Matrox & Selective Reviewing?

[RussSchultz]

Could you name any other DirectX-8 "next generation" games that were available at the time that he could have tested?

I can't. I can't even name any other DirectX8 games out now, but I'm more involved in getting my house built these days. (Won't keep me from NWN, though!)

Anyways, NVIDIA did start selective reviewing a few years ago, and they got lambasted for it. Countless accusations of only allowing fanbased sites to review the cards.

What Kyle does is called investigative journalism. Whether he's right or wrong, he seems to make sure somebody talks about things. Personally, I applaud him for being persistant on issues. As a previous Savage4 owner, I commend his ragging on S3 for crappy drivers. Even the S4 drivers were crap. If he were just a little more technically inclined...

Without out the fear of a vocal voice in the community coming down hard on your product and being a rallying point for the disparate disatisfied owners, most companies would never improve their product because it doesn't make a bit of difference to their bottom line.

 

[Bjorn]

As a previous Savage4 owner, I commend his ragging on S3 for crappy drivers. Even the S4 drivers were crap.

As another previous Savage 4 owner, i would say that crap is a way to nice word to use when describing the Savage 4 drivers 8)

 

[John Reynolds]

Anyways, NVIDIA did start selective reviewing a few years ago, and they got lambasted for it. Countless accusations of only allowing fanbased sites to review the cards.

Partly accurate. Nvidia also threatened to withhold review samples from sites they'd previously worked with if that site posted a positive review of a competitor's product. Either way, though, it's certainly a company's right to decide who gets to review their products.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Didn't you need to reg tweak to get the T&L unit on the Savage 2k to work? It was too slow to use anyway if you had a 500mhz processor anyway. lolz @ S3.

 

[Doomtrooper]

Could you name any other DirectX-8 "next generation" games that were available at the time that he could have tested?

I can't. I can't even name any other DirectX8 games out now, but I'm more involved in getting my house built these days. (Won't keep me from NWN, though!)

Anyways, NVIDIA did start selective reviewing a few years ago, and they got lambasted for it. Countless accusations of only allowing fanbased sites to review the cards.

What Kyle does is called investigative journalism. Whether he's right or wrong, he seems to make sure somebody talks about things. Personally, I applaud him for being persistant on issues. As a previous Savage4 owner, I commend his ragging on S3 for crappy drivers. Even the S4 drivers were crap. If he were just a little more technically inclined...

Without out the fear of a vocal voice in the community coming down hard on your product and being a rallying point for the disparate disatisfied owners, most companies would never improve their product because it doesn't make a bit of difference to their bottom line.

Since when is Quake 3 a Direct X Level Game ??

Review was dated Thursday , April 04, 2002

Lets see...

Serious Sam 2
MOHAA
RTCW
Any EA Game..i.e Madden 2002 or NHL 2002
Comanche 4

Then people wonder why Matrox didn't want to send him a card, just to watch their card run Dronez

 

[Randell]

Didn't you need to reg tweak to get the T&L unit on the Savage 2k to work? It was too slow to use anyway if you had a 500mhz processor anyway. lolz @ S3.

It was so broken it was never enabled in drivers. I think at the end of its life it was enabled and it did help ~ 300mhz CPU's a bit.

Aye me experience with my S4 taught me, drivers over feature lists

 

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

At this point I simply think we were going to get shipped a "cherry picked" card that would perform under our testing circumstances and very likely not show us the true potential of the card.

Simply put the only silly mistake Matrox made was telling the truth about why they were not sending a card.

Can I just say that this guy is a joke? Who'd bother to ship him a custom card for testing? Does he think he's Carmack or something? (I reall him a JERK)
Heh, it just happens I was doing some discrete maths problems in truth tables and implications.

Kyle's logic: A->B B->D D->Z

yeap... I'd get about 0/100 in a test with Kyle's Law of implications.

 

[muted]

and they would also try and overclock the card..

"we can't really recommend this card , since it is a poor overclocker
matrox did a really bad job on this one "

I wouldn't have sent a card to Hardocp either ( please refer to it as the parhelia hardocp fiasco from now )

I hope they will send a card to the Beyond3d guys ..

 

[Mize]

Anyone else remember the [H] review of the V5-5500? The V5 came within a few fps of the GF2 in every test, but Kyle scaled the plots such that the GF2 was graphically 3-4 times faster...he even had a comment in the review that he just couldn't figure out how to scale the graphs.

Here's a good example:
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTAwLDM=1010877282OXBx7YcoJk_3_6

Note the excuse at the bottom. For the average 12-year-old surfer that GF2 sure whips the V5. Classic [H] in the post V2 era.

Mize

 

[Doomtrooper]

OMG that is terrible !!!

 

[jb]

OT:

Doom although we don't see eye to eye, I do find your choices of animated gif very entertaining. Thanks for some cool ones!

 

[windtalker12001]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1640&p=6

one of these parapragh was

"Our performance analysis of the card will be published on June 25th, exactly one week from today. The reason for Matrox's decision to set a NDA of the 25th is so that when reviews are published, you should be able to actually purchase a card. Parhelia boards will be available sometime next week according to Matrox."

June 25th is a big day for "Parhelia"

 

[RussSchultz]

Since when is Quake 3 a Direct X Level Game ??

Review was dated Thursday , April 04, 2002

Lets see...

Serious Sam 2
MOHAA
RTCW
Any EA Game..i.e Madden 2002 or NHL 2002
Comanche 4

I was actually talking about Aquanox and Dronz(which you referred to as NVIDIA tech demos), both of which use the hardware pixel shaders exposed in DX8. Do those other games you mention?

I won't say that Aquanox or Dronz are good games, but they are shipping games that take advantage of DX8. To call them NVIDIA tech demo's simply because the 8500 doesn't run on them is disingenuous.

 

[ben6]

AFAIK Aquamark is D3d and does run well on a 8500 (Tried it last night on a AIW Radeon 128MB 8500) Dronez, I don't have but I thought that was OpenGL

 

[jb]

DroneZ is openGL only had uses NV specific OpenGL calls to add in the TnL processing. Thus GF3/4 cards get better results. These same calls will run on the ATI card if the developers provide for the use of the ATI calls. Vulpine is the same way (custom nV OpenGL calls).

I dont have a problem with this as back then when the apps were being developed GF3's where the only thing they had to target. Now with P10, Matrox and ATI parts offering the same features I would hope the developers give us a patch. And if these are used in reviews (which again is perfectly fine) just please make note of the fact that they use Optimized nV calls.

 

[RussSchultz]

Me can't articulate to save life.

I was grouping those two games as ones that actually take advantage of programmable pixel or vertex shaders (i.e. DX8 "class" hardware).

I didn't realize that Dronz was OpenGL only(which does tend to make it NV specific).

 

[OpenGL guy]

As another previous Savage 4 owner, i would say that crap is a way to nice word to use when describing the Savage 4 drivers 8)

Well, at least the OpenGL drivers were good...

Hint: I used to work on the Performance ICD for the Savage 4 and some other chips.

 

[Tygrus_Artesiaoa]

As for hardocp and brent

as for hardocp...sometimes they're staff are not the most technically inclined...theyre more of gamers, very enthusiastic ones. Ya want the nitty gritty go for digit-life, xbitlabs, reactorcritical, BEYOND3d of course, Occasionally Nvnews has a decent one, Hot hardware and Tech-report seem to have come into their own.
Brent is trying to learn. Thats why he joined b3d board...let's teach him!
As for some of hardocp benchmarks...Some of them really shouldn't be used. 3dmark has always had its complaints, but dronez and vulpine gl mark...these are blatently NV optimized...or Chameleon for that matter.
Really though I'm trying to play around with fraps. Many games today don't have built in benchmarking and some of the cool games out don't have it. Supposedly fraps doesn't kill performance anymore as well.
Think of Brent as a padawan in 3d and hardware...not quite a newbie but not a Jedi yet.

 

[RussSchultz]

As another previous Savage 4 owner, i would say that crap is a way to nice word to use when describing the Savage 4 drivers 8)

Well, at least the OpenGL drivers were good...

Hint: I used to work on the Performance ICD for the Savage 4 and some other chips.

I'm sorry.

 

[Randell]

actually the S4 and S2000 were renowned for good UT and quake performance if nothing else. All the problems were primarily D3D games, although the S4 locking up online was a pain in UT.

OpenGl guy did you use that name or similar at SDN's forums?