1.05.01.008 drivers for Parhelia & P750/P650

[Sisyfos]

ftp://ftp.matrox.com/pub/mga/archive...105_01_008.exe

[tbow::]>]

Hopefully they will post a whitepaper with the fixes...

[ncfoster]

I'll probably take the plunge in a couple of hours, after work. I'm anxious to hear the results of others. I'm not too benchmark centric. Mostly concerned about fixes, etc.

Nathan

[borat]

hmm, thought i recognised that blue moon in the sky tonight.

[bsdgeek]

Originally posted by tbow::]>
Hopefully they will post a whitepaper with the fixes...

Not going to get angry about this yet, since they aren't "official", but Haig if you're reading this, can you (or someone) take a couple of minutes and write-up a short list of release notes for the official launching of these drivers?

By the way:

Str08 = "Matrox Parhelia HR128"

[UtwigMU]

Haig said nothing for vanilla Parhelias/P650/P750's.

Most likely fixes for HR/QID cards

[a_h]

The version increases just 1 point (01.008 versus 01.007) so I think they just ironed some bugs out.

However I'm sure Haig doesn't know of any fixes, that's the dev's job. The release-note illness is more like an epidemy, nvidia has it too (ati is just cured).

[borat]

lets face it Nvid's would need a daily spokesperson saying "we hacked this to get a extra 200 3d farts but it broke all these games, never mind - more 3d farts tomorow"

[a_h]

They could write it in the release notes, and use the money for the spokesperson for another driver dev.

[Maggi]

FYI

Matrox PowerDesk-HF
Notes, problems, and limitations

* For more information on your Matrox display driver and Matrox PowerDesk software, see the help included with this software.
* To install your Matrox display driver and Matrox PowerDesk software, run the setup program included with this software.
* For Matrox software updates that may fix problems listed here, see the Matrox Web site (www.matrox.com/mga/).
* To use Matrox PowerDesk-HF software, Microsoft .NET Framework software needs to be installed in your system. This software is included on the installation CD-ROM included with Matrox products and is automatically installed by the main setup program on the CD-ROM.
* To get the most of your Matrox product, we recommend using the highest color palette setting (a 32-bit color palette) for all your displays. An 8-bit color palette may be unavailable or certain features may be unavailable while using an 8-bit color palette.
* The PixelTOUCH feature is unavailable with multiple displays in stretched mode or with a TV used to view your Windows desktop.
* Under certain conditions the Matrox GigaColor feature (over 1 billion simultaneous colors) may not be used even though the feature may be enabled in the software interface. This may happen if:
o Matrox PowerDesk-HF is configured to use 2 displays at a time, each with very high display resolutions.
o Matrox PowerDesk-HF is configured to use 3 displays at a time.
* Windows XP -- With the Windows Fast User Switching feature, PowerDesk is unavailable if another user is already logged on to Windows. To keep PowerDesk available, users can log off from Windows normally and shouldn't use the Windows Switch User control. For more information on Fast User Switching, see Windows documentation.
* Full-screen programs (typically games) designed for versions of DirectX earlier than 8.0 may not support horizontal display resolutions higher than 2048. While using multiple displays in stretched mode, the horizontal resolution of each display is combined (for example, a combined TripleHead resolution could be as high as 3840 x 1024). As a result, the stretched mode resolutions you can use with such programs may be limited to resolutions lower than what your graphics hardware and display driver can support. Selecting an unsupported resolution within a program may cause the program to quit unexpectedly.
* Matrox Millennium P750 | Millennium P650 -- Accumulation buffers may not be available for 3D programs. As a result, certain advanced 3D programs may not work properly (for example, Maya and Lightwave).
* Matrox Parhelia -- The game Soldier of Fortune II may not properly detect Matrox Parhelia graphics cards. As a result, this game may use unoptimized default settings that result in low frame rates with these cards. For better frame rates with Parhelia cards, make sure texture compression is enabled from the main menu of this game: click Options > Video Settings > Advanced Options > Image Format, then select DXT1 Compressed.

...


what bugs me in particular is this entry

* Under certain conditions the Matrox GigaColor feature (over 1 billion simultaneous colors) may not be used even though the feature may be enabled in the software interface. This may happen if:
o Matrox PowerDesk-HF is configured to use 2 displays at a time, each with very high display resolutions.
o Matrox PowerDesk-HF is configured to use 3 displays at a time.

yet another feature limitation that wasn't mentioned when they launched parhelia, was it ?

[UtwigMU]

Well, 3-display limitation was mentioned since 3d DAC is only 8-bit.

2-display, IMO depends which card and how high a resolution.

[Peter Aragon]

I hope they will one day be able to fix the green stripes problem in Windows Media Player 9, because I have almost have lost hope in that one....

[a_h]

Maybe you should post it again at the official forums? You know, low attention=low priority and that stuff?

[COLD]

Peter Aragon: I hope they will one day be able to fix the green stripes problem in Windows Media Player 9, because I have almost have lost hope in that one....

Hi Peter, I have somehow solved my problem with the green stripes in Media Player 9... Instead of adjusting the brightness and contrast via the player (not using the default settings which are too dark to my taste) I am temporary adjusting the monitor brightness and contrast when watching a video

I have confirmed on every occasions that as soon as I am changing the settings in Media Played 9, the green stripes appears and remain present whatever I try to do thereafter but if I use the monitor settings then I am home free. This was also confirmed on various installation of Windows XP Pro Corporate (I have Windows XP Pro Corporate installed on 4 different hard drives, all legit since I have a MSDN Universal account witn MS).

DC

[Peter Aragon]

COLD: I never touched those settings, they happen to me when I have 2 independed CRT displays with a feature out to PAL TV with DVDMax enabled.....
If I turn off hardware acceleration in media player it doesn't appear, but then it also not uses overlay off course. I see the second head flickering momentarily before I watch a movie, maybe something wrong with the implementation and they never use this setup? But then again, it has been a while since I cleaned my system. I've got MSDN universal too, but sometimes I install some beta thing that I should probably better have done on my second test machine and not my main test machine ;-) (I call it test-machine because else you are not legit because MSDN is only for developing purposes ;-)