Message-Id:	<199901070217.VAA15154@delorie.com>
Comments:	Authenticated sender is <mert0407 AT sable DOT ox DOT ac DOT uk>
From:	"George Foot" <george DOT foot AT merton DOT ox DOT ac DOT uk>
To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Date:	Thu, 7 Jan 1999 02:16:39 +0000
MIME-Version:	1.0
Subject:	Re: DJGPP performance + Matrox G200 video card = S-L-O-W... hel
X-mailer:	Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v2.42a)
Reply-To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com

On  6 Jan 99 at 10:42, Ron wrote:

> Well, this is a dilly of a problem indeed. It took me 3 months to figure it
> out, after several unanswerd
> e-mails to Matrox and a 2 hour technical non-support long distance call to
> Matrox, and Finally I got the
> answer.
> 
> I found someone who found the answer for me (I own a G200 also), Matrox
> Thinks DOS is dead, therefore
> see's no point in supporting VESA AT ALL. Yup, The G200 has Shitty DOS
> performance because they
> sold out to Microsoft and decided to make DirectX the only platform that is
> supported well with the G200.

In what way is it poor?  I can't find any message you could be 
replying to, sorry.

I have a Mystique G200, and it seems to have built in VBE 2.
There weren't any problems using the Allegro test.exe with the
card -- it seems to work fine in all colour depths except for
24, which is understandable.  In any case, how do you measure
its performance?  What operation is being slow in DOS that VESA
could make faster?

If you want improved performance you could use a VBE/AF driver
instead of VESA; this will provide 2D acceleration.  SciTech
supply many of these (not free though, I don't think) and more
are available in FreeBE/AF for free:

    http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/freebe/

The Matrox driver in FreeBE/AF won't support G100 or G200 yet,
only the older Milleniums and Mystiques, but it seems that
the underlying 2D acceleration interface is very similar, and
I am working on extending it to support the newer cards too.

I'm surprised by your observations about Matrox; the company
seems to be happy to give developers information about their
products, and I think this attitude is important.  It means
that if you're unhappy about the supporting software after you
buy the card you can write better software yourself -- or copy
the software of some other person when they write it.  Much
better than relying on people's guesswork, as is necessary
with cards whose manufacturers don't provide any information
at all.

-- 
george DOT foot AT merton DOT oxford DOT ac DOT uk

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