MatroX files news

12.08.2001

New version of MXINFO (0.99) with new boards support and better PInS dump. Expect more news before end of August

26.09.2000

Updates: G450 review - now, new version of MXINFO (0.96) - soon.

19.09.2000

The long-awaited Millennium G450 DH landed happily on my desk. Here is the partial review. Expect some updates to the website soon.

08.09.2000

After K6-X+ CPUs appeared on the market I received several requests to support them in MXK6OPT utility. Here it is: version 1.00 should work with the new CPUs. Also, I'm working on full G450 support in MXINFO.

16.06.2000

After a long period of silence I am starting some site updates. First update (not quite finished yet): MGA Overclocking. Next candidates are BIOSPROG and BIOS recovery information.

30.12.1999

Strange solution to strange problem: if your Win98 (especially SE) hangs during shutdown w/G400, besides installing the shutdown patch make sure to delete all traces of all Matrox drivers using Matrox Uninstaller, then install the newest PowerDesk. Worked for me (lost 4 hours on this).

16.12

More rumours and some explanations: despite my good relations with Matrox, my rumours do not come from any internal sources - they would have the full right to kill me if that was the case. All the revelations on T&L may be thought out of the publicly available materials. If you study some documents (even the short ones) it becomes obvious that at least some of the graphics chips have big potential capabilities. Probably one of the earliest chips with T&L capability was Rendition Verite 2100. The fact that the chip can do T&L doesn't imply that it's good to do T&L on the chip. Any MMX-compatible CPU can nicely draw shaded and textured triangles to graphics memory, but it makes no sense to do this since the graphics chip does it faster. Some graphics chips can do T&L, but in many cases it is better to leave this task to the CPU and let the chip do its own low-level dirty job faster. That's it. No mysteries. No confidential information leaks. Just a little logic. More details THERE!!!.

15.12

It's a rumour time, so here are some: The current Matrox chips, starting with G200 are theoretically capable of hardware transformation and lighting (T&L). Since for many people the "hardware T&L" is a buzzword regardless of the actual results, this capability of Matrox chips should be considered important, at least from marketing viewpoint. While it doesn't make too much sense to force the G200 to do T&L, this may probably be done to G4xx line chips. It's all in drivers though, and the programmers may or may not use the capability depending on what they consider to be better/faster solution (trust them, they were wrong so many times <Alf>). So, if you have a G400-based card, you already have (unused) hardware T&L. You feel happier, dear Matrox owner, don't you?...

01.12

Deeply impressed by 3DTweak guide to unsuccesful installation, I updated the Installation page with the description of BIOS Setup options. Other silent updates are planned for tomorrow.

01.10

The G400 review is expanded with an introduction to TurboGL.

18.09

Here are my very first 3DMark scores. The test system was AMD K6-III 400 MHz (Thanks, AMD and Nancy in particular) w/ 128 MB RAM. Well, I adjusted some settings of my G400 before doing this test. Look at the rasterizer score...

17.09

Yesterday I received and installed my Millennium G400 DH (Thanks!). Expect some new stuff on the website soon.

20.07

New MXINFO 0.88 dumps some vital parameters of G400 boards. Not too optimistic remarks added to G4SET section of Downloads page.

16.07

G400 control utility is released. Please report your remarks and errors. I still don't have a G400-based card, so I can't test the uttility myself.

24.06

New page added - Introduction to G400.

23.06

This is not Matrox-related. Today I discovered three undocumented 3DNow! instructions present in AMD processors.

21.06

Matrox has released the G400 chip specification. Some important points: 1. The clocking scheme of G400 is quite different from that of the previous chips. 2. The infamous locked BIOS problem has been addressed - G400 has the capability to unlock the locked BIOS. Good. Looks like Matrox has learned something from its G200 story.

08.04

The article on MGA clocking and overclocking is ready (and expanded today). BIOS/PINS information updated.

01.04

This is NOT a joke, (at least not mine). Carsten Sorensen wrote free VBE TSR for G200. Look for it here.

13.03

New version of  MXCKINFO  and a new utility - its GUI counterpart, MXCK .

12.03

Mystique G200 review is ready.

27.01.1999

BIOSPROG v0.30 programs the G200 BIOS in 3 seconds!!! Matrox programmers: feel free to contact me on the details :-).

New article added - RAMDAC guide.