W2k + G450: DH resolution? / 3DMark 427?

[ChristianL]

I have the following configuration:
- G450 DH 16 MB SDRAM LE
- Windows 2000 SP2
- Direct X 8.0
- Matrox driver 5.52.010
- Abit KT7A-RAID bios 3R
- Athlon Thunderbird 1400 MHz
- 256 MB

Question 1:
Primary display is 19", supports 1600x1200 at 85Hz, secondary display is 15", supports 1152x864 at 75Hz.

W2k does not accept a configuration according to the above resolutions. Now I am using 1280x1024 and 1024x768, which works OK. If I set 1600x1200 on my primary display, w2k complains that the display driver is not compatible with w2k, and blacks the secondary display.

If I try 1360x1088/1400x1120/1480x1110 the resolution on my secondary display is automatically downgraded to 800x600 at 60Hz.

Under Win 98 SE everything works fine using 1600x1200 and 1152x864.

I have tried removing and reinstalling the display drivers, but no help. Any ideas?


Question 2:

The performance running Colin McRae 2 is poor (only game I've tested so far), so I decided to test the 3D performance using 3DMark 2001.

Starting 3DMark the program gives the following message:

'3DMark 2001 : The 3D accelerator you selected does not support the display settings combination you had chosen. The settings have been downgraded.
The default settings for 3DMark2001 are 1024x768 resolution, 32 bit colors, 24/32 bit Z-buffer, compressed textures using DXTC formats 1 and 3'

Running the tests with lower resolutions gives a 3DMark of 427! For this system and a G400 a typical 3DMark should be at least 2000. What could be the problem?

[Maggi]

FYI ...

1600x1200x3 bytes (for RGB) = 5760000 bytes per buffer (5625KB or roughly 5.5MB)

now, considering that your card uses at least double buffering, setting your primary display to 1600x1200 will eat up about 11MB of your local gfx RAM or if using triple buffering, almost all of your gfx mem is in use only for display #1, since you said you'd be running a 16MB gfx card.

I'll leave the math up to you how much RAM is left over for your secondary display ...

[ChristianL]

Thanks Maggi, but please explain why it works under Win 98?

[Maggi]

I guess you had only 16bpp color depth ...

[ChristianL]

You're so right! I thought I'd tried that already, but apparently not. Now I'm down to 16 bits color, and everything's OK. Thanks Maggi!

Still the problem with the lousy 3DMark 2001 result remains...

[Maggi]

I don't think your 3D Mark scores are too far off, since you only run a 16MB G450 and on my OCed 32MB G550 I get about 1000 3D Marks.

Dunno who told you to get around 2000 points on your, but that's just plain impossible on your card, maybe in 640x480x16bpp, 16bitZ and 16bit textures, but even then I doubt it.

[Nuno]

Chistian, just 2 thoughts:

- Be sure you have the VIA AGP driver installed. Win2k sp2 has a built-in VIA AGP driver, but you never know....

- The main reason for that low 3dmark2001 is your G450. It´s doesn´t even comply with the minimum system specs for 3dmark2001:

Minimum System Requirements:
Intel® compatible 500 MHz processor
128 MB system memory
1999 released 3D accelerator with 32 MB memory
Windows 98/SE, ME or 2000 operating system
DirectX 8.0 or later

3dmark2001 uses up to 36 Mb of textures for some scenes, so the G450 16 Mb is just passing almost everything through the AGP bus wich is not a nice thing, performance wise.

Also keep in mind that the G450 SDRAM is a very SLOW 3d card. It only has a 64 bit SDRAM memory bus, I don´t know how much faster it´ll be than a G200 16 Mb. The 64 bit DDR ones have twice thw bandwidth and are somehow a bit slower than old vanilla G400 32 Mb cards.

About that error message, it´s normal, because the standard mode for 3dmark try to use texture compression, that the Gxxx cards don´t support. So the "downgrading" (actually a upgrading in umage quality ) is reverting from DXTC textures to 32 bit textures.

Hope this helps...

Hey Maggi I used to get ~1400 with my G400 "MAX" with a Thunderbird 1000 3dmark2001 is more cpu dependent than anything else. Even a G400/G550 should have fillrate to spare on 3dmark2001 with anything less than a thunderbird 1400...

[IcedEarth]

Originally posted by Nuno
3dmark2001 is more cpu dependent than anything else.

Uhm.... didn't think so....
3dmark2000 is way more cpu dependant than 2001. Overclocking my Duron 750 to 866 MHz gives me about 40 extra points or so in 2001. Not really something to write home about.

Or did I miss something?

[ChristianL]

Searching projects with same CPU and G400 (seems that G450 gets registered as G400?) at MadOnion gives a score range from 1273 to 2037 for 3DMark 2001. Link to top score (2037):

http://gamershq.madonion.com/products/orb/?publish_compare.shtml?&project_type=6&dprid=1283297&search=1

I ran the test with the same settings, so my comparable score is now 569.

I have all the latest drivers installed, including VIA 4-in-1.

Seems that no one else has a card with only 16MB...

Maybe I'd better switch to a ATI Radeon 64 DDR VIVO, and get an old PCI-card for the second display...

[Nuno]

Don´t. If you´re using dual monitors, just get a cheap G550 32 Mb DDR OEM. Much faster than your 16 Mb SDR G450, speed around G400 MAX. The most recent games will still be enjoyable with a 1.4 Tb (around 800x600x32, maybe 30-40 fps)

You really can´t beat Matrox Dual Head features.

But if you´re really into 3d gaming and high-resolutions keep in mind that a G550 will still not be up to recent standards. Much better than a G450 SDR, but that´s it.

[Kastuvas]

Yeah your score seems very Low i get twice more marks with half the CPU you have.

And i noticed as well that there is something wrong with 3DMark search engine it doesn’t find even 1 result with G450 in 2001 version, that cant be right.

And further more there is no G550 in the 3D chipset menu. Maybe it recognises G550 as G400 can someone who has G550 and have run 3Dmark 2001 can clarify this.

[ChristianL]

Originally posted by Nuno
Don´t. [CLIP]
You really can´t beat Matrox Dual Head features.

How does W2K work with two different cards? Can I set all parameters independently, ie use 1152x864 /75Hz on the second one and 1600x1200/85Hz on the first? What features does Matrox DH have that I don't get with two let's say ATI display cards?

[ChristianL]

Decided to check the 3DMark2001 score on my old system with Celeron 300@450, W2K SP2, 128MB and a Matrox G400 DH 16MB.

The settings were the same as on my previous test and the score was 592!!! So my old Celeron beats my new TB 1400 (569)!

There must be something wrong with my setup. Is the old G400 faster than the new G450? The G400 has 16 MB SGRAM and the new G450 16 MB SDRAM.

I could try switching cards...

[SteveC]

How does W2K work with two different cards? Can I set all parameters independently, ie use 1152x864 /75Hz on the second one and 1600x1200/85Hz on the first? What features does Matrox DH have that I don't get with two let's say ATI display cards?

Win2k works basically the same with two different cards as it does with Matrox' 'True DualHead'.

An ATi or Nividia Dual Output card under win2k gives you one big desktop stretched across both screens - no independant resolutions/refresh rates/colour depths.

Is the old G400 faster than the new G450?

The G450 is a business card - the G400 is definitely faster for gaming.