G400 MAX - a better card than G550? Discuss.

[James Loudon]

I ask because a friend has given me one knowing that I am a bit of a Matrox enthusiast and she thinks that it real old technology. Since Matrox redid their website its impossible to find the comparison charts but, from what I gather the G550 introduction was generally a cost cutting excercise for Matrox and offered no great benefits for those of us working with CRTs. It would also seem that the G400max has the same speed ramdac as the G550 but double the width of memory bus. Okay it has a fan but that could probably be replaced with a passive heatsink no?
So I'm wondering whether to stick it in my main box instead. Its a i875 chipset and I use it for web development, photoshop and video/sound editing. What d'ya think?

[Nowhere]

Yeah, G400 (especially MAX) is considered often as the best G-series cards (presumably fastest, best TV-out)...but I doubt you'd see any difference in the types of your usage...

[UtwigMU]

The 2nd RAMDAC on G400 is inferior to G550 meaning you can't do dual 1600x1200@85. Not sure how fast is it, AFAIK it goes only to 1280x1024@85Hz.

The G400MAX also has a fan, which might fail, you can downclock or replace heatsink.

Otherwise it is faster in 3D and has better TVOut.