Did Matrox per accident listen to us?

[franksch3]

Did they? They now released new drivers within two weeks and a BETA driver. Although the BETA driver is removed at the moment. But lets keep up the good work Matrox.

Now on to benchmarking and playing. ;-)

[Narph]

It appears that they might actually be starting to listen, and believe me, no one is more suprised than me.

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Real men don't spend 20 minutes writing a .sig

[Haig]

I don't think that we make accidents do we ?

Haig

[Snake-Eyes]

I think it's a very good thing that you've begun making the beta drivers available to the public. Most other companies have been doing this for a while. I'm sure most of us understand that this is a BETA, so there may be problems. Even so, if we have questions, and you don't have time to answer- that's what forums like this and the newsgroups are for anyway, right? Keep up the good work Matrox. You're definitely on the right track now.

Just one minor note, Haig:
Might want to see about getting a short readme file included with beta drivers/icd- basically a disclaimer- you know, the usual stuff, this is an unsupported beta, use at your own risk, yadda, yadda. Could be included with any betas that are made available without being rewritten if it's done right the first time.

Anyway- a second Way to Go! for this developement (both the drivers and the beta).

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Ace

[Himself]

Beta, release, I can't really tell the difference myself.

[paulcs]

Matrox has released quite a few beta drivers in the past. During the second half of last year, between the drivers that shipped with the first batch of G200's and PD ver. 4.51, we were seeing on average two updates a month, many of them betas. It was quite remarkable.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[cjolley]

Haig,
There is realy a very good PR reason to have a beta driver available at all times. That is that the very same people who flog you about flaws they find in drivers (and there will always be something) would be the first to DL and install the betas.
The point is not that the flaws they found would help you the way the BetaBoz do (though it might help some). But, that they would shut up! After all, what would they say? "I have all my pci slots full, I'm overcklocked, and I'm running 12 background programs. Why won't these POS BETA drivers work?". There is no doubt that this would reduce the noise level in these forums and Matrox's support organization.
chuck


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Oh, No! no sig yet!

[Nuno]

I don´t see that much usefulness for beta releases. If they are beta, they have problems, or they haven´t been properly tested, otherwise they would be released as a "normal" version.

That beta ICD is fun, undoubtly, oh yeah, 7-10 more fps in quake2, 2-3 fps more in half-life, 26 fps again in q3demo1 (1024 all on, but then again 5.13 did it also and it is broken in 5.2x). BUT it has severe problems in half-life (texture corruption, memory leakage) and the graphical quality in q2 isn´t that good. If you watch carefully there are some glitches.

So I don´t agree with beta versions being available neither alowed to be tested while in developement because:

1- They generaly have problems, and I surely prefer stability over performance.

2- They tend to create false expectations (as 5.13.21 did when benchmarked some time ago by independent sites). Then to resolve stability problems they have to cut down performance and everybody start ranting about it.

I prefer the "it´s done when it´s done". But done quikly if possible.

[MM]

Testing is a slow process. With Matrox's strict Q&A it's even slower. So a reasonably well developed driver would be sitting on a harddrive of the developers only because it hasn't been tested yet - even if it solves problems in some games people want to play now. By the time it went through Q&A new games came out and it's no longer that much relevant as it used to be.

I think stable betas is a good idea. Developers should decide on which builds are stable and which are not for betas. Q&A should decide on which builds are stable and which are not for releases.

Just my 2 cents

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P2c-300a/450, 192MB PC125 SDRAM, Quantum Fireball Plus KA 18.2GB 7200rpm, Panasonic 7502B x4/x8 Ultra SCSI CD-R, Tekram DC-390U2W Ultra2Wide SCSI controller, Diamond MX300 (Vortex2), Creative Labs AWE64 Gold Sound Blaster, A-Trend Voodoo II 12MB, Matrox Millennium G400Max, 19" Hitachi SuperScan 752 and some other fancy stuff

[cjolley]

For the purposes of the point I was making it does not matter one whit whether the "Beta" drivers are realy beta drivers or not.
I was talking about PR not an organized program of beta testing. It's a totaly different subject.
chuck

[DuRaNgO]

Thanks for getting the word to Matrox for us! This forum is why I will be replacing my g200 with another "M" card (g400)
nice job!
jim

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p2-350 (o.c'd to 450) 128mb pc-100, Mill. G200 8mb sgram (o.c'd to 210 with MGATweak) PD5.21, win98se, DX6.1, THREE BIG FANS (and three little ones)

[Haig]

Hi Chuck,

I understand what you are saying. It's been discussed internally a few times over certain builds. We won't release beta drivers to the public on a consistent basis but a few beta drivers a year would come out.

Thanks,

Haig

[tish beta2]

So the next update to the OpenGL ICD driver would be, like, in december?

and, like, a Windows 2000 ICD wold have to wait to, like, NEXT SUMMER?!

Why not release betas more often? or don't they get "updated"/"tweaked"/"improved" more often than twice a year? Or is it that whenever you try to do something about them then many DANGDEROUS bugs appear?

Ok I know I'm acting stupid.

Haigh, we love that you're here but, get real, hire another driver developer, release that goddam windows 2000 beta, get the win9x ICD almost final and start working on that HORRENDOUS NT icd....



Cheers,
Fish.

[This message has been edited by tish beta2 (edited 09-14-1999).]

[Haig]

I'll get on it first thing.

[This message has been edited by Haig (edited 09-13-1999).]

[cjolley]

Haig,
That was more diplomatic than I could have been.

Fish,
Why post a flame and at the same time say "Ok I know I'm acting stupid." ?
If you are going to act stupid, do it without apologies.
chuck

Ok, OK. I'll order it from the #$%@*&%!#$$@% Matrox online store.


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Oh, No! no sig yet!



[This message has been edited by cjolley (edited 09-13-1999).]