Technical Question about G200

[nehalmistry]

OK.... when i play games for eg... halflife i notice that the fps goes from 50fps from a low detail scene to about a crappy 8fps during action... this happens to other games... although to a lesser extent...

My question is....
what is causing it..
is it
1. The really REALLY crappy architecture of the G200 chip
2. The low amount of ram i have (64)
3. My cpu (k6-300)

what im getting to is if i get lets say a voodoo banshee or a tnt (not that im planning to)... will it go faster...

if not... what would the problem be.... im just curious about all this.

[Maggi]

Mostly 2 & 3 ...

Do you know the benchmark Tirtanium ?

In its results viewer's database you'll find my good old Mystique G200 kicking some serious buds ...

Drop me a note if need a link ...

------------------
Cheers,
Maggi

Despite my nickname causing confusion, I am not female ...

[Marvel]

Hey negalmistry, your g200 is not pure shit
But i think that the matrox ICD for opengl is pure shit !
My g200 (+ Asus K7m + Athlon 650 Mhz + 64 MO) on 3Dmark99 800*600 : 3400
And most of the games based on Direct3D are playable with comfortable fps but on games like Quake3, even with a fast setting i've got only ~~20 fps !!!
Don't blame your card but matrox techs !

[Maggi]

When the drivers are shit, then tell me how come I got +4400 3D Marks in 3D Mark 99 MAX on that mentioned Mystique ?

That was run on a Cel333A@500 ... I guess your setup is somewhat screwed.

[Marvel]

Oh shit !

Maggi, after reading your reply

...I'm a little depressed... ( !

There is something important, i've only 64 MO ram.
Maybe that makes the difference ?
(i have to find something to comfort myself !)

I use PD 5.52, directX 7, agp miniport last version...
Can anyone really tell me if 3400 on 3Dmark is a ridiculous score with my config ?

[Alec]

My guess is that it´s none of the choices you have given us.
The bottleneck of the G200, for me, is the puny 8 Mb of video memory. When a game exhausts all of the local memory, the card starts AGP texturing, which makes things slower. You can override the 8 Mb limit (you can play a game at 1280x1024 with 32-bit color and triple buffering), but it´s going to be a real slideshow. If you keep things below the 8 Mb limit, G200 is a beauty. I´m sure that if I upgrade to 16 Mb, things will be faster.
Of course, system RAM and the processor are very important too. I don´t think that the G200 has a crappy arquitecture. It´s fast enough for its age and the image quality is awesome. In 2D it still surpasses the Voodoo 3 3000.

My specs:
INTEL CELERON 433,
G200 SD 8MB AGP (BIOS 2.6),
INTEL ATLANTA 440LX BIOS rev.15
SOUNDBLASTER PCI 128
128 MB SDRAM
AGP aperture size 256 MB
Latest Powerdesk and DirectX
Win98 SE
AGP 1x (not forced)
(no overclocking)

Quake 3 reaches 45 fps max, average 22 fps: Best textures, 800x600, 16 bit textures and color, low sound quality.

[This message has been edited by Alec (edited 06 March 2000).]

[nehalmistry]

sorry i didnt reply for a while... was busy

maggi: where can i get this tirtainium or whatever 3d benchmark program

marvel: yes.... im also pretty confident that the ram is part of it... i only have 64 too... i heard of ppl that upgrade their ram and see a huge differencce