ?

Lastly, the OpenGL ICDs from Matrox have become interchangable between different OS'es, meaning you could manually extract the ICD from the very last driver release and replace the older on that came with your W98 drivers.

Procedure:
- extract driver's archive
- open g400icd.dl_ using WinZip
- extract resulting g400icd.dll
- find previously installed g400icd.dll
- replace it with new one

hope that helps ...