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Matrox to fund DRI Development 120

Posted by CowboyNeal from the oh-yeah-that's-the-stuff dept.
SuperN wrote in to let us know that Matrox will be contracting Precision Insight to develop a DRI driver for the G400 and G200 chipsets, for use in XFree86. There's more information available, as well as a press release. Once Precision Insight is finished developing the driver, the source is to be released with the rest of XFree86, so it looks to be good vibes all around.
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Matrox to fund DRI Development More

Matrox to fund DRI Development

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  • About dual head (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    More support is great news; however, I wonder if dual head really is as urgent under X. Many window managers have a desktop paging mechanism. When I show this to Windows users, it is usually agreed that this is a wonderful and obvious way to reduce clutter on the desktop. Buying a second monitor is another way to increase desktop size, but until flat 17" panels are cheap, a really bulky way.

  • I registered my new G400 DualHead I bought this weekend online. I don't recall there being a box marked 'Linux'. I did write in that a major factor in me buying it was Linux support. Has anybody else noticed there being anything in the boxed version regarding Linux. My oem card had no box, just card, cable, disc.

    I'm really glad I bought this card, it just keeps getting better.
  • What's really bad is when they start pronouncing the acronyms like they were words.

    Oh so you walk around saying stuff like "S-C-S-I" and "L-A-N". Its not lazy, its just the generally accepted way to say these things. I'd probably think you were a luser trying to sound smart if you said. "I need an I-S-A ethernet N-I-C for my machine.", instead of "I need a ISA NIC for my crappy 486." or something to that effect.
  • I don't get it. Why isn't the hardware designed so that it always does the Macrovision stuff to the output signal, no matter what?
  • Indeed ! They've sure changed from the early days when NO matrox board were supported, and calls and request for specs to their head office were never returned or acknowledged. Good on them ! I know what MY next board will be !
  • Its quite likely that more than 50% of /. readers have more than one monitor.

    On what do you base that assumption? I'm still struggling along with a nearly 4 year old system. I'm sure there are others using far less up to date machines. We don't all have money to spend.

    "Sir, I'd stake my reputation on it."
    "Kryten, you haven't got a reputation."
  • Cool though the multi-head capabilities are, you have to wonder who will use it, other than top professionals who can afford to have two monitors on their desk. I guess you could use two cheap 14" monitors, but you wouldn't get the best form the card, and you'd end up with severe neckache. Having said that, I want one... ;)

    "Sir, I'd stake my reputation on it."
    "Kryten, you haven't got a reputation."
  • Man, you can tell you're getting old when you don't know (or care) what half the acronyms mean in an article. Yeesh. Some days I wish we'd stop abbreviating everything. Ah, but then what fun would it be if the name of something actually described what it did, eh? :)
  • but.... I do that... =)

    Yeah, I know what you mean. Like "ascii" - pronounced "ahz-key". But really, I think the marketing-types have started inventing words because they "sound computerish". Cases in point: MMX, ActiveX, Windows 2000.

  • The Utah-GLX driver is now available for the G400,
    G200, Intel 810, Mach64 and S3 Virge cards...
    Unfortunately it doesn't (and won't) work with
    XFree86 4.0 (including the 3.9.X snapshots) :-(
    My hope is that both projects would merge as soon
    as possible so that XF4.0 can have 3D acceleration
    from the start!
  • Hmm... is 3dfx still using 16-bit color?
    If so... it can't really compare to the
    g400/TNT2/GeForce wich all support and is
    fast in 32-bit mode.
  • I use a 21" monitor now and am constantly swapping between virtual desktops. Being able to see code on one screen and shells and results on another at the same time would be great. Our graphics artist uses a G4 with a multiheaded display and it is great. He uses a 21" screen for photoshop work and keeps his toolbars on a second 17" screen. I will definately get one of the G400's when they support multi-headed X. (or maybe before then.)
  • You might be interested in some source from the
    Dxr2 project at opensource.creative.com.
    There's one BrookTree chip in the Dxr2 which is
    usually disabled when playing DVD on Linux :)

    (The usual comment is "Please turn this on if you
    want to avoid pirating your dvds" ;)

  • The majority of the cards that do work are supported under the BT848 chipset, but there is work in progress for the Matrox Marvel G200 with Video 4 Linux:

    http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~eddie/mga4 linux/ [brandeis.edu]

  • Christopher,
    We keep good relationships with all of the XFree86 developers. VA Linux is actually hosting our open source development repository (SourceForge). We spend a lot of our time coordinating our efforts with those of VA Linux, Red Hat, and SuSE so that XFree86, and ultimately all open source end users, can have the largest possible benefit from the combined efforts of literally hundreds of XFree86 contributors.
  • I don't know if it is urgent to have dual head under X but I, for one, could certainly use more simultaneously visible real estate. It would be a definite motivation for me to buy a G400 for example.

  • Slashdot needs a dictionary of confusing acronyms on here. About half of all the words in the articles show acronyms I have never heard of before.
  • I own a Matrox G400 Dual Head (32MB). A friend of mine has an Elsa Erazor III TNT2 (also 32MB) and here's what I have found:

    The G400s OpenGL ICD seems to be way more beta than the TNT2s. The scene with the tubes in 3DMark2000 is bumpy on my P II 400 and fluent on his K6-2 366. The 'dozen' demo (available here [scene.org]) also has performance problems in the first scene (the one with the glows) which runs perfectly on his TNT2. But, as I said the G400 ICD is under development and still being worked on.

    As for TV-Out, the one of the Erazor is more configurable (Elsa has always been very good with TV-Out) but the Matrox TV-Out is of a very good quality too. When it comes to outputting DVDs Matrox's DVD-Max feature really kicks ass and you get a full screen HQ image as if you were playing it on a 'real' DVD Player!

    As far as drivers are considered, I do not see much difference. They both have the basic configuration options and are both under heavy development. (When I discovered the bug with the ground texture in 3DMark's helicopter scene I went to download the latest driver and, after installing it, saw that the problem was fixed.)

    Apart from these little driver difference they compare pretty similarly in the benchmarks (can't really check that because my PC is slightly more powerful than my friends')

    As for Q3, UT and so on, Matrox have developed a special TurboGL driver which only works for those games but is supposed to be faster. Unfortunately I couldn't test that one yet because my PC's mainboard has given up working recently.

    All in all they're pretty similar. The G400 wins out on the features like Environtally Mapped Bump Mapping, (which you REALLY notice unlike Vibrant Color Quality2 ) the DVD TV-output, the Dual-Head feature (allows for TV-OUT, multi-screen usage etc) and a little in performance. (according to reviews I read)

    On the other side the Erazor has slightly better Direct3D and OpenGL support.

    As far as I am concerned, I am a proud owner of a G400 and the latest moves Matrox made towards Linux only confirm me in my choice and I will continue to support them by buying their products in the future.

    Phew, guess I wrote a little too much but I'm too lazy to start reviewing all that now.

    Greetings
  • What you are looking for is a socket7 motherboard and there are plenty of them out there with AGP,which
    will support your p233. You should be able to score one in the 100$ range or better and when you want you can get one of those AMD k6 500 processors(or what ever they are up to) when you want to slip in a faster processor. Keep in mind that the availability of boards with SIMM/DIMM slots may be a little more difficult to find If you require SIMM support. Good Luck.

    Kent
  • you might want to check http://everything.slashdot.org [slashdot.org]
    ---

  • Are da bomb! Keep up the good work, Frank and colleagues. I'm going to be ordering two G400's in the next couple of weeks, just based on the presence of good Linux OpenGL support for them. A rousing hoo-raw to you all from out here in the sticks!

  • I've got a Tyan Trinity 100 ATX (the new 1598S, with the MVP4 South(?)bridge) and a Matrox G400 (cheap OEM version without dual-head/TV-out), and I have had only one problem so far: under Win98, until the 5.40.x driver, if I had 256MB RAM installed and "AGP aperture size" set to anything above 8 MB, the machine would crash shortly after Windows came up (this hasn't happened with Linux, neither with NT 4).

    With the new drivers, everything works fine, even with the aperture size set to 128MB (the current BIOS of the board doesn't allow for more).

    My system specs: Tyan Trinity 100 ATX (1598S), 256 MB PC100 SD-RAM, AMD K6-III 450, Linux, Win98, WinNT, WinTV/PCI TV-card, Mylex (ex-BusLogic) Flashpoint SCSI controller, 2 IDE hard-disks, 1 Mitsumi 40x CD-ROM, 1 SCSI hd, 1 Toshiba CD-R
  • ...I've had one of these boards for a year and a half, they support any socket 7 chip - from a p75 to a K6-3/600. Also includes support for SIMMs or DIMMs (DIMMs are much faster though). Bus master DMA and AGP 2X are supported as well.

  • I would like to use them! My G400 serves my new 21' while olde 17' sits on my server showing: tail -f /var/log/apache_access. Its quite likely that more than 50% of /. readers have more than one monitor.
  • I have an nvidia (tnt) also and it works great ... in 98. I really want acceleration in Linux, and have been waiting for XFree86 2.4, hoping I could get decent performance from a GeForce card so I could upgrade. Now, however, I think maybe my next card really ought to be a G400. I have been envying the Matrox Linux compatibility for some time, and they are really starting to look like the card of choice.
  • Would be nice if the turbo driver would run on a Celeron though... (Yes, I use win98 for occasionally playing a game, can't buy any Linux games over here anyway, tried to buy Linux Q3a at on shop that is specialiced in games and always imports them from The States, so that I've got it sooner than anyone else, replied: "No way, I'm not going to order Linux games, out of the question.."
    Well really nice.. I'm off to LokiGames, making use of my creditcard for a change (only 1/100 or 1000 people has one over here, I think.)


  • The problem is, everyone who puts TV-Out technology on their boards signs a contract with Macrovision, Inc (they are
    the ones who implement the copy protection that prevents you from copying vhs tapes), and the contract forbids
    specs from being released (because people could then easily override the insecure Macrovision protection and allow
    vhs tapes to be copied).


    Ahhh...you mean the Macrovision copy protection which is trivially disabled? (for instance in my DVD player). You can also buy a box for $50 or so which strips macrovision from any video signal ;-)

    Point taken though - I didn't know that macrovision were involved in TVout stuff.

    Nice info...


  • But that's going to destroy your signal quality - really no-one should use RF. I don't know about the US but over here every TV made in the last 5+ years has had at least a scart socket (which can carry either composit or even better RGB). No I know the US don't have scart (damn euro commie connectors!) but are RGB/composit/svideo really that rare?

  • Full drivers for the Matrox range of cards is one of the things that could make me switch from Windows to Linux!

    I couldn't make out from the information if this would include support for capturing with the Marvel and RR-G cards. Matrox cards are performing capturing extremely well, and it would be a great benefit for both Matrox and the Linux community if this would be the case.

    Well done Matrox!

  • Desktop on one monitor and a DVD movie playing on your TV - at the same time?

    Thanks to DeCSS and Matrox, together ;)

  • Unfortunately, the only motherboards that support P1's have poor AGP support. That whole "Super 7" thing that was going on six months ago pretty much ended with the Athlon, and they never got AGP working quite right. I have an ASUS Super7 board, and it's got a few problems with the bios.

    I haven't ever tried an AGP card, but based on what I've heard I don't trust this low-end MoBo to handle one. Wait until you have enough for a cheap p2 or celeron.
  • Well, I had been trying to decide which new video card to get. I love the G400 and especially the dual-head, but it never worked under linux.
    =======
    There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
  • I have 9 monitors in my office/closet and half a dozen old 14"'s on a shelf in the garage. 50% could be good guess or maybe not. It's hard to tell.
  • High performance graphics pretty much require intimate contact between the program and the hardware. A lot of this stuff ends up having to run as root, or suffer performance loss.

    Perhaps in the future, better designed hardware will make secure, high performance graphics feasible. It's really more a matter of marketing than technical issues.

    But while we're busy treading down this path, don't forget how much NT 4 reliability was 'helped' by moving graphics into the kernel.

    For a gaming machine, the security/performance implications are probably OK. But this bears careful watching, and an ongoing assessment of risks.
  • Two monitors are well within the range of rich amateurs. Or alternatively you can use a monitor and a TV. And there's a lot of uses especially for things like video editing. Or just have two keyboards, two mice and have two people using the machine.

    What I really want is 3 outputs, 3 projectors and a 120 degree screen. All acting like a single big display device.
  • Believe me, I use dual head at work, once you use it, you never want to go back. you see everything at once =-)
  • Precision Insight should go public now, while the market is hot. They've got some great people over there. They should do it like Andover did, also. That open ipo system is great for investors.

  • Re:hrmmmmmmm (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have a G200 and have been keeping an eye on what opinions are. In the Windows world, I believe that at very low resolutions (680x480) the TNT2 is somewhat faster than the G400, but at higher resolutions the G400 is much faster. The Linux drivers could change things (since there are now lots of G200/G400 driver efforts going, I don't know what to compare) The G400 is supposed to have somewhat better image quality, and supports environmental bump mapping, which no Linux games use right now, but looks incredible in games that use it in Windows.

    My G200 does very well 2d-wise...I'm happy with it. I tried the glx 3d drivers quite a while back (probably faster now)...they still have a good ways to go, as the card runs somewhat slower than it does in WinNT, but I was playing q3test against other people in my dorm happily on a PII266. Still, I could feel the slowdown relative to the Windows drivers at the time, and stuck to playing Q3test in Windows.

    The G200 is still relatively slow 3d wise (compared to cards a few generations down the road like the G400 and the TNT2), and I'd recommend against it if you're looking for a 3d gaming card for Linux. We'll see what improved drivers do.
  • Given that a G400MAX is the fastest 3D card under Linux at the moment (going by GLX performance), this is great news. Even NVidia's latest GeForce GLX drivers don't compare on a GeForce SDR to the G400. I expected to see the GeForce dominate once the NVidia drivers were out, but on a P3 500 the G400MAX was over twice as fast[1] as a GeForce SDR on an Athlon 600 at quake3 (something like 55 fps for the G400, 25 for the Geforce).

    Matrox is further increasing their lead in linux with moves like this. Once DualHead is in place and XFree86 4.0 with DRI support is out, I can't see any other company providing drivers as reliable or as fast for a long time. It takes time to ramp up expertise on a new platform, and by using Open Source/GLX drivers, Matrox will almost certainly be a step ahead for a long time to come.

    [1] - Now in Windows the G400MAX doesn't beat the GeForce, which shows the GeForce Linux drivers are severely limited. With time this will improve, assuming NVidia keeps up with their pledge to support XFree86 and Linux and releases specs so that other developers can contribute in meaningful ways.
  • It's nice to see such a positive answer, and that reflects well on all parties involved.

    Now, the only big problem is that Matrox doesn't seem to be as well-favored in the supply chains as they used to be, which is a matter well outside the scope of the control of Linux folk...

  • There are a couple of staff at VA Linux Systems that have been doing Matrox/XFree86 development for a goodly couple years now; the open question is where this leaves their efforts.

    Hopefully there's some information sharing between Matrox, PI, and LNUX on this so that all their efforts can continue to prove useful.

    It would be unfortunate if there was a fragmentation of efforts.

  • And I do it too! EISA? eeeeesa!

    But then again, whenever I see DOS, I pronounce it to myself as D-O-S, not daus. I have to force myself to pronounce it that way so people would not confuse it with the acronym for Denial-Of-Service, which, in a twisted way is what DOS is as an operating system.

    Acronyms. I believe self learned nerds that don't get out (such as myself) will always get these wrong and raise eyebrows whenever they meet.
  • Th G400's are the first really 3d accelerated cards matrox released. The 400's are fairly speedy and from eyeballing a friend's it looks quite comparable to a TNT2 but with prettier graphics.

    The downside is their Win drivers aren't full OGL; it's a mini-ICD that's HEAVILY optimized for Quake. Performance isn't bad with other games in D3D, but it is fairly pricey compared to a TNT2; G400's run about $250. But it's got nifty stuff like bump-mapping that make the world just downright gorgeous when it's supported.

    Hopefully the DRI driver will be full OGL+bump mapping and that OGL will dribble back to Windows. Hmmm, opensource Linux improving windows. Wasn't this the point?
  • What's really bad is when they start pronouncing the acronyms like they were words.

    Like the ISA bus. I've been hearing people, even people who work in the industry, referring to it as "eye-sah". How lazy is that? First you're too lazy to pronounce the term, so you shorten it. Then you get too lazy to even just pronounced the letters of the acronym, so you phoneticize it.


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  • Well, erm... I've always seen Matrox as the company with the best driver support for Windows (and it works good under Linux as well). I've never had a problem with their drivers. Ever. I've just downloaded the latest unified driver and watched things fly (since my original Millennium I -- I still have it). When I added another Matrox board, I didn't even have to update the drivers. I don't see your problem...

    /* Steinar */
  • You can get a composite->RF converter at radio shack for about $25
    ________________________________
  • you have to wonder who will use it
    I have a monitor and a TV for the project I'm working on at work (Sony) running off a G400
    The best feature is being able have a DVD playing in the background then watch it on TV...

    Now if only I could get DirectX/OpenGL under Win2k to stop hanging the system, I'd be set. Quake 3 on a 32" widescreen. Mmmmm.

  • You know I've been a big fan of nvidia for a long time and had pretty much relegated to buying only nvidia hardware (I've never been a 3dfx fan especially after the only card I've ever bought was a lame ass banshee), but after watching matrox make contribution after contribution to Xfree in the form of open specs and financial funding, I have a feeling I should reward them with my business since they have obviouly had a clue for quite sometime.
    Can someone who has been a long time user of the G series and maybe even someone who has a G400 give me some details on how it compares to a tnt2? I know there are benchmarks and what not out there but I honestly prefere the personal opinion to the official one ;)

    Specifically in games like q3 and what not. How well do they handle OpenGL?
  • First the "yes". I found that page already, but thanks for pointing it out anyway. Trouble is, they are only at version 0.0.7 and the page isn't very clear on what that means.

    As for the "but". Sure, the best supported cards are the BT848/878-based ones. But I can't find any cards based on this chipset that have video in AND out (WinTV-D is apparently out only...). Know of any?
    ---
  • This explains a lot. I guess I better keep looking for a fully supported card OR get the G200-TV and learn how to create Linux drivers...
    ---
  • Now, can someone answer this question: Is the G200-TV supported for video capture/output? Under Video4Linux or elsewhere? If so, this is the card for me (I don't need high-performance, I just need s-video in AND out under Linux).

    When I buy it, I intend to mention that their support of Linux is the reason I chose them. Be sure you do the same.
    ---
  • Matrox has done a great 180. They used to have the worst driver support in the industry, even under Windows.

    In my experience, the dubious honor of worst Windows drivers goes to ATI. They have alway s had poor 2d AND 3d drivers (remember when Gateway quit using them ~5 years ago? There was a reason.)

    Now they're working hard, and they're putting out good Linux support. I think the G200/G400 is the fastest 2d card you can get for XFree86, and their 3d support is getting better fast.

    A lot of the reason for this is the Matrox driver project - a bunch of guys are writing good drivers for Matrox. Don't be too hasty in chalking this one up to Matrox...there are other (open) sources at work.
  • Oh I dunno. I've got a 21" in my desk right now, and I've seriously considered putting a 17" right next to it. Decent 17" aren't really all that expensive any more, and I can always use more screen-space.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • Well, I got a 15" with my system in 1995, and have bought a 21" early last year... all 3 systems run through a Cybex KVM box to the 21, but technically I've got two... no wait - there's an Epson XT with monitor in the basement of my old house... right next to the C64 and 128 with their old monitor... can't really count the XT or Commodore monitors, but once my finacee moves in, there's another 15" monitor...

    At home my brother and dad each have a system with a monitor, my grandfather has 2 systems, two monitors.

    Hell, my family averages well over the 50% line...
  • odd - I pronounce DOS "dahs" (or daus? "rhymes with house - maybe from the german class I took), but I refer to D-O-S (dee oh ess) attacks. But then again, it doesn't really matter too much.
  • If I understand the release correctly, they will use that code as a base, and modify it from the utah glx to the DRI glx system.

    "Building on the fast, stable 2D driver and the current GLX driver already written by the Linux community, Precision Insight will integrate support for 3D performance and features using the company-authored DRI architecture."

    Don't y'all read the articles?
  • I have two SS7 DFI MVBP3 p5v3c's, and haven't had a lick of trouble with them. AGP 2X mode works nicely as well.
  • Yeah, they're approximatly the same as the PII. Personally, I'd take a higher clock K6-2 over a 400 K6-3. The 3's run about 7% faster than the 2's at the same clock, but you can buy a much faster K6-2 for the same price. Plus, theres the ceiling; AMD has the K6-2 550 out on the market, but the K6-3 line is stuck at 450.

    You want to check out the prices of DRAM before you 'yippee!'. These boards don't have any 72-pin SIMM slots. Buy the PC100 stuff, because the board runs much better with a 100mHz DRAM clock.
  • Heres some spec/price links. The price is about dead-on for retail market.

    Baby AT w/2M cache [tccomputers.com]
    Baby AT w/1M cache [tccomputers.com]

    DFI also makes a identical board in ATX. As for the CPU, you should be able to pick up a retail-box K6-2 500 for about $100. (the 400 can be had for about $50).
  • DFI Super Socket 7. They're solid, and most of the current revs will clock a K6-2/3 to 600, so you've got quite a bit of expandability. Plus, they're inexpensive, feature 2X AGP, conveniently placed DIP switches, etc. Downside is you'll need DIMMS, as there are no SIMM slots.
  • Hanging off my win98 box at home I've got one good 15" and two shite 14" monitors one either side of the big one. works great, just wish I could get it to work under linux.
  • A few comments. I own a G400MAX. They have FULL (repeat) FULL OpenGL Hardware accelerated support for ANY OpenGL application. Its standard. They have a special TurboGL driver optimized for 3D gaming which in no way replaces there other OpenGL drivers. It just makes the games they optimized for work Much quicker. Its stiffly priced. I LOVE the DualHead. I DO watch a DVD on my nice 640x480 SVGA monitor while I cruise the web or do programming.. whatever. The G400Max has Awesome Direct3D support. (*sigh* I love some games that only run in Direct3D accelerated modes.) All in all its Matrox's first card that has probably made much of a dent in the hardcore gaming market. Its no way near a GeForce256 with DDR or even SDR but IT is a playable and awesome card. I wouldnt trade it for ANY of the other cards on the market.

  • Re:Interesting. (Score:3)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Thursday January 13, 2000 @04:24AM (#1376857) Homepage
    Cool though the multi-head capabilities are, you have to wonder who will use it[...]

    I'd love to have that; imagine having my usual comfortable bearded, long-haired head with glasses and all at work, then attach a Mel Gibson lookalike unit when going out for the night! Toothache? No problem! Just rent a spare head from your dentist while your own unit is in for repairs! Ahhh, the future is truly ours!

    Sorry.

  • Re:Living up to my expectations. (Score:3)

    by Caballero ( 11938 ) <daryll.daryll@net> on Thursday January 13, 2000 @06:51AM (#1376858) Homepage

    All the sources and all the specs are available for the 3dfx cards as you mentioned. The GLX list does have a lot of people on it, but in reality only about a half dozen are probably active developers.

    I'm the primary author for the 3dfx drivers. I'd love to have more people help with them. That's why we setup dri.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]. That's got the current 3dfx drivers, and will include all the drivers from Precision Insight [precisioninsight.com] including the Matrox and ATI drivers.

    - |Daryll

  • Video Capture (Score:3)

    by Stiletto ( 12066 ) on Thursday January 13, 2000 @05:14AM (#1376859)
    DRI is only for 3D support.

    For video capture under Linux using The Marvel or Rainbow Runner G, go to here [brandeis.edu]. The drivers are still in an unstable "alpha" state, but work well enough to use and start hacking on.
    ________________________________

  • This will make my next purchasing decision easier (Score:3)

    by dsplat ( 73054 ) on Thursday January 13, 2000 @05:42AM (#1376860)
    Knowing that Matrox is committed to having open source drivers for their stuff means that I can buy with confidence. I've been telling my parents (who've never touched Linux) for years that they should buy hardware that is supported by open source. It is the surest indicator that it will be widely supported regardless of which software they run.

  • Living up to my expectations. (Score:3)

    by jemfinch ( 94833 ) on Thursday January 13, 2000 @04:15AM (#1376861) Homepage
    Someone offered to trade me his dual head G400 for my Voodoo3 3000. Even though it meant pretty much giving up quake3 (sure, I could still play, but it would be at about half the speed, which would be intolerable for me) I decided to go ahead with the deal because I knew that even though 3dfx does make decent linux drivers, I felt that Matrox's method, "open the specs and let the hacking begin" was more in line with my beliefs.

    I'm happy to see that Matrox is not only meeting my expectations, but pleasantly surpassing them by going the extra mile to make sure their hardware is supported in linux. I'll make sure Matrox gets my money next time I actually buy a video card.

    Jeremy

  • Re:Living up to my expectations. -- and beyond (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 13, 2000 @04:38AM (#1376862)
    Matrox has done a great 180. They used to have the worst driver support in the industry, even under Windows. Now they're working hard, and they're putting out good Linux support. I think the G200/G400 is the fastest 2d card you can get for XFree86, and their 3d support is getting better fast.

    Remember, people. When you buy the videocard, SEND IN THOSE PRODUCT REGISTRATION CARDS! Mark Linux. It's how they know what to support!

  • TV-Out (Score:4)

    by Stiletto ( 12066 ) on Thursday January 13, 2000 @05:06AM (#1376863)

    People are working on support for TV-Out. Unfortunately this is one of the only portions of Matrox's graphics system they did not make the specs available for.

    The problem is, everyone who puts TV-Out technology on their boards signs a contract with Macrovision, Inc (they are the ones who implement the copy protection that prevents you from copying vhs tapes), and the contract forbids specs from being released (because people could then easily override the insecure Macrovision protection and allow vhs tapes to be copied).

    There are rumors that Matrox intends to support TV-Out via a binary-only module, but they are only rumors. There hasnt been any official info from Matrox regarding TV-Out on Linux.
    ________________________________

  • John Carmack's Role? (Score:4)

    by chabotc ( 22496 ) <chabotc&gmail,com> on Thursday January 13, 2000 @05:23AM (#1376864) Homepage
    Is it just me, or do more people get the feeling that the magic 'carmack touch' was applied here?

    In the matroxuser.com sniplet it sums up the history of the matrox & linux community relationship, from the first matrox driver in 1992, upto the GLX project, where it -clearly- states the nature and development of carmack's role in the GLX project. And if you would expand this history line with 'the present' it would be this order:

    Start of GLX
    Carmack messing with GLX
    Matrox Funding GLX development.

    Now doesnt that make a great coinsidence? Specialy considering the weight carmack's word usualy carries in the OpenGL / Games scene, it wouldnt supprise me to find that he was the final drop for matrox to go ahead.

    If this all is true? donno, but if so, kuddles to u carmack for helping this to happen!

    -- Chris Chabot
    "I dont suffer from insanity, i enjoy every minute of it!"

  • WARP specifications would be nice... (Score:5)

    by tamyrlin ( 51 ) on Thursday January 13, 2000 @06:46AM (#1376865) Homepage
    Now, if Matrox would only release the warp specifications so that we could make secure direct rendering without a performance hit.

    Some background:
    The G200 and G400 has the ability to read and write to buffers in primary memory. This is a great feature, but if misused you can easily crash your computer or with a little more work do things like read and write kernel memory. Therefore we only allow root to do direct rendering in Utah GLX.

    Thanks to Matrox' donation of the warp microcode we can now send a list of vertices to the card instead of having to manually calculating things like delta x and delta y values. (This is usually called triangle setup.) This was a great performance boast and also a key to more security since you cannot embed register writes in such a list of vertices.

    Still, every time you want to change the current texture or change your current blending mode you will need to write to a register. And since the G200/G400 doesn't distinguish between a register write to change your blending mode and a register write that initiates a blit that will zero out the first 6 MB of framebuffer memory you a normal user cannot be allowed to write such data directly to the card. [1]

    You can work around this by sending a buffer with some sort of bytecode to the kernel and let it do some sanity checks on it before sending it to the card. Thankfully the vertex lists cannot contain hidden register writes. [2].
    This does not come without a performance penalty though.

    What we could do if we had warp specifications is to write microcode that would take a buffer that not only contained vertex data but also information about all mode changes that was safe. Stuff like buffer allocation would still have to be done by the kernel or the X server, but you wouldn't have to do that very often.

    I am not totally unreasonable, even though I would love to write some microcode myself I would be satisfied if Matrox provided microcode with this kind of functionality.

    Still, this is a problem that will probably disappear in a couple of graphics card generations once multiuser systems is more common.


    [1] Actually, the data isn't written directly to the card in any case if you are using DMA to transfer the commands from the host to the card. This is a key to high performance graphics in combination with the G200/G400.

    [2] You can upset the card by writing improper values to the vertex list with the current microcode, you shouldn't be able to do more than a DOS attack with it though. The kernel or X server could probably detect this and restore the state of the card if this is tried as well. (I don't know if this is possible, but I think this is the case.)

  • Support Matrox, support open source (Score:5)

    by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Thursday January 13, 2000 @06:12AM (#1376866)
    The choice of video card for frequent Linux users has been pretty clear for years, in my opinion. Matrox always seems to be the most well supported card in many ways. The Millenium line is one of the most highly accellerated cards under XFree. The accellerated MatroxFB gives you a much faster and bigger console than VESAFB does. Most recently, the G400 has the fastest OpenGL implementation available under Linux.

    The decision is even more of a cinch given the excellent quality of their hardware. This is not a situation where you have to choose between the best hardware and the best open source drivers. Matrox has them both. The G400 MAX has the highest output bandwidth of any card of which I am aware, and it produces a nice crisp image on even the biggest monitors. Besides that, it makes a passable 3D accellerator for games.

    For me the decision was easy. I traded in my Millenium II for a Millenium G400 MAX last week and I have been very happy since.

    -jwb

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