Wait for the G400 or wait some more for the MAX?

[TSChamp]

Hello all.
I'm looking for some advice and input whether I should get a G400 DH in two weeks when they are avaliable or the G400 Max sometime in september.
How does the G400 o/c compared to the MAX? I've browsed the forum but couldn't find anyone who have o/c their MAX.
Extra cooling is of course something I'm counting on to be required.
I'm mostly working in 2D apps but I also want a card fast enough for smooth running in any 3D game at 1024x768 32bpp or higher with my PIII550, will an o/c G400 do the job? Or do I need a MAX?

Any info is appriciated. Thanks.

[M Ragsdale]

Hi TSChamp,
The regular G400 should fit your bill just fine, and if you find that you need more speed (provided you have a good system setup), overclocking of the G400 seems to be working out pretty good, with decent performance gains. But I see very little need to go for the max if those are the resolutions you are going to be running.

Matt

[Gurm]

GME:

Sorry pal, I own both cards (the V3 is in my wife's machine because she wants, and I quote, "every single game to run the first time no matter what").

The V3's image quality is... err... crap. Poo. Sh.i.t. Crapola. Ka-ka. Dung. Doo-doo. Garbage.

Even with the newest drivers. 16-bit is 16-bit no matter how well you disguise it.

Wanna see a comparison? I'll post some pix later. But the very first screen from the new quake3 test... with Matrox it's crisp and sharp, with V3 (newest drivers) it's blurry and pixelated. And that's just TEXT, not graphics.

- Gurm

[tohoward]

If you don't need the extra performance of the G400 MAX (for 3d graphics) just get the G400. I'm betting it will run most games just fine at 1024x768x32. It probably won't be the best, but if you want the "best" (GAMING CARD) right now you probably aren't going to buy a G400.

I don't know that I agree with the V3 image quality being total crap, but it is clear that the G400/TNT2/ATI/"anything that can do 32bit" does look nicer.

Todd

[GME]

Don't wait for either, buy a Voodoo3 3000 today. The new drivers make the image quality the equal of anything Matrox (this Voodoo card is the first non Matrox card I've ever owned), it's blazingly fast, and you can't beat the price at @$150.

I'll duck now...

[SCompRacer]

Aside from providing better refresh rates (5 to 15Hz) at resolutions not many people go to, 1800x1440 through 2048x1536, the MAX also gives you faster RAMDAC and memory.

So decide based on your absolute needs based on fact (hard) or splurge (easy), get the MAX and don't think about it at all.

And as far as VooDoo cards go, I'd rather have optimized Open GL drivers at 16 bits that the not ready for prime time Open GL drivers Matrox has put out up to date.

[M Ragsdale]

VooDoo, and optimized OpenGL in the same sentence....yeah right! 3dfx's OpenGL is about on a par with the beta drivers and the MCD for the G200. Their story has always been "we don't need OpenGL, we have GLide"

Matt

[tohoward]

I'll second that last bit: it's taken 3dfx MUCH longer than Matrox to produce a full OpenGL ICD. That said, their mini-GL is fairly well optimized and does work well. Glide, while being "opengl-like" in some ways, isn't OpenGL.

The fact that 3dfx doesn't have a decent ICD doesn't excuse Matrox though; they still screwed the G200 owners (myself included) by promising support and delivering almost a year later.

A note on the RAMDAC/refresh: The faster RAMDAC is what gives the MAX the ability to do faster refresh rates at higher resolutions, so stating both is redundant.

Given your original post (that you primarily work in 2D), I'm sure a plain G400 (16 or 32 MB) will do you fine. If you *MUST* have awesome 3D performance or better support for very high resolutions, get the MAX.

Todd

[SCompRacer]

M Ragsdale and tohoward, you are right about the Open GL drivers and I concede.

Just shots fired in anger due to Open GL problems with my ECC memory, a SCSI card memory address conflict that keeps me from playing Forsaken and going through the "Tech Support Gauntlet." I guess I snapped.

I cannot run Quake II or 3D Studio MAX R2 in Open GL due to memory parity errors with my ECC memory. I changed 3D Studio to Direct3D drivers so thats OK now.

Just have to be patient and perhaps a driver update will take care of it. Until then, all I got are my old VooDoo II's in SLI, and that looks alot better than software with the G400.

Rich O