Matrox Mystique and 3D Games
Laszlo Lovasi
Forgive me if this is a stupid question...
I have a Maxtrox Mystique with 2MB of video RAM. I know the card has
some limited 3D acceleration, but I don't see it in an of the games I
play. The only games that are accelerated are the ones bundled with the
card, like Scorched Earth, but they are all crappy. If I wanted to see
some 3D acceleration on other games not included with my card, how would
I that?
Guinea Pig 75
On Sat, 02 May 1998 12:11:15 -0700, Laszlo Lovasi <las...@ucla.edu>
wrote:
As far as I know, the acceleration provided by the mystique is too
weak for modern games.
Apart from a flurry of games that were released shortly after the
mystique, there is relatively little support for it.
G. Scott
Add a Matrox m3D card. I've heard that you can get them for ~$50 after
rebate. This would be a very cheap solution to get far better 3D
ability than the Mystique alone can provide. Also, you would get some
new games with the m3D card. I use this combo and it serves my needs.
Guinea Pig 75 <guinea...@hotmail.com> wrote in article
<354b9957....@nntp-serv.cam.ac.uk>...
Racer
>Forgive me if this is a stupid question...
>I have a Maxtrox Mystique with 2MB of video RAM. I know the card has
>some limited 3D acceleration, but I don't see it in an of the games I
>play. The only games that are accelerated are the ones bundled with the
>card, like Scorched Earth, but they are all crappy. If I wanted to see
>some 3D acceleration on other games not included with my card, how would
>I that?
buy a Voodoo2....
Stephen Burgess
On Sat, 2 May 1998 19:11:15, Laszlo Lovasi <las...@ucla.edu> wrote:
> Forgive me if this is a stupid question...
> I have a Maxtrox Mystique with 2MB of video RAM. I know the card has
> some limited 3D acceleration, but I don't see it in an of the games I
> play. The only games that are accelerated are the ones bundled with the
> card, like Scorched Earth, but they are all crappy. If I wanted to see
> some 3D acceleration on other games not included with my card, how would
> I that?
Tht http://www.matrox.com/mga and check the 3D game club... they have a list of
Mystique supported games. Also try Matrox Sphere http://matrox.dimension3d,com,
he has a list of Mystique and M3D supported games as well.
C'ya
Steve
WARPed and loving it.
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Guinea Pig 75
On 3 May 1998 01:34:44 GMT, "G. Scott" <gfs...@DELETEflash.net>
wrote:
>Add a Matrox m3D card. I've heard that you can get them for ~$50 after
>rebate. This would be a very cheap solution to get far better 3D
>ability than the Mystique alone can provide. Also, you would get some
>new games with the m3D card. I use this combo and it serves my needs.
>
If you're willing to spend a little more, and wait a month or so.
Check out the mystique g200 - that looks like a killer card.
2d faster and better than a millennium II
3d almost as fast as and better than a voodoo II
Armand Hirt
> Forgive me if this is a stupid question...
> I have a Maxtrox Mystique with 2MB of video RAM. I know the card has
> some limited 3D acceleration, but I don't see it in an of the games I
> play. The only games that are accelerated are the ones bundled with the
> card, like Scorched Earth, but they are all crappy. If I wanted to see
> some 3D acceleration on other games not included with my card, how would
> I that?
Ah, opinions. The Mystique should happily accelerate any D3D game, but the
hardware has many shortcomings. First, it does not do fog, bilinear
filtering or transparencies, although this last feature is simulated in
software.
My personal opinion is that you can live without bilinear filtering, but
some games just require fog or they just look silly. For instance, do not
try playing Turok with your Mystique: the game will be accelerated, but
the screen door transparencies and the lack of fog will make the game look
horrible (and it will be unplayable at times).
One of your main concern will be the amount of memory on your card: 2MB is
not a lot, and if you try playing in 640x480 resolution, the frame buffer
and the Z buffer will eat most of it, leaving only little memory for the
textures. In most games, you will be limited to 512x384 resolution because
of that.
That does not mean that the Mystique is useless as a 3D accelerator. If
you try Jedi Knight, you will find that your video card is well suited to
the game (which means that the Mystique really makes the game better than
if you used only software rendering). Forsaken, surprisingly, also looks
nice on a Mystique, and the coloured lightning is better than on my
Diamond Viper V330. This said, the screen door transparencies make some of
your opponent shots hard to spot.
Of course, this is only my personal experience.
Ken Arromdee
In article <email*armand.hirt-04...@ipemac41.epfl.ch>,
Armand Hirt <email*arman...@epfl.ch*email> wrote:
>Ah, opinions. The Mystique should happily accelerate any D3D game, but the
>hardware has many shortcomings. First, it does not do fog, bilinear
>filtering or transparencies, although this last feature is simulated in
>software.
My Mystique 220 (4M) claims to be able to do fogging. I think they added it
for the later Mystiques. Do the drivers support it though?
By the way, does Tomb Raider work okay on a Mystique? Are transparencies
simulated or just not present? How would it be compared to a Voodoo?
--
Ken Arromdee |They said it was *daft* to build a space
arro...@inetnow.net |station in a swamp, but I showed them! It
karr...@nyx.nyx.net |sank unto the swamp. So I built a second
http://www.inetnow.net/~arromdee|space station. That sank into the swamp too.
--------------------------------+My third space station sank into the swamp.
So I built a fourth one. That fell into a time warp and _then_ sank into the
swamp. But the fifth one... stayed up! --Monty Python/Babylon 5
Stimpy
Tomb Raider doesnt look to bad on my Mystique 220. When she dives into water
though it looks more like they changed the pallette then if it was actually
transparent water. Couldnt get Toshinden patch to work. This is my first "3d"
card so cant tell how well it compares to others. Does anyone know if it
accelerates Jedi Knight ok or not (640x400 on mmxp233)? The matrox m3d is getting
close to the $50 dollar mark and am wondering if its got enuff bang for the buck.
Armand Hirt
In article <354FD397...@starnetinc.com>, Stimpy
<ch...@starnetinc.com> wrote:
> Tomb Raider doesnt look to bad on my Mystique 220. When she dives into water
> though it looks more like they changed the pallette then if it was actually
> transparent water. Couldnt get Toshinden patch to work. This is my
first "3d"
> card so cant tell how well it compares to others. Does anyone know if it
> accelerates Jedi Knight ok or not (640x400 on mmxp233)? The matrox m3d
is getting
> close to the $50 dollar mark and am wondering if its got enuff bang for
the buck.
I recall that Jedi Knight was OK on my original Mystique 2MB/ AMD K5
PR166, showing no particular problems and being fast enough. I only played
the demo though, so I can't comment on problems that you could have later
in the game.
Liew Khong Jye
>I have a Maxtrox Mystique with 2MB of video RAM. I know the card has
>card, like Scorched Earth, but they are all crappy. If I wanted to see
No one seems to answer right to your question. Your problem of not
getting 3D aceleration from most of today's games is because your
Mystique has only 2 MB. The minimum requirement for 3D acelerators is
4MB. So the most cost-saving way to get 3D acceleration is upgrade
your Mystique to 4 MB. Of course, you can consider a Voodoo add-on if
you got money to spare.
3D acceleratoed games that work with 2MB Mystique are very few. Just
to name a few.
- Tomb Raider with Mystique native patch, run at 512x384, 4MB will go
640x480.
- Battle Arena Toshinden with Mystique native patch.
- MechWarrior2, bundled with Mystique, run at 640x400.
- ScorchPlanet, bundled with Mystique, run at 640x400.
- MDK with D3D patch. (even work well on 2MB ViRGE!)
Some games supports 3D acceleration in 2MB Mystique, but in 320x200 or
320x240. Since Mystique doesn't do bilinear filtering, I don't think
you like to play in such low resolution.
With 4MB Mystique, you can enjoy most of the Mystique-supported 3D
accelerated games either through Direct3D or Mystique native API, as
long as you have a good CPU, and don't mind the blocky textures of
Mystique. Some games which have very well written in Direct3D, look
quite well on Mystique. The effects of blocky textures are reduced by
using high-resolution, highly detailed and high-color textures.
I own a Mystique 170 4MB. Here are the list of games that I've tried
out work perfectly well and look quite nice with my Pentium-133.
- Motoracer with full D3D patch (V3.20)
- Tomb Raider II
- ID4
- Formula F1
All the above games look quite well and play fast, providing the same
pleasure as offered by my Monster3D.
Look in http://matrox.dimension3D.com/ for more Mystique supported
games and screenshots. Apparently, Jedi Knight, Incoming, Forsaken
also get along very well with Mystique.
If you look for even more 3D performance from Mystique, get the
overclocking utility MystCLK to overclock your Mystique. Give you
25-40% more performance.
Hope this helps.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| Liew Khong Jye |
| Penang, Malaysia |
| Email Address: kjl...@pop.jaring.my |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*** Please reply via e-mail. ThanX.***
Ron Christian
In article <3551af39...@news.jaring.my>,
Liew Khong Jye <kjl...@pop.jaring.my> wrote:
>No one seems to answer right to your question. Your problem of not
>getting 3D aceleration from most of today's games is because your
>Mystique has only 2 MB. The minimum requirement for 3D acelerators is
>4MB. So the most cost-saving way to get 3D acceleration is upgrade
>your Mystique to 4 MB. Of course, you can consider a Voodoo add-on if
>you got money to spare.
Adding a VooDoo may not be a bad idea. As for the memory upgrade, it's
almost as expensive as buying a new OEM 4 meg card. Adding an M3D doesn't
buy you anything, because the M3D uses the Mystique memory and you don't
have enough! The VooDoo I is a self contained card, and may be a better
choice at this time.
Let this be a lession to everyone: Don't buy a 2 meg card in this day
and age. Ever. Pay the extra $20 and get at least 4, even if you don't
think you need it. In a year, I'll probably be saying "don't buy a 4
meg card ever" :-)
Really, though, if you're in the market for a Mystique, do yourself a
big favor and ignore the 2 meg version.
To your other comments, the Mystique works with most 3D games that use
Direct3D, it just doesn't support many of the special effects of which
the games are capable. There are not very many Mystique-specific games,
it is true.
Ron
--
"Stamp out": 1) eliminate 2) reproduce rapidly in great quantity
Take your pick.