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My thoughts about PD 5.13 and problems so far - Haig?

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  • My thoughts about PD 5.13 and problems so far - Haig?

    After formatting my hard drive and doing a clean install of win 98, PD 5.13 and Dx 6.1 (so no old drivers conflicts are possible) here´s the situation:

    2D

    Excelent: Finally I can see my scanner´s preview (it is stored in some *.dib file). I couldn´t with 4.51, but all drivers prior to 4.51 worked fine. It took several months, but finally my main problem is fixed.
    2D seems more stable indeed, I have not yet seen the garbled mouse icons I was used to with 4.51. Resolutions and colour depth changes are ok also (some ocasional image garbling with prior drivers).
    I find the PD 5.13 monitor customization less user friendly. That´s a personal opinion, of course.

    D3D

    Very good: I found a speed increase in many D3D games. Forsaken biodome demo 640x480 went up 10 fps, Tomb Raider 3 is now perfectly smooth at 1024x768x16, Toca 2 is running perfectly and even smoother than before at 1024x768x16. Unreal 225f D3d is fixed too: I could´t enable vertex lighting with the previous drivers, some polygons just turned black in some viewing angles, now is just fine. And just a curiosity: that S3 photo realistic level for unreal (DmS3Gallery) now runs fine - before all the textures were corrupted - so I guess these drivers have better texture management.
    Oh and maybe I am wrong, but I guess trilinear speed filtering is up too (74% of bilinear now, 70% before, mesured with 3dmark). Still nothing to be proud of, wasn´t G200 suposedly capable of doing trilinear for free?

    OpenGL
    Poor: Quake2 lost 3 fps in demo1, texture corruption and flashing textures occur randomly. Half-life works but also with this random texture corrution and flasing textures. HL speed now exceeds slightly the D3d mode: 25.5 fps OGl vs 24 fps D3d in 800x600x16 blowout timedemo).
    This texture corruption (you can see the discussion about it in Gaming forum - "HL + new drivers. Any problems?") apear to go away if you change the resolution: it is always present when the game starts at whatever resolution, but if you change it and resume the game, it´s fine. It eventually shows up again later, the same procedure fixes it again. Strange, at least...
    GlHexen II is not working!! it just displays a black screen and freezes. It works with the wrapper and worked with ICD beta1 and beta2.
    Sin demo and Unreal OpenGl now work very good, both didn´t before with previous ICD´s.

    Sorry for the long post, but here´s the sum of 2 days lost trying to get this g200 working. Just trying to give some user feedback about the drivers. Any thougths are welcome.

    Thanks.

    Ps: Sorry, forgot my system specs: Celeron 300a @ 450, abit BX-6, bios JL, 96 Mb Pc100 SDRam, SB awe 32, isa rockwell 33.6 modem, generic isa 8 bit scsi board (scanner), HDD Fujitsu 6.4 Gb, Cdrom Phillips 40x, Matrox Millennium G200 8 Mb Sgram, bios 2.3, PD 5.13. Running Win98, IE 5.0, Dx 6.1.



    [This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 07-05-99).]

  • #2
    Hi Nuno,

    I should scroll down more often

    1 - Monitor section takes abit of getting used to. I personally didn't like it at first but it grew on with time

    2 - Texture management - We did fix it up a bit, but we are still working on this mainly for the ICD. Same goes for trilinear filtering.

    Thanks for the feedback.

    On a different note to all, Zoran will be sending me an official explanation about the blue screens that some of you have been getting. Once I get it, I'll send it off to Ant and Chris.

    This has something to do with their CSS protection being very picky. Whenever you get a BSOD during installation of zoran, this is because their app is searching for debuggers during the installation. If a debugger is running, it will crash. If some driver has left over debugger files open, it will crash.

    They have found a few debugging dll's being left open from Creative Drivers and 3comm drivers. They have notified Creative and 3comm and according to Zoran, both these companies will be releasing new drivers.

    3comm already released a stripped down version of their drivers which has fixed this.

    Haig

    Comment


    • #3
      PMFJI, but can I ask question related to the Matrox Monitor setup?

      Why are there different refresh rates for different color depths at the same resolution? I've never heard of a monitor that supported a certain refresh rate but only at certain color depths. Is that the reason?

      Also, please consider bringing back the "collapse separate color depths" to the PD monitor setup. Without that I have 44 separate display modes to setup. Ouch!

      Thanks,
      Steve

      Comment


      • #4
        Dear Haig,

        If you really want to know what problems I encountered with my 5.13 drivers during my four days LAN party with friends (from 9.30am to 7.30pm almost non stop!).

        2D:

        It fixed some of the few non annoying bugs I had, like garbled icons in the scandisk, black box under the cursor after exiting Rainbow6.

        DirectX:
        Nice speed boost sawn in 3dmark, didn't see them in games because they all already ran fine in 1024x768.

        OPENGL:
        10fps boost in Quake2!!!!! It yet rans at 38fps in 640x480x16.
        I can now play HL and TFC at 1024x768 OGL instead of 640x480 DX.
        The only problem I encountered was those flashy textures that came after a while of playing (kind of one or two hours ;-))

        Verdict:
        You saved my 4 days LAN party ;-)
        Had the ability to frag my deadlyest friend easyer due to the increased frame rate in Q2 and TFC. I did not get any BSOD nor crash in one long week of intense gaming!
        That's a success.

        Idea for the next driver:
        Fix that stupid flashing textures.
        Give me ten more fps in Q2 ;-)

        Thanks, Vlip

        Comment


        • #5
          Oups forgot to give my system specs:

          AMD K6-III 420, 128mb PC100, Asus P5-A, G200 8mb, SB Live Value, ...

          Comment


          • #6
            Cool

            Is this the public counter part of the BetaBoyz ?

            Anyway, good job, dudes !

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

            Asus P2B-S @ 112MHz FSB * Celeron300A @ 504MHz
            Heavily boosted by the Millenium G400 32MB SGRAM DualHead




            Comment


            • #7
              I just installed my G400 32MB, D-H yesterday and installed it using PD5.13 without any problems. Photoshop, Bryce, Ray Dream Studio, Painter 5 are all working great. Contrast and color are better than with the G200 and did I say faster.
              As far as games go the flashing textures in Q2 that I had with the G200 and 5.13 are gone with the G400. The only problem I had was with Q3 Test. It worked great until I changed it to 32bit color. The whole screen became corrupted. I still need some time to sort that one out as it could just be something in my system causing that.

              Paul

              ------------------
              PII450, SE440BX, 192MB PC100, MILL G400-32MB on BNC, Quantum3D Obsidian2 X-24 on D-sub, 21"Trinitron, SCSI CDR/RW, SCSI ZIP, WN98
              and a (Very Messy Desk);oP















              "Never interfere with the enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself"

              Comment


              • #8
                Hi there

                Haig: Thank you for your attention. I´m glad to see that you are concerning for the end users problems. Keep up the good work! Just make sure that those coming drivers are easier to install, these (5.13) were a real pain for sure! - Altough that new unninstaller should take care of it.

                Maggi: Hi! No, not a BetaBoy here , just a regular end user giving some feedback, and pleased for being listened...
                About the "BetaBoyz", I agree 100% with that. I´m sure you and the others beta-testers are doing an excelent and usefull job for all of us, matrox users. Just don´t listen to those exalted people that pop up sometimes and keep post stupid and useless statements.
                Just waiting for the G400 to hit the stores here too!

                Paul: I am also experiencing that screen corruption in Q3 test with my g200. I can mess arround with graphics setting, but when I change 16->32 bit or from 32->16 bit mode the screen always gets corrupted. I have to reset. Next time I start up Q3test all works fine.

                Comment


                • #9
                  The Q3test 32 corrupt issue appears to be wide spread for G200 and G400 users. The workaround is to set the options you want, then exit the game and restart. The problem goes away.

                  Dave
                  Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Thanks Hele, I try that when I get home.

                    I'm still at work having G400 withdrawls

                    Paul
                    "Never interfere with the enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself"

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      You don't have to leave the game...just alt+enter to get it into a window, make your option changes, then alt+enter back to full screen
                      Core2 Duo E7500 2.93, Asus P5Q Pro Turbo, 4gig 1066 DDR2, 1gig Asus ENGTS250, SB X-Fi Gamer ,WD Caviar Black 1tb, Plextor PX-880SA, Dual Samsung 2494s

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Here's something I've noted during some testings with Win9x PD5 and NT PD4 OGL and would like them to be fixed:

                        1. GLQuake/GLQWCL's (0.98/2.33-0005) dynamic lights. <a href="http://www.netppl.fi/~tumu/icdpics/glqw00.jpg">[image1]</a> Also GLQWCL crashes when trying to start in fullscreen. And some weird refresh rate problems (white stripes and textures flashing black) when ALT-TABbing in GLQuake if GLQuake and desktop have different refresh rates (640x480 in 120Hz and 1024x768 in 85Hz).
                        2. Busy-icon in GLQuake/GLQWCL on NT PD4 OGL. It draws on desktop and not in window area.
                        3. Quake 2's thrashed textures and hud-displays when stallups happen during high polycounts. <a href="http://www.netppl.fi/~tumu/icdpics/quake01.jpg">[image2]</a> <a href="http://www.netppl.fi/~tumu/icdpics/quake02.jpg">[image3]</a> <a href="http://www.netppl.fi/~tumu/icdpics/quake03.jpg">[image4]</a> <a href="http://www.netppl.fi/~tumu/icdpics/quake04.jpg">[image5]</a> Crashes with "GLimp_EndFrame() - SwapBuffers() failed!" when in fullscreen and ALT-TAB is used.
                        4. Half-Life's thrashed textures similar to Quake 2.

                        Haig, can you pass the word for these problems to the programmers?

                        And let's throw some benchmarks too:

                        GLQWCL 2.33-0005 and overkill.qwd in 640x480x16bit window because fullscreen crashes into black screen.
                        gl_picmip 1, gl_playermip 1, gl_polyblend 0, gl_texturemode GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST with sounds

                        27.6 fps with r_dynamic 0 and gl_flashblend 1 (without rainbows)
                        20.6 fps with r_dynamic 1 and gl_flashblend 0 (with rainbows)

                        Quake 2
                        crusher.dm2, gl_picmip 0, gl_playermip 1, gl_flashblend 0, gl_polyblend 0, gl_texturemode "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST", vid_fullscreen 1 with sounds

                        640x480x16bit 20.5 fps
                        800x600x16bit 16.8 fps
                        1024x768x16bit 8.2 fps

                        -Tumu, gettin' jiggy with it.

                        --
                        Celeron 333 (not overclocked), GigaByte 6BXE Intel 440BX AGPset Mobo (bios v3.0, does AGP 2x fine), 64MB PC100 RAM, G200 8MB SGRAM (not overclocked, bios v1.6), PD5.13.020, SB16 Value

                        Celeron 333 (not overclocked), GigaByte 6BXE Intel 440BX AGPset (bios v3.4),
                        64MB PC100 RAM, nVidia TNT2 32M (was G200 AGP 8MB SGRAM), SB Live! Value LW3.1, 3COM Fast EtherLink XL, Sony Multiscan 100ES, HP8210i
                        Win98 finnish

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Tumu-
                          What happens if you switch to linear_mipmap_linear ?

                          This is the setting I have always used in both Q2 and HL. I have seen a very occasional corrupt texture with my G200, but not to the extent you have. Perhaps this might help...
                          Core2 Duo E7500 2.93, Asus P5Q Pro Turbo, 4gig 1066 DDR2, 1gig Asus ENGTS250, SB X-Fi Gamer ,WD Caviar Black 1tb, Plextor PX-880SA, Dual Samsung 2494s

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            test...grr, i can't seem to post anything...and how do i become a "Member" instead of a "Junior Member"?

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Hallo all, this is my first post here, even if I'm reading you since 2-3 months.
                              Just giving some feedback to the 5.13 ICD.
                              I finally got a G400 SH 16 MB here in Italy and I must admit, it's a damn good card.
                              BUT, as stated in this thread, the 5.13 ICD wreaked havoc in my Q2
                              Not only it's awfully dark compared to all other cards I tested, but the dynamic lightning is completely messed up... when you fire a rocket trough a tunnel, all textures involved in the dynamic lightning process are totally messed up with every kind of possible color, then they revert back as normal when the rocket disappears
                              This makes the game unplayable, I was forced to kill the dynamic lightning but I'll prefer if Matrox fixes this in the ICD, can you?

                              D3D has no problems, Q3Test has no problems exept it gives a GPF when trying to switch to 1600x1200, all other modes are ok; remember to fix the 16-bit z-buffer, it causes strange effects on tight objects (like stairs becoming black).

                              My PC is: p2 450, 128 mb ram, sony PST 21" monitor, HD IBM EIDE 10.1 Gb, CD SCSI Ultraplex 40x, SB Live!, SpeedStream ATM 25 ADSL card, SOLTEK BX board.

                              Hope this may help, I really want this card performing in OGL as it performs in D3D, and I'm sure you there at Matrox want it, too

                              Waiting for 5.14 and good work,

                              Nereid


                              [This message has been edited by Nereid (edited 07-09-99).]

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