Your views on matrox vid cards!

[Elecktroblaster]

Hi!

At the moment i have a geforce2 mx400 64mb card which is good but hasn't got a tv out or anything so im looking into getting a g450 or g550 cuzz of the dualhead thingy!

what i need to know is:

1. can it do 32bit colour

2. whats the performance like in games

3. what are they like at playing dvd, div-x films etc!

thanx in advance

[Kruzin]

Yes, they do 32 bit color.

The game performance is acceptable, but not the fastest around.

DVD playback and TV-Out is outstanding, dut Divx is not supported by Matrox, and takes some tweaking with 3rd party patches to get it going.

[Electric Amish]

1. can it do 32bit colour

Hell yes!! Matrox cards have always had the best implementation of 32 bit color. My friend still has problems on his Geforce 2 GTS when he tries to use 32 bit in UT.

You will be amazed at the difference in 2D/desktop graphic quality after changing from a Geforce MX. The MX is one of the poorest performing cards in 2D quality.

My G400 performs well in all the games I've tried. UT, Q3, Tribes 2. I've never had a problem. Speed has been just fine for my tastes at 1024x768x32 bit.

I don't have a DVD player or TV-out, so I can't comment on those.

amish

[rylan]

Matrox has amazing image quality and color saturation, especially at high resolution 2D.

For gaming however, The G550 probably won't be any faster than your current card. Personally I wouldn't bother with the G450 since its slower than what you've got, and slower than my G400MAX.

[joelau]

Matrox cards are never good at 3D.
But they're extremely good at 2D.

It all depends on what purpose you need it for.

Regards.

[Rob100]

I have G400 Marvel which is used in video editing box. However I have tried the card b4 with games (UT, Q3A, SOF etc) and the speed is "okay" - however it's nothing like a GF2/3. I will say though that games "look" (colours, texture etc) very good on the G400 - better than the GF and my old Voodoo 3 - just a shame it plays so slow in comparisson :-(

[Elecktroblaster]

Just like to say Thanx to everyone

your comments have made my mind up!

i also noticed how bad the geforce is at 2d stuff and as im not really into gamez anywayz im gonna be better off with the dual-output of the matrox. only downside is i can only get the g450

it will do tho!

whats all this prob's with div-x? i assume the card has protection to stop div-x like the old macro-protection on dvd's yeh?

[dZeus]

use the sasami2k player to play back mpeg4 files, or use the divxg400 patch made by rene prillop (as found somewhere on the matroxusers-site I guess) for ripped movies with subtitles where the people who put in the subtitles didn't think about overscan standard for tv (at least I *think* that the divxg400 patch can add black borders.... I hope that they are added around the whole picture, or at least around the top and bottom of the picture).