Does this G400 support 1,5V?

[Nowhere]

For some reason matrox forum doesn't work for me where I am...so I hope somebody here will know this (or perhaps somebody could post on the matrox forum, pretty please? )

I have Matrox Millenium G400 16MB G4+M4A16G. Will it work ok in mainboard that is AGP 1,5V only?

[Wombat]

Yes, but if it is one of the oldest G400s you may need to do the resistor mod. Not a big deal.

[Nowhere]

But...wouldn't it be good to know whether it will work or not without the mod before putting it in there? I mean - the instruction of the mainboard says something about frying the mobo if the card isn't 1,5V...

[Goc]

Number 4 in the M4A16G tells you that it is an AGP 4X card so there shouldn't be any problems...

[Mcollector]

As Goc said, the "4" in the Matrox part code on the white sticker on the back of the card is the key as to whether it will work stock at 1.5V in a 1.5V/0.8 only AGP signaling mobo slot. Another example of the numbering scheme, and what will and won't work:

G4+M4DHA32G -- yes
G4+MDHA32G -- no

I wish Matrox would post a full, translated list of what all their parts codes mean. With some effort, you can find part of it on their website with translation, but not all of it (can't find the memory type codes, for example); and you can find a list of the codes for OEM-specific, potentially modified cards, but you can't find to whom or what all the OEM-specific codes refer. (Some are obvious, like HP or CPQ, but what the hell is OE5?)

For example, in the above codes,
G4+ ::= G400
M ::= Millennium
DH ::= Dual Head
A ::= AGP (P would be PCI)
32 ::= 32 MB video memory
G ::= SGRAM video memory

If followed by an "R", it's retail, "B" it's "bulk" (white box), "/5BN" or "...B/5N" is a 5-pack white box (bulk) for the North American market. (The bulk cards are purchased by system builders (usually small shops) that supply complete systems and don't need the retail packaging or the extras that comes in the retail box, and only need 1 driver CD for several cards.)

If the last part is something like "/CPQ" (Compaq), "/HP" (Hewlitt Packard), it's OEM to a specific Tier 1 OEM. There are a lot of these OEM codes, and not all are obvious (like OE5 and OE6). The Tier 1 OEM coded models may be modified from the Retail or "white box" models.

Retail and white box "bulk" models are essentially the same (rumors persist that the retail ones are more overclockable, which I don't do, so I don't care), are safe for Matrox website-supplied BIOS upgrades, but the modified OEM ones may not be.

The Tier 1 OEM cards may be modified vis-a-vis the Retail or "white box" models. Modifications might include a different type of RAM (SDRAM v. the SGRAM on retail), and/or a different amount of RAM (less than the amount on retail cards), presence or absence of additional connetors, and who knows what else. Matrox will also *not* provide end-user support for any card with a Tier 1 OEM code; they'll blow you off to whoever your "system vendor" is, and they often won't tell you who that was if you have an out-of-box card you scrounged off ebay or elsewhere. IF they do tell you, the Tier 1 OEM vendor will then want your system P/N and S/N, which you probably won't have, so you're still out of luck. While the BIOS upgrades off Matrox' site might not work on the OEM modded cards (I've been unwilling to try it after Matrox once told me not to), I've always found the drivers off Matrox' website work just fine no matter what version of the card you have.

Sometimes there are other region codes (like "I", which might mean Ireland, but I don't really know). I don't know if that matters. It might, since some regions of the world use 50 Hz power, which might affect video timing, but I'm not sure. I stick w/ the North American retail ones wherever possible, or the North American white box "bulk" ones, since I'm in N. America. I avoid everything else.

[Goc]

Great post... Summs it up quite nicely.