Voodoo 3 3000 vs Matrox G400 (not max)
Paul-RS
I've been running at Voodoo 3 3000 for the past few months, but I have
the offer of a Matrox G400 32MB (not the max version) for a swap.
I appreciate the Matrox can do 32-bit and has twice the memory than my
Voodoo 3 3000
But what about speed in things such as Quake3, Unreal Tournament etc
??
Anyone any advice please ?
Paul.
everettes
really tell the difference between 16 and 32 bit.
"alekz" <fusi...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:FZ0Q4.5357$Za1....@newsc.telia.net...
> Voodoo 3 will be faster in UT because it uses Glide.
>
>
> "Paul-RS" <pa...@gremlin.u-net.com> skrev i meddelandet
> news:2k51hs8o6n72g5g6l...@4ax.com...
Ray Marden
support all three APIs, have more mature drivers, and are generally
faster...
Often disagreeing with 3dfx's technology pushes/advancements,
Ray
========================================================================
Paul-RS wrote:
>
> I've been running at Voodoo 3 3000 for the past few months, but I have
> the offer of a Matrox G400 32MB (not the max version) for a swap.
>
> I appreciate the Matrox can do 32-bit and has twice the memory than my
> Voodoo 3 3000
>
> But what about speed in things such as Quake3, Unreal Tournament etc
> ??
>
> Anyone any advice please ?
>
> Paul.
--
Ray M. Marden
{dbd}Lagged_Newbie[AsS]
ICQ: 44585133
Mailto:Ray_M...@worldnet.att.net
I believe I exist based only on what my environment tells me.
trobbel
but the ramdac output quality of the G400 is simply unique!
I sometimes use two monitors to surf the net.......
I have a cel400 and play q3a in 1024x768 with 38 fps in win98 (haven't run
the demo @500Mhz yet). That's enough, wouldn't you say?
--
remove .nospam to reply
You may have
deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you. The universe
rings true wherever you fairly test it. C.S. Lewis
"Paul-RS" <pa...@gremlin.u-net.com> wrote in message
news:2k51hs8o6n72g5g6l...@4ax.com...
Michael
using TurboGL to blitz the voodoo3, but yes the G400 at this time doesn't
have proper support for all games, though that will change. The G400 also
has EMBM which is Enviromental Bumb Mapping, that really does make a
difference on realism. The technical demo that comes with the game shows
that off :). It depends on the system you have. A P3-600 for example, I
would choose the G400 but an athlos based system the Voodoo3 because
TurboGL (for UT, Q3, Q2 and more) only supports P3 CPUs. I only have a
P2-333 so TurboGL doesn't make that much difference on my system but I
play Q2 at 1024x768x32bpp at over 55fps which is better than I could get
on a voodoo3.
E-mail me if you want, I did a heap of research before choosing the G400,
I know the pros & cons of both.
Karl
spec CPU's. The G400 gains ground with faster CPU's and higher resolutions,
having said that I'm fairly happy with mine on a K62-450. I'm not bothered
about GLIDE, maybe a few old games that want it, but not a lot I suspect.
Most software now seems to come with D3D support and the G400 can hardly be
called a slouch in that area. I've not really messed about with the TurboGL,
tried it on Unreal, thats about it. I think you will find that TurboGL is
now provided for Athlon/PIII and K6II/K6III.
Try and have a look at both cards. I had a look at the Quake 3 demo and
there was a difference between 16 and 32 bit colour, there was quite visible
dithering on 16bit explosions. Thinking ahead, maybe games will start giving
you the option of using more detailed textures, in which case the Voodoo's
start to look rather unnapealing. I would rather have the output quality of
the G400 rather than the extra fps. Having said that, it wouldn't hurt
Matrox to release some decent OpenGL drivers....
Karl
Michael <quad...@iinet.net.au> wrote in message
news:39115130...@iinet.net.au...
Jeff
Answer these questions and the answer will materialize right before your
eyes....
1. Is your cpu a PIII 500mhz or faster? (Celeron 1 overclocked to 500+
doesn't count)?
2. Is 2D quality important to you (i.e do you spend more time gaming or
surfing the net)?
3. In games, would you sacrifice a few frames per second for the ultimate
in 3D image quality?
If you answered NO to any of the above questions the get a Voodoo
3000....simple.
I ran a Voodoo 3000 for over 6 months before I got a G400. Now the Voodoo
3000 board is in my kids system and I'm running the G400. From a 2D/3D
quality perspective, the Matrox G400 is second to none. It may not be the
fastest board out there but it can sure hold its own in any benchmark for
video cards from that generation. Just look at the countless reviews on the
net for both prodcuts and you can decide for yourself.
Jeff
Paul-RS wrote in message <2k51hs8o6n72g5g6l...@4ax.com>...
Paul-S
>Hi Paul,
>
>Answer these questions and the answer will materialize right before your
>eyes....
>
>1. Is your cpu a PIII 500mhz or faster? (Celeron 1 overclocked to 500+
>doesn't count)?
>
Yes - Pentium III 450 overclocked to 558 Mhz.
>2. Is 2D quality important to you (i.e do you spend more time gaming or
>surfing the net)?
>
Yes - I am running a Iiyama Vision Master Pro 510 monitor at 1600x1200 res for
my windows desktop.
>3. In games, would you sacrifice a few frames per second for the ultimate
>in 3D image quality?
>
Yes - Just a few frames per second would not notice, and 32-bit colour in Quake
3 would be much nicer (ugly banding in the fog)
>If you answered NO to any of the above questions the get a Voodoo
>3000....simple.
>
Looks like given your questions the answer should be clear !
>I ran a Voodoo 3000 for over 6 months before I got a G400. Now the Voodoo
>3000 board is in my kids system and I'm running the G400. From a 2D/3D
>quality perspective, the Matrox G400 is second to none. It may not be the
>fastest board out there but it can sure hold its own in any benchmark for
>video cards from that generation. Just look at the countless reviews on the
>net for both prodcuts and you can decide for yourself.
But Jeff.....
I have a Big problem here and would appreciate suggestions from anyone:
I have been running a Voodoo 3 3000 (overclocked to 183 Mhz) so went to
Device-Manager and selected to remove the video device (voodoo card)
Shut down Win98 and pulled out the card.
Plugged in a Matrox G400 (not max) and re-booted.
Windows found the card and asked for drivers. I pointed it towards a folder on
my HDD which contained the latest drivers direct from Matrox's web site (that I
had prepared earlier!)
Thoughts:
2D Difficult to know. As I know the 2D SHOULD be better, I may be wishing it
better. It looks as clear as It could be. Poss a little better than Voodoo3 but
without switching between them fast I would not bet a lot of money on which was
in my machine at any one time.
So I'd give this aspect to the G400 as I think it's fractionally better.
Regards 2D Speed: I have a VERY old (but I like it) Utility from hercules called
SPEEDY It displays 9 boxes with various things happening.
Triangles, Boxes, Fonts, Blitting, etc etc all happening at once and gives you a
benchmark score (speedy mark) after about 1 minute of working.
This is an old program, but a honest program for general 2D stuff, which has got
faster as my machines have got faster over the years.
Here's the bummer:
Voodoo 3 3000 gave a speedy score of about 1200 (which is blinding)
Matrox G400 gave a score of about 250 (which is utter crap) and noticeably
slower when running.
Something very worrying here :-(
Now onto Quake 3 which is probably the main reason why I'd like the 32-bit
colour.
Running on my Voodoo3 at 1024x768 with Everything turned on - max texture
detail, 32-bit etc etc, everything apart from Fog type stuff looked great and
ran reasonably smooth and fast.
Running same settings on the G400 produced a better looking game when it comes
to the Fog, and some lighting etc, but I'd have to say Unplayable with these
settings. Jerky in the extreme.
Walking along, and jerk/stutter every couple of steps.
Have to drop settings and res right down low to achieve smoothness of the
Voodoo3 play.
Unreal tournament, also, whilst looking nicer was much reduced in playability.
I am happy to drop a few fps in a game, but plugging in the G400 really killed
the games.
Is a G400 really this bad ?
Any suggestions as to why it is performing so bad against my Voodoo3 3000 ?
I'd LOVE it to be better.
Paul.
Jeff
Sorry to hear that you are having problems. I'll try to give you a
hand.....
1. 2D...while the Voodoo is no slouch, I noticed considerable difference
above 1024x768 on a Sony 19" monitor. What resolution do you run at?
2. 2D speed....can't say much about the old ultiliy your using but on
Wintune 98 the G400 is slightly better than my Voodoo 3000. Also most
reviews of these cards on the interent will show that 2D speed has basically
maxed out so they should be very similar. I'd suggest running the latest
Wintune benchmark and see if there is a big difference. If there is then
it's possible that there is a conflict with your G400 and/or the settings in
the BIOS/OS are not optimal for this card. I would make certain that the
latest G400 drivers are installed correctly (ver. 5.52).
3. Games...you mention Unreal Tournament and Q3. Unfortunately, these
games are probably the poorest at showing the true speed of the G400. Most
reviews show the G400 blazing thru D3D games and only giving adequate
performance in opengl. Now in your case it sounds like there is a problem
with the G400 (bad card, settings,??). Again, most reviews show the Voodoo
3 and G400 being very close in performance for these games. A recent review
of Geforce cards which also happen to bench the Voodoo 3500 vs. G400 max is:
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/00q2/000406/index.html
As you can see they are running neck and neck in all benchmarks. Here's
another set of benchmarks for the G400/Voodoo in Q3 at
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/q3videoroundup2/page10.asp
Finally, in my case, I'm getting over 50fps on a G400 (overclocked to max
speeds) in Q3 demo 001, normal, 1024x768.
Do you have some fps numbers to compare both cards in the same game? It
might be interesting to see how poorly the G400 is doing in relationship to
the Voodoo.
So in summary, you should not be seeing such a big performance difference.
I feel there maybe some conflict or incorrect settings. Did you physically
remove all drivers/reference to your Voodoo card? I can't comment on your
install procedure because when I installed my G400 I purged the hard drive
and did a fresh install of my OS/basic programs (backed-up on cd with only
basic drivers installed...very nice to reformat and reinstall most programs
in less than 1 hr!).
Best Regards,
Jeff
Paul-S wrote in message <4so7hso8b2tvch20r...@4ax.com>...
Julian McGirr
I run a G400 Max also on and Iiyama Vision Master Pro 510 monitor at
1600x1200 and just one question about the 2D quality - you are using a
quality BNC cable aren't you?
When I first hooked mine up with a regular VGA cable the quality was OK but
a bit naff a higher resolutions (above 1280x1024) - switching to a quality
BNC cable certainly fixed that, the quality is now excellent.
Jeff is giving you good advice, there is something wrong with your setup. I
run a P3 500 with 384Mb RAM and run UT @ 1024x768 D3D with the graphics
etc. maxed out and get excellent frame rates - very playable (same for
Soldier of Fortune with OpenGL). Can't comment on Q3 - don't like it.
Good Luck, Julian.
On Sat, 06 May 2000 10:38:57 +0100, Paul-S <pa...@gremlin.u-net.com> wrote:
>On Thu, 4 May 2000 19:10:49 -0400, "Jeff" <ski...@corecomm.net> wrote:
>
>>Hi Paul,
>>
>>Answer these questions and the answer will materialize right before your
>>eyes....
>>
>>1. Is your cpu a PIII 500mhz or faster? (Celeron 1 overclocked to 500+
>>doesn't count)?
>>
>
>Yes - Pentium III 450 overclocked to 558 Mhz.
>
>
>>2. Is 2D quality important to you (i.e do you spend more time gaming or
>>surfing the net)?
>>
>
>Yes - I am running a Iiyama Vision Master Pro 510 monitor at 1600x1200 res for
>my windows desktop.
>
>
>>3. In games, would you sacrifice a few frames per second for the ultimate
>>in 3D image quality?
>>
>
>Yes - Just a few frames per second would not notice, and 32-bit colour in Quake
>3 would be much nicer (ugly banding in the fog)
>
>
>>If you answered NO to any of the above questions the get a Voodoo
>>3000....simple.
>>
>
>Looks like given your questions the answer should be clear !
>
>
>
>>I ran a Voodoo 3000 for over 6 months before I got a G400. Now the Voodoo
>>3000 board is in my kids system and I'm running the G400. From a 2D/3D
>>quality perspective, the Matrox G400 is second to none. It may not be the
>>fastest board out there but it can sure hold its own in any benchmark for
>>video cards from that generation. Just look at the countless reviews on the
>>net for both prodcuts and you can decide for yourself.
>
Mike Larwood
3dfx got only 30... Me thinks there is something very wrong here...
Mike
"Paul-S" <pa...@gremlin.u-net.com> wrote in message
news:4so7hso8b2tvch20r...@4ax.com...
Maverick
Try purging your Windows system directory of anything 3dfx or glide related
(use find files from the start menu). Also head into Regedit and delete the
3dfx regestry keys. You don't need these anymore.
Then uninstall any 3dfx, and matrox video card utilities (eg 3dfx tools).
Then remove the Matrox video card by going to the display properties -
settings - advanced - adapter tab - change...
Then change your adapter to a generic VGA card (microsoft driver). Find the
button that says "Display a list of drivers.." then select "show all
hardware". Standard video devices is at the top.
Do this & it will ask to reboot. say no and go and change the directory
where you last put the matrox drivers (so Win9x doesn't get too smart on
you).
Then reboot, and then install the card using the latest Matrox G400 drivers.
Try that and see how you go. Sometimes drivers do not take properly unless
you do the above "standard display adapter" step.
MLT
<snip>