RT2000 + G400 Flex3D Question.

[Scouser]

Hi people,

I'm curious about something (...at this point my cat does a runner...) :P

The RT2000 uses the G400 chipset to do realtime 3D effects in Premiere right ?

If i'm not mistaken, it's called 'Flex3D'.

Now i seriously doubt Matrox 'tweaked' the hardware on the G400 in any way just for this purpose, so it's most likely done with software (a bog standard G400 could handle this no problem)

Why can't this be applied to any G400 card, to speed up/enchance 3D effects in Premiere e.t.c ?

What do YOU think ?

Food for thought....

Scouser
(Tom)

[Dr Mordrid]

Wrong.

There are hardware optimizations on the Flex3D version of the G400 that allow it to do it's magic.

Also there is a backplane cable that connects the G400 Flex's feature connector to the RT-2000 codec card that permits this to be done very quickly and without having to pass much data through the system bus. The Flex3D software is an API and control system.

Another thing about Flex3D and the backplane is that they will allow later high end Matrox graphics cards, whatever they are called, to be implemented into the RT-2000 archetecture.

This, of course, also means that as features get added to these cards the Flex3D software can be upgraded to offer more features and effect types as well as even faster calculation of the existing effects.

What you are proposing is how the DV500 does it. Without the hardware connection it's not as flexible or powerful. Certainly this gains the ability to use any graphics card, but limits performance.

Dr. Mordrid



[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 01 April 2001).]

[cjyo~]

Theoretically, maybe, but the G400Flex card does have an internal connector which connects directly to the RT2000 board. I think this allows the two cards to talk directly and bypass the PCI bus/CPU entirely to do the real-time 2d and 3d effects. I don't think standard G400's have this interface...