[MPlayer-users] Re: Re: Re: Chroma interpolation

[D Richard Felker III]

On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 09:55:15AM +0100, Stefan Seyfried wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 01, 2004 at 02:29:38AM -0500, D Richard Felker III wrote:
> > 
> > I never understood wtf the HAL module was useful for. I've certainly
> > never touched it and everything works great.
> 
> except if you want to use the thing which cost most of the cards silicon
> - the 3d engine.

G400 supports full 3D without HAL.

> If you use the 3d engine (my kids surely wanted to on their box) then
> the system has exactly the same problems as NVidias: switching to
> virtual console hangs it some times hard.
>  
> > > well, the only thing that is good on matrox cards on todays standards
> > > ist the analogue signal quality. Too bad that decent displays have DVI ;-)
> > > My experience with the matrox drivers regarding stability are not better
> > > than the oh-so-bad, but at least actively maintained NVidias.
> > 
> > Perhaps you'd like to elaborate rather than mindlessly praising
> > nvidia.
> 
> I'm not praising nvidia, don't get this wrong, i'm just saying: matrox
> is not better these days. I wonder, if one of the modern cards (newer
> than ancient G450) is really supported by todays open source mga drivers.

AFAIK everything except the Parhelia is supported (at least the
important features). But I don't claim full docs are available for
anything later than G400. This discussion was about the G400, not the
G450 or 550 which are crippled versions of it, and to my knowledge HAL
is not useful at all for G400.

> I havent tried. Maybe they were once "good guys", but this was ages ago.
> How often do you see updates for linux on the matrox website?

Never because the specs don't change. Only the drivers need bugfixing,
and drivers should not be written by the manufacturer but by
independent developers with access to proper specs. (This is to avoid
conflict of interest where corners are cut to increase performance
resulting in bugs/instability/crashing.)x

> How often do you get a updated, bug-fixed nvidia driver?

A better way to phrase that: "How often does nvidia have bugs that
require fixing?" :)

> Yes, you can tell me "matrox has nothing to fix in their drivers, but
> nvidia has", but that is the same as microsoft telling us windows
> is more secure because there are much more security fixes for linux
> announced by RedHat/SuSE/debian. This is just FUD.

No, it's a lie. Linux is a kernel, not redhat/suse/debian crap. But
what I say is true. Thats where your comparison breaks now.

> I don't like nvidia not giving out specs, but if i have to choose
> between 2 heaps of shit, i'll take the smaller and cheaper one.

Cheaper than $60?

> The nvidia card (TNT2) which is now in the box of my kids at least lets
> them play needforspeed on win and everything else on linux without giving
> trouble. 

Umm, wtf? You don't buy a card for both win+linux unless you plan to
do something dumb like move the card back and forth between 2
computers...

Rich