VOGONS


First post, by 386SX

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Hi,

I am switching from a S3 Virge DX 4MB to a Matrox Mystique PCI 4MB and I am amazed by the difference of quality and speed in Windows gui not to mention colors.
Weren't they released at the same time/year? I don't understand why there's this huge quality difference, I know the Mystique was probably a more expensive and advanced card but it's like night and day.
Are there any games I can test the Matrox card in 3D (with the few D3D supported features?
Thank

Reply 1 of 27, by F2bnp

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The Matrox has much better image output. The Virge cards will always be inferior, but it's also pretty vendor specific, some cards will look better than others. The differences while in Desktop really start to show above 800x600.

As far as early 3D games go, you can try most games with D3D support from 1996-1997. Dark Forces 2 : Jedi Knight usually runs pretty well on everything, so the Mystique will run it pretty well at 640x480. It's a pretty light-weight game.

Reply 4 of 27, by Thandor

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Using Windows the drivers also play an important role. Back in the day differences between 'raw' DOS-performance and Windows-performance was quite big in some cases. The S3 ViRGE chip really isn't a bad one if you install it into an early Pentium system. I did many (DOS) benchmarks and found that the S3 ViRGE is just a fraction slower than the Matrox Mystique 220/4MB in a Pentium 100 system. The S3 was clearly the better choice in DOS-gaming if you combine benchmark results and the price you had to pay for the card. Did you need a Windows accelerator? It'll be a different story.

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Reply 5 of 27, by vlask

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Mystique is faster in 3D, but has no filtering, so playing 3D games looks like playing in software mode. Is known also for its 2D image quality. Virge was lowcost 3D accelerator with fast 2D done by countless various companies. Had also problems with transparency (fog, lens flares). Depends on your usage, both are good for 2D and sucks in 3D.

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Reply 6 of 27, by smeezekitty

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It's a well known fact that the ViRGE has marginal image quality. I found it highly dependent on the Windows drivers too.
In Windows 98, I found it the most blurry with the stock drivers but decent in 95 and 2000 for some reason.That said, the Mystique is a pretty shitty chip for 3D. I have both and kept the ViRGE in my 486 because it is both faster and looked better for the games I was working with.

Reply 8 of 27, by swaaye

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I've had problems with frequent lock-ups while using Matrox Mystique / Millennium II 3D. I don't think there's anything terribly worthwhile about the 3D hardware in these chips.

Reply 9 of 27, by elianda

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What is much more important for DOS is that the Virge has support for low-res VESA modes as well as 15 bit modes (but not 24 bit).
The Matrox just support 8/16/32 bit starting at 640x480.

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Reply 10 of 27, by Scali

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386SX wrote:

Weren't they released at the same time/year? I don't understand why there's this huge quality difference, I know the Mystique was probably a more expensive and advanced card but it's like night and day.

Matrox built its own cards, which allowed for much better quality control. Their cards have legendary quality in analog VGA output.
They used a 5-stage output filter on their RAMDACs, where most other cards just used 2 or 3 stages. This allowed Matrox much better control over the filter cutoff, preventing blur/smearing at high resolutions/refresh-rates.
A common trick back in the day was to simply remove the last stage of the output filter on a bad card. I've done this on an Asus GeForce2 GTS of mine, and it improved the quality a lot. The same trick would probably work on S3 cards.

Aside from that, the Mystique was one of the first 'budget' consumer cards from Matrox. They were mostly aiming at high-end solutions in the earlier days, making the best and most advanced 'windows accelerator' cards back then, and the Mystique was basically a respin of the technology they already had in-house, aimed at a larger market (using cheaper memory to keep prices down and such).

In a way it is similar to what eg nVidia does these days, with Quadro professional cards, and GeForce which is pretty much the same technology at a lower pricetag.

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Reply 11 of 27, by vlask

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swaaye wrote:

I've had problems with frequent lock-ups while using Matrox Mystique / Millennium II 3D. I don't think there's anything terribly worthwhile about the 3D hardware in these chips.

You have to disable Use bus mastering in driver settings. With mastering enabled i wasnt able finish many benchmarks due random freeze.

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Reply 12 of 27, by idspispopd

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Most points have been made. Some more thoughts:
Virge cards don't only differ by build and image quality, the speed of the RAM chips can also differ. Good cards use EDO RAM with 35ns access time (I even got one with 25ns), an example for that would be STB Nitro 3D (actually that one is GX and not DX, but that doesn't matter), bad cards use up to 60ns RAM (I don't know if slower RAM was used on DX cards, original Virge/325 even could have 70ns or slower.)
RAM speed makes a difference, especially with Windows GUI acceleration. You could try overclocking the chip/RAM if you want to.
Which driver are you using? Putas uploaded the drivers he tested with here: http://vintage3d.org/driver.php
(I suppose this is more relevant for 3D than for GUI acceleration.)
Regarding speed in DOS (which you didn't mention) I recommend S3VBE20 and S3SPDUP if the specific games support VBE 2.0 and/or are compatible with S3SPDUP.
For 3D games you can either try very early D3D games, or one of the MSI games here: 3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)
If the game runs fast enough on the Virge that would be preferable because than you get bi-linear filtering and at least some proper blending.

Reply 13 of 27, by Scali

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vlask wrote:
swaaye wrote:

I've had problems with frequent lock-ups while using Matrox Mystique / Millennium II 3D. I don't think there's anything terribly worthwhile about the 3D hardware in these chips.

You have to disable Use bus mastering in driver settings. With mastering enabled i wasnt able finish many benchmarks due random freeze.

I think that depends a lot on which chipset you use.
My Matrox cards have been in Triton 430FX machines, and I never had a problem with bus mastering enabled.
It could be that it also has to do with what other PCI-cards you use (driver deadlock).

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Reply 14 of 27, by vlask

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Scali wrote:
I think that depends a lot on which chipset you use. My Matrox cards have been in Triton 430FX machines, and I never had a probl […]
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vlask wrote:
swaaye wrote:

I've had problems with frequent lock-ups while using Matrox Mystique / Millennium II 3D. I don't think there's anything terribly worthwhile about the 3D hardware in these chips.

You have to disable Use bus mastering in driver settings. With mastering enabled i wasnt able finish many benchmarks due random freeze.

I think that depends a lot on which chipset you use.
My Matrox cards have been in Triton 430FX machines, and I never had a problem with bus mastering enabled.
It could be that it also has to do with what other PCI-cards you use (driver deadlock).

Gigabyte GA-60XET rev. 1, Intel 815EP, lan Realtek RTL8139D - no other cards. Think i tried it even without realtek, no change. Chipset maybe too new for these cards. But disabling bus mastering helped alot.

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Reply 15 of 27, by 386SX

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vlask wrote:

Mystique is faster in 3D, but has no filtering, so playing 3D games looks like playing in software mode. Is known also for its 2D image quality. Virge was lowcost 3D accelerator with fast 2D done by countless various companies. Had also problems with transparency (fog, lens flares). Depends on your usage, both are good for 2D and sucks in 3D.

Nice benchmark comparison, thank!

Reply 16 of 27, by 386SX

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Wow nice answers. I am using both card on the VP3 Via chipset. I wanted to use the Voodoo1 but my mobo actually has always problem to get it running so a switched to a Voodoo2 8MB both with the S3 Virge DX / 4MB and the Mystique to test.

Certainly the S3 has problems with 2D quality/speed at 1024 resolution compared to a much more sharp, saturated and stable image of the Mystique but I want to test some S3 good drivers compared to the W98 default ones. Certainly not many games running on the S3 but I still get amazed when I see Quake and the S3 GL driver running (de)accelerated and filtered on the Virge. It's something incredible even at 5fps.

Reply 17 of 27, by swaaye

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vlask wrote:

Gigabyte GA-60XET rev. 1, Intel 815EP, lan Realtek RTL8139D - no other cards. Think i tried it even without realtek, no change. Chipset maybe too new for these cards. But disabling bus mastering helped alot.

Yeah I had problems with Mystique 220 and Millennium II on i815 and 440BX. Now that you mention bus mastering, I recall this as well. Only 3D was problematic.

Maybe they do work better on 430 chipsets. I suppose it's possible.

Reply 18 of 27, by dr.zeissler

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elianda wrote on 2015-09-01, 22:39:

What is much more important for DOS is that the Virge has support for low-res VESA modes as well as 15 bit modes (but not 24 bit).
The Matrox just support 8/16/32 bit starting at 640x480.

That is an interesting information! Is that why my onboard-mystique does not work in many demos with special 15/24 bit resolutions, even if I have loaded SDD with VESA3.0 support?

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Reply 19 of 27, by red-ray

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dr.zeissler wrote on 2020-08-31, 08:30:
elianda wrote on 2015-09-01, 22:39:

What is much more important for DOS is that the Virge has support for low-res VESA modes as well as 15 bit modes (but not 24 bit).
The Matrox just support 8/16/32 bit starting at 640x480.

That is an interesting information! Is that why my onboard-mystique does not work in many demos with special 15/24 bit resolutions, even if I have loaded SDD with VESA3.0 support?

I thought that the Mystique supported low res modes and 24-bit colour so I checked and they do, but low res is only @ 85Hz. The system is running 2003 Server.

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