Explanation of Millennium - G200 era

[UtwigMU]

I jumped on the Matrox bandwagon with G200. Their previous cards are a bit unknown to me (wasn't following the hardware scene at that time).

So could someone please explain / briefly sum up date of release and features / drawbacks / lead to me.

One of the reasons I'm posting this is that I won a Millennium in online auction for $4.65. It's a decent secondary PCI card and should be great if/when I turn this machine into server.

If I'm correct:

Millennium (when?)

Mistique (same core as Millennium?, (why) was Mistique worse than Millennium?)

Millenium II

The infamous M3D

Productiva G100 (Which core?)

Millennium G200 (Had it, died, replaced it with G400 3D difference was that OMG feeling - quite substantial.)

[FormerEx-SalesSoup]

this should help: http://www.matrox.com/mga/archive_st...ct_history.cfm

[Ribbit]

Re: Explanation of Millennium - G200 era

Briefly and from memory (I don't have dates),

Originally posted by UtwigMU
Millennium

MGA2064W. First card to use WRAM (from Matrox anyway). Could be configured with between 2 and 8MB memory. This was a very fast VGA and Windows card, as opposed to previous Matrox cards, which were very fast under Windows and horrifically slow as VGAs. The Millennium took over from the Tseng ET4000 as the card to have for games and scene demos since it was so fast. It also had some basic 3D abilities (lines, gouraud shading), but I don't think they ever got used.

Mystique

MGA1064. Matrox' 3D gaming card. At the time no-one thought much of it, but these days it's probably the only pre-Voodoo consumer 3D card you can talk about with a straight face. Had 2 or 4MB of memory. There was also a MGA1164 version which bumped the RAMDAC from 170MHz to 220MHz.

Millennium II

MGA2164W. Like the name suggests, a new improved Millennium. More memory (up to 16MB), faster RAMDAC, etc. This was a very very fast card for Windows (apparently even faster than the G200). Supposedly it also had texture mapping on top of the Millennium's 3D features, but again nothing made use of it.

The infamous M3D

The only Matrox card using someone else's chip (a NEC PowerVR, ancestor of the Kyro). Suffice to say, they're probably not going to do that again in a hurry.

Productiva G100 (Which core?)

Basically a G200 without the WARP engine, I think. With this card Matrox abandoned WRAM and went with SD/GRAM. Not sure what you're asking by "which core?"

Millennium G200

Matrox' next attempt at a gaming-oriented chip after the Mystique. Actually it did pretty well - I seem to recall it held the speed crown for about...oooh....three weeks or so, while still looking better than everything else, of course.

[UtwigMU]

So Millennium cam out in 95/96? When exactly?

I recall CADdie (member of Ars forums) boasting about autocadding in '95 or '96 with dual 21's and 2 Millenniums @ 2x1200x1600 on a P90.

[Ribbit]

The Millennium must have come out early in 1995. I remember it was around before Win95 was.

[albatorsk]

Re: Re: Explanation of Millennium - G200 era

Originally posted by Ribbit
Briefly and from memory (I don't have dates),
Millennium II

MGA2164W. Like the name suggests, a new improved Millennium. More memory (up to 16MB), faster RAMDAC, etc. This was a very very fast card for Windows (apparently even faster than the G200). Supposedly it also had texture mapping on top of the Millennium's 3D features, but again nothing made use of it.

Ahemm.. I had a Millennium 2 way back, and it supported Direct3D just fine, thank you very much No bilinear filtering, though, but it worked just fine for most D3D games of the day.

[Ribbit]

Thanks for clearing that up.

As a defence against further nitpicking I'll also mention that the Mystique didn't use WRAM as I might have implied.

[chhfchhf]

http://www.starryland.com.cn/club/dispbbs.asp?boardID=11&ID=711

it is my cards
you can find Millennium,mistique,MillenniumII,G100,G200 and so on

[Marshmallowman]

ahh...the g200, the fastest for a week or two....but the fecking best looking output for at least 6 months.....well except opengl....and that got trippy with the patented rainbow effect.

[Kurt]

was the only time when you could get best of both worlds:

G200 + Voodoo2 SLI

best 2d, best 3d. nuff said.

[DukeP]

Lol Kurt.
I had that, too. Pricey as HELL tho!



~~DukeP~~

[Kurt]

yeah, and that's without factoring the monitor with dual input (BNC + HD15)