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Review Of The Matrox 32MB Millenium G400
The Damage Report is currently featuring a review of the new Matrox card. I've been playing with the GeForce 256 lately - very, very pretty stuff, but I'd be interested to see how this compared.
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The article says the thing has "Full AGP 2X/4X device with multi-threaded bus mastering and AGP texturing", but never talked about "multi-threaded bus mastering". I had no idea either, and was kinda dissapointed that they explained bump mapping with 3 pages and 4 pictures, but didn't say anything about this at all.
After poking around on matrox's site, I found only a breif PDF document. As far as I can tell it means the G400 can be told to DMA a vetrex list, command list, and textures, and stuff, and the G400 will decide which needs to be feteced next, and how much of it. Sounds useful, but I donno if it really is.
Sure they have the best video quality, but they screw their customers. They don't even try to be competitive. I remember buying a Matrox Millenium way back when. The big selling point was the ability to upgrade. The only problem was that they charged more for the upgrade than for a new card. Their other big problem is they build all their own cards so when new products come out you have to wait six months to get ahold of one or you wind up backordered because they don't do a good job of supplying the market.
To be completely fair if you have a business workstation Matrox is the only card to use. Dollar for dollar the video quality and clarity is the best. Even old Millenium cards with 4/8 meg of WRAM are better than most of the newer 16 meg video cards.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Yeah, its not a card that was released yesterday. But I think its a good review of it. As the review mentions, this line of cards were meant to compete with the voodoo3 and TNT2 series of cards. The voodoo3 as of right now is still 3dfx's top offering. The only card on the market right now that is a step above the g400, voodoo3, and TNT2 is the GeForce. And not everyone has damn near $300 to spend on a DDR GeForce ;)
I'll be interested to see how it preforms in X too, and Scott (Damage) does mention in the review that he may add Xfree 4.0 info to it at a latter time.
Some great sites out there for hardware reviews and news:
Also, I like to check the user opinions at Cnet and Sysopt. Its always nice to know what the average person thinks of the product after they've bought it and used it.
just my $0.02
Problem is, Matrox originally distingished the segments of their product line by name:
Mystique was the cheap card for home gaming
Millennium was the workstation card
Mystique 220 was the beginnings of a 3d card
Millennium II was a killer 2D card (I have one)
Problem was, people associated the Mystique with the bad card, so they started releasing all of their cards with the (respected) Millennium name.
Two exceptions: Matrox's first go at a 3D accelerator (PowerVR PCX2 based, not even a Matrox chip) was the m3D, another M.
Matrox's All-in-one card, was the Marvel (another M).
I guess the reasoning is, that distinctiveness is important, so you can begin to build a brand identity.
I told ya...it's alliteration. If you managed to avoid literature classes growing up (lucky bastard!), it's the intentional reuse of consonant sounds. They wanted names that would tie the company and the product together in the minds of the consumer. Say each of these 10 times:
"Matrox G400"
"Matrox Millenium G400"
Sure, the first would be just as good a functional identifier for the product. But the second "flows" better. It sounds more pleasing to the ear. This, subconciously, causes the consumer to think of smooth-flowing graphics performance. We also see a hint of corporate philosophy here; Matrox has traditionally been the card for high-end graphics users, not the hardcore gamer. All the other major players in the 3D card industry use terms symbolizing power, speed, explosive nature, etc...Matrox counters that with a name that seems to say "when you're ready to grow up, come to us."
Good god I'm starting to sound like a marketing guy. Please shoot me.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Yup, my original Millenium (~$300 when I got it for my nearly new P-100) was a the best card for 2D I ever had in my machines until it got upped to an AGP G200 (it was better than the Mystique 220s by a good shot, too, but had little 3D). I put my RIVA TNT in my NT4 box, and it just can't compare to the 2D speed of the G200 (or really, the old Millen, either). You can really *feel* the difference - I did benchmarks, too (not that I remember them now). Obviously the G200 wasn't hte answer for 3D, either, but hey, the G400 (esp the MAX) is looking pretty sweet there.
/.!), so they should try and improve 2D performance as well. Sure it may not be the biggest selling point for gamers, but it keeps Matrox cards in (most of) my machines... I do like the TNT for 3D games, but I guess the G400 can take care of that 8^)
I really wish the other manufactures would try to at least reach the 2D performance achieved by the Mystique and older milleniums... 3D is certainly the gravy, but I just don't want to see my windows being drawn, refreshed, etc... The built-on-board AGP SiS graphics on so many motherboards choke at res's above 800x600 higher than 16 bit color... why? In 1995 my card could do 32 bit at 1280x1024 pretty darn quick (with 4MB). 2D performance has not improved as much as it could be, due to the 3D madness (which is fun).
well over 90% of what people use computers for is 2D (like
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Also, the G200 supports Linux perfectly, and when I boot into Windows, games like System Shock II look great (System Shock II is the main reason I keep Windows around.)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Nope. Few GeForce cards even have Tv-out. The chipset itself is designed to run as a single, independent chip.
The dualhead feature of the G400 (and it's inherited 2D performance) does make it a good card for 2D work in photoshop and various publishing applications. But 3D wise, yes, the GeForce does paste it to the wall (then draws a funny little mustache on it!)
For TV-In you're better off with a seperate TV Card.
Why?
When was the last time you bought a motherboard with integrated video, or intergrated sound, two things that often require upgrades (as opposed to IDE and SCSI, which are fairly static)?
When was the last time you replaced your video card? Get one with a built in tv-tuner and you'll need to buy the same tv hardware all over again. Go for a Hauppauge WinTV-D (or plain WinTV), so you can watch TV on any video card you own, as opposed to only the card you have in at the moment.
Yes, I realize that 3.3.3 contained obfuscated code, at first... I also realize that they rather quickly wrote a patch with non-obfuscated code, which also got included in 3.3.6....
Basically, I wouldn't be surprised if the drivers are binary only. Nor would I be surprised if their not. Bear in mind the alliance they now have with SGI, a company that has very rapidly become much more OS friendly. Maybe SGI can have a good influence on nVidia
Ever the optimist,
Adam K
If you're running any reasonably current RH dist, a source install of Xfree4.0 is painless! Snag the source, tar -zxf it, and make World >> stuff.log & tail -f stuff.log!! When it finishes, just su root and make install!
Be warned, it can eat up a few hundred megs of HD space by the time it finishes. And expect to wait. The dual Celeron 400 took about an hour, the K6-2 took 1.5, and my MediaGX took almost three.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Well, it'll run under any OS that has drivers written for it ;)
But, I expect Matrox will provide drivers for Winxxx, and XFree86 4.0 has support for it, including multi-head and overlays (in 8-bit and 24-bit)
For information, it also includes support for GeForce and Voodoo3
http://www.xfree86.org/4.0/RELNOTES2.html#15 for info
--
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
Do these cards help out 3D raytracing/rendering programs like POVRAY, or do they just provide the "quick and dirty" raytrace/render operations & don't provide any additional functionality for those raytrace/renderers?
For those of you who wanted a Windows/Linux comparison of this graphics card, our lab has been doing som preliminary work on benchmarking this card, and here are some of the results we get.
First off, the card is a matrox G400 Max, with 32 megs. The system is a Dell Precision 220 with 2 533 Mhz PIIIs, and 128 megs of memory. We didn't do any overclocking, so these are just raw numbers. Everything was done at 32 bpp, and at 1024x768, 76hz.
For Windows 98, using Q3A, we get the following:
demo001: 1346 frames, 45.2 seconds: 29.8 fps
demo002: 1399 frames, 48.1 seconds: 29.1 fps
For Linux 2.3.47, XFree86 3.3.6, and Utah-glx 0.9, we get:
demo001: 1346 frames, 74.4 seconds: 18.1 fps
demo002: 1399 frames, 76.2 seconds: 18.4 fps
Note that this does not use the DRI of Xfree86 4.0, and there are some issues with AGP, since this system uses the i820 chipset. Overall, not bad performance.
As a side note, I was seeing similar performace with the G400 test as I was with my SGI Octanse SI with texture memory, not too shabby...
We have just bought a nice workstation with G400 (16MB) for our lab. I installed Linux on it, and tried to configure the OpenGL support, which seemed prettey straightforward (actually, it comes with SuSE 6.3). The only problem is -- it doesn't work. Some GL programs, like ssystem, are slow like a hog and with a bad case of display schisophreny (these famous double overlapping, black-white images) if you change the window size. And I couldn't get the xscreensaver-gl running in fullscreen mode. And the KDE screensavers don't work at all.
Yes, I know. I am just a stupid biologist who doesn't know anything about Linux: but still, it sucks and is not useful for anything but, maybe, Quake - however, I rather play nethack then Quake.
Regards,
January
I own a Millenium G400 MAX and it is the best video card I have owned. I was thinking I got seriously ripped shelling out around ~250 Dollars for the 32MB version of the card.
:-) It has all the good audio formats supported DOLBY etc. etc. I have a Monster Sound as well so overall im super happy with this system but the video card is sorta what makes it for me.
I have to agree I have a 19" Nokia Monitor and I even bought a GeForce256 SDR and yeah.. my Quake was a lil faster but I stare at this monitor 26 hours a day writing code some of the time and I will say the Matrox has a much better display than the GeForce. Its very obvious and I would not trade my card for anything.
Not to mention this card has the best Linux support out their IMHO. Voodoo cards are good for linux support but I just find this card phenomenal.
Now lets talk about the dual head display and DVD playback of this thing.
Dual head display! ROCK ON!! Once you start using it you wont ever stop. I wish a couple of *good* games would come out that totally utilize the dual display. As it is using it in doze is just to much like fun.
Okay DVD playback rocks to.. I lose no frames full screen
Hmmn okay ill stop my praise now.
If you have a look at http://www.matroxusers.com you will see that the production of the G400 stop in Q2 in profit of the G450 and G800 which are far more better.
Why was this posted? Of the hundreds of hardware reviews put online every day why did this make the cut to be posted on the main page of slashdot? This is six to eight month old hardware, there are not 3d drivers for linux for it, the article dosen't even have any linux benchmarks. What's the point?
It's really disappointing to see slashdot go down hill with what seems like a very large number of reposts of previously covered topics or very old news.
I'm beginning to wonder if there is a "quota" of posts to the front page that needs to be filled.
I do have a question I havent seen answered sufficently for me. Does the "dualhead" feature work under linux? That seems to be the major selling point of this card for right now. Especially since this card is very hardware dependant for performance (needs a high horsepower chip) and even then the Geforce still wipes the floor with it. Then again most of the people on this site seem to not be interested in the hardware one-upsmanship so prevalent in 3d gaming. The 3dfx cards work far better with 300mhz class machines and have linux drivers!
I'm a hardware geek and this post just irked me.
I'm not trolling, I just am dissappointed in a website I check religiously and have been reading for over a year.
pending committee review
As always, Matrox has excellent linux support. G400 runs fast and steady under XFree86 SVGA server. You can overclock the board with gMGAclock, a GNOME-based overclocking utility for Matrox G400 cards.
RFC1925
Have Matrox got stuck at this letter of the alphabet; nay this product name? The Millenium series seems to have run for a long time now as did the Mystique; it seems that video hardware manufacturers seem to get stuck with only one 'theme' for life:
Creative: Absolutely everything Blaster
ATI: Rage, Fury etc; anything to do with getting mad
Now Matrox: Any card you want so long as it starts with M!
I'm sure there are many more examples out there, can anybody think of them?
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
the G400 max runs on a 100mhz faster clock speed the reg G400 shown in this review. I believe sharky extreme did a review of the MAX and showed with the G400 MAXes (at the time) beta drivers it was a hair slower then the TNT2U.
And the TNT2 does NOT look better then the G400 in visual quality, I own both (a G400 MAX anyway) and the G400 has a slight edge on the TNT2. (TNT2 on my windows box, G400 on my linux box). Allthough, you accually have to sit down and take a good look at both before you decide.
This review was done very poorly. a G400 MAX vs TNT2U would have been a better selection. They decided to equate it price vs price instead. So i guess their GeForce DDR review will pin the card up against other $250-$300 cards? Yeh, right.
Oh well.
It has full OGL implementations under 9x, 2000 and NT4.0. XFree86 has built in support for all Matrox cards. You can get OGL support via the Glx project here http://utah-glx.sourceforge.net/
The one thing I would like to know is why this card is being reviewed now? It's been out for a number of months now, at least since last summer. Not that it's a bad card mind you, in fact, while it may not give you the highest frame rate around, it sure as hell will give you the best image quality around.
But hey, whatever. It doesn't really matter, it just seems a little strange.
HedsSpaz
Argh! I've loved Matrox cards since I first had a Mystique (not a 220, just the original). For a programmer, I find that 2D image clarity should be FAR FAR FAR more important than an extra few FPS in some game! Thus, I get very irritated at reviews which gloss over visual quality, and only worry about fill rates or whatnot.
This review was a refreshing, and relieving.
I have a Millennium II now, and I find that the image quality, in 2D, is amazingly clearer, than the output of the TNT2 or Voodoo3. I've used Matrox cards for roughly 4 years now, and now looking at displays of other cards, feels like looking through a piece of thick plastic.
With the disappointing performance of the G200, though, I was worried that Matrox woudl get run out of business, simply because of the sudden insane focus on 3D speed. This article makes me feel a bit relieved, since it shows that Matrox 3D can keep up with NVidia where it counts, in Quake, run under the #1 gaming platform, Windows 98.
That, and with Matrox showing far more commitment to open drivers than NVidia (binary driver for XFree 4? Gag!), I'd guess that NVidia will fall behind 3dfx and Matrox in the small, but activist, open source community.