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.

Comments

Rant by a Matrox Fan

[JamesKPolk]

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.