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Was the G400 Max OK for benchmarks but bad in practice?

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First post, by mzry

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Hi all,

I wonder if the problem may be just down to the fact that I run either winxp or win2k, but my g400 seems fine in 3dmark 2000, about 3500 marks, Quake2 demo1 at 1024x768 32bit colour is 60fps. System is a Tualatin 1.4ghz on 440bx. I noticed Phil's computer lab reported the card could do up to 90fps at that res, but that was in win9x and probably the turbogl.

But when running Unreal tournament (with either the stock D3D option or the newer D3D9 Driver, or OGL) the game 'hitches' a lot, a strange sort of slowdown where the FPS really plummets every few moments. Makes it feel absolutely unplayable.

I know that the D3D driver has a lot of options in preferences, I tried turning things off like volumetric fog and detail textures etc, nothing seems to help

I've been trying the 'best' reported drivers like 584.

Anyone got any ideas? Thanks

Reply 1 of 7, by Joseph_Joestar

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If you're getting exactly 60 FPS then VSync might be on.

Try forcing it off using PowerStrip or a similar tool.

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Reply 2 of 7, by mzry

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-01-29, 12:58:

If you're getting exactly 60 FPS then VSync might be on.

Try forcing it off using PowerStrip or a similar tool.

Yeah that's the first thing I did, I turned vsync off with powerstrip. Also I think 3dmark would show a really bad result if it was on right? Hmm. So strange.

Reply 4 of 7, by The Serpent Rider

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Win2k drivers are less game friendly, because Matrox quickly bailed out from gaming market and NT systems had different priorities. Unreal Tournament Direct3D is problematic to run decently on many cards.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 6 of 7, by iraito

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Win9x yes but also D3d is the API that truly makes the card shine.

Take into account that some games had abysmal D3d support.

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Reply 7 of 7, by swaaye

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Win9x and probably games up to mid 2000. I played a lot of UT on the G400 back in 1999-2000 and it ran it very well. You'd want to run 1024x768 or lower and maybe run 16-bit color. That will cause Z fighting though and so you also might want to enable 32-bit Z in the UT.ini and Matrox control panel.

At one point I bought a GeForce 256 DDR and promptly returned it because it stuttered quite noticeably with UT's D3D. So even though it ran faster, it didn't feel like it.

Eventually I moved to the hot deal that was the Radeon LE.

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