Matrox G400 Revisited

Matrox G400 16-bit vs. 32-bit Z-Buffer

The following tests were run on a G400 MAX and Pentium III 600 CPU to illustrate the effects of 16-bit vs 32-bit Z-Buffer when rendering at 32-bit color.

There's been considerable debate about whether or not Matrox is "cheating" on benchmarks by using a 16-bit Z-buffer when 32-bit rendering is enabled. However, its clear from the above graphs that the performance difference is fairly small --10% at most. Clearly, the effect is not huge, and most users will not notice the difference in Z-buffer depth. However, for those that must have it, in Matrox's driver utility, there is an option to enable the 32-bit Z-buffer.