Tweet
Back to my beloved G400max !!!
Hello folks,
I'm a new member here but quite old forum reader and Matrox owner. As a desktop apps user and not gamer at'all i was very pleased using G400max on my business and home computers driving 21" high quality monitors. I never thought to use something else as Matrox gave me the best 2D speed and quality among all video cards i use in my computer life (over than eighteen years). The truth is that i would like to get a G800 or whatever Matrox has under development though.
Last month i bought an ATI Radeon for a new Win2k workstation i built. Don't ask me why i choose Radeon. I tried to get a G400Max but i could not find one so my only second choice was the "best after" Matrox 2D card.
Please don't lough yet...
I know very well ATI's driver support bad reputation as i'm an old Mach32 and Rage owner. I just thought that ATI did try a lot to build their new cards and drivers better than before.
"MAXIMA MEA CULPA" = "MY BIG MISTAKE"
I spent $400 for a new retail Radeon 64MB DDR. My first impression was too bad. The card was full of electrolytic capacitors and filtering coils along with famous Radeon ICs. For a moment i suspect that Radeon had serious power regulation problems and they fixed it using all that LC parts. Anyway i continued with installation leaving my bad thoughts.
I downloaded the last final win2k ATI driver as well as all their "special" beta drivers (leaked from rage3d.com and official from ATI site). I connected my EIZO/Nanao T962 21" monitor using pro class BNC cable and i powered on the new computer...
After some driver troubles i finished the video setup driving the monitor with 1600x1200x32 @ >90Hz. Quality was far better than NVidia powered cards but worst than Matrox. Wait a minute, what the hell is that ? My screen is FLICKERING and has shimmering problems
I connected a Sony F500R but the problem was still there.
After some emails, phones, rage3d.com forum posts i entered some DAC trimming keys in registry to fix that shimmering issue. That helped me a lot but it didn't eliminate the problem. I also lost "command prompt" full screen mode with that hack.
Then i did some usual desktop tasks running applications.
My impressions ? That card is really garbage. I don't know about games but my applications run almost in half speed than my trusty Matrox.
Coreldraw 10 was almost unusable though the computer was an ASUS P4@1500Mhz
Autocad was full of garbage pixels and random lines.
IE55 and Outlook crashed my computer. Actually it's the first time i shaw win2k crash without recovering or error messages.
VS6 and my other developent tools had various display problems with missing fonts and random pixels arround.
Almost anything i tried failed to display properly. I was really ungry. I installed all beta/special drivers including that latest ATI's ones. Different drivers - same problems. BTW i still wait ATI's responce to my email problem reports...
Their web site sucks. They don't have even a knowledge base or tech faqs or something helpfull. I posted my reports in rage3d.com but they could not help me as people there are just game players and they only care on Quake's FPS.
Is this really the ATI's best 2D/3D card ? GF2 killer ? Next to nothing 2D performer ?
Not at all, it's just crap. Full of power regulation problems, driver issues, very very slow in 2D, blurry video and useless VIVO features.
Last week i finally removed Radeon from my test system and installed my beloved trusty G400Max. What a relief !!!
Everything runs excellent with the well known Matrox quality and speed.
So i have a spare and useless Radeon in my drawer. I also have $400 less in my bank account. I took my lesson.
G400Max is back, and will stay here until Matrox build their future cards.
Regards
Sakis
[This message has been edited by Inray (edited 22 January 2001).]
I'm a new member here but quite old forum reader and Matrox owner. As a desktop apps user and not gamer at'all i was very pleased using G400max on my business and home computers driving 21" high quality monitors. I never thought to use something else as Matrox gave me the best 2D speed and quality among all video cards i use in my computer life (over than eighteen years). The truth is that i would like to get a G800 or whatever Matrox has under development though.
Last month i bought an ATI Radeon for a new Win2k workstation i built. Don't ask me why i choose Radeon. I tried to get a G400Max but i could not find one so my only second choice was the "best after" Matrox 2D card.
Please don't lough yet...
I know very well ATI's driver support bad reputation as i'm an old Mach32 and Rage owner. I just thought that ATI did try a lot to build their new cards and drivers better than before.
"MAXIMA MEA CULPA" = "MY BIG MISTAKE"
I spent $400 for a new retail Radeon 64MB DDR. My first impression was too bad. The card was full of electrolytic capacitors and filtering coils along with famous Radeon ICs. For a moment i suspect that Radeon had serious power regulation problems and they fixed it using all that LC parts. Anyway i continued with installation leaving my bad thoughts.
I downloaded the last final win2k ATI driver as well as all their "special" beta drivers (leaked from rage3d.com and official from ATI site). I connected my EIZO/Nanao T962 21" monitor using pro class BNC cable and i powered on the new computer...
After some driver troubles i finished the video setup driving the monitor with 1600x1200x32 @ >90Hz. Quality was far better than NVidia powered cards but worst than Matrox. Wait a minute, what the hell is that ? My screen is FLICKERING and has shimmering problems
I connected a Sony F500R but the problem was still there.After some emails, phones, rage3d.com forum posts i entered some DAC trimming keys in registry to fix that shimmering issue. That helped me a lot but it didn't eliminate the problem. I also lost "command prompt" full screen mode with that hack.
Then i did some usual desktop tasks running applications.
My impressions ? That card is really garbage. I don't know about games but my applications run almost in half speed than my trusty Matrox.
Coreldraw 10 was almost unusable though the computer was an ASUS P4@1500Mhz
Autocad was full of garbage pixels and random lines.
IE55 and Outlook crashed my computer. Actually it's the first time i shaw win2k crash without recovering or error messages.
VS6 and my other developent tools had various display problems with missing fonts and random pixels arround.
Almost anything i tried failed to display properly. I was really ungry. I installed all beta/special drivers including that latest ATI's ones. Different drivers - same problems. BTW i still wait ATI's responce to my email problem reports...
Their web site sucks. They don't have even a knowledge base or tech faqs or something helpfull. I posted my reports in rage3d.com but they could not help me as people there are just game players and they only care on Quake's FPS.
Is this really the ATI's best 2D/3D card ? GF2 killer ? Next to nothing 2D performer ?
Not at all, it's just crap. Full of power regulation problems, driver issues, very very slow in 2D, blurry video and useless VIVO features.
Last week i finally removed Radeon from my test system and installed my beloved trusty G400Max. What a relief !!!
Everything runs excellent with the well known Matrox quality and speed.
So i have a spare and useless Radeon in my drawer. I also have $400 less in my bank account. I took my lesson.
G400Max is back, and will stay here until Matrox build their future cards.
Regards
Sakis
[This message has been edited by Inray (edited 22 January 2001).]
Comment