I have seen the light!
I have been reading on how fuzzy NVidia cards are and how clear Matrox cards are, but now I see! I have had a 1st gen. TNT card since I built my computer. I just got my g450 yesterday and I cannot believe the difference. I cannot believe I went 2 years on that crummy video card. I should have bought a g400 instead of the TNT.
I also read that in Win2K you could only do dual-head with both displays at the same res, but I had no problem running 1 display at 1600x1200 on the G450 primary, 800x600 on the G450 secondary and on the TNT.
I had a problem installing drivers. Win2K wouldn't boot with the G450 plugged in untill I took out all of the other cards in my system. The installation cd didn't work. It would install the drivers and software and then reboot the computer. After rebooting I could only use res. of 640x480 or 600x800 and the software wasn't installed. I uninstalled the matrox software from the control panel (add/remove software) and downloaded the latest drivers off the internet and they worked right away. After I had the G450s drivers installed I was able to put my other cards back in and boot into Win2K fine. Getting dual-head to work with the G450 at different res. took 3 reboots. It took another 2 to get the multi-head to work when I plugged in the TNT card.
FreeBSD was fine in text mode without having to yank cards. I need to setup Xinerama though. We'll see how x-windows likes this setup.
I have one gripe with matrox. I ordered my card online directly from matrox. They sent the card in an antistatic bag packed in paper and a plain brown box. It also included the installation cd. I thought I would get a retail version. I don't need a pretty box but I would appreciate a manual and the TV-out cable and DVD software. I e-mailed matrox asking for what I thought was missing.
All in all, it is worth it. I love the graphics quality, the software/drivers are cool, and multi-head is awesome.
A new Matrox Devote
Jason
PS. Matrox just emailed me. They are mailing me a manual but say I have to purchase the TV-out cable and DVD software.
------------------
Win 2K/FreeBSD
ABIT BX6r2
Celeron II 600 @ 900
256MB RAM
ASUS V3400-TNT AGP
Old NEC 15"
Matrox G450 PCI
Viewsonic P815 21"
Old NEC 15"
Promise Fastrak 66
4x IBM 18GB 22GXP IDE HD
DXR3 (Hollywood+) DVD Decoder
Linksys 10/100 NIC
SB Live
Maxtor 10GB IDE HD
WD 6GB IDE HD
HP 8200 CDR/RW
DVD ROM
[This message has been edited by Whatchamacallit (edited 09 May 2001).]
[This message has been edited by Whatchamacallit (edited 09 May 2001).]
I have been reading on how fuzzy NVidia cards are and how clear Matrox cards are, but now I see! I have had a 1st gen. TNT card since I built my computer. I just got my g450 yesterday and I cannot believe the difference. I cannot believe I went 2 years on that crummy video card. I should have bought a g400 instead of the TNT.
I also read that in Win2K you could only do dual-head with both displays at the same res, but I had no problem running 1 display at 1600x1200 on the G450 primary, 800x600 on the G450 secondary and on the TNT.
I had a problem installing drivers. Win2K wouldn't boot with the G450 plugged in untill I took out all of the other cards in my system. The installation cd didn't work. It would install the drivers and software and then reboot the computer. After rebooting I could only use res. of 640x480 or 600x800 and the software wasn't installed. I uninstalled the matrox software from the control panel (add/remove software) and downloaded the latest drivers off the internet and they worked right away. After I had the G450s drivers installed I was able to put my other cards back in and boot into Win2K fine. Getting dual-head to work with the G450 at different res. took 3 reboots. It took another 2 to get the multi-head to work when I plugged in the TNT card.
FreeBSD was fine in text mode without having to yank cards. I need to setup Xinerama though. We'll see how x-windows likes this setup.
I have one gripe with matrox. I ordered my card online directly from matrox. They sent the card in an antistatic bag packed in paper and a plain brown box. It also included the installation cd. I thought I would get a retail version. I don't need a pretty box but I would appreciate a manual and the TV-out cable and DVD software. I e-mailed matrox asking for what I thought was missing.
All in all, it is worth it. I love the graphics quality, the software/drivers are cool, and multi-head is awesome.
A new Matrox Devote
Jason
PS. Matrox just emailed me. They are mailing me a manual but say I have to purchase the TV-out cable and DVD software.
------------------
Win 2K/FreeBSD
ABIT BX6r2
Celeron II 600 @ 900
256MB RAM
ASUS V3400-TNT AGP
Old NEC 15"
Matrox G450 PCI
Viewsonic P815 21"
Old NEC 15"
Promise Fastrak 66
4x IBM 18GB 22GXP IDE HD
DXR3 (Hollywood+) DVD Decoder
Linksys 10/100 NIC
SB Live
Maxtor 10GB IDE HD
WD 6GB IDE HD
HP 8200 CDR/RW
DVD ROM
[This message has been edited by Whatchamacallit (edited 09 May 2001).]
[This message has been edited by Whatchamacallit (edited 09 May 2001).]
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