Well, soon I will receive my OpenGL Programming Guide.
After some responses about my choice I will buy a Matrox G550 at start of december, since I saw a few posts on the net where people are happy with the card, and because the drivers are open source. )
Well I need someone to tell me that I am in the right way, that I will make the new “Unreal Tournament” with all this stuff.
I want to use all things as possible from openGL to build two things:
A Business Program Interface: Something better than Windows, more 3D, less pollution on the screen, more information with new kinds of information.
A RPG: I really love Ultima until Ultima VIII. Now I want something free, 3D, with more options, more quests, with random worlds, and multiplayer (cooperative or not). It could be named Matrix if you like it… )
Well, I need an REAL answer about the trail, so if you know about openGL and Linux, please send me an answer.
Thank you.
about the choice of a graphic card - right now I use Matrox G550 with PIV 2GHz on RedHat 7.1 and I’m very disappointed with its OpenGL drivers: It crashes too often with different OpenGL apps, which worked fine under win2k, or on my other pc with GeForce2MX.
Also I have to mention that the 3D performance is generally very very bad - my Athlon Classic 650Mhz with GeForce2MX400 (again on RH7.1) works much faster for any OpenGL app.
Not to mention the fact that this Matrox card does not have HW T&L unit, which for me is very important.
Aside from that it is true that the drivers are open source and 2D quality is fine, but I definitily do not recomend it for OpenGL under Linux and Windows.
My recomendation for a 3D card for linux is NVidia GeForce2MX and above, with perhaps the best card for the money now - GeForce4 4200 (even with AGP 8x if you plan upgrading your MoBo soon). For windows you can use an ATI card for OpenGL too, but for Linux their drivers are still not mature enough. (except if you dont use a commerial driver from www.xig.com, but their drivers are quite expensive)
Regards
Martin
[This message has been edited by martin_marinov (edited 11-20-2002).]
I too would advise against a G550 although I’m a matrox fan(every card I’ve owned was a matrox).But the G550 IIRC is just a G400MAX(which I have right now and which I bought 2 years ago) core with some more features.It might be fairly adequate for some uses but not for a new buy.So I’d also recommend something along the lines of ati or nvidia although they might lag a bit in terms of visual quality.
I don’t remember where I saw that G550 has a very good performance, but the guy were very happy with the card. About the Nvidia, I am very unhappy with the tricks to compile the driver. I tried, but I am tired to worry about the driver, I want to put my attention to the applications. Everyone says that ATI isn’t a good choice on Linux, because de drivers. So, I guessed that Matrox is the better, because there is no bad comments on the net.
Originally posted by dccristian:
[b]Well, soon I will receive my OpenGL Programming Guide.
After some responses about my choice I will buy a Matrox G550 at start of december, since I saw a few posts on the net where people are happy with the card, and because the drivers are open source. )
Well I need someone to tell me that I am in the right way, that I will make the new “Unreal Tournament” with all this stuff.
I want to use all things as possible from openGL to build two things:
A Business Program Interface: Something better than Windows, more 3D, less pollution on the screen, more information with new kinds of information.
A RPG: I really love Ultima until Ultima VIII. Now I want something free, 3D, with more options, more quests, with random worlds, and multiplayer (cooperative or not). It could be named Matrix if you like it… )
Well, I need an REAL answer about the trail, so if you know about openGL and Linux, please send me an answer.
Thank you.[/b]
I somewhat agree with the other posters about the performance of this card. It was a good card a couple of years ago (not a great one), and you will be able to make accelerated opengl apps with it but your frame rate will most-likely be less than half of the Geforce, and you won’t have many of the extra features – still it’s not a horrible choice…
I do believe that you are begining to walk down a very very long road. Almost gone are the days that a single programer could write an entire game. I believe that it is still possible, but it’s a long road.
Two years ago I began putting together some demos so I could play with the new features of the new graphics cards. I found that I wanted something a little more interesting than a little demo showing off graphics. So I started making a little game engine. I’m almost ready now to start playing with the new graphcis features
I don’t remember where I saw that G550 has a very good performance, but the guy were very happy with the card. About the Nvidia, I am very unhappy with the tricks to compile the driver. I tried, but I am tired to worry about the driver, I want to put my attention to the applications. Everyone says that ATI isn’t a good choice on Linux, because de drivers. So, I guessed that Matrox is the better, because there is no bad comments on the net.
Daniel[/b]
Yes, the card is setup, it uses DRI, and is working fine in 2D and it has very good performance for 2D and execellent visusal quality. It is working with OpenGL fine most of the time too, but!:
from time to time it crashesh very badly - most often when I use compiled vertex arrays with lines and such situations.
It is slow, has low fillrate, and terrible (compiled) vertex arrays performance, mainly because it lacks HW T&L unit.
GeForce line has much better price/perfmance ratio than this card, not to mention (almost) execellent linux drivers(albeit not open source)
If you want still matrox, the new Parhelia is a very good card, as I heard, but I guess it will take time until it is fully supported in linux, and it is expensive…
You mention that you’d like to work on your own RPG. Although there’s comments in this thread about the G550’s performance, it sounds like you won’t be pushing it to its limits, so I’d think that you should be fine.
If Matrox is good about fostering development of Free drivers for its Parhelia, you can always switch to that later when the price comes down and the drivers are more mature.
Btw, have you asked about this on the dri dev mailing list? Those folks know which cards have the best currently supported/developed drivers. If you find out anything there, please let us know.
Personally, I wanted to be sure to use dri (and thus mesa), and also wanted the 2d quality, so buying a Matrox G400 was a no-brainer. I’m a novice C++ programmer, and won’t be pushing this card to its limits for some time.
Good luck on your chosen trail. You have to start somewhere, and taking too much time trying to decide on a direction (rather than just jumping in and trying something) can lead to stagnation.
As I said I currently have a G400MAX which should be a little slower than the G550 and it is quite adequate for a lot of things,especially for a beginner.Just be aware of the fact that you can get much better HW(faster,more features etc.) with the same money,and if that doesn’t matter at first it might in time.That’s all.If you want to support open source drivers that’s an other thing.
BTW doesn’t nvidia use the DRI.Does it implement it’s own or what?
Right now I had a Riva TNT2 (with the standard drivers), and it is best than the SIS chipsets I had at work.
Someone knows if the Matrox is better than this one? Since I will use some basic features at this moment, I would like some hardware that implements Hardware Accellerated features. As I understood, my hardware isn’t accelerating anything right now, since I’m not using the right driver…
Again, I thinking Matrox because the little problems it seems to have and some sites that talk about features (it’s old and in portuguese: http://www.clubedohardware.com.br/chip3d2.html )
It says something about a “True Environmental Bump Mapping” in G400. It seems to be a great thing… I don’t know yet…
I choose G550 because is cheaper than Parhelia. The dual head is just a candy to play with.
Here (Brasil) I found G550 for US$180, it’s very expensive, but again, I think it will be easyer to work with it.
I am beggining to become confuse!
Thanks for all the help at this moment, guys.
[This message has been edited by dccristian (edited 11-20-2002).]
[This message has been edited by dccristian (edited 11-20-2002).]
If you want to run UT2003 you need to have a nvidia card or it wont work. I heard that it wont work for linux and it crashes alot of win. I have a geforce2 and it runs great. If your thinking of getting a new card nvidia is comming out with the nvidia (geforce 5)fx in january. They make linux drivers for everything. There not open source but they still work great. Id go with nvidia for a gfx card for linux.
Well when the G400 came out it ha almost the same pefromance as the TNT2 IIRC,maybe a little better.So the G550 should be just a little better than that but (I think) not worth upgarding for,especially considering the price tag.In fact if you have a TNT2 and don’t want to spend any money,it should be perfectly adequate to learn opengl with.Also regarding the drivers they don’t suck but they’re not that great either.As far as quality goes nvidia seems to be the leader.
Right now I had a Riva TNT2 (with the standard drivers), and it is best than the SIS chipsets I had at work.
Someone knows if the Matrox is better than this one? Since I will use some basic features at this moment, I would like some hardware that implements Hardware Accellerated features. As I understood, my hardware isn’t accelerating anything right now, since I’m not using the right driver…
Again, I thinking Matrox because the little problems it seems to have and some sites that talk about features (it’s old and in portuguese: http://www.clubedohardware.com.br/chip3d2.html )
It says something about a “True Environmental Bump Mapping” in G400. It seems to be a great thing… I don’t know yet…
I choose G550 because is cheaper than Parhelia. The dual head is just a candy to play with.
Here (Brasil) I found G550 for US$180, it’s very expensive, but again, I think it will be easyer to work with it.
I am beggining to become confuse!
Thanks for all the help at this moment, guys.
[This message has been edited by dccristian (edited 11-20-2002).]
[This message has been edited by dccristian (edited 11-20-2002).][/b]
Hi,
at any cost do not spend $180 for G550 )
I know some people in Brazil, and I know that there most of the hi-tech components cost twice the normal price, but $180 for this card is simply money for nothing, especially if you have TNT2. For ~$140 you can order GeForce4 Ti4200 from USA, and I the additional $40 might be enough to pay for shipping and VAT. Even GeForce4MX460 ~$100 is much better deal -
from hery you can downlad HW accelerated driver for your TNT2 and other Nvidia cards: http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=linux_display_1.0-3123
After some at dri site, I saw that the card with more features is the Radeon 8500/8700.
I didn’t go take the price for it, but I guess that will be the choice, first because the driver is open source and second, it must the best one at this moment (free software/implemented options).
Well now I had a prompt linux only… Hehehehe
I’m trying to use a hammer and a chain saw but the drivers in my distro aren’t working.
As I see, soon will be released some updates to XFree and DRI, so I will wait and pray for my card (an ATI Radeon 8500) to work.
