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Matrox to fund DRI Development
SuperN wrote in to let us know that Matrox will be contracting Precision Insight to develop a DRI driver for the G400 and G200 chipsets, for use in XFree86. There's more information available, as well as a press release. Once Precision Insight is finished developing the driver, the source is to be released with the rest of XFree86, so it looks to be good vibes all around.
Actually the voodoo3 3500 is the fastest 3D card in linux right now. It has full glx compatability, and full-speed window rendering in the pre4.0 Xfree release. I'm just guess you didn't think the voodoo3 supported glx. It does via Mesa and glide. Actually the voodoo3 only supports GL written for glx. And glide too. Mmmm unreal tournament.
Yes, but the OpenGL driver they provide is *dog slow* compared to the TurboGL driver
Got a URL where I could see one?
What's a K6-III cost these days?
Just wondering - ,etc. -
you know the syntax for X displays:
somehost:0, somehost:1
is the
somehost:0.0, somehost:0.1 etc syntax
I sometimes see in docs, but have never myself
used, part of the X11R6 specification for
multihead displays, or what?
And anyway, as an ex-amiga user I have two
other gripes with XFree
i) why can you change resolution but not colour depth on the fly? Do we need "overlay visuals"
to allow this?
ii) why are we using numbers to refer to the displays, anyway? On the amiga, public screens
had user- (with the MUI pubscreen manager tool) or programmer- defined names eg "Workbench Screen", "VNG Screen", which arbitrary pubscreen-aware (i.e. all mui apps) could use.
nåt som inte finns i norge
I bought two old 21'' Digital monitors and two Millennium II PCI cards. Dual monitor on Linux is great. I had an instance of KDE running on each monitor and it was perfect for programming. By the way, I was using Metrolink's xserver. For $39, it was well worth it. SuperN
I sold my Guillemot TNT2Ultra for a G400Max. GLX driver is a lot more stable and complete with the Matrox. The G400Max is aproximately 3 times faster than the TNT2 Ultra (45fps for the Max compared to 15fps for the TNT2U with the same settings : 1024x768 with all quality options on). I also have an old PII 266 with a G200 and it is faster than my PIII with the TNT2u ! Just a warning : installing GLX to get the maximum performance out of the Matrox is more complex. You have to install GLX+Mesa and also the AGP kernel module + a little program to clock correctly the card (XFree doesn't set correctly the clock on the G400 and G400Max cards). Some tweaking is required but the performance is here and the image quality is a little better than TNT2u (and a LOT better than my previous Voodoo2 SLI cards !). There is also grapical artifacts visible in Q3 with TNT cards (yellow color on the walls near explosions) instead of the correct rendering visible with Matrox and 3dfx cards. As of today, G400 and G400Max are by far the best 3D cards for Linux.
I run dual 1280x1024 on my G400 Dual-Head. Granted, that isn't quite 1600x1200, but I wouldn't call it low res either.
http://www.pricewatch.com, http://www.resellerratings.com.
These are your friends.
Looks like the lowest price for a dual head g400 MAX is currently $199. Shipping not included.
A single head 16 MB g400 goes for a little above $100.
Yes. Textures are 16 bit and the frame buffers are 16 bit. The texture blending and filtering are done internally with 32 bits and then dithered down to 16 bits before being placed into the frame buffer. 3dfx has claimed that this system is equivalent to 22 bits of rendering precision. Like the V1 and V2, they still start with 16 bit textures, but the increased internal precision avoids degrading the quality of the textures during blending & filtering. The V3 does look significantly better than any other card at 16 bits. However, other cards rendering in full 32 bit mode look slightly better in most circumstances, and much better when rendering fog and other smooth gradient effects that produce banding in 16 bits.
There are several points in favor of the V3 cards. First off, the V3 looks better in 16 bit mode than other 32 bit cards running in 16 bit mode. Before you say "who cares", realize that under Windows, no card (except the GeForce cards) is fast enough to produce decent frame rates at 1024x768x32 under games like Q3 and UT. Therefore, you will either run at lower resolutions, or in 16 bit color, or at shitty frame rates. I would argue that 32 bit mode is basically worthless for the current FPS games unless you own a GeForce card. Also, it is worth noting that the 3dfx cards are the only ones that perform equally well in Linux as in Windows. Under Linux, 3dfx is the performance king and Matrox is a distant second.
While Matrox deserves a lot of praise for being the only leading manufacturer to release HW specs, 3dfx deserves some credit as well. 3dfx has supported Linux almost from the beginning (a Linux Glide port was available for the V1), and they have recently decided to open source their Glide library.
I would rate 3dfx as #1 in Linux performance and Linux driver support, and Matrox as #1 in Linux community support. If only Epic would provide a GL port of UT (which then could be ported to Linux), I would buy a G400MAX. However, for the time being I need my UT under Linux so I'll stick with 3dfx.
I've seen the Celeron 466PPGA listed for $92, which you could combine with an AT size Abit board (about the same price) and fit into your existing case AND use your existing 66MHz memory. The Celeron will be a better all-around gaming chip than the K6-III due to the well known K6 FP performance deficit. 3DNow! only makes the K6-2/3 competetive in very few games (such as QII).
>Like the ISA bus. I've been hearing people, even >people who work in the industry, referring to it >as "eye-sah". How lazy is that? First you're too >lazy to pronounce the term, so you shorten it. >Then you get too lazy to even just pronounced the >letters of the acronym, so you phoneticize it. Most people I know say "eye-sah". Its perfectly okay. What you call lazy I called intelligent - why waste time talking for longer than you need to?
jo det bli så i bland kenta
Matrox Users
Actually, despite recent improvements on the Matrox front, 3dfx still has the fastest GL rendering under Linux (in 16 bit of course).
Monitors aren't that expensive anymore, even if you are picky about brandnames. Roundabout thanksgiving Compusa was selling it's house brand 19" monitors for ~$300.
I payed more than that for my original PC monitor: a 14" Housebrand CompUSA monitor.
I bought 2: one for me and one for the wife.
I could have just as easily bought two for me and one for her if I had a working dual head solution.
BTW, that 14" generica is 7 years old and still operational.
A good Xfree app should be able to do the resolution switching all by itself (ditto for any decent Win32 app too).
Goto Computer Renaisance.
If you were in Vegas, I might just GIVE you my old 14".
Tomato Board and Trident have the worst Windows drivers. The first (and only) Tomato product I ever bought was an 8 Mb PCI video card.
:-)
As soon as I installed the drivers that came with the card Windows crashed after 2 minutes of use. This was on a FRESH windows install. So I took it back. The store offered to get me new drivers. I politely told them that if the card didn't come with drivers that would work for more than 2 minutes, I don't care how much better the new ones work, Tomato doesn't want my business. If you want my business, you have to put in some effort.
Trident drivers are another story. They are stable, but so SLOOOOOOOOOW it makes your computer feel like an XT again!
Most of us geeks can pick up deals - we settle for "less". I have 3 20" monitors. One Mitsubishi Diamond Scan 20H - $599 CAN last year (picked up as a demo model - a year or two old at that time). It was in "immaculate" condition - no manual though.
:-)
And 1 year before that, I had a 17" TTX Color monitor. OK, but not too hot - only $389 CAN.
I also have picked up a 20" modidified Sync-On green Trinitron fixed freq (1280x1024) for only $100 CAN.
And, better than that, after going through the local "dump" for computer parts (not the city trash, but a trashed parts center) I was able to pick up a working 20" multisync monitor for virtually nothing.
And that doesn't count the multitudes of TTL, CGA, and 14" VGA monitors I have lying around...
I have spent no more than $1100 CAN on monitors over the last 10 years. You just have to be careful what you spend your money on. CRTs last a long time, so don't be afraid to buy slightly used/demo models (look at what you buy first though).
But most of my computers are a bit out of date. But who needs a super fast machine for netscape, etc... But even on a slow piece of crap, if you plan to do GUI, you NEED a big monitor. Better for your eyes... I would rather stick with 3 20" monitors than get a Dual Athlon 750 with 256 Mb RAM.
Check your local dumpsters behind high-tech companies, see if your local University/College has parts sales. Look in the paper, and ask freinds. Know what you need and you will find a deal - it just takes time.
Well, you wanted to know my briggs-meyers rating... there you are.
0.0.7 means it only works if:
:-)
:-)
:-)
a). You work your ass of at it.
b). You expect nothing from it.
c). You are willing to live with no features at all. No tuner (maybe), no capture (IIRC). Just video in.
d). You are willing to live with the fact X will screw up on you if you use it too long, and your mouse pointer will be screwed.
e). You are willing to log in as root to use it (at least, that's how I see it).
It basically isn't ready for prime-time or for the skilled user with no time, but it is a good effort, and I hope to see it work (I tried it already - I was impressed by what DID work
And the BT chipsets make the video look like trash anyways. I couldn't believe the difference in TV quality between my RRG and the BT. And the RRG has hardwarde video MJPEG compression too. Even on the highest setting (16:1) it still looks fine.
And the BT TV out is so bad, even at 640x480, the TV screen is TOTALLY unreadable, even on a 51" projection TV. VERY poor since all TV standards support over 480 lines. Ugh. On my matrox card, I can read stuff off the Tv screen at 640x480.
And yes, I have seen and tried both the BT TV in and OUT chipsets. So don't think I am just regurgitating reviews.
Because you might want to record the computer screen and what you are doing to a video tape for an educational seminar. Say you are teaching Word, for example. Simply record your actions on the screen, speak into a microphone, and voila! instant presentation! And you don't need to worry about the machine crashing in the middle of the real prensentation (on VHS tape, you can always just cut that out...).
Or for Non-Linear-Editing. You need to record something to the computer, make changes, and output the final to a video tape. You don't want macrovision screwing that up. And the G200 with rainbow runner makes a GREAT Non-Linear-Editing suite for the price!
So, you only want to protect things like DVD video, for "safety". Pfffft.... yeah right.
Get an external VGA-TV converter box. :-) No worries at all then.
friend of connected it to computer and a tv so when he wants to watch vcd's on tv he doesnt have to switch resolutions
I seem to remember Carmack and some others working on a 3d driver or something for the G200/400...is his work going to be wasted?
Well, after seeing that almost-Free-Software video editing program come out earlier, and knowing that Matrox TV support is in active development, well, upgrading my Matrox Mill II is just looking ever-so-much attractive.
:(
Man, that Matrox G400TV card looks sweet - TV in for doing video capture and editing. Dual-head support (which is great for doing 3D rendering and web design stuff) great 3d support, with better DRI and OpenGL stuff in the pipeline... wow.
But the G400 is an AGP card, and I've got a P233 motherboard. Not a PII-233, I mean a good old fashioned Pentium.
Well, I can probably float buying the the card and a new motherboard, but I can't do a new processor too.
Is there a motherboard out there that will do P1+AGP, but that's processor-upgradeable for when I get some more liquid cash? (Mmmmm... Athelon)
Suggestions anyone?
What? The OpenGL driver they provide is a full driver. The TurboGL driver is more of an ICD though.
Actually, the second head can only do 1280x1024 in 60 Hz, so a very high end monitor is wasted on it.
Heh. Lundahumor på slashdot. Det trodde man inte. ;-)
So if you add all slashdotters monitors, and divide by the total number of slashdotters you will get more than 0.5 ;-)
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
What's more annoying about Matrox's TVOUT macrovision is that you won't be able to watch any DVDs through a VCR at all, even though you don't intend to copy the material. This is necessary for those who's TVs don't have an RCA/SVHS input...
Actually, the second ramdac on the G400 has
a max dot clock of 112 MHz so the second head
must be a fairly low resolution display. If
you'll notice all the Dual-head ads from Matrox,
the second head is always smaller. There's a
reason for that. You can't run two monitors
at 1600x1200 with the card, not even with the
Windows drivers.
i have a matrox g400 and the 2D is beautiful. however, i can only play squake and quake.x11, can't play glquake. how do i get that setup? i'm a newbie so if anyone replies, write to the lowest common denominator. don't know what mesa is, just know i need it. thanks.
>I had both a G200 and a TNT2 in my AX59Pro, and i never had problems with graphics - I'm not saying I never had problems with it...
Sounds like another ACER/A-Open quality system. Ugh. Please, stop these companies before they get down to the level of PC-Chips! This is all the company I work for will buy. At least I suppose I'll have a job for life (and more).
store.yahoo.com has AMD K6-III 400 for $81!
Jeez... I can do the MB and processor for less than $200!
And isn't a K6-III roughly the same as a PII of same MHz? That's a steal!
Whoohoo!
I know this card probably is out-of-date, but will it be easy for MGA to open the spec and let people write a driver for XFree86?
2000 == the year linux 3d took over
According to the marketing doublespeak, its not 16bit, its 22bit. no really, we promise.
d .html
Of course, that still doesn't explain why it looks like ass when blending: http://www.longbowdigitalarts.com/seumas/3dfxblen
Actually the specs of all Voodoo cards are released. The sources for all drivers are released. I don't know why you make a distinction between the two companies in this respect. The only legitamite distinction that can be made having to do with this is that matrox has more developers hacking away at their code base than 3dfx does. At least it appears that way, John Carmack being a notable figure head.
I don't care who contributes any amount of money. Nothing will change the developmental stage of the Dirty Rotten Imbeciles (DRI). They are immature, loud, racous, and just plain rude.
I hope that was meant as a retorical question... AC's reading the articles, heh.
it's pronounced ASS-key, sim. BUTT-plug
More support is great news; however, I wonder if dual head really is as urgent under X. Many window managers have a desktop paging mechanism. When I show this to Windows users, it is usually agreed that this is a wonderful and obvious way to reduce clutter on the desktop. Buying a second monitor is another way to increase desktop size, but until flat 17" panels are cheap, a really bulky way.
I registered my new G400 DualHead I bought this weekend online. I don't recall there being a box marked 'Linux'. I did write in that a major factor in me buying it was Linux support. Has anybody else noticed there being anything in the boxed version regarding Linux. My oem card had no box, just card, cable, disc.
I'm really glad I bought this card, it just keeps getting better.
What's really bad is when they start pronouncing the acronyms like they were words.
Oh so you walk around saying stuff like "S-C-S-I" and "L-A-N". Its not lazy, its just the generally accepted way to say these things. I'd probably think you were a luser trying to sound smart if you said. "I need an I-S-A ethernet N-I-C for my machine.", instead of "I need a ISA NIC for my crappy 486." or something to that effect.
I don't get it. Why isn't the hardware designed so that it always does the Macrovision stuff to the output signal, no matter what?
Indeed ! They've sure changed from the early days when NO matrox board were supported, and calls and request for specs to their head office were never returned or acknowledged. Good on them ! I know what MY next board will be !
Its quite likely that more than 50% of /. readers have more than one monitor.
On what do you base that assumption? I'm still struggling along with a nearly 4 year old system. I'm sure there are others using far less up to date machines. We don't all have money to spend.
"Sir, I'd stake my reputation on it."
"Kryten, you haven't got a reputation."
Cool though the multi-head capabilities are, you have to wonder who will use it, other than top professionals who can afford to have two monitors on their desk. I guess you could use two cheap 14" monitors, but you wouldn't get the best form the card, and you'd end up with severe neckache. Having said that, I want one... ;)
"Sir, I'd stake my reputation on it."
"Kryten, you haven't got a reputation."
Man, you can tell you're getting old when you don't know (or care) what half the acronyms mean in an article. Yeesh. Some days I wish we'd stop abbreviating everything. Ah, but then what fun would it be if the name of something actually described what it did, eh? :)
Hmm... is 3dfx still using 16-bit color?
If so... it can't really compare to the
g400/TNT2/GeForce wich all support and is
fast in 32-bit mode.
You might be interested in some source from the :)
;)
Dxr2 project at opensource.creative.com.
There's one BrookTree chip in the Dxr2 which is
usually disabled when playing DVD on Linux
(The usual comment is "Please turn this on if you
want to avoid pirating your dvds"
The majority of the cards that do work are supported under the BT848 chipset, but there is work in progress for the Matrox Marvel G200 with Video 4 Linux:
http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~eddie/mga4 linux/
Christopher,
We keep good relationships with all of the XFree86 developers. VA Linux is actually hosting our open source development repository (SourceForge). We spend a lot of our time coordinating our efforts with those of VA Linux, Red Hat, and SuSE so that XFree86, and ultimately all open source end users, can have the largest possible benefit from the combined efforts of literally hundreds of XFree86 contributors.
I own a Matrox G400 Dual Head (32MB). A friend of mine has an Elsa Erazor III TNT2 (also 32MB) and here's what I have found:
The G400s OpenGL ICD seems to be way more beta than the TNT2s. The scene with the tubes in 3DMark2000 is bumpy on my P II 400 and fluent on his K6-2 366. The 'dozen' demo (available here) also has performance problems in the first scene (the one with the glows) which runs perfectly on his TNT2. But, as I said the G400 ICD is under development and still being worked on.
As for TV-Out, the one of the Erazor is more configurable (Elsa has always been very good with TV-Out) but the Matrox TV-Out is of a very good quality too. When it comes to outputting DVDs Matrox's DVD-Max feature really kicks ass and you get a full screen HQ image as if you were playing it on a 'real' DVD Player!
As far as drivers are considered, I do not see much difference. They both have the basic configuration options and are both under heavy development. (When I discovered the bug with the ground texture in 3DMark's helicopter scene I went to download the latest driver and, after installing it, saw that the problem was fixed.)
Apart from these little driver difference they compare pretty similarly in the benchmarks (can't really check that because my PC is slightly more powerful than my friends')
As for Q3, UT and so on, Matrox have developed a special TurboGL driver which only works for those games but is supposed to be faster. Unfortunately I couldn't test that one yet because my PC's mainboard has given up working recently.
All in all they're pretty similar. The G400 wins out on the features like Environtally Mapped Bump Mapping, (which you REALLY notice unlike Vibrant Color Quality2 ) the DVD TV-output, the Dual-Head feature (allows for TV-OUT, multi-screen usage etc) and a little in performance. (according to reviews I read)
On the other side the Erazor has slightly better Direct3D and OpenGL support.
As far as I am concerned, I am a proud owner of a G400 and the latest moves Matrox made towards Linux only confirm me in my choice and I will continue to support them by buying their products in the future.
Phew, guess I wrote a little too much but I'm too lazy to start reviewing all that now.
Greetings
Are da bomb! Keep up the good work, Frank and colleagues. I'm going to be ordering two G400's in the next couple of weeks, just based on the presence of good Linux OpenGL support for them. A rousing hoo-raw to you all from out here in the sticks!
...I've had one of these boards for a year and a half, they support any socket 7 chip - from a p75 to a K6-3/600. Also includes support for SIMMs or DIMMs (DIMMs are much faster though). Bus master DMA and AGP 2X are supported as well.
I have an nvidia (tnt) also and it works great ... in 98. I really want acceleration in Linux, and have been waiting for XFree86 2.4, hoping I could get decent performance from a GeForce card so I could upgrade. Now, however, I think maybe my next card really ought to be a G400. I have been envying the Matrox Linux compatibility for some time, and they are really starting to look like the card of choice.
Would be nice if the turbo driver would run on a Celeron though... (Yes, I use win98 for occasionally playing a game, can't buy any Linux games over here anyway, tried to buy Linux Q3a at on shop that is specialiced in games and always imports them from The States, so that I've got it sooner than anyone else, replied: "No way, I'm not going to order Linux games, out of the question.."
Well really nice.. I'm off to LokiGames, making use of my creditcard for a change (only 1/100 or 1000 people has one over here, I think.)
The problem is, everyone who puts TV-Out technology on their boards signs a contract with Macrovision, Inc (they are
the ones who implement the copy protection that prevents you from copying vhs tapes), and the contract forbids
specs from being released (because people could then easily override the insecure Macrovision protection and allow
vhs tapes to be copied).
Ahhh...you mean the Macrovision copy protection which is trivially disabled? (for instance in my DVD player). You can also buy a box for $50 or so which strips macrovision from any video signal
Point taken though - I didn't know that macrovision were involved in TVout stuff.
Nice info...
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
But that's going to destroy your signal quality - really no-one should use RF. I don't know about the US but over here every TV made in the last 5+ years has had at least a scart socket (which can carry either composit or even better RGB). No I know the US don't have scart (damn euro commie connectors!) but are RGB/composit/svideo really that rare?
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
I couldn't make out from the information if this would include support for capturing with the Marvel and RR-G cards. Matrox cards are performing capturing extremely well, and it would be a great benefit for both Matrox and the Linux community if this would be the case.
Well done Matrox!
it's in my head
Well, I had been trying to decide which new video card to get. I love the G400 and especially the dual-head, but it never worked under linux.
=======
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
High performance graphics pretty much require intimate contact between the program and the hardware. A lot of this stuff ends up having to run as root, or suffer performance loss.
Perhaps in the future, better designed hardware will make secure, high performance graphics feasible. It's really more a matter of marketing than technical issues.
But while we're busy treading down this path, don't forget how much NT 4 reliability was 'helped' by moving graphics into the kernel.
For a gaming machine, the security/performance implications are probably OK. But this bears careful watching, and an ongoing assessment of risks.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Two monitors are well within the range of rich amateurs. Or alternatively you can use a monitor and a TV. And there's a lot of uses especially for things like video editing. Or just have two keyboards, two mice and have two people using the machine.
What I really want is 3 outputs, 3 projectors and a 120 degree screen. All acting like a single big display device.
Precision Insight should go public now, while the market is hot. They've got some great people over there. They should do it like Andover did, also. That open ipo system is great for investors.
I have a G200 and have been keeping an eye on what opinions are. In the Windows world, I believe that at very low resolutions (680x480) the TNT2 is somewhat faster than the G400, but at higher resolutions the G400 is much faster. The Linux drivers could change things (since there are now lots of G200/G400 driver efforts going, I don't know what to compare) The G400 is supposed to have somewhat better image quality, and supports environmental bump mapping, which no Linux games use right now, but looks incredible in games that use it in Windows.
My G200 does very well 2d-wise...I'm happy with it. I tried the glx 3d drivers quite a while back (probably faster now)...they still have a good ways to go, as the card runs somewhat slower than it does in WinNT, but I was playing q3test against other people in my dorm happily on a PII266. Still, I could feel the slowdown relative to the Windows drivers at the time, and stuck to playing Q3test in Windows.
The G200 is still relatively slow 3d wise (compared to cards a few generations down the road like the G400 and the TNT2), and I'd recommend against it if you're looking for a 3d gaming card for Linux. We'll see what improved drivers do.
Given that a G400MAX is the fastest 3D card under Linux at the moment (going by GLX performance), this is great news. Even NVidia's latest GeForce GLX drivers don't compare on a GeForce SDR to the G400. I expected to see the GeForce dominate once the NVidia drivers were out, but on a P3 500 the G400MAX was over twice as fast[1] as a GeForce SDR on an Athlon 600 at quake3 (something like 55 fps for the G400, 25 for the Geforce).
Matrox is further increasing their lead in linux with moves like this. Once DualHead is in place and XFree86 4.0 with DRI support is out, I can't see any other company providing drivers as reliable or as fast for a long time. It takes time to ramp up expertise on a new platform, and by using Open Source/GLX drivers, Matrox will almost certainly be a step ahead for a long time to come.
[1] - Now in Windows the G400MAX doesn't beat the GeForce, which shows the GeForce Linux drivers are severely limited. With time this will improve, assuming NVidia keeps up with their pledge to support XFree86 and Linux and releases specs so that other developers can contribute in meaningful ways.
Now, the only big problem is that Matrox doesn't seem to be as well-favored in the supply chains as they used to be, which is a matter well outside the scope of the control of Linux folk...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Hopefully there's some information sharing between Matrox, PI, and LNUX on this so that all their efforts can continue to prove useful.
It would be unfortunate if there was a fragmentation of efforts.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Th G400's are the first really 3d accelerated cards matrox released. The 400's are fairly speedy and from eyeballing a friend's it looks quite comparable to a TNT2 but with prettier graphics.
The downside is their Win drivers aren't full OGL; it's a mini-ICD that's HEAVILY optimized for Quake. Performance isn't bad with other games in D3D, but it is fairly pricey compared to a TNT2; G400's run about $250. But it's got nifty stuff like bump-mapping that make the world just downright gorgeous when it's supported.
Hopefully the DRI driver will be full OGL+bump mapping and that OGL will dribble back to Windows. Hmmm, opensource Linux improving windows. Wasn't this the point?
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
Well, erm... I've always seen Matrox as the company with the best driver support for Windows (and it works good under Linux as well). I've never had a problem with their drivers. Ever. I've just downloaded the latest unified driver and watched things fly (since my original Millennium I -- I still have it). When I added another Matrox board, I didn't even have to update the drivers. I don't see your problem...
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
You can get a composite->RF converter at radio shack for about $25
________________________________
You know I've been a big fan of nvidia for a long time and had pretty much relegated to buying only nvidia hardware (I've never been a 3dfx fan especially after the only card I've ever bought was a lame ass banshee), but after watching matrox make contribution after contribution to Xfree in the form of open specs and financial funding, I have a feeling I should reward them with my business since they have obviouly had a clue for quite sometime. ;)
Can someone who has been a long time user of the G series and maybe even someone who has a G400 give me some details on how it compares to a tnt2? I know there are benchmarks and what not out there but I honestly prefere the personal opinion to the official one
Specifically in games like q3 and what not. How well do they handle OpenGL?
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
First the "yes". I found that page already, but thanks for pointing it out anyway. Trouble is, they are only at version 0.0.7 and the page isn't very clear on what that means.
As for the "but". Sure, the best supported cards are the BT848/878-based ones. But I can't find any cards based on this chipset that have video in AND out (WinTV-D is apparently out only...). Know of any?
---
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
This explains a lot. I guess I better keep looking for a fully supported card OR get the G200-TV and learn how to create Linux drivers...
---
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
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Now, can someone answer this question: Is the G200-TV supported for video capture/output? Under Video4Linux or elsewhere? If so, this is the card for me (I don't need high-performance, I just need s-video in AND out under Linux).
When I buy it, I intend to mention that their support of Linux is the reason I chose them. Be sure you do the same.
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In my experience, the dubious honor of worst Windows drivers goes to ATI. They have alway s had poor 2d AND 3d drivers (remember when Gateway quit using them ~5 years ago? There was a reason.)
A lot of the reason for this is the Matrox driver project - a bunch of guys are writing good drivers for Matrox. Don't be too hasty in chalking this one up to Matrox...there are other (open) sources at work.
All the sources and all the specs are available for the 3dfx cards as you mentioned. The GLX list does have a lot of people on it, but in reality only about a half dozen are probably active developers.
I'm the primary author for the 3dfx drivers. I'd love to have more people help with them. That's why we setup dri.sourceforge.net. That's got the current 3dfx drivers, and will include all the drivers from Precision Insight including the Matrox and ATI drivers.
- |Daryll
DRI is only for 3D support.
For video capture under Linux using The Marvel or Rainbow Runner G, go to here. The drivers are still in an unstable "alpha" state, but work well enough to use and start hacking on.
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Knowing that Matrox is committed to having open source drivers for their stuff means that I can buy with confidence. I've been telling my parents (who've never touched Linux) for years that they should buy hardware that is supported by open source. It is the surest indicator that it will be widely supported regardless of which software they run.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Someone offered to trade me his dual head G400 for my Voodoo3 3000. Even though it meant pretty much giving up quake3 (sure, I could still play, but it would be at about half the speed, which would be intolerable for me) I decided to go ahead with the deal because I knew that even though 3dfx does make decent linux drivers, I felt that Matrox's method, "open the specs and let the hacking begin" was more in line with my beliefs.
I'm happy to see that Matrox is not only meeting my expectations, but pleasantly surpassing them by going the extra mile to make sure their hardware is supported in linux. I'll make sure Matrox gets my money next time I actually buy a video card.
Jeremy
Looking for a Python IRC bot?
Matrox has done a great 180. They used to have the worst driver support in the industry, even under Windows. Now they're working hard, and they're putting out good Linux support. I think the G200/G400 is the fastest 2d card you can get for XFree86, and their 3d support is getting better fast.
Remember, people. When you buy the videocard, SEND IN THOSE PRODUCT REGISTRATION CARDS! Mark Linux. It's how they know what to support!
People are working on support for TV-Out. Unfortunately this is one of the only portions of Matrox's graphics system they did not make the specs available for.
The problem is, everyone who puts TV-Out technology on their boards signs a contract with Macrovision, Inc (they are the ones who implement the copy protection that prevents you from copying vhs tapes), and the contract forbids specs from being released (because people could then easily override the insecure Macrovision protection and allow vhs tapes to be copied).
There are rumors that Matrox intends to support TV-Out via a binary-only module, but they are only rumors. There hasnt been any official info from Matrox regarding TV-Out on Linux.
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Is it just me, or do more people get the feeling that the magic 'carmack touch' was applied here?
In the matroxuser.com sniplet it sums up the history of the matrox & linux community relationship, from the first matrox driver in 1992, upto the GLX project, where it -clearly- states the nature and development of carmack's role in the GLX project. And if you would expand this history line with 'the present' it would be this order:
Start of GLX
Carmack messing with GLX
Matrox Funding GLX development.
Now doesnt that make a great coinsidence? Specialy considering the weight carmack's word usualy carries in the OpenGL / Games scene, it wouldnt supprise me to find that he was the final drop for matrox to go ahead.
If this all is true? donno, but if so, kuddles to u carmack for helping this to happen!
-- Chris Chabot
"I dont suffer from insanity, i enjoy every minute of it!"
Now, if Matrox would only release the warp specifications so that we could make secure direct rendering without a performance hit.
Some background:
The G200 and G400 has the ability to read and write to buffers in primary memory. This is a great feature, but if misused you can easily crash your computer or with a little more work do things like read and write kernel memory. Therefore we only allow root to do direct rendering in Utah GLX.
Thanks to Matrox' donation of the warp microcode we can now send a list of vertices to the card instead of having to manually calculating things like delta x and delta y values. (This is usually called triangle setup.) This was a great performance boast and also a key to more security since you cannot embed register writes in such a list of vertices.
Still, every time you want to change the current texture or change your current blending mode you will need to write to a register. And since the G200/G400 doesn't distinguish between a register write to change your blending mode and a register write that initiates a blit that will zero out the first 6 MB of framebuffer memory you a normal user cannot be allowed to write such data directly to the card. [1]
You can work around this by sending a buffer with some sort of bytecode to the kernel and let it do some sanity checks on it before sending it to the card. Thankfully the vertex lists cannot contain hidden register writes. [2].
This does not come without a performance penalty though.
What we could do if we had warp specifications is to write microcode that would take a buffer that not only contained vertex data but also information about all mode changes that was safe. Stuff like buffer allocation would still have to be done by the kernel or the X server, but you wouldn't have to do that very often.
I am not totally unreasonable, even though I would love to write some microcode myself I would be satisfied if Matrox provided microcode with this kind of functionality.
Still, this is a problem that will probably disappear in a couple of graphics card generations once multiuser systems is more common.
[1] Actually, the data isn't written directly to the card in any case if you are using DMA to transfer the commands from the host to the card. This is a key to high performance graphics in combination with the G200/G400.
[2] You can upset the card by writing improper values to the vertex list with the current microcode, you shouldn't be able to do more than a DOS attack with it though. The kernel or X server could probably detect this and restore the state of the card if this is tried as well. (I don't know if this is possible, but I think this is the case.)
The decision is even more of a cinch given the excellent quality of their hardware. This is not a situation where you have to choose between the best hardware and the best open source drivers. Matrox has them both. The G400 MAX has the highest output bandwidth of any card of which I am aware, and it produces a nice crisp image on even the biggest monitors. Besides that, it makes a passable 3D accellerator for games.
For me the decision was easy. I traded in my Millenium II for a Millenium G400 MAX last week and I have been very happy since.
-jwb