Total newbie at this

[Scooter]

Ok I'll condense as best I can. I traded a SDR GeForce a while back for a G400MAX. I liked the idea of the Dual Head feature. I'm a gamer and a hardware junkie. I have a 21" Sony GDM-F500 and a 19" Hitachi Superscan 751. I wanted to surf and watch a DVD movies at the same time.

I discovered that the Matrox card absolutely blew the GF's 2d away, and as a matter of fact Quake3 looked even better than nVidia's offering, as far as asthetics go. The MAX's OpenGL ICD didn't really impress me at the time. As the OpenGL game Tribes had all sorts of visual anomalies. And the frame rate was lacking.


So being more or less a gamer at heart I sold the G400MAX and went back to nVidia.

Here's the deal. I now have two systems, one Win9x based with a GeForce GTS for gaming. And a Win2K machine to surf, dabble in graphics (Photoshop), and watch DVD movies.

I read hardware articles religiously on a daily basis. It seems to be a concensous that Matrox owns the 2D portion of video market. And since I'm not going to be playing any games on my Win2K machine 3D performance is not a factor at all. All that being said, this is what I want to do. And I'm asking for your help in picking the right product(s) for me.


I want:
DH features;
resizable DVD playback (where I can adjust the windowed movie size;
the best 2D I can get;
hopefully, 100mhz refresh at 1600x1200;
TV on the secondary monitor either a separate TV tuner card or Matrox integrated;
stable Win2K drivers;
and a one that supports SMP as a have a dual P3 550 motherboard.

Given the info above what Matrox product would you recommend? There's a Rainbow Runner, A Millienum, a MAX, eG450 TV and the Marvel. blah, blah, blah and I don't know which to get. All Greek to me. Matrox gave me too many choices. :P

Thanks ahead of time for your responses. And I hope I don't offend anyone with my foolish and ill worded questions.

Scott

[Scooter]

Not to be argumentative at all, just curious. But, why would you suggest the G450 over the G400MAX? What does the G450 offer than the G400MAX does not, besides a smaller .18 dies size and passive cooling?

I also noticed that the new G450 has an intergrated Secondary RAMDAC. Is that better than the G400MAX had?

[Alec]

Nothing better than reading a proper review:
http://www.gamepc.com/reviews/hardwa...ew=g450&page=1

[Scooter]

Alec, I guess I failed to mention I read several reviews. From Anandtech's, GamePC, Gamer's Depot, Sharky Extreme etc.. I know the the G400MAX is faster. Like I mentioned in my first post, I'm primarily interested in 2D.

Please allow me to reword. What is the difference between the 2D quality of the G400MAX and the G450? I understand that Matrox intergrated the secondary RAMDAC of the G450. Did they do that to save money, like they did going to a 64bit bus? Or did they do that to increase 2D quality?

Out of the reviews I've read, none of them answered that question.

From what I've read, the G400MAX is faster in 3D than the G450. The real question is: Is the 2D of the G450 better than that of the G400MAX?

Because if I wouldn't gain any 2D performance then why not get a G400MAX used for about the same price as a new G450?

[This message has been edited by Scooter (edited 28 September 2000).]

[Alec]

Ok, Scooter:

What I got from the reviews is this:

1 - The secondary RAMDAC improves the image quality in DualHead mode.
2 - DualHead has more features than before.
2 - TV Output has improved.
3 - DVD playback is better.
4 - Smaller transistor size and DDR memory makes a smaller, environmental-friendly card, more overclockable than the G400(MAX).
5 - I don´t believe that the 2D quality has been made worse; in the worst case scenario it has remained the same.


If you want an excellent quality all-around card with visual quality that´s second to none and plan to use the DVD and Dualhead capabilities, go for the G450, as it´s not very expensive. If you plan to spend hours in Photoshop and browsing, it´s the best possible buy (provided that you use it with a monitor that really shows the card´s capabilities).

Cheers and good buying.

[Joel]

As someone who has been testing the G450 I can say that the image quality is actually better than the G400MAX. By integrating the secondary RAMDAC into the G450 chip they were able to achieve a higher clock frequency from it, thus better output on the second head. I mainly use the second head for DVDMAX output to the TV via the s-video cable and it is clearer than the output on the MAX. No the G450 is not as fast as the G400MAX but I have not had any problems with the games I play. I play alot of UT online and here lately Star Trek Voyager-Elite Forces, which is based on the QuakeIII engine. Like you, mostly what I do is 2D based and IMHO the G450 does have the best available image quality out there.

Joel

[xortam]

Scooter, make sure you understand the limitations of the DH under W2K. Several threads here have discussed the problems.

[Bixler]

Count out the Marvel G450 e-TV flavor if your second head is a monitor rather than a TV...although at $265 U.S. it would be a good buy since you mentioned you wanted TV tuning capabilities. If your second head is a TV then read up on this gizmo, as it has LOTS of TV features, and would probably cost less overall than the 450 with another tuner card for the TV. It's the same basic card as the other 450's but optimized for video editing/Capture and output to TV on the second head.

[Scooter]

Man, now that's info. You guys are awesome. Alec, your absorbtion of the info for all those reviews is way better than mine.

Joel, that answers all my image quality concerns.

xortam, I follow. Under Win2K I'm not going to be able to run the secondary monitor at different refresh rate or resolution. I caught that. And it'ss not the hardware, it's NT, obviously. You can run different rates under Win9x though. I'm there.

Bixler, you read my mind. I was seriously wanting the G450e, but there's no provision for a monitor other than a TV.
Maybe I can come up with a good STB or ATI tuner card. For cheap.


Guys, thank you all for your responses. I got exactly what I wanted out of this post.


[This message has been edited by Scooter (edited 28 September 2000).]

[Alec]

I´d go for the G450:
http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/mill_g450/home.cfm

[Coop]

Hello,

Where would could I buy a g450 today? I tried to find someone who sold one but I am not having much luck.

Thanks.

[Greebe]

The G450's aren't on the market yet.

[SteveC]

I've heard that they are available in Japan and places like that. Not here in the UK however.

------------------
Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"