G450 Dualhead Clone

[Palliator]

I just got ahold of a Matrox G450 32MB Dualhead card (several months ago I used to own a G400 Max). I bought it for a secondary PC mainly for use for the DVD Max functionality. Sure enough, with Power DVD XP it works like a charm. I also use this PC to occasionally play old emulated arcade games in MAME. Whenever I use the Dualhead Clone (only Dualhead function enabled) function, the movement in the secondary display is very choppy. These are not very processor intensive games I'm playing either and this is a reasonably well equipped machine (1 GHz Celeron w/ 256 MB RAM). The primary display isn't nearly as choppy. All of the Clone functions, except Hotkeys, are greyed out so not settings changes there (I assume because I am using the TV out). In fact, the only way I can enable Clone mode is through Hotkeys. It's not life or death I get this to work, but it would sure be nice to play some of those old games on a decent size screen (if possible). I'm using the latest version of PowerDesk in Windows 2000 (SP3). Suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[Zitch]

Glad you're enjoying the DVD-Max function of the card. I'm doing the same thing in my living room with a Gateway 750 PIII system /w 384 Megs. Combine the G450 with a Hercules Game Theatre XP, connect via S-Video to a 27" TV and to a 5.1/DTS receiver (using an optical link) and DVDs, AVI, MPEGs, Quicktime, and other Video files are playable full-screen on the TV. All of this on Win2k SP3 and with PowerDVD XP.

Unfortunately, with the clone option, it had come to my attention in that it Scales from the primary display (monitor) to the TV using software. You may notice this if you use the task manager and compare with and without clone modes. You will see the processor usage jump to 100% when using clonemode with a dynamic display (stuff moving around, etc).

There are only two solutions to this that I can think of:

1 - Get a faster processor
2 - Use the G400 in this system. I heard that the G400 does this scaling in hardware.

Getting more RAM probably won't help here. 256 Megs should be plenty to play DVDs, Videos and MAME.

Sorry I can't be anymore help.

Zitch

[Palliator]

I really wish I would have researched this before I made the purchase (even if I bought it realitively cheap on eBay). I've looked through some of the old forum posts about the scaling being done in software (as opposed to the Maven on the G400). I ran task manager and sure enough there is 100% processor usage. On a P3 based 1GHz Celeron in the system running simple emulated games (again, not the more demanding emulated games here) this doesn't seem very reasonable. It would seem Dualhead Clone is completely unusable for any sort of gaming. And no, I don't think a 2 Ghz+ P4 or Athlon XP should be a requirement. Did I screw up buying this or is there something seriously wrong here. It's rather disheartening Matrox did this to the G450 line, I knew the other advantages of the G400 line but certainly not this. Oh well, enjoy the DVDs eh?

[Goc]

Yep!

[Palliator]

Well, in typical fashion I couldn't leave well enough alone and went ahead and got ahold of a G400 Max (well, hope it is on its way). Funny, the same card I had almost a year ago... We will see if it yields much better performance on the secondary display. My guess is it will. Even doing quick scrolls in Internet Explorer with Dualhead Clone on the G450, the CPU utilization was through the roof. A good experiment it will be when the G400 arrives. Not like I'm blowing huge amounts of money here and, if it works out, to recover my cost the G450 will go on eBay...again.

Admittedly, I was so tempted to pick up one of those inexpensive ATI 8500 LE Radeon cards. AT $88 shipped, I could get decent 3D to boot. Then I started thinking about the 8500DV AIW I have in my primary system and how lame the Hydravision software is. A great card it is, but the TV out/multi-display features are lacking compared to the G400 Max. That was the whole purpose with this secondary machine of mine, DVD and MAME on the TV. Here we go again...

[Goc]

Well, G400MAX is simply irreplacable for purposes that you just mentioned... That is the biggest reason why I still have it in my primary and secondary machines... Nothing really has that kind of "look and feel" that Matrox has... Now if only Parhelia would be a bit cheaper I'd go get me two replacements...

[Evildead666]

I made the same mistake...
I fried my G400, a very sad day, and went and bought a G550 for the excellent DVD and DivX playback i was getting in DVDMax, and its pretty crap on the G550, like it seems to be on the G450...
And yes, i'm looking for a G400 (max or not) just for the brilliant video scaling....i have aan Athlon 1800+ and the screen still jitters a bit when playing back on the second head in clone mode.
It took me a while to figure it out....
Then Dr Mordrid mentioned the Mavern chip (maven?), and that was it.
Why o why didn't they continue using that chip???!
I just did a check here, and there is a G400 max on eBay for 70$!!
rather a lot....oh well.

[Goc]

You guys with Parhelias ou there... If my memory serves me well someone already ask this question but I must ask again. How's Parhelia doing with video scaling? I believe it has hardware overlay on two heads but the third one is emulated. Is that right?
And how's P doing with DVD Max in Dualhead clone?

[dZeus]

Goc, your questions are a bit weird, but I assume you want to know about video scaling and tv-out scaling on the parhelia?

Since it supports two overlay surfaces it should thus be abel to scale 2 videos in hardware. But this feature has not much to do with overlay/clone performance on tv-out:
For tv-out you need to scale the complete image to be outputted to tv to the right 'resolution' (you can't really talk about resolution with TV because the display lines are analogue). From what I've heard, the Parhelia has no hardware scaling support for tv-out, much like the G450 and G550 (I already stated this in another thread). Why on earth they chose to not implement this is beyond me. Incompetent tech marketing decisions perhaps??? Who knows...

[Goc]

Yep dZeus... That's what I wanted to know... Guess I asked stupidly...
Thanks!

[Palliator]

Well, this story has kind of bittersweet ending I guess. I got my Matrox G400 Max today. I installed it my secondary machine, setup up my preferred resolution at 960x720 @ 32-bit, enabled "scaling" and "favor image quality", and then turned on Dualhead Clone. Even with a different monitor refresh rate and the image being scaled down, the image on the TV was perfectly smooth. None of those options were accessible with the G450. I can pretty much run anything I want and not take the performance penality I took with the G450 installed. The moral here is that I should have gotten a G400 in the first place. I didn't realize the TV output would be this superior on the "older" card. I don't know about the rest of you, but for me the G400 Max is as good as it got with Matrox. Maybe if they design a next generation product with the same design principles, I'll buy another Matrox product otherwise I'll be perfectly happy with this in my secondary machine until it gets hopelessly outdated....