Announcement

**Stringy** · 6 December 1999, 19:32

Well there might be a TurboGL for the previous version of 3Dnow!, but for P2's and Celeries, you're outa luck... not TurboGL for that...

the OpenGL ICD will continue to get better I'm sure.. The TurboGL is just a "Now" fix for the long developement time of a good ICD...
Time will tell.. Besides a P3 isn't all that expensive

Craig

**Marshmallowman** · 6 December 1999, 19:40

yes it does suck, But PII/celerons just don't have the sse instructions to increase performance that much. same thing ,but to a lesser extent is true of K6-2 as compared to the better 3dnow implementation of K6-3.

**BC547** · 7 December 1999, 06:09

Many questions... who can answer them? :-)

If it's impossible to get current TurboGL speed on a normal PII, why is it then?

1. Lousy driver programming? If the current turboGL is just an intermediate step towards a full openGL implementation, why does it take over 6 months to develop it if the product life cycle is 1 year? Many people I know don't buy a G400 just because it doesn't perform as good as other cards in 3D games. It seems to me that all the superfast hardware is present on a G400 (I think) but it can't be used.

2. G400 Hardware design that isn't suitable for this? Does the data needs to be in a 'special' format or structure or something before the videocard can use it and this causes huge CPU requirements?

3. Is the matroxteam focusing on Win2K drivers and has no resources to improve turboGL? I think many people will wait to install W2K until the first servicepack is released and the most important bugs are fixed :-)

As far as I know, a tnt2 ultra or geforce don't need a PIII to be faster than a G400.
Especially on low resolutions where the CPU isn't the bottleneck the difference is very noticable. It just feels like driving a ferrari with a speed limiter on it :-)

BC547 aka Dirk

PS. 3Dmark2000 gives me 1673 in 1024/16bit just to let you know :-)

Celeron 300A@464
Abit BH6 mb
128meg RAM
G400Max (default settings)
Iiyama visionmaster pro 510 & Panasync Pro P70
SBLive Player

**Kruzin** · 7 December 1999, 06:26

Read the replies previous to yours.
Your questions are alresdy answered.

P2 DOES NOT HAVE THE SSE 3D INSTRUCTIONS OF A P3

If they did release a TGL for P2, it would not give as much of a speed boost that TGL for P3 does, because P2 DOES NOT HAVE THE SSE 3D INSTRUCTIONS OF A P3.

The current TGL gets most of it's boost from taking advantage of SSE or 3DNow! instructions. It doesn't matter what Matrox does, they cannot magically make SSE or 3DNow! appear on chips that where not made with it.

**BC547** · 7 December 1999, 06:52

kruzin,

I know the PII does not have the SSE instructions and that SSE improves the cpu processing power a lot for 3D... But that doesn't change the fact that a tnt2ultra or geforce DON'T need sse to get faster performance. Benchmarks in 640/480 on a PII 450 show that the matrox card is almost the slowest card in fps although the hardware design is better as a tnt2ultra.

My question can be rephrased as "Why does matrox need SSE for good performance while other manufacturers don't require it for faster gameplay?"

And I know a TGL for a PII wouldn't reach thesame performance levels as a SSE optimzed driver, but even an increase of 10fps could change a lot for gameplay.

BC547 aka Dirk

**Kruzin** · 7 December 1999, 07:55

"Why does matrox need SSE for good performance while other manufacturers don't require it for faster gameplay?"

I don't know what planet you live on, but I get better than "good" performance from the regular ICD. At high res, G400 is actually faster than TnT2, and even GeSpot in certain tests. On my lowly P2-450, I can play Q2/HL on the full ICD with speeds that exceed my max_fps settings. Why would I need more?

I could care less about 640x480 scores. Why would I want to play at that pissy res on my 21" monitor, when I can run fluidly at 1152x864 or 1280x1024 (where TGL actually gives almost zero improvement over the full ICD)?

Other manufacturers specifically tune their OpenGL ICD for games. Matrox is striving for a fully functional ICD that works well with proffesional apps AND games. For the FPS counters, they released TGL, which is optimised for lower res (unlike the full ICD), SSE/3DNow!, and is only for games (cutting out large amounts of bulky coding).

You will find Matrox users are not the anal frame counters that TnT users are. It is no secret that in certain games (OGL shooters), other cards are faster. So what. That does not make the G400 unplayable in these games. It does not make the drivers crap. All it means is that those other cards are GAME cards, and the G400 is a FULL USE card. Not to mention that G400 smokes TnT in D3D speeds (but you don't see Matrox Users running around TnT forums asking "why isn't TnT as fast as my G400 in D3D")

For the extra features (DualHead, EMBM, better visual quality, etc.) I am gladly willing to give up a few fps that can't be visually percieved anyway.

**Himself** · 7 December 1999, 08:04

Marshmellowman,

The K6-3 differs from the K6-2 only in having a CXT core for sure and on die L2 cache (256KB). The Athlon cpu adds a bunch more instructions to 3D-Now! to basically fill in any gaps left between 3D-Now! and SSE, they are practically functional clones of each other.

BC547,

In general, I could give a flying fig about OpenGL, but I would like to see faster D3D drivers, that has less to do with SSE or 3D-Now! or perhaps only for culling, and more to do with optimization. I am looking forward to better DX7 drivers more than any TurboGL for my K6-3.

And yes, NVIDIA has faster drivers, they are extremely buggy I found, but they are faster.
I do think Matrox needs to get cracking on performance issues in the drivers NOW, especially if their next chip is a G400 based core.

**rickn** · 7 December 1999, 08:49

Kruzin: when I did tests on my old celeron 366@550, the G400 was considerably slower at Q2 crusher than my 16MB TNT2 was on the same cpu. Matrox needed SSE to bring it up to TNT2 speeds.

And, unless you have tested both like I have, please do not bother arguing with me. No offence

Course, I would never trade in my G400 on a TNT2

[This message has been edited by rickn (edited 07 December 1999).]

**BC547** · 7 December 1999, 08:56

kruzin,

I was not talking about 40fps and higher, but low fps rates where every extra frame IS noticable. If I want high framerates without any quality, I could indeed turn off every nice feature and play without dynamic lights, shadows and with vertexlightning.

I get approx 30 frames in Q3 now, sometimes dropping below 20. If a driver optimization could increase it to 40 or something, that would improve the 'gamefeeling' A LOT!. Especially in deathmatch against other skilled persons.

Since the TGL is a game-only stripped version of the full ICD, what's holding matrox to tweak it also for PII's? NVIDEA shows it's possible to get faster performance. And if they have a good TGL, they could use that code also in their full ICD so the work isn't lost. Gaming is the biggest and fastest market for PC business. If they can deliver extremely good drivers (for all platforms, not just high end systems)for games NOW instead within 3 or 4 months, it would boost their sales immediatly. The hardware can do it..it's just software that makes the difference...

A fully functional ICD that works well with professional apps AND games is great. But 90% of the users just don't care for a fully functional ICD. They want good gaming performance and a perfect 2D picture quality together with the 'extras' like dualhead. Besides...a real professional that needs fully functional superfast opengl (for 3dsmax or something) will buy other hardware.

BC547 aka Dirk

**sasa** · 7 December 1999, 09:23

People, get real and stop defending matrox. Theirs OGL was crap from the beggining.I recently changed my trusty old TNT with brand new G400 16 MB. Not to mention that I got bad card (soon Ill find some time to change it) but I also expirienced minimal speed increase, and big speed decrease in some games. Yes, I have celeron 400, oc to 450 and I do not want to buy P3. Also, I am sure that 90% of poeople have celeron or K6-2,3. So, what happened? I first started UT demo , and it was SLOWER than on TNT in 800*600*16 (D3D!)all settings high(although now it works excellent with new drivers). Quake 2 runs great, 60 fps on all resolutions till 1024 (I dont care for higher since I have 15 inch NOKIA monitor). But who cares for 2.5 years old game which was designed for voodoo1? What really matters are NEW games, like QUAKE3. In short : disaster for matrox.
From 49 fps (640*480*16, all high) I got 36 fps. Great result for twice more expencive card. That was 1.09 demo. Now I have full game, and in 800*600*32 I got (demo001) 28 fps which is barely playable and SUCKS. Dont get me wrong, I love matrox; I bought G200 instantly when it came out (few years ago).I sold it because I got tired of matrox lies about opengl. (from 70 fps on voodoo 2 I got 36 on p2 300) They constantly lied about good OGL drivers("they will be out next month" )so I was patient for 6 months and then sold it (full OGL for G200 appeared recently (!), two (!!) years later(!!!). Cool, now You can play Quake 1 flowleslly, ha ha ha ). So, if matrox says go buy P3 Ill say: dont, go buy nVidia card (even vanilla TNT runs better on Q3). Looks like history is repeating...

**Wombat** · 7 December 1999, 09:42

"A few years ago"!?! How the hell did you manage to do that? Oh wait, all that "crap" you were talking about was actually your post.

**Kruzin** · 7 December 1999, 09:42

BC547-
They released the P3/K7 TGL because it was ready for release. They did those first, which makes sense...do the current hardware first, pick up older hardware (if possible) later.

If they had waited until they had 4 or 5 separate TGLs written for all the different processors, it would have been a long, painful wait. Reviewers (for the most part) use todays hardware (P3/K7) in their reviews. Doesn't it seem logical that Matrox would want to get the P3/K7 optimizations out ASAP for the benefit of those reviews?

For all you know, Matrox is working on TGL for P2/K6. I agree that they could write it for P2/K6, and show a marked improvement over the full ICD. Just don't expect to see the % of increase that P3/K7 gets. It could very well be in beta testing right now...or maybe not

**BC547** · 7 December 1999, 10:25

kurzin,

"Doesn't it seem logical that Matrox would want to get the P3/K7 optimizations out ASAP for the benefit of those reviews?"

So the TGL could be just a publicity stunt to show that high end systems can benefit from the G400 (since most of the reviews are done with high end pc's)? How long is it now since the TGL appeared? 3 months? One can do A LOT of programming in 3 months :-) Especially if the product life cycle is 6 a 12 months, this is unacceptible. Did they ever announce TGL support for PII/K6? Is it that difficult to announce it? Or don't they care about customers opinions and wishes? Now they are announcing W2K drivers already... To me, it seems they won't release anything 'spectacular' anymore for PII&K6/Win95/98 owners.

For all you know, Matrox is working on TGL for P2/K6

Why don't they announce it then? I would consider it BIG news... The latest powerdesk has just been released.. so I don't expect to see anything within the next 1.5 months...

But let's hope it's in beta testing now :-)

Matrox..give us all a nice christmas present..please :-)

BC547 aka Dirk

PS. If any matrox official reads this: you can always give a clear answer...

**Unam** · 7 December 1999, 10:54

...hey BC547, "Besides...a real professional that needs fully functional superfast opengl (for 3dsmax or something) will buy other hardware. " Ouch, as a professional I buy Matrox products for exactly this reason. I agree with your comments about the G200 and OGL drivers. I bought a G200 when they first came out and the lack of an OGL really hurt Matrox, I still have a TNT to prove that. The reason I and many other professionals buy Matrox products is they give good performance for a lot less money than other professional series 3D cards. Now let's not make mistakes here, I'm not saying that the Matrox products are faster, but they generally give good performance and they don't cost $1000+! I actually paid more than that for my last card (Intergraph) and the G400 is faster! (Ouch again, isn't everyone hurting because of a 6 month product life cycle?) On another note I too am interested in Matrox's next part, what I would really like to see is a part with some life span!

------------------
Asus P3B-F1, PIII 600B, 128Mb PC133 RAM, 18.2 KA drive, HP CDRW & Travan drive, SB64PCI, Intel EPro+ PnP NIC, G400.

[This message has been edited by Unam (edited 07 December 1999).]

Announcement

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TurboGL for PII?

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