Finally bought my G400!

[aaroncgi]

Hi all! It's been a while since I posted here, and have to say I was right on the fence between the G400 and the Nvidia Geforce 2 MX with Twin View. A few things clinched the Matrox for me though:

-Nearly a month after the supposed release, there is still only ONE Geforce 2 MX supporting dual monitors.

-This one card (Hercules Prophet II MX) is STILL not available, and only one vendor on Pricewatch even lists it. Nor is it cheap, about the same price as the G400MAX, which to me is already an expensive card.

-I've heard too many horror stories of the Nvidia cards using any Athlon chipset, AMD or VIA, and heard also some not so nice stories about Nvidia's 'strong-arm' tactics regarding online hardware reviewers.

-G400 by my readings should still have the highest quality output.

-There's this great forum for Matrox users, and I've always been a fan of SETI!


When in doubt, I always vote for the underdog, and that sure isn't Nvidia!

I decided to go for the 32M Dual Head, got a great price on it, only $127. I couldn't justify the $195+ for the MAX, so instead I may do some overclocking of my card if need be, though I doubt I will for a while.

Here's the rest of my system, though I'm going on a vacation for a few weeks and thus won't actually have it up and running until after I get back..really looking forward to it though!

Superpower full tower case (black)
Tyan S2380 SlotA motherboard
AMD Athlon 650
128MB PC133 memory
IBM Deskstar 75GXP 30GB hard drive
Matrox G400 32MB Dual Head
Kenwood 42X CD-ROM
Yamaha PCI soundcard
Zoom 56k PCI modem
Samsung Syncmaster 950P 19" (will order shortly!)

This thing should scream, at least compared to my dinosaur P133 ! Will be interesting to see how smoothly the setup goes..

Cheers!

Aaron Gilbert

[This message has been edited by aaroncgi (edited 24 August 2000).]

[This message has been edited by aaroncgi (edited 24 August 2000).]

[paulcs]

Welcome aboard. You'll probably want to use Matrox's PowerDesk 6.0X, as the 5.5X set has problems with some VIA chipsets.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Joel]

Also if you do decide to OC the G400 attach a small 486 CPU fan to the heatsink for added cooling.

Joel

[Bixler]

Welcome Aboard!

Oh what a Joy to see someone posting in who knows how to get the most out of their hardware.

GOOD CHOICE! Not for leading edge performance...but certainly for support. You'll have a good time. Especially if you are upgrading from a 133! Enjoy, and never hesitate to ask a courteous question. Hundreds will dive in to help with a solution.

[aaroncgi]

Thanks for the support, already! I have been planning this upgrade for the past eight months, finally gotten around to it after fixing my car about once a month.. The best part is that computer stuff only gets cheaper and faster, and we hope more reliable, as you wait! I have tried to optimize my system to get the best bang for the buck, without compromising reliability, stability, support, or expandability.

Looking forward to some Diablo II and all the other games I've been missing for the past couple years! Also will be nice to not be waiting on the hard drive and processor all the time, to say nothing of being stable with more than two major applications open at a time. Not sure what I'll do with 30GB of hard drive space though, only using about 1GB right now...LOTS of games I guess.

Thanks for the tip on the 486 fan for overclocking, Joel, read that from you in another thread just last night.

Man I almost wish I wasn't going on vacation so I could actually get this thing up and running as soon as the parts arrive!

Aaron

[Maggi]

hehehehe ... welcome to the nutty club, Aaron !



About that TwinView issue, I saw only one actual review that had a card supporting one variant of NVidia's supposed-to-be-something-like DualHead and that one was crippled to feed TVs only. The editor mentioned that he doubts that NVidia will release a fully working VGA TwinView in the near future, maybe not even before net year.

I guess you made the right choice there ...

Cheers,
Maggi

[aaroncgi]

Maggi,

Sounds like the same review I read. It seems pretty easy to get a Geforce 2 MX with TV-output, but if I wanted that, I could have easily stuck with ATI, their cards are dirt cheap, at least the Rage128 variants. I have a ATI 3D Expression Pro Turbo (Rage II+ chipset) that has S-video and composite out, hasn't given me a single problem on my machine. The one thing I like about the TV-output, is that you can use BOTH the S-video and composite, as well as the VGA output, all at the same time. I was very surprised to see that most new video cards don't support simultaneous display, except again the ATI's and Matrox. I'm rather puzzed as to why ATI has dropped S-video from their Radeon cards though, especially with the best DVD decoding. The TV out as you can guess is a big selling point for me.

I read recently that Creative is working on a Geforce 2 MX card, but it won't be out until October?? What good is six month product cycle that Nvidia seems to like, if the manufacturers can't release the cards until three months later??

The more I read about the G400 (and I've already read a lot), the more I like! I ordered my monitor yesterday from Outpost, will have it today, and thus it will be interesting to note the differences between my ancient ATI card and the Matrox...

Cheers!

Aaron

[rubank]

Sorry aaroncgi,
I think you made the wrong choice.
I recently had an ASUS MX card, wich I, for reasons I won´t go into here, swapped for a G400 of the same kind as yours.
I´m very disappointed, I saved some money (I got my G400 for 100$) but I think it was a bad swap anyhow.
The 2D is NOT better and the 3D looks is definitely worse; the mipmap banding is very ugly. And running the wonderfully looking (with the MX) Mercedes Benz Truck Race demo isn´t even worth a try.
The G400 is clearly outdated.

rubank

[aaroncgi]

Rubank,

Thanks for the input. I'm well aware that the G400 is a dated card, I'm willing to live with that (hey, at least I'm not my dad who never spends more than $50 on a video card and always gets generic!!). As I mentioned earlier however, the Geforce 2 MX is still not available with Twin-View supporting dual monitors...this was a must have feature for me, at least once I learned of it's existence. I hate to let a perfectly good monitor go to waste, and can think of any number of scenarios where it would come in extremely useful. Twin-View sounds great and all, but the implementation is just way too slow. I have already waited eight months for this machine, and I can't take any more!

Glad you enjoy the MX!

Aaron

[mdhome]

Thats a strange one. I remember a time about 2 years ago when my nephew bought a G200 and mated it to one of the higer spec 17 in Belinea monitors. It took my breath away. Since then I have bought both a G200 and G400 ( my previous card a 2 meg millenium). My lodger has a CL DDR geforce and he is only intereested in 3d speed. Boy does his card rock when it comes to playing Q3- makes me green, but I looked at his 17 inch monitor the other day and I'm sorry to say it looked far worst than my nephews g200 did 2 years ago. BTW They both have the same monitor. Now maybe with some tweeking he could improve the picture but whenever he comes into my room, his eyes are the quality of a G400 (not that he would buy one of course)

btw I dont personally feel the G400 is dated, it just doesnt do 3d games as well as the newer beasts on the market


regards MD

[foft]

I must say I don't get this 2D visual quality thing. On my Iiyama 22" my rage pro looks as good as the G400 in 2D. It is a lot slower though :-)

[Kruzin]

I DO "get" the 2D quality thing.
I have 2 PCs at home. One with a G400, the other with a G200. Then there is my work machine. It has an ATI. I definatly "get" the 2D thing.

Even the G200 is better than the ATI Rage Pro at work. Every ATI I have tried has had poor desktop visuals and 2D performance. Random pixels and corrupt fonts show up with the ATI that I never see on the Matroxes. Slow scrolling, and random vectors regularly show up on the ATI. Forget AutoCAD (my primary use for all my PCs) on the ATI. I hate my office machine just because of that card. Color saturation on Matrox cards is way better too. Unfortunatly, the boss is too cheap to pony up for a decent card.

I can't wait for my G450 to get here (any day now ), cause that will mean I upgrade my office machine (boss says if I supply the card, I can upgrade it), and get rid of that ATI POS

[This message has been edited by Kruzin (edited 26 August 2000).]

[Indiana]

Originally posted by mdhome:
My lodger has a CL DDR geforce and he is only interested in 3d speed. Boy does his card rock when it comes to playing Q3- makes me green, but I looked at his 17 inch monitor the other day and I'm sorry to say it looked far worst than my nephews g200 did 2 years ago.

A similar experience to mine. I had a Asus V3400TNT and tested it against a friends G200 with 3DMark99. Both computers were in the same room with the monitors near each other (and we both have the same monitors, too). While the TNT sure gave a higher result, the difference in 2D AND 3D image quality was so blatant that I shortly after that sold the TNT and got a G400.
Of course there were other reasons as well: The Asus had annoying driver bugs especially regarding overlay-support, general instability and the - while of top-notch quality - unflexibility of the TV-Out with annoying black borders.

Up to now I didn't regret this decision and the card is still fast enough for most of todays games - if Matrox only had a good OpenGL, it would be nearly perfect...

P.S.: The G200 while slower in 3DMark99 overall still looked smoother, cause the TNT had stuttering at some point (texture-loading?) that was quite annoying.
NVidia seems to have this problem up to the Geforces, a friends DDR seems to have lower minimal FPS than my G400 in some games - and the drastic drop in frame rate really is disturbing during gameplay.
P.P.S: The Geforces image still looks worse than that of the G400 in both 2D AND 3D.

[Joel]

I agree with Kruzin. I had a simular experience when I first started at the job I'm at now in that the PC I got had on-board ATI Rage Pro graphics and it was not what I was use to as far as graphics quality goes. At home I have nothing but Matrox cards and at my last job the Gateway PC I had even had Matrox card. So I managed to appropriate a G200 PCI for my work machine and I am one happy dude. If I end up having to upgrade that unit the G200 in there will be going into the next machine also. I will not give up on excellent graphics quality for a few extra fps in some first person shooter. And believe me in the job that I have, I have quite a bit of opportunity to compare different video cards and the Matrox cards are still the best when it comes to graphics quality. Hell even Dell feels this way in that if you order their high end 420 workstation it will come equiped with a G400MAX. Just had 4 of them come in the other day. Give me quality over quantity anyday.

Joel