AMD on Celeron/Matrox Intros the G450

rubyred writes "AMD is at it again today and has added to their Duron line-up and released the 750MHz, which performed well against the Celerons from Intel. There are reviews on Sharky's and Anand's. Also Matrox, who we've not heard from in while has let loose a new .18micron based G450 chip, which is set for the corporate world. The 2D performance looks really good but the gaming... well it's another Matrox product. Still their Linux drivers might get better this time around. Again the same two sites have previews of the card."

Comments

2D versus 3D

[FFFish]

Colour me odd, but by far most of my computer time is spent staring at text on the screen: word processing, graphics creation, page layout and web browsing.

My impression of Slashdot folk is that a good number of them spend most of their time coding software or creating web pages.

In other words, our machines are our tools for creating products, which we get paid for.

For all of us (with the exception of the 3D modeling folk), shouldn't our primary concern then be to obtain the absolute best *2D* card? The one that produces the sharpest, stable-est output?

By all indications, that'd be either a Matrox or an ATi card... not a card that cares more for 3D performance than 2D quality.

Just my opinion and, like I said, maybe I'm the odd one out on this sort of product choice...

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Matrox driver support rules

[Vicegrip]

One thing that is rarely mentionned is that they have rock solid video drivers (although I haven't done 3d in linux with it). Every steroid pumping card I've used from Diamond or ATI or has _always_ had stability problems and/or poor support for none win9x platforms.

Quite frankly, after 30fps it don't make much of a diff. I play half-life(CS) in 800x600 all the time and never had probs. Not to mention that all good games always come with little g400 problems. I'm always reading faq items from people detailing various 3dfx card problems or weird behaviors. The faq sections for the g400s are always empty.

Anyways, as long as they keep up the decent 3d performance I'll be happy. The others can keep their 60fps cards and blue screens.

Re:Matrox Cards

[Greyfox]

I've been running a G400 Max for several months. 3D works great with XFree 3.3.6 and Utah GLX (I haven't tried Xfree 4.x yet.) While the 3D may be more sluggish than the newer 3D cards, the drivers are open and Matrox has traditionally been the most friendly video card company to the open source community. That counts for a lot in my book, and I plan to continue voting for them with my wallet for the foreseeable future (I'm currently investigating how well a Rainbow Runner would work with Linux.)

Intel

[jjr]

As OSes and software is getting cheaper everyday Intel better start worring about AMD eating thier lunch. Since software will soon become a minimal cost of building computers. People will see that AMD is giving more bang for the buck.

AOL! (Re:Matrox driver support rules)

[Hanno]

Let me say "me too!".

I've been *extremely* happy with Matrox cards in the past.

- They support their products for a *long* time (I still get updated drivers for the old Matrox cards in my other computers!)

- Their Windows 9x drivers so far have always been rock solid, at least on my rather unusual self-built machine (unlike many other graphics card manufacturers I tried in the past).

- 2D image quality: Yes, it is indeed that good as other people here already stated. And this is one of my main concerns when working with computers. Just ask the many computer store clerks I drove insane just by the way I check a computer screen before I buy it... :-)

- They were among the first to release specs to the XFree folks. The Matrox products used to be the fastest 2D cards on Linux and back then, it was one of the reasons why I switched.

- The G400 double head support is a *very* good thing. Sure, Macs had it for more than a decade, but you can't appreciate it unless you tried it yourself. It is also nice to play games on a TV set with the G400.

To sum up, anyone who is working with his machine most of the time and is also a casual gamer (as myself), the Matrox card is *the* one to buy.

I have played a few 3D games on it (Freespace 1 & 2, Descent 3, Halflife, Homeworld, Dungeon Keeper 2) and wasn't disappointed. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't mind better game support. If Matrox came out with a more Gamer-oriented card that still has all the "office & business" qualities mentioned above, I'd buy it!

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The problem with Duron

[thinthief]

The main problem with AMD right now is that the motherboards cost so much more. The Duron/Athlon chips are cheeper but when you have to spend $50 more on the motherboard (than if you bought a PIII or a Celly) it makes the price gap very small.

When we can get Socket A mobos for $70, then Intel will be truly useless.

PS. I don't understand what the title "AMD on Celeron" is supposed to mean. I guess that they are on the celeron's trail? Weird grammar.

Matrox Cards

[linuxonceleron]

With the demise of Number Nine, Matrox seems to be one of the only companies today who cares about 2D quality. My friend was using an S3 based card for a while, which broke, and was replaced with a G400, the improvement in picture quality was astonishing. Though he still hasn't been able to get the linux 3d support working right. But if the G450 is as good as expected, I'd be happy to own one. As far as the Durons go, I've been looking into getting a new CPU, but was going to get a Celeron2 until I found that my motherboard can't use the new .18 micron chips. Looks like a new case/mobo/cpu for me...

Matrox and gaming

[Tet]

The 2D performance looks really good but the gaming... well it's another Matrox product.

Your point being? I've been using my G400 for gaming, and haven't run into any framerate problems. I don't personally care if a GeFore2 gets better performance. If I'm not getting slowdown, why should I want a faster card? Admittedly, it doesn't do 1600x1200 at high speeds, but then for gaming, 1024x768 is good enough for me anyway. Furthermore, not only is 2D performance really good, but the image quality is unsurpassed. Matrox just seem to be able to get really clean, crisp images to the screen.