pouët.net

New Matrox Cards and the compatibility with demos'n'intros

category: general [glöplog]
 
Hello there.

I wanna buy in the future a graphic card. I still belive, that best color handlings/sharpness/etc. are @ Matrox.

So please, if someone using at work/home Parhelia, P650/P750 please share me your thoughts, and so. Mostly concentrated on compatibility with demoscene stuff.

Or am i really wrong and have to choice Ati or Nvidia product?
added on the 2003-11-06 01:30:18 by d-lee d-lee
Matrox cards are great for 2D art and video editing. Not so great for 3D. ATi seem to have a good combination of 2D quality and 3D support, though nVidia might be improving in 2D quality.
added on the 2003-11-06 02:03:40 by phoenix phoenix
Great, i thought the same. ... but anyway, some 3D experiences with those cards, i'm really curious. Maybe a list, what's working what not in big details?

Anybody else?
added on the 2003-11-06 02:13:30 by d-lee d-lee
a friend of mine noticed a walking monk animation in Epilog on his Parhelia, when there was none on his (or my) GeForce ti-4200/4400 (could be a driver issue... we didn't care to explore it further). Fragment AA only works on some surfaces and not others... for example when geometry intersects, there's no AA, or something like that.

The Parhelia is not a particularly useful card unless you plan to take advantage of its triple-head capability, and even that rarely works in demos
added on the 2003-11-06 02:21:09 by cats cats
now that all morons has spoken..

ok.. yes.. image quality IS still best on matrox ...

but parhelia has this problems:

- IMAGEQUALITYArtifacts WHEN DOING windowed 3d: Banding problem .. making everything look like shit when running windowed.. this only occours in DSUB mode tho.. so go for DVI only if you want to use a parhelia.. (meaning: max dualhead).

- Forget about the feutures they promised.. there are no dx9 vertexshaders (2.0), nor adapptive tesselation/displacement mapping.. Maybe it is in the hardware (some people tend to think so) but its NOT, and WILL NOT be in the drivers... So FORGET it.

- Speed / Fillrate for 3d.

+ The antialiasing techniques are COOL, you can either use the standard blur-it-all (TM) nVidia,ATI , or the Smooth-Edges technique.. you can find info about this on matrox page..

+ The hw acc'd Font drawing.. Makes your coding/pr0nbrowsing/irc/windows fast as shit, it really matters btw.. no matter what people says..

+ GREAT dualhead... no doubt about it.. Matrox are #1 here still.. ATI looks like a joke compared to parhelia on this area..

+ Stable drivers.


ok.. lets sum it up...:
Dont buy parhelia if you wanna do/watch modern demos/games...
Buy a parhelia if you want freggin nice dualhead and REALLY speedy windows desktop ( everything is fucking accelled :)...
added on the 2003-11-06 11:18:21 by Hatikvah Hatikvah
nvidia is standard, everything off the standard causes problems, if you use ati cards, well bad luck for you ;) and wtf. who uses matrox those days?
added on the 2003-11-06 19:13:05 by elkmoose elkmoose
tmb: bullshit. stefan is right; matrox is a great 2D card (it still beats everything in videoediting) with awesome image quality, but if you want heavy fillrate, use ATi. nVidia may be standard, but try to compare an nVidia topnotch card with an ATi one... even a Radeon 9500 beats an FX5900... ATi just needs to develop their drivers more...
added on the 2003-11-06 19:31:10 by Gargaj Gargaj
For DX9-stuff Ati is mostly the standard here. At least in games. It takes much more time and tricks to get any decent shader performance out of GFFX than Radeon-series. Well, if the developer doesn't bother Nvidia will do... (by forcing low-FP precision)
added on the 2003-11-06 20:29:51 by breez breez
gargaj, i dont have to compase if 50% of the games and 70% of the demos dont run properly on ati cards
added on the 2003-11-06 23:40:01 by elkmoose elkmoose
70% is nonsense, apart from a few GF-only releases (mostly from bp) most demos run on Radeon cards as well... With the proper drivers ofcourse.
added on the 2003-11-07 00:04:24 by Gargaj Gargaj
hmm, havent found one single game not running better on a radeon card tha on a geforce?

and for the demos .. only bad demos doesnt run on radeon.. (read: shiva crap or finnish jokesgroup... like that winner from last asm.. better off with quality joke 3dstorys from the moose brothers then..)
added on the 2003-11-07 00:52:10 by Hatikvah Hatikvah
I'd like to see the day when it's just a matter of performance between different manufacturers rather than a question of, "Will it run?" That era seems to be approaching.
Thom. remember this company called 3dfx? then came nvidia along as a breath of fresh air. Same situation now. More manufactureres = more choices = more competition = lower prices.

HAIL NVIDIA, ATI, BITBOYS AND MATROX.

As for the image quality. I have had the pleasure of working with both parhelia, 9800pro's and gffx's (as part of a graphic assignment). And to be honest it takes a really trained eye to tell difference. back in the gf256 and gf2 compared to matrox and ati, there was a clear visual difference in -especially- color volume and sharpness. But not now. And besides, it takes a pig of a monitor, wich i reckon few sceners can afford.

matrox and ati is "industry standards" along with a few other, rather unknown manufacturers. But 500$ monitors arent.
added on the 2003-11-07 09:05:34 by NoahR NoahR
Thom. remember this company called 3dfx? then came nvidia along as a breath of fresh air. Same situation now. More manufactureres = more choices = more competition = lower prices.

HAIL NVIDIA, ATI, BITBOYS AND MATROX.

As for the image quality. I have had the pleasure of working with both parhelia, 9800pro's and gffx's (as part of a graphic assignment). And to be honest it takes a really trained eye to tell difference. back in the gf256 and gf2 compared to matrox and ati, there was a clear visual difference in -especially- color volume and sharpness. But not now. And besides, it takes a pig of a monitor, wich i reckon few sceners can afford.

matrox and ati is "industry standards" along with a few other, rather unknown manufacturers. But 500$ monitors arent.
added on the 2003-11-07 09:20:04 by NoahR NoahR
stefan: some Catalyst versions had some nasty slowdown bugs with a certain gl-call tho... there's a thread somewhere about that by Mazy i think.
And the asm-winner ran a-ok here with the fixed drivers. (read: not the coders fault)
added on the 2003-11-07 12:59:39 by Gargaj Gargaj
if the coder depends on opengl.. then it `sure must be his fault.
added on the 2003-11-07 13:34:49 by Hatikvah Hatikvah
Gargaj: That's mostly the demosceners' fault, as that certain OpenGL call is so seldomly used in the "real world" that it simply doesn't matter. And you don't even need it, all modern OpenGL games achieve the same (render-to-texture) effects on ATI cards without slowing down that much.

Apart from that (and complete suckers using OpenGL and nvidia-only extensions) all games and demos run pretty fine here on my R9000. So NVIDIA is the standard? Not anymore.
added on the 2003-11-07 16:40:09 by kb_ kb_
Ohhyeah, just curious: Whazzap with the whole BitBoys project? :)

It would be great, when a finnish scener could answer this, maybe he is more close to the fire. (...upon the deep :)
added on the 2003-11-07 21:02:10 by d-lee d-lee
d-lee: what i heard.. bitboys depended on a company that went bankrupt.. kindof :)
added on the 2003-11-08 15:24:19 by Hatikvah Hatikvah

login