ASUS V5200 User Manual

User’s Manual

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AGP-V5200

Windows NT Workstation Graphics Accelerator

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R

ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.

Copyright © 1998 ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this manual, including the products and software described in it, may be reproduced,
transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any language in any form or
by any means, except documentation kept by the purchaser for backup purposes, without the ex­press written permission of ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. (“ASUS”).

ASUS PROVIDES THIS MANUAL “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS
OF MERCHANT ABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. IN NO EVENT SHALL ASUS,
ITS DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES OR AGENTS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL,
INCIDENT AL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF PROFITS,
LOSS OF BUSINESS, LOSS OF USE OR DA T A, INTERRUPTION OF BUSINESS AND THE LIKE), EVEN
IF ASUS HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES ARISING FROM ANY
DEFECT OR ERROR IN THIS MANUAL OR PRODUCT.

Product warranty or service will not be extended if: (1) the product is repaired, modified or altered,
unless such repair, modification of alteration is authorized in writing by ASUS; or (2) the serial
number of the product is defaced or missing.

Products and corporate names appearing in this manual may or may not be registered trademarks or
copyrights of their respective companies, and are used only for identification or explanation and to
the owners’ benefit, without intent to infringe.

The product name and revision number are both printed on the product itself. Manual revisions are
released for each product design represented by the digit before and after the period of the manual
revision number. Manual updates are represented by the third digit in the manual revision number.

For previous or updated manuals, BIOS, drivers, or product release information, contact ASUS at
http://www .asus.com.tw or through any of the means indicated on the following page.

SPECIFICATIONS AND INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS MANUAL ARE FURNISHED FOR IN­FORMATIONAL USE ONLY, AND ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE AT ANY TIME WITHOUT NOTICE,
AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS A COMMITMENT BY ASUS. ASUS ASSUMES NO RESPON­SIBILITY OR LIABILITY FOR ANY ERRORS OR INACCURACIES THAT MAY APPEAR IN THIS
MANUAL, INCLUDING THE PRODUCTS AND SOFTWARE DESCRIBED IN IT.

Product Name: ASUS AGP-V5200
Manual Revision: 1.00 E256
Release Date: August 1998

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Contents

ASUS Contact Information ............................................................................5

Communications Regulation Information ......................................................6

Chapter 1: Introduction

ASUS AGP-V5200 Item Checklist ................................................................ 7

System Capabilities ........................................................................................8

System Requirements .....................................................................................8

ASUS AGP-V5200 Parts ................................................................................8

ASUS AGP-V5200 Layout.............................................................................9

Chapter 2: Hardware Installation

Static Electricity Precautions........................................................................11

Installing the ASUS AGP-V5200 ................................................................. 12

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Chapter 3: Software Installation

Prerequisites ................................................................................................. 13

Installing the Software..................................................................................14

Resolutions and Color Depths ...................................................................... 15

3D Graphics and Double Buffering..............................................................16

Display Properties ........................................................................................ 17

OpenGL Texturing and Extensions...............................................................23

®

3D Studio MAX

GLINT Event Logging ................................................................................. 27

Known Anomalies and Restrictions ............................................................. 28

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26

Appendix A: Declaration of Conformity

CE ...................................................................................................................... 30

FCC.................................................................................................................... 31

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ASUS Contact Information

ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.

Marketing

150 Li-Te Road
Peitou, T aipei, Taiwan 112
[phone] telephone
[phone] fax
[e-mail]

Technical Support

[phone] fax
[phone] BBS
[e-mail]
www.asus.com.tw
ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS

ASUS COMPUTER INTERNATIONAL

Marketing

6737 Mowry Avenue
Mowry Business Center, Building 2
Newark, CA 94560, USA
[phone] fax
[e-mail]

Technical Support

[phone] fax
[phone] BBS
[e-mail]
www.asus.com
ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS

ASUS COMPUTER GmbH

Marketing

Technical Support

Harkort Str. 25
40880 Ratingen, BRD, Germany
49-2102-445011 telephone
49-2102-442066 fax
[e-mail]

The Ultimate Windows NT Workstation Graphics Accelerator

49-2102-499712 hotline
49-2102-448690 BBS
[e-mail]
www.asuscom.de
ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUSCOM

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Communications Regulation Information

Federal Communications Commission Statement

This device complies with FCC Rules Part 15. Operation is subject to the following
two conditions:

■ This device may not cause harmful interference, and

■ This device must accept any interference received, including interference that

may cause undesired operation.

This equipment has been tested and found to comply with the limits for a Class B
digital device, pursuant to Part 15 of the FCC Rules. These limits are designed to
provide reasonable protection against harmful interference in a residential instal­lation. This equipment generates, uses and can radiate radio frequency energy
and, if not installed and used in accordance with manufacturer's instructions, may
cause harmful interference to radio communications. However, there is no guarantee
that interference will not occur in a particular installation. If this equipment does
cause harmful interference to radio or television reception, which can be determined
by turning the equipment off and on, the user is encouraged to try to correct the
interference by one or more of the following measures:

■ Re-orient or relocate the receiving antenna.

■ Increase the separation between the equipment and receiver.

■ Connect the equipment to an outlet on a circuit different from that to which the

receiver is connected.

■ Consult the dealer or an experienced radio/TV technician for help.

WARNING! The use of shielded cables for connection of the monitor to the
graphics card is required to assure compliance with FCC regulations. Changes
or modifications to this unit not expressly approved by the party responsible
for compliance could void the user’s authority to operate this equipment.

Canadian Department of Communications Statement

This digital apparatus does not exceed the Class B limits for radio noise emissions
from digital apparatus set out in the Radio Interference Regulations of the Cana­dian Department of Communications.

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Introduction

The ASUS AGP-V5200 board has been designed for high performance profes­sional 3D graphics acceleration. This device combines workstation class 3D
graphics acceleration and state of the art 2D performance. All 3D rendering
operations are accelerated by 3Dlabs’ s Dual GlintMX chipset including Gouraud
shading, texture mapping, depth buffering, antialiasing and alpha blending.
The addition of Gamma chip enhances performance by off-loading the host
computer of both the rendering and setup calculations.

The ASUS AGP-V5200 provides the ultimate 3D system performance for the
power user. It provides greatly enhanced hardware support for texture map­ping and significant performance improvements.

ASUS AGP-V5200 Item Checklist

Check that your package is complete. If you discover damaged or missing
items, contact your retailer.

■ ASUS AGP-V5200 graphics accelerator card

■ Support drivers and utilities (2 floppy disks)

■ User’s Manual

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System Capabilities

■ Onboard SVGA

■ 16MB VRAM as frame buffer and 80MB EDO DRAM as local buffer

System Requirements

■ Suitable for use in Pentium II computers supporting the AGP bus

■ VGA, XGA, SuperVGA or Extended VGA compatible monitor

ASUS AGP-V5200 Parts

80MB EDO RAM
Local Buffer
(Front & Back)

16MB VRAM
Frame Buffer
(Back)

RAMDAC

SGRAM
(Front &
Back)

Video Output Connector

Glint MX Chipset

Glint Gamma
Processor

VGA Chip

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ASUS AGP-V5200 Layout

Front

R

RAMDAC

Shaded Items: EDO RAM

SGRAM

VGA
Chip

JP2 JP3 JP4

ON

OFF

BASE CLASS

Jumper Settings

ON

GAMMA VGA

Processor

ON
OFF

VGA P2 FIX ADDR

OFF

OPEN: No Jumper Caps

ON

JP1

OFF

Glint

Gamma

WITH FAN

Glint MX

Chipset

WITH FAN

Glint MX

Chipset

WITH FAN

J3

Jumpers are factory-set, as shown in this layout. Leave on these default
settings, i.e., JP1, JP2, JP3, JP4: On; J3: All OPEN.

Back

Light Shaded Items: EDO RAM; Dark Shaded: VRAM

SGRAM

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ASUS AGP-V5200

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Hardware Installation

The instructions in this chapter discuss important static electricity precautions
and procedures for installing the ASUS AGP-V5200 graphics accelerator to
your computer. The board will have been configured for the options installed
at the factory. Before installing the board, check that the jumper settings (see
board layout) are correct and that you have taken note of the static electricity
precautions.

Static Electricity Precautions

1 Unplug your computer.
2 Before handling any components or touching anything inside the system

unit, discharge your body static electric charge by using a grounded wrist
strap. If you do not have one, hold onto a grounded surface. If the system
unit is connected to a grounded outlet, you can touch a suitable part of the
system metal chassis.

3 Do not remove boards from their antistatic bags until you are ready to in-

stall them.

4 When handling boards, hold them by their edges and their metal mounting

brackets. Avoid touching components on the board and the edge connec­tors that plug into the expansion slots.

5 Avoid plastic, vinyl and styrofoam in your work area.

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Installing the ASUS AGP-V5200

Installing the ASUS AGP-V5200 in your system is simple. To install the board,
follow these steps:

1 Switch off your system and all peripheral devices.
2 Follow the static precautions described on the preceding page.
3 Remove the cover from your system.
4 Remove any existing video boards installed in the system.

T o do this, detach the monitor cable from an existing video board, remove the
screw that holds the board in place and then pull it out from its expansion slot.
Store the old video board in an antistatic bag.

5 Find the AGP expansion slot in your system.
6 Remove the metal cover plate from the slot you have chosen and put the

screw to one side.

7 Ensure the onboard jumpers are correctly set on your AGP-V5200, which should

be on their default setting (

8 Align the board AGP slot connector with the expansion slot in your PC and

gently lower and push the board into the free slot.

see

board layout).

9 Secure the board to the expansion slot with the screw you removed from the

metal plate.

10 Replace the cover on your system and plug in the power cord.
11 Reattach the video cable to the video output connector.
12 Turn on the monitor and power up the system.

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Software Installation

This chapter describes the Windows NT 4.0 Display Driver and OpenGL In­stallable Client Driver and Heidi for the ASUS AGP-V5200. It also explains
how to install these drivers.

This document should be read in conjunction with the
the installation floppy disk, which contains details of the driver version and
installation instructions.

README.TXT file on

Prerequisites

■ Windows NT 4.0 (Build No. 1381), Service Pack 3 is recommended.

Service Pack 3 is necessary for AGP cards to work and for DirectDraw to
be hardware accelerated.

■ Intel Pentium II processor

■ ASUS AGP-V5200 Board

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Installing the Software

Before installing the software, turn off your computer and install the ASUS AGP­5200 board according to the hardware installation instructions. Start your computer
using the non-VGA mode option [from the OS Loader, highlight and choose the

Windows NT Workstation Version 4.00 option; the other option is Windows
NT Workstation Version 4.00 (VGA Mode)]. New display drivers cannot be

installed when the machine has been started with the VGA Mode option.
Once started and you have logged in as an Administrator, follow these steps :

1 On the Control Panel window, double-click the Display program icon, and

then click the Settings tab.

2 Click the Display Type…. The Display Type window will appear.

3 On the Display Type window, click Change.... The Change Display window

will appear.

4 On the Change Display window, click Have Disk .... The Install from Disk

window will appear.

5 Type the path A:\. Insert the release floppy disk for your machine architecture

into the drive and press OK. The Change Display window will appear with a
list containing a single entry that says “ASUS AGP-V5200”. Select this item
and press OK.

6 Follow the onscreen instructions and quit Control Panel. When prompted,

restart your computer by pressing Yes.

NOTE There are no options to select a given resolution during installation.
When the machine restarts, Windows NT 4.0 allows the video mode to be
dynamically changed without the need to restart.

Y our computer will now shut down. On restart, choose the non-VGA mode option (see
earlier procedure for choosing this option). Your computer will restart using the AGP­V5200 as the display device. Y ou can check this by double-clicking the Display program
icon again on the Control Panel window and then clicking the Change Display T ype...
button. The Display Type window should report that it is running the AGP-V5200.

To change the desired resolution, color depth, and refresh rate, double-click the
Display program icon on the Control Panel window and select the desired
resolution, color depth and vertical refresh rate. This selected mode can be tested
to ensure that it can be handled by the monitor. On some double buffered
applications a higher refresh rate allows higher frame rates to be achieved. The
display will change dynamically.

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Resolutions and Color Depths

A full list of all modes is available through the Display Properties dialog box
once the ASUS driver has been installed and the system restarted. Click the
List all Modes option to get this list.

By default, only resolutions capable of supporting double buffered OpenGL
applications are selectable using the Display applet, unless a control panel setting
is set to override this (see procedure later in this chapter). This is to avoid
confusion when double buffered OpenGL applications run through software
rendering because of insufficient memory available on the graphics board to
support accelerated double buffering.

Resolution and Color Depth Table

Resolution Color depth Vertical refresh rate (Hz)

640 x 480 32768 colors/True Color 60, 75, 85, 100
800 x 600 32768 colors/True Color 60, 75, 85, 100
1024 x 768 32768 colors/True Color 60, 75, 85, 100
1280 x 1024 32768 colors/True Color 60, 75, 85, 100
1600 x 1200 32768 colors/True Color 60, 75

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3D Graphics and Double Buffering

The display driver contains an extension to allow 3D applications and the OpenGL
installable client driver (ICD) to drive the AGP-V5200. T o provide double buffering
capability for these 3D applications, the display driver offers three features.

A screen-sized off-screen buffer is configured if the
registry variable is 2 ( see explanation later). This buffer is used in 256-color,
32768-color and True Color modes to provide BitBlt double buffering. The off­screen buffer is also used to provide full screen hardware double buffering if an
application window covers the whole screen. To provide double buffered
accelerated capability , there must be enough memory to contain two frame buffers.
This may not be the case at high resolutions. On the AGP-V5200, the video memory
is separate from the depth buffer/texture memory.

DoubleBuffer .NumberOfBuffers

Full Screen Double Buffering

If an application window covers the whole screen, the display driver will
automatically switch to use a hardware double buffer mechanism, which can have
a significant performance benefit. This mechanism will not be available to an
application that has more than a small window border at the top of the screen. It
will also be unavailable if, for example, a floating task bar (common on W indows
NT 4.0) is at any edge other than the top of the screen, since the display driver will
check and find that the application window does not cover the whole screen.

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Full Flip Double Buffering

Flip double buffering is available on the AGP-V5200. Flip double buffering is
available for applications that run in a single window and is facilitated by all of
the desktop rendering being written to both frame buffers. When this is available,
only the first double buffered window will use this approach. When there are
multiple double buffered windows, the application reverts to blit double buffering.

Blit Buffering

Blit double buffering is the simplest form and involves copying the contents of the
back buffer into the displayed buffer . For the given configuration, the OpenGL ICD
will always try and use the fastest double buffering method that it can. If the selected
screen resolution/color depth is too high, double buffered applications may start to
run slowly , because they revert to using the Microsoft Generic OpenGL renderer.

Display Properties

Some of the registry variables, detailed in the next section, can be conveniently
changed by means of the V5200 tab in the Display Properties dialog box. The
V5200 tab allows both boot-time and run-time control over the configuration
of OpenGL and other applications using the ASUS AGP-V5200 display driver .
The control panel is split into a number of pages as listed later. The pages are
selected by clicking one of the three configuration buttons at the top right of
the V5200 dialog box.

NOTE You must have administrator privileges to change any settings in
the Display Properties dialog box. If you do not have administrator
privileges the options will be grayed out and cannot be changed.

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Information

Software

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2D Driver Build

For information only . This reports 2.12-0399 corresponding to the File and Product Version

information required for W indow Hardware Quality Labs compliance under Windows 95.

ICD Build

For information only. This reports 4.1x.0x.xxxx-xxxx corresponding to the File and

Product V ersion information required for Window Hardware Quality Labs compliance
under W indows95 (the same OpenGL ICD binary runs under both W indows NT/95).

OpenGL Release

For information only . This is the OpenGL version number that can also be queried by

an OpenGL application at run-time. Applications will do this to determine what
functionality they can expect to be provided by the implementation. Full OpenGL
version 1.1 is supported by ASUS’ s ICD. This release reports 1.1.23, where the last
two digits identify the ICD internal release number (increases with every release).

Hardware

Chip Name

For information only. This reports the name of the chipset on the board, such as
3Dlabs GMX2000.

Clock Speed

For information only. This reports the speed, in MHz, at which the graphics
chip is running.

Depth/Stencil

For information only. This reports the total amount of memory used by auxillary
buffers for use in hardware hidden surface removal (z-buffering) and masking/clipping
(stencil and GID planes).

Texture Memory

For information only. This reports the total amount of graphics card memory
available for storing texture maps — after allowing for full screen front, back
and depth buffers. Smaller desktop color depths and/or screen resolutions will
free up more graphics card memory for texture use increasing the amount
available for non-swappable textures (refer to the notes later on the texture
memory manager).

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Setup

Gamma Adjustment

Gamma adjustment affects the entire screen display. The default gamma value is

1.0 and the allowable range of floating point values is from 0.3 to 4.0.

Options

Export High Resolution Single Buffer Formats

When this option is selected, it will enable the driver to support screen resolutions
where only single buffered OpenGL applications are hardware accelerated (because
at higher resolutions, there is not enough graphics board memory to support double
buffered OpenGL applications). By default, this is not enabled. This prevents a
screen resolution to be selected, which will result in OpenGL applications that use
double buffered modes to be unaccelerated. This option should be selected by
users who wish to run 2D applications at the highest available resolutions.

Disable PCI Disconnect

Higher 2D graphics performance can be achieved by using PCI Disconnect.
However, this feature can sometimes adversely affect the performance of other
devices, such as modems and sound cards.

Select this option if you are experiencing problems with the performance of other
devices.

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OpenGL Page

Advanced Options

Number of DMA Sub Buffers

Each DMA buf fer is subdivided into sub-buffers, which are used in conjunction
with an Interrupt DMA mechanism to reduce latency in the system. The number
of sub-buffers can be set here. Setting it to 2 will disable the interrupt mechanism.

Wait For VBlank

Smooth animation of 3D applications can be achieved by rendering to an off­screen window/desktop sized color buffer and copying or swapping the contents
to the displayable front buffer at the completion of each frame. Enabling this
option prevents tearing of the display by synchronizing the swap of the back
and front buffers to the vertical blank retrace interval of the monitor display.

Leave this option unselected if the highest rendering frame rates of a double
buffered application are desired (i.e., not locked to sub-multiples of the current
display refresh rate).

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Application Support

Wireframe MCAD

Selecting this option will give the best performance for wireframe MCAD
applications on the ASUS AGP-V5200. For most other OpenGL applications,
clearing this option will give increased performance.

SoftImage Version 3.51/3.7

V ersion 3.51/3.7 of SoftImage requires this to be set to ensure the correct operation
on the ASUS AGP-V5200. Changing this option requires a restart of the system.

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OpenGL Texturing and Extensions

Efficient Use of Multiple Textures

OpenGL applications that render primitives with multiple texture maps will
achieve much higher performance by not invoking the different textures in
immediate mode. There are two alternative options for efficient switching
between multiple textures.

The first and much preferred option is to use the OpenGL texture object
functionality . Texture objects are fully editable and may have their images and
parameters altered at any time (unlike the use of textures in display lists). Details
on texture object functionality is available in the OpenGL 1.1 specification.
The performance gain using this approach will benefit performance for the
ASUS AGP-V5200 board.

The second option is to define each texture (or array of mip map resolutions)
within a display list — with the limitation that only one texture is allowed per
display list. Switching between different textures is then achieved by referencing
the appropriate display list. Since display lists are not editable in OpenGL, the
OpenGL implementation is able to cache texture data defined within a display
list. In effect the display list identifier acts as a texture handle. This caching
cannot be performed when a texture is invoked in immediate mode because the
application in this case is expected to have changed the texture data since the
time it was previously referred.

Texture Memory Cache Management

Texture data is stored in the local buffer memory on the graphics card. The
memory available for textures is therefore constrained by the local buffer
memory available. It is also constrained by the amount of local buffer memory
already consumed, such as for the depth buffer and stencil buffer. This amount
varies according to the current display resolution in use, i.e., there is more
memory available for textures when the display resolution (and therefore the
size of the depth buffer, stencil buffer) is lowered.

On 3Dlabs OpenGL releases prior to version 1.1.14, if the condition is reached
where there is insufficient local buffer memory to load a new texture, then the
OpenGL texture download will not succeed and will set the error code

GL_OUT_OF_MEMORY. Textured primitives that expect to use this texture will

not be rendered correctly . To improve on this behavior a scheme for swapping

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textures to/from system host memory is required. By setting aside a portion of
texture memory on the graphics card for use as a texture cache and tracking when
a texture switch takes place, textures can be reloaded to the cache as needed from
a copy kept in host memory when the texture was first downloaded. If the requested
texture is already present in the cache, then no reload is performed.

Ideally, for the greatest flexibility and most efficient use of available texture
memory, all textures should be cacheable. However, for a software texture cache
manager, there is a small performance overhead to be paid for this tracking and
any delay in reloading a swapped out texture (as a texture could be swapped out at
any time by another OpenGL process). By allowing the user to specify the size of
the texture cache through the use of the registry variable
an approximate balance between non-swappable and swappable textures can be
made (and hence performance). Thus an application should load any of the real­time critical textures first because the texture manager will only place textures in
cache and/or host memory if a space of sufficient size is not available in the non­swappable area of texture memory.

To guarantee all texture requests no matter how large, any texture whose size in
texels is greater than the cache size will be silently filtered down to fit in the cache
(while preserving aspect ratio). On the ASUS AGP-V5200 board the size of the
texture cache allows extra room for all lower mipmap level textures including
border texels.

OpenGL.MaxT extureSize,

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Texture Filter Modes

The default texture minification filtering for OpenGL involves mip-map filtering.
This gives good textured rendering quality but at the cost of low performance.
Much higher performance can be obtained by changing the default texture filtering
such that the minification and magnification filtering modes are the SAME. Setting
them to GL_LINEAR gives good quality bilinear filtering and improved performance.

Setting both modes to
fastest possible performance.

GL_NEAREST will give nearest neighbor filtering and the

BGRA Extension

The BGRA extension provides an additional pixel color format for compatibility
with the blue, green, red component ordering of Microsoft Windows DIBs (device
independent bitmaps).

Palette Texture Extension

The AGP-V5200 provides direct support for palette textures, where each texel
represents an index into an on-chip RGBA (8-bits per component) lookup-table.
An OpenGL palette texture extension has been defined by Microsoft, which is
supported by 3Dlabs OpenGL ICD from release 1.0.1 1. The supported texel depths
are 1, 2, 4, and 8 bit texel depths.

Besides improving texture performance and reducing the memory requirements
for storing textures in the local buffer by repeatedly updating the texture LUT,
animation effects, such as real-time color cycling, are also possible.

If many textures share the same look-up table (LUT), performance gains can
be obtained with paletted texture objects by forcing the textures to share the
same palette (particularly for 8-bit palette textures on the GLINT MX). The
default behavior when texture switching through calls to
send down the LUT on every switch. This can be disabled by the

EXT_shared_texture_palette extension.

glBindTexture is to

Driver Extension

In addition to the extensions mentioned earlier, the 3Dlabs_DriverState extension
has been added. This extension is simply a mechanism for adding extra state to
the Client Driver and adds extra control to the currently selected context.

Swap Hint Extension

The AGP-V5200 supports the Microsoft-defined extension GL_WIN_swap_hint.
This extension allows the area of a window swapped by the SwapBuffers call
to be restricted. This can give performance benefits when only a small area of
the display is being updated at a time. For more information, contact Microsoft
directly or search in the latest Win32 help files for glAddSwapHintRectWIN.

Kinetix Buffer Region Extension

This extension was specified and implemented as an optimization for 3D Studio
MAX® 2. It can be freely used within other applications that could benefit
from it. The extension allows areas of frame, depth and stencil buffer to be
stored away and later repaired. 3D Studio MAX® 2 uses the extension to
optimize display when a single object is being edited within a complex scene.

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3D Studio MAX

®

This release supports hardware acceleration of both 3D Studio MAX
Studio MAX® 2. For 3D Studio MAX® 1, it is accelerated through the Autodesk
propriety API, Heidi , while for 3D Studio MAX® 2, it is accelerated through OpenGL.

®

1 and 3D

3D Studio MAX® 1.x

Hardware acceleration is provided on MAX 1 through a Heidi driver . This driver ,

wglint.hdi, comes as a standard with the display driver. Once the display drivers

have been installed, the Heidi driver must be manually copied to your /3dsmax/
drivers directory (or wherever you installed the application). Start MAX and go to
the File/Preferences dialog box. Click the Viewports tab and then click Choose
Driver. Ensure that the GLINT Hardware option is selected. Restart MAX.

On the ASUS AGP-V5200, best performance will be provided when running in
TrueColor display modes.

The ASUS AGP-V5200 should be used with OpenGL acceleration under 3D Studio

®

MAX
when running under 3D Studio MAX® 1.x with a Heidi driver.

When running MAX to ensure you are getting hardware acceleration go to the
About 3D Studio MAX dialog box under the Help menu. When running on the
ASUS AGP-V5200, the driver section should read GLINT Hardware (MP).

2. Although the application will run, you will not obtain full acceleration

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3D Studio MAX® 2

After installing these drivers, start MAX and go to the File/Preferences dialog box.
Click the Viewports tab and then select Choose Driver. Ensure that the OpenGL
option is selected. Shut down MAX. Before restarting MAX, delete the MAX
OpenGL configuration file that stores information about your OpenGL driver . Doing
this will cause MAX to reset some of its options to get the best performance from
these drivers. The file is called oglgfx.ini and is located in your /3dsmax2/ directory
(or wherever you installed MAX). If the file does not exist, restart MAX.

When running with OpenGL you can confirm that you are getting hardware
acceleration by viewing the About dialog box under the Help menu. The driver
box in the top right hand corner of the resulting dialog should read OpenGL (3Dlabs
v1.1.23). If it reads OpenGL (Microsoft Corporation v.1.1.0), then you are
running through Microsoft’s software OpenGL and should consult the OpenGL
section of this document for more information on enabling OpenGL acceleration.

When running through OpenGL, 3D Studio MAX® 2 defaults to not backface
culling wireframe objects. This means that wireframe objects typically use twice
as many lines as they do through a Heidi driver. This can result in poor
performance, in comparision to a Heidi driver. This behavior can be changed
from within the application. Go to the File/Preferences dialog box. Click the

Viewports tab and then click Configure Driver. Select the option Display
Wireframe Objects Using Triangle Strips. This causes wireframe objects to

be backfaced culled and can drastically improve performance. The setting also
causes shared edges within polygons to be drawn which may not appear as desired.

GLINT Event Logging

The ASUS Display Driver registers a number of event log errors and warnings
when problems are encountered. The events that can be logged include:

• No DMA support has been configured

• No interrupt driven DMA has been configured

• A non-cache coherent PCI bus has been detected which results in uncached
DMA buffers.

• Fewer than the required number of DMA buffers have been allocated.

After booting the driver, it is advisable to check the system event log to determine
the characteristics of your machine. For example, if an event log indicates that
interrupt driven DMA has not been configured, this may be because the BIOS
has not been configured for PCI interrupts.

To view the system event log, run the Event Viewer from the Administrative
Tools program group. From the Log menu ensure that the System Log has
been selected. Look for events with the Source type glint. Double click on
these events to read the event message.

If no GLINT events are logged, then everything is working perfectly. In this
case, interrupts are working, all DMA buffers have been allocated and the PCI
bus is cache coherent.

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Known Anomalies and Restrictions

OpenGL

• On some machines, the use of AGP DMA with the ASUS AGP-V5200 may
cause a crash when trying to run OpenGL applications. This problem is under
investigation. AGP DMA can be disabled by setting the registry variable

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\glint\Device0\
GlintDMA.UseAGP to 0.

• A mode change after running MultiGen Creator Version 2.0 for the first time
can hang the system and/or corrupt title bar text. This problem is still under
investigation.

• The slow redraws of the texture palette in MultiGen Creator Version 2.0 on ac­celerated hardware is an application issue for which MultiGen will release a fix.

• When a constantly updating OpenGL application is running (such as the X29
or rollercoaster demos) screensavers run very slowly. This appears to be a
problem with the task priority allocated to the screensaver process.

• When using the glaux library supplied by Microsoft, specifying that you require
alpha planes in the visual is not satisfied by requesting a visual type of
AUX_RGBA as opposed to AUX_RGB when calling auxInitDisplayMode(type).
In these instances, the hardware accelerated visual that will be returned in
some modes may not have alpha planes. This is because the display driver
exports visuals without alpha planes before those that do. This problem can
be resolved in two ways: First, if you have the source code, then when speci­fying the visual type, you can OR in AUX_ALPHA, along with AUX_RGB (for
Example auxInitDisplayMode(AUX_RGB | AUX_ALPHA)). Secondly, if source
is not available, the following registry variable can be set to 1, which enables
the visuals with alpha planes to be selected first.

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3DExtensions.ExportAlpha

in:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\glint\Device0

Setting this variable will result in a decrease in the performance of some appli­cations as the driver must perform additional setup calculations for the graph­ics chip to cater for the Alpha value as well as R, G, and B.

• In some cases, there is confusion over the meaning of the
PFD_SUPPORT_GDI bit in the dwFlags field of the PIXELFORMA T descrip­tor. For instance, 3Dlabs has seen applications, such as
that incorrectly assume that if this flag is set, rendering to bitmaps is sup­ported by the visual. The Installable Client Driver does not support bitmap
rendering so these applications fail. To enable these applications to work
the exporting of PFD_SUPPOR T_GDI can be disabled by setting the follow­ing registry variables in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\
CurrentControlSet\Services\glint\Device0 to F ALSE. The applications will then
choose a Generic pixel format, thereby using unaccelerated software ren­dering to draw to bitmaps.

3DExtensions.SupportSingle
3DExtensions.SupportDouble

By default, PFD_SUPPORT_GDI is set to TRUE for single buffer formats
and FALSE for double buffered formats.

Open Inventor

NOTE Under Windows NT, Generic pixel formats that support double
buffering and rendering by means of GDI are mutually exclusive. This is
because GDI does not have the ability to render to the backbuffer. 3Dlabs
has, therefore, chosen to set the default for double buffering, to be in line
with the Microsoft implementation. However, with care, GDI rendering and
double buffering may be mixed, so the second registry variable will cause

PFD_SUPPORT_GDI to be exported by double buffer formats, should an

application benefit from this added functionality.

,

• When running multi-threaded applications, it may be necessary to disable
the use of the fast clear planes by setting the environment variable
GLINT_DONT_USE_FCP to TRUE, or by checking the corresponding box
in the control panel applet. This issue arises when more than one context is
being used to render to the same window (e.g., OpenGL pipes screen­saver with multiple option selected). If this variable is set, then this disables
the use of 3Dlabs proprietary fast clear mechanism that allows the depth(Z)
buffer to be cleared up to 16 times more quickly than normal. T ypically, this
becomes significant for animation rates of 10Hz or higher in large windows.

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Appendix A: Declaration of Conformity

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