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Matrox Releases G400 Specs
Anonymous Coward writes "Matrox just released the hardware specs for the highly rated G400 here (must register). According to the guys working on the G200 driver (including John Carmack) from a driver perspective it is very similiar to the G200, so XFree86 and 3D support should be coming very soon. 1999 is going to be good year for Linux and high performance graphics. " With XFree86 4.0 out by the end of the year (hopefully), the Precision Insight news, and mandrake's work on xinerama, I'm inclined to agree. Now, if only I could get my hands on one of those babies...
Matrox has stated that they are going to help us with the WARP engine. Take a look at the following URL: http://lists.openprojects.net/pipermail/g200-dev/1 999-June/001323.html
besides, using the WARP engine will not be really helpful until we are using a direct rendering approach.
/Andreas
If Matrox hasn't released the specs for the G400's triangle setup engine (They never did for the G200), this is just a marketing ploy. Buy a TNT.
By releasing already-written GPLed drivers, NVidia jumped to the top of the pack. Esp. since they actually have decent Windows drivers if there are any games you still need to reboot for.
Short of releasing a faster card (Is the G400 faster than the TNT2?) AND releasing full specs for the card, Matrox is dead in the water.
(Note: Not long ago I was a Matrox fan and an NVidia hater. Then Matrox kept on slipping on drivers, and I got annoyed.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Matrox refuses to release the specs to their triangle setup engine, which is a key portion of the card for decent performance.
NVidia has released a full-blown GPLed driver. Instead of releasing docs, they actually went to the effort of writing a driver.
And don't forget that Matrox doesn't give a damn about OpenGL gamers under Windows either.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
For the uninformed (like I was until I looked it up), Xinerama is a wide screen server that combines two or more screens into a single virtual screen. I'm guessing this would be really good for video walls and other similar uses.
:^)
About the G400 specs, awesome. I wrote to Matrox about this, and I guess this was their reply.
-- Does Rain Man use the Autistic License for his software?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
see this image. It's from Quake 3, with all the effects on. btw it's 615Kb JPG...
Yes, the G400 is quite a bit faster than TNT2 or Voodoo3, at 32b color depth and high resolutions. At lower resolutions, it doesn't do as well as those cards.
:)
But if you can play Q3 smoothly at 1280x1024, why go back to 800x600?
My reference is the recent Q3T benchmarks of various video cards by Id. The original data can be found at Id, and here's some analysis done at Shugashack. (I don't completely agree with their analysis, but I might be confused about an issue or two. Like all analysis on the web, use it as background, but make up your own mind when you have the data. The G400 is definately damn fast on high res, high quality settings, though.)
John
Hang on a sec. I think calling this a "marketing ploy" is going a little over the line. Two points about the triangle setup engine: it's not necessary to have the WARP triangle setup specs in order to get good 3d acceleration. You still get the rendering engine, after all, and it ain't half bad. But regardless, the WARP gives you about a 25% performance boost (J. Carmack's estimate, not mine), and Matrox has committed to helping the open-source driver developers use it. Considering their track record on promises to open-source folks, I'd say they're serious. On this one, let's wait a month or two and see what happens with the WARP -- my feeling (and the attitude on the GLX development list) is that Matrox will probably do what they say.
... the same GLX source base as the G200 drivers. Surprise.
... well, I don't want to get into a pissing contest here. But the result of having the card specs is that the *G200* is faster than any TNT(2)(Ultra) card under Linux right now -- the drivers are just better. So, if your only metric is Linux 3d (OpenGL) speed, then I would guess Matrox is a-okay: they've opened the specs on everything we could have asked for (as a public company, they would likely be liable and be sued for releasing specs on something as proprietary as the WARP ... I'm amazed they were able to release the G2/400 specs, personally), and have committed to help us (which, notably, is the same response we have from Nvidia -- code and a committment to continue helping) on the small remaining parts. Furthermore, their G200 (not to mention the forthcoming G400) is arguably the fastest Linux 2d/3d combo accelerator at present. (The Voodoo2's still beat up on it in pure 3d performance.) I'm not running off to buy Matrox stock or anything, but in regards to their open-source community standings, I would say they're doing all the right things.
:) There are better things to get worked up about -- both of these companies have helped out 3D under Linux *tremendously*. Bashing Matrox here doesn't do anyone any good.
Sure, Nvidia released "already-written GPLed drivers", but a) they aren't fully finished, b) they didn't send the specs along with the drivers, and c) the Nvidia drivers were based on
As to your note on Matrox needing to have a faster card *and* releasing full specs
Seeing this message and your other anti-Matrox message, it looks like you've made the full transition from Matrox fan/Nvidia hater to Matrox hater/Nvidia fan. Might I suggest reserving religious commentary for something other than graphics cards?
Ok, I'm sure Crow (I'm assuming you're Stephen Crowely [sp?], unless I've been confused for a long time) has adequately explained this, but I'll chime in. People keep complaining about the WARP specs not being there. It doesn't really matter yet anyway. Besides, this is a bunch of people who asked for specs and got some of them. Matrox is willing to work with them. Likewise, NVidia has released source but no specs. Both have made great contributions but haven't gone all the way. Neither seems like that much of a publicity stunt, just another way of keeping/getting customers. Also, some people seem to think that support for the G[24]00 cards comes at the expense of support for the NVidia cards, but that isn't so. They share a lot of source, from what I can tell, and not all the developments the G200 development people are making are specific to Matrox products. GLX has a bit of a ways to go, and they're making it go. I've been on the G200 dev. mailing list for all but the first week it existed. It's been very interesting. I've learned a lot. I was very shocked when I noticed that first message from John Carmack! I've since moved to digest form (I'm not contributing anything anyway!), but I still get it, and it's still interesting. Everything is progressing along fine, and there really isn't any bad news at all, except for the impatient. And for the license-complainers talking about microcode and the WARP engine, someone on the g200 list has repeatedly pointed out that the Linux kernel contains microcode, and that is quite GPL'd.
The G400 16mb version: $150
G400 32mb version: 200
G400 MAX (faster 32mb version) 250..
I just ordered a max a few days ago (they've been taking online orders for a little while, it'll take the boards about 3-4 weeks to get there, unless it's a max, which will take 4-5 weeks.)
They look great, and we'll see how it all turns out on the 21" monitor, eh?
-ehfisher
this
The biggest hurdle to implementing bump mapping is artistic. To get the best effect from textures in hardware that doesn't support bump mapping, the light effects must be drawn in by hand in the texture (i.e. drawing the shadows on a brick wall). In a bump mapping-capable system, you want the hardware to do that, so the textures are drawn differently. Supporting both types of systems effectively doubles the workload of the texture artists, which is one of the main reasons why bump mapping isn't in q3a.
.plan that was in)
Another reason is the non-negligible 20%+ performance hit from enabling env. map bump mapping, as displayed by the Matrox G400. When a Ultra TNT2 is having trouble reaching 60 fps on "Highest Quality" in q3a, it doesn't make sense to devote the extra effort for a feature very few will use. As it is, q3a engine licensees are supposed to be able to easily enable bump mapping in the engine itself, for future games. (I can't remember which id
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