Video Cards: Diamond Stealth 3d 2000 or Matrix Mellion (F1GP2)

Which Card runs best with GP2 both have 2 Megs Or is the a better Card for F1GP2 I Have Pentium 133 with 8 Edo a presently a really slow graphics card Mark

>Which Card runs best with GP2 both have 2 Megs >Or is the a better Card for F1GP2 >I Have Pentium 133 with 8 Edo a presently a really slow graphics card >Mark ] Mark, I'm a pc reseller, and I have a P166 w/32mg and a Diamond Stealth 64 Dram card. I picked the Matrox Millenium, with 4 mg, just after I got F1GP2, hoping that it would improve the graphics. NOT! The results on my system with the MGP card were the same frame rate as with the Diamond. As a matter of fact, some comparison graphics on the back of the box indicate the Matrox card only a little faster than the Diamond. So, I took the matrox back. Now, if I were going to buy a new card to replace a standard VGA card, the Matrox is the one I would buy. Hope that helps. Rick in Dallas

>>Which Card runs best with GP2 both have 2 Megs >Doesn't make any differences. Video card plays only minor role in DOS >games. >P.S. Upgrade your memory. >--KCI Okay - so if the video card only plays a minor role in DOS games, what plays the major role? I'd like to ask a question - put a 2 year old ISA graphics card in your PC, and then come and say it didn't make much difference. PS - upgrade your memory for using programs (Win95 for example) - it will not make ANY difference to the frame rate of GP2, no matter what anyone says. ------------- Richard Sobey

On Fri, 02 Aug 1996 14:32:01 +0300, Roey Lehman >PAH! Well, you dont know much about P.c's do you? >Let me tell you that a friend of mine has a pentium 90 with a 10 year >old graphics card (ISA of course, 512k) Well, if you honestly think that a 10 year old graphics card might have had 512K on it, you are a little short on the PC knowledge front yourself :) Heck, many PCs only had 512K of _main_ memory at that time :))) Richard

: PAH! Well, you dont know much about P.c's do you? : Let me tell you that a friend of mine has a pentium 90 with a 10 year : old graphics card (ISA of course, 512k) : A typical pentium 90 would get 90.9 in 3d bench. His gets 32 ! THATS : RIGHT, 32 ! : He cant run any game that a 486 dx 33 cant run. : I doubt any game would run at SVGA resolutions, at more than 2 fps. : My point: please do some research before you reply to such a message. Well this is a very EXTREME case. If we are talking about similar bus cards with similar video memory, the case for improvement over video cards in DOS holds true to a point. We may be talking about a couple of fps's at the most change. Of course there will always be examples such as yours. But, this is not the norm. -- **************************** Michael E. Carver ************************* Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./. [- < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The point is that graphics cards do not a lot of difference make. In your example, changing the graphic's card on an ISA bus to another graphics card on an ISA bus will make very little difference to the rate data can pass across the bus. OTOH, change the bus to PCI but leave the functions of the graphic card essentially unchanged and you will see a MAJOR increase in performance. -- Suck The Goat

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> >Which Card runs best with GP2 both have 2 Megs > >Or is the a better Card for F1GP2 > >I Have Pentium 133 with 8 Edo a presently a really slow graphics card > >Mark > Doesn't make any differences. Video card plays only minor role in DOS > games. > P.S. Upgrade your memory. > --KCI

PAH! Well, you dont know much about P.c's do you? Let me tell you that a friend of mine has a pentium 90 with a 10 year old graphics card (ISA of course, 512k) A typical pentium 90 would get 90.9 in 3d bench. His gets 32 ! THATS RIGHT, 32 ! He cant run any game that a 486 dx 33 cant run. I doubt any game would run at SVGA resolutions, at more than 2 fps. My point: please do some research before you reply to such a message.

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> Well this is a very EXTREME case. If we are talking about similar bus > cards with similar video memory, the case for improvement over video > cards in DOS holds true to a point. We may be talking about a couple of > fps's at the most change. Of course there will always be examples such > as yours. But, this is not the norm. > -- > **************************** Michael E. Carver ************************* > Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town. > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./. [- < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Youre right, my friend's is a very extreme case. Plus, by comparing Benchmarks, Ive found out that my 70$ Tseng labs card performs in DOS, like a 170$ Stealth 3d 2000 card. I have decided not to waste money in upgrading my video hardware, But I will buy a pentium 166 :)

Keep in mind though, that an upgrade from Vesa (VLB) to PCI wouldnt give you the same kind of jump in preformance. PCI runs at 30 or 33 MHz depending on your motherboard, while VLB runs at 25, 33, 40, or 50 MHz. This is kinda trivial, becuase most all upgrades from VLB to PCI also involve a Pentium class cpu ... :-)

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>>Okay - so if the video card only plays a minor role in DOS games, what >>plays the major role? I'd like to ask a question - put a 2 year old >>ISA graphics card in your PC, and then come and say it didn't make >>much difference. >CPU plays the major role. What I wanted to say was that most PCI(<--) >cards should make no difference. I'm not saying "who carez about >video card? Just throw it away!". If you did throw away, you'll get >0 fps :)

Agreed. MOST PCI cards should make no difference, yet there can sometimes be a massive DOS performance increase just by buying a different chipset (such as the ET6000, which features on the VideoLogic GraifixStar 600, my next buy, after a 33.6 modem, 2Gb hard disk, 32Mb EDO ram......) But they can. Albeit only a small differece, but the difference between 90% processor occupancy and 110% p/o is a lot of some peoples standards. Or perhaps having the sky texture on or off. Btw, do you know why the sky takes up so much processor time? Surely it's just a bitmap which scrolls accordingly. I don't know shit about programming or texturing techniques, so forgive me if that sounded stupid. Yes - you're right there. If a program says 8Mb minimum, it will run. It will load a track slower, and generally be slower than a 16Mb system, but whilst the hard disk isn't thrashing and the game is still slow, you'd better think about upgrading that P133 <g> ------------- Richard Sobey Are you browning your browns?

FYI, When I bought my new P166 system, the PC place didn't have any Matrox Millenium in stock, so they let me borrow a Tseng4000w32p video card until the Millenium came in. I used the Tseng4000 for a week, including playing Quake, and when I finally got my Matrox Millenium, I ran it in quake, and the TIME_REFRESH test at the beginning of the game gives me a 2FPS increase for the Matrox over the ET4000. Cheers. --John -- ------------------- John (Joao) Silva http://weber.u.washington.edu/~jsilva Seattle, Washington USA.

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> >--KCI > FYI, When I bought my new P166 system, the PC place didn't have any > Matrox Millenium in stock, so they let me borrow a Tseng4000w32p > video card until the Millenium came in. > I used the Tseng4000 for a week, including playing Quake, > and when I finally got my Matrox Millenium, I ran it in quake, > and the TIME_REFRESH test at the beginning of the game > gives me a 2FPS increase for the Matrox over the ET4000. > Cheers. > --John > -- > ------------------- > John (Joao) Silva > http://weber.u.washington.edu/~jsilva > Seattle, Washington USA.

Hi. I have a Tseng ET4000/w32i and I am NOT about to shell out an additional 200$ for a Matrox just for a 2 fps increase! C'mon people 2 fps is NOT a VISIBLE difference!

> Hi. I have a Tseng ET4000/w32i and I am NOT about to shell out an > additional 200$ for a Matrox just for a 2 fps increase! > C'mon people 2 fps is NOT a VISIBLE difference! Whoooops. I have a Tseng ET4000/w32p with 2 megs (PCI), not a crappy W32i (which is VLB and FULL of hardware problems)

says... >>Okay - so if the video card only plays a minor role in DOS games, what >>plays the major role? I'd like to ask a question - put a 2 year old >>ISA graphics card in your PC, and then come and say it didn't make >>much difference. >CPU plays the major role. Right.... Wrong......Try running video speed benchmarks involving a MACH64 PCI card and a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 PCI card..Oh, and when you've finished, don't you dare tell me that you do not see a difference, because there is. That's right...because buying a faster card will produce faster graphics output, which is the jump they need. Please do not post bogus information such as this...I have heard people with P133's and 16 MB of RAM saying that GP2 runs horribly slow on there computers. If they had better video cards, there wouldn't be a need for that. The game runs as smooth as silk on my 16 MB Pentium 100 with a PCI Mach 64 card.

Well I agree with you ;-) I didn't mean you should go out and replace your video card, just replying to the person above who said he saw some Quake graphics benchmarks that say there is no speed difference between the ET4000w32p and the Matrox Millenium. I was a happy user of a ET4000w32p VLB on my 486DX2 for 2 years, so I know they are pretty good, but the Matrox seem to be just a bit better, and definitely better in Win95, although that comes with a bigger $$ cost. Cheers. --John -- ------------------- John (Joao) Silva http://weber.u.washington.edu/~jsilva Seattle, Washington USA.

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> PAH! Well, you dont know much about P.c's do you? > Let me tell you that a friend of mine has a pentium 90 with a 10 year > old graphics card (ISA of course, 512k) > A typical pentium 90 would get 90.9 in 3d bench. His gets 32 ! THATS > RIGHT, 32 ! > He cant run any game that a 486 dx 33 cant run. > I doubt any game would run at SVGA resolutions, at more than 2 fps. > My point: please do some research before you reply to such a message.

Ahem, that goes double for you. 3D-Bench is a Superscape utility, written by Brian Salt. It's designed to test the performance of graphics cards with the prime aim of telling whether they're any good at running with Superscape's VRT packages. It also has benefits of telling roughly whether they're any good. Although your post was more accurate than the guy you were replying to, you too were inaccurate since SVGA cards weren't available 10 years ago. I would also doubt that a 10 year old card would boot in a P90 due to the initialisation time of the ISA bus. FYI the Superscape card of choice was the Elsa WinnerPro until recently when I showed Brian figures for the Matrox Millennium. Cheers, Mike. (p.s. - don't ya just luuurve a good argument)

> Please do not post bogus information such as this...I have heard >people with P133's and 16 MB of RAM saying that GP2 runs horribly slow on >there computers. If >they had better video cards, there wouldn't be a need for that. The game runs >as smooth as silk on my 16 MB Pentium 100 with a PCI Mach 64 card. Yes in VGA so does my DX120 but in SVGA its shit just like it is on your P100 FORZA FERRARI

RV> >I'm not here to say spending bunch of money into those cards is RV> >stupid, because those cards have other benefits. But I didn't want RV> >them to waste their money thinking they can run GP2 faster with the RV> >new card. RV> Please do not post bogus information such as this...I have heard RV> people with P133's and 16 MB of RAM saying that GP2 runs horribly RV> slow on there computers. If they had better video cards, there RV> wouldn't be a need for that. The game runs as smooth as silk on my RV> 16 MB Pentium 100 with a PCI Mach 64 card. I don't think this was "bogus" info. If it runs well on you system - bully for you. But it is quite clear that a so-called "better" video cars may make no difference at all - if your sytems' is slowed by a bottleneck due to a poor motherboard, slow or deficient RAM, a slower CPU or whatever, the "best" video card won't help. Equally, a 200MHz CPU may not help that much if an ISA bus is holding things up! Don't simplify things so much - join the real world! Cheers! --- * RM 1.3 U0414 * You mean I'm supposed to read the _messages_ ?!?