Announcement

**C=64** · 10 May 2000, 22:35

A simple search replace for the terms "RAGE FURY MAXX", "RAGE 128 PRO", and "ATI", and viola! the message I'm waiting for Matrox to send me in regards to my G400 Max in my SMP system.

(a rather depressed) C=64

--------------------

Dear Customer,
You have previously contacted our Microsoft Windows 2000 feedback email address to comment or inquire about G400 drivers and support for the Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system.

I regret to inform you that our plan to provide a G400 driver for the Windows 2000 operating system cannot be completed. Due to issues with enumerating the chip ID's, of the dual head graphics chips, we are unable to complete the driver for our G400 card.

Matrox sincerely apologizes for promising a driver to you and then being unable to complete it. This was an unforeseen technical issue during the development of the Windows 2000 G400 drivers.

For those customers who wish to contact me directly to comment on this situation, please email me at cservice@matrox.com. I welcome your comments and feedback.

**PaulS** · 11 May 2000, 00:08

What's with Canadian companies and Windows 2000? Is supporting it against their religion or something?

Paul

**Maggi** · 11 May 2000, 03:32

Hey C=64,

what kinda BS is that ???

Matrox has released quite a few revisions of their Win2k drivers

They even put out beta drivers for their Marvel cards (G400 and G200) to get their video tools working under Win2k.

...

Better stop posting nonsense so that you won't confuse/mislead other people like PaulS in this case.

Regards,
Maggi

**paulcs** · 11 May 2000, 13:36

I'm not sure we can "blame Canada" here. I'm in the midst of testing a series of nVidia boards across platforms, and so far, the SMP support is flakey (at best!)

I'll be doing GeForce tests later on, but TNT2 Ultra support is still a real crapshoot. I've tested Guillemot's board with the newest W2K drivers, the "leaked" 3.84 Detonators and the "becoming more official every day" 5.16 set.

The first set works, as long as you remember to disable SMP before leaving Quake3. If you forget, forget about entering the game again. You have to edit Q3's config file manually to restore the default single CPU mode. Cursor problems continue and performance varies from install to install.

The 5.16 Detonators, which at least nominally support the TNT2U, worked well at first, but eventually corrupted my display worse than anything I've seen with W2K. Uninstalling and reinstalling the 5.16 drivers, complete with a search and destroy mission for registry entries and drivers, did no good. I had to reinstall the 3.84 drivers to restore a normal display.

Given ATI's inability to provide decent Windows 98 driver support, and couple that with the fact that no US-base company has produced drivers with stable SMP support, I suspect this has little to do with our friends in Canada.

ATI appears to be admitting that they will never get their drivers to work properly with W2K. Period. I think this goes well beyond getting SMP supported properly.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

**CannyOne** · 11 May 2000, 16:14

The part that gets me is that "Certified" drivers were released for the Vanilla G400 weeks ago, but those of us who are in posession of their "MAX" version are still in a holding pattern!?! It's no wonder people are trying to get "any" of the more recent drivers to work. First, I hear their trying to get things working with SMP. Now I hear their trying to get things working with dual-head. (Deep Sigh!) If OpenGL would just work I wouldn't care so much. And No I'm not talking about playing Q3A!! I just want other stuff to work properly!!!!!! I guess that's too much to ask.

**Joel** · 11 May 2000, 20:11

We can't blame the video card manufactures for such a crappy OS. The company I work for is not even considering Win2k at this time, because every test machine we have that has Win2k crashes like no tomorrow, and we just can't have that happening in a production environment where computers are as vital as they are in what we do.

Joel

[This message has been edited by Joel (edited 12 May 2000).]

**PaulS** · 11 May 2000, 22:11

Hi Joel,

I think that says more about the quality of the computers your company buys than anything bad about W2k. Try the HCL.

paulcs,

Running those tests on a TNT2 is akin to complaining about G200 support. Obviously nVidia's primary interest is the geforce, fixes will trickle down (hopefully!).

Paul

**Rags** · 11 May 2000, 23:30

Hi PaulS,

Running those tests on a TNT2 is akin to complaining about G200 support. Obviously nVidia's primary interest is the geforce, fixes will trickle down (hopefully!).

Errr, no. The G200 and TNT are comparable in time-frame. The TNT2 and G400 are more akin to one another. So Paulcs has a very good point.

Joel,

...for such a crappy OS.

Heh. That crappy OS may have problems because of the elusive HCL, and dodgy mfrs., but it sure does run SETI fast

Rags

**PaulS** · 12 May 2000, 00:27

Rags,

The Geforce line and the G400 line are the current flagships of both companies, and will obviously receive the lions share of development efforts.

In fact, the TNT2's are now 3 generations behind the Geforce 2, so maybe more comparable to say the Millenium II in terms of development priorities.

Paul

[This message has been edited by PaulS (edited 12 May 2000).]

**mj12** · 12 May 2000, 00:45

Joel:

We can't blame the video card manufactures for such a crappy OS

You can't be serious. I want to know what machines/models these are. W2K is the best OS that MS has ever put out, so don't even go there. Does it really shock anyone that Ati can't produce drivers? I honestly can't believe that a major hardware company is this inept. What is Ati going to do when MS moves away from the 9x code base to the NT kernel? "Sorry, we can no longer produce drivers for our hardware. Here is some source code if you can figure it yourself"

[This message has been edited by mj12 (edited 12 May 2000).]

**franksch3** · 12 May 2000, 02:50

I'm still baffled that there are still people who blame Microsoft because their computers crashing on Windows 2000.

Windows 2000 is a very stable, robust and fast operating system. The instability is caused by faulty drivers because some hardware companies seem to be unable to produce good drivers.

**franksch3** · 12 May 2000, 02:51

BTW: Ronny will certainly love this thread. ;-)

**Joel** · 12 May 2000, 03:59

We use exclusively Dell PCs. Our company has a contract with them. Even our Dell rep does not recommend we go to Win2K yet.

Joel

[This message has been edited by Joel (edited 12 May 2000).]

**PaulS** · 12 May 2000, 05:05

Well that's Dell for you. Play the manufacturers off against each other and force them to strip down their cards to the bare minimum to win an OEM contract. Then make them develop drivers especially to work with this new knobbled card.

Everything in a Dell PC has been taylored to the exact requirements of a specific set of hardware and a predetermined OS. If anything else works, it's just by chance.

Paul

Announcement

No Windows 2000 support for the ATi Rage Fury MAXX

No Windows 2000 support for the ATi Rage Fury MAXX

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