wrote:I also almost bought a Matrox M3D back in the day because of its cheap price, but I decided to save up a bit more and get a Voodoo instead.
Smart decision. Even during its time, a cheap Canopus Pure3D can be had for more mileage at the same price in Jan/Feb '98
M3D, the Matrox stopgap to cover the market while G100 and G200 were under development. 😁
I think they would have done better slapping 3dfx chips on a Matrox PCB.
wrote:Had to bump this, because I've been craving a Neon 250 for quite some time now (just for s**ts and giggles and seeing how well i […]
Had to bump this, because I've been craving a Neon 250 for quite some time now (just for s**ts and giggles and seeing how well it works with games released a year or two after it; not to be used as an everyday gaming card). Besides being released late to market, it only supported MiniGL (while other manufacturers supported ICD). Never been able to find one on ebay, guess they are pretty rare.
Maximum PC review: (though poorly written IMO and some typos)
http://books.google.com/books?id=zwEAAAAAMBAJ … epage&q&f=false
I also almost bought a Matrox M3D back in the day because of its cheap price, but I decided to save up a bit more and get a Voodoo instead.
I've recently been looking into adding one of these to my buy list, too. Does it share anything in common with the earlier PCX cards or the later Kyro cards or is it something completely different from either? That's what I really want to find out.
It's more like a PCX that can do more blend modes and have better drivers. It's nowhere near Kyro's level of maturity.
I own a Hercules "3D Prophet 4500" agp card with 64mb memory and a PowerVR chip. Some games play better than if you had the latest NVidia or AMD video card but most look horrible. I find the card rather confusing.
wrote:Smart decision. Even during its time, a cheap Canopus Pure3D can be had for more mileage at the same price in Jan/Feb '98
Yep after seeing some of your PCx2 screenshots in this thread I can see why. Well, MechWarrior 2 still looks pretty good on it with the fogging effects. One thing I noticed with my original copy of Unreal was that the SGL renderer could do 24-bit color (which made me want to get the M3D) but after you mentioned that there's no way to force it, I'm still glad I stuck with my original plan.
By the time the TNT2/Voodoo3 were released, Matrox reduced the price down to $20........... most likely as a way of clearing their remaining stock.
I own a Hercules "3D Prophet 4500" agp card with 64mb memory and a PowerVR chip. Some games play better than if you had the latest NVidia or AMD video card but most look horrible. I find the card rather confusing.
Anything that isn't NVIDIA or ATI can be rather confusing. 😉
Even the Mechwarrior 2 port has bugs. Texture filtering seems to come and go. The fog is cool but not used on many levels.
In the recent discussion of the Kyro2 around here I decided to try this card again.
VESA also only goes up to 800x600 on the Kyro2. unless i'm doing something wrong here
What other VESA tools should I try to test with?
and i've finally tried the latest driver with the EnTNL bullcrap. 3dmark01 reports hardware T&L from it, nice faking there PVR!
By the way, for other kyro2 VGA owners, do you notice things looking a bit... blue in 60hz?
Commander Keen 4 has the scrolling problem btw.
I don't know how this happened, but...
DEUS EX IS WORKING ON PCX-2 USING ITS SGLDRV.DLL
it's 20fpsish at these docks, too. The wierd look is all 128x128 texture limit artifacts
this is so surprising, i speell my dwenk.
Crashes at load / save screen due to the attempt to load the screenshots in the saves killing texture memory off (it's a 4mb card after all)
I'm not sure which patch the developers neutered the SGL renderer out of Unreal, but my guess would have been a year or two after its initial release. did you get it to work without any modifications or did you just copy and paste the SGLDrv from the original Unreal release?
Oh and that makes it look a lot like Deus Ex running on PS2 (from the 128x128 texture resolution limit).
Cool stuff there leileilol. 😁
What's sobering is that a Voodoo1 would probably run the game fine and it is about the same age or older than a PCX2. heh.
I need to find a 6MB Voodoo1 some day.
wrote:did you get it to work without any modifications or did you just copy and paste the SGLDrv from the original Unreal release?
I used the SGLdrv.dll the game Deus Ex ships with.
though to really get it to work I installed Kernelex 4.5.1 - dunno WTF that does that solves SGLDrv device detection problems (dependencies?). 😖 without KernelEx, it doesn't work. Makes no sense.
Also, Fraps can not record the SGL api. Someone else will have to do s-video captures
wrote:wrote:did you get it to work without any modifications or did you just copy and paste the SGLDrv from the original Unreal release?
I used the SGLdrv.dll the game Deus Ex ships with.
though to really get it to work I installed Kernelex 4.5.1 - dunno WTF that does that solves SGLDrv device detection problems (dependencies?). 😖 without KernelEx, it doesn't work. Makes no sense.
Kernelex makes games/apps that require Win2k/XP run on Win9x operating systems. If Deus Ex was written for 2k or XP and you're trying to run it under Win9x, then that's your answer. It is also supposed to work with some drivers that don't support Win9x OS's, so it might be possible to install some later pieces of hardware and use the 2k/XP drivers if Win9x drivers don't exist.
No, Deus Ex is a Win9x game, and drivers for this card are only available for Win9x... why does KernelEx magically make SGLDrv.dll work? I do not understand. Disabling Kernelex extensions on DeusEx.exe also kills the SGLDrv's support. STRANGE?!
I will try UT (initial release), Rune and Nerf Arena Blast.
Unreal Tournament Demo 348 works on PCX-2 after a KernelEx'ing. Check out the ASMD and muzzleflashes! 🤣
It's choppy at 800x600, but runs smooth at 320x200 (sorry no 320x240 option here)
I'll still have to install UT 400, then patch my way up until I find the regressing version.
wrote:No, Deus Ex is a Win9x game, and drivers for this card are only available for Win9x... why does KernelEx magically make SGLDrv.dll work? I do not understand. Disabling Kernelex extensions on DeusEx.exe also kills the SGLDrv's support. STRANGE?!
I will try UT (initial release), Rune and Nerf Arena Blast.
I'd write it off as an unintended gift and not ask why it works. Things like this tend to stop working if you start tinkering with them too much. You may never get it working again if you start fiddling with it.
Well I just installed Windows 98SE and installed Kernelex on that (to see if it's not a ME exclusive thing), and it works there also.
also, Turok Benchmarks
320x240 - 106.5
512x384 - 50.8
640x480 - 38.1
800x600 - 20.4
1024x768 - 13.0
Interesting info! 😀
KernelEx looks like it's a staple.
PCX-2 isnt very compatible with Geforce, though. Try to launch a D3D game through PowerVR HAL and you'll find it crashing because Nvidia forces their card to be the only primary video card no matter what. This leads to no acceleration for either card.
dxdiag will even report the Video card to be the Geforce with the PowerVR HAL enabled. This shouldn't happen - the PCX-2 should take over that tab.
KYRO II does not do this.
