F2bnp wrote:

Hey I've heard of the G400Max outperfoming every card of its era(except the GeForce256 of course), is it really that great?

It had a few months of glory but its OpenGL sucked at the time. It had more memory bandwidth in 1999 than anything short of the GeForce 256 DDR. 200 MHz 128-bit SDRAM.

unmei220 wrote:

I'm trying to upload the 3DMark99 image quality tests of the few cards I have. Problem is, when I try to create a slideshow in imageshack, it always gives me this error: "Failed to upload your picture(s): Internal error".
The pictures are PNG and are already uploaded into imageshack. Then I select the images I want for the slideshow, and click on the option "create slideshow", and then gives me that error during the creation. Any ideas ?

Sometimes their servers get overloaded during the day.

blah

Why do your charts show a TNT2 performing worse than a TNT?

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review moved to first post

HunterZ wrote:

Why do your charts show a TNT2 performing worse than a TNT?

TNT2 M64 is the gimpy edition of the TNT2. It has half the memory bandwidth.

TNT1 had something like this too, called the Vanta. I used to have one of those but tossed it. Ooops. 😀

Ah. I went straight from a (real) TNT1 to a GeForce 2 MX back in the day, so I missed out on all the silliness in between.

In my random computer repair side jobs I've come into possession of the various OEM favorite cheapo cards.

swaaye wrote:

TNT1 had something like this too, called the Vanta. I used to have one of those but tossed it. Ooops. 😀

I'm almost certain my Creative Vanta board was TNT2 based. Wasn't "Vanta" the name given to PCI versions of the TNT2 M64?

I think the card i owned was called a "Creative 3D Blaster TNT2 Vanta"... Or Maybe "Creative Graphics Blaster TNT2 Vanta"... I can't quite remember but i'm sure it was 32mb and a PCI based TNT2.

Something interesting about the Raedon 7000 is how it's hardware is supposed to only be DirectX 7 but it supports feature from DirectX 8. That detail sent me on quite the wild goose chase; using that card I played Civilization 4 and so assumed that the game only needed DX7 level graphics. What I later discovered is that the 7000 series has some pixel and vertex shader support in the hardware. I guess the rest is filled in by Catalyst.

I'm almost certain my Creative Vanta board was TNT2 based. Wasn't "Vanta" the name given to PCI versions of the TNT2 M64?

I think the card i owned was called a "Creative 3D Blaster TNT2 Vanta"... Or Maybe "Creative Graphics Blaster TNT2 Vanta"... I can't quite remember but i'm sure it was 32mb and a PCI based TNT2.

I had an AGP TNT2 Vanta back in the day... I belive the main difference was that the Vanta was the ultra-budget/OEM model, which usually had less memory and slower clockspeeds than the M64. The Vanta and M64 were otherwise pretty similar.

Hey swaaye what are the best drivers for Matrox Millennium II? Which ones did you use? I'd like to try it out, it's been sometime 😁

F2bnp wrote:

Hey swaaye what are the best drivers for Matrox Millennium II? Which ones did you use? I'd like to try it out, it's been sometime 😁

I used the latest drivers for Windows 98SE. They can be found on the Matrox site.

It looks like 3DMark99SE's default settings are sensitive to memory bandwidth and that's why the G400 Max is flying compared to some of the other fast cards.

PowerPie5000 wrote:

I'm almost certain my Creative Vanta board was TNT2 based. Wasn't "Vanta" the name given to PCI versions of the TNT2 M64.

I think you're right. For some reason I was convinced that it was from the TNT 1 generation.

prophase_j wrote:

Something interesting about the Raedon 7000 is how it's hardware is supposed to only be DirectX 7 but it supports feature from DirectX 8.

The drivers might have some vertex shader emulation. The GeForce 4 MX had that in some driver revisions. The rest of the Radeon 7xxx series probably does too.

They can't emulate pixel shaders though.

Thanks 😉

F2bnp wrote:

Thanks 😉

I just noticed that you said Millennium II, not Millennium G400. Maybe you wondered why I blathered on about G400? 🤣 Well there are drivers for all of the old cards buried within Matrox's site so you're still good to go.

Sorry to interrupt this very excellent thread with two questions:

1. This Voodoo "22 bit" RAMDAC postprocessing thingy - can that be turned off somehow?
2. I have always wanted to try out a G400, but never bought one because I suspect this card to be quite bad under DOS. Earlier Matrox cards (Millennium, G100, G200) are incompatible with Mode X and lack lots of VESA modes. Can anybody confirm that for the G400?

5u3 wrote:

Sorry to interrupt this very excellent thread with two questions: […]
Show full quote

Sorry to interrupt this very excellent thread with two questions:

1. This Voodoo "22 bit" RAMDAC postprocessing thingy - can that be turned off somehow?
2. I have always wanted to try out a G400, but never bought one because I suspect this card to be quite bad under DOS. Earlier Matrox cards (Millennium, G100, G200) are incompatible with Mode X and lack lots of VESA modes. Can anybody confirm that for the G400?

1) You can at least tweak it in V.Control for Voodoo Banshee and newer. In V.Control the settings to tweak are "alpha blending" and "3d filter quality". They are normally on automatic. http://www.3dfxzone.it/koolsmoky/vctrl.html . These settings might be present in 3DFX Tools too (the stock control panel). It sounds like the RAMDAC filtering can not be disabled however.

More info
http://www.techspot.com/reviews/hardware/voodoo5_part2/

2)I don't know specifics but in the past I have run into some problems with them in DOS. They aren't exactly disaster zones though and do work ok with most games. I know for sure that Dark Forces works on Mystique, G200 and G400, and I think that game uses mode X.

I really haven't spent a lot of time with them in DOS in years. As you probably know, the original Millennium used to get recommended as a great DOS card. They are exceptionally fast. I suppose that compared to the most compatible cards (S3/Tseng) they are above average?

I can think of cards that are vastly worse, such as Viper VLB, Imagine 128, Matrox Impression, ATI Mach 32 (?), etc.

review moved to first post

For Unreal on that card try enabling vertex lighting instead to get lighting because it appears the lightmaps aren't even working.

Doing that also gives a very nice speed boost, especially on PCX-2 😀