Classic Matrox hardware(Millenium,Millenium II, Mystique)

[iboso]

This is for Classic Matrox hardware owners that wanna post messages..I myself have a:
Cyrix PR166+(133Mhz)
Matrox Millenium 2MB
32MB RAM
2GB HDD
ALi V Chipset

I have many questions to ask.
1. Where can I find a OPTIMIZED OpenGL driver for my Matrox card??
2. What are the capabilities of my card??
3. What games(EXACT names) can I run in hardware-acceleration with my Matrox Millenium 2MB??

[Kruzin]

1. Nowhere. G200 was Matrox's first card that supported OGL.

2. Your card is capable of a decent 2d display.

3. None.

[kjliew]

Your system is worthless of playing any 3D games at all. Sorry to say that. Cyrix has the weakest FPU among the rest of the world. You'll need a better overall system to better enjoy 3D games. You graphics card is not your only problem.

[leech]

oh come now, my mom's computer has a matrox millenium II in it, and it played Mechwarrior Mercenaries in Direct3D (ugly as sin, but it played) Actually she has a 3dfx voodoo one card in it, so it plays 3d at an ok rate, although compared to my G400 it looks like crap. but at least Aliens vs. Predator plays well on it, as does Unreal Tournament. Even quake 3 played well enough on it that my brother beat the (very poor) single player game. My suggestion if you don't want to upgrade everything, get a voodoo card. Either a one or two. If you're looking to get that ol' clunker cyrix to do anything at all....Didn't cyrix pretty much die?

Leech

[Greebe]

Leech, it was running in software mode only!

[Thundrchez]

Cyrix did not completely die, but I think it was pretty doggone close to death. VIA, in an act to try to protect itself from Intel lawsuits, bought both Cyrix and IDT's Centaur group. There was a mass exodus of Cyrix employees, but I think a few of them continued to work for VIA. Just the other day, VIA announced or released a new x86 chip, but it was based on the IDT design.

Back to topic, though, didn't the Millennium I CD come with NASCAR Racing that took advantage of its 3D capabilities. I think that was about the extent of it, though. It was definitely not a regular direct3D 640x480 compatible card. The Mill II & Mystique was d3d compatible, but it was ugly as sin. Eventually Matrox had the 3d only M3D card based on the PowerVR chip to get decent direct3d gaming with the Mil I/II line.

I think you're pretty much limited to decent 2d display with that ol Mil I 2MB.

[iboso]

I will then ask for advice, I'm gonna scrap this one and get a new one what 3D card should I get(and dont say "G400" just because this is a Matox forum!!) As a 14 yr old boy i need to know which 3D card will benefit me..TnT2 and ATI's RAGE128 look very attractive at an affordable price..G400 I WISH I CAN GET BUT CANT AFFORD IT!!!!! HELP!!!!!!! ME OUT PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Kruzin]

Well with those system specs, your best bet is going to be a PCI (as you don't have AGP) style VooDoo card.
You can probably find a used or refurb VooDoo2 for 30-40 bucks

[Rags]

You can also find PCI VooDoo3 2000's for under a Benjamin as well. They work well with systems such as yours (well, as good as they can with the power you have )

Rags

[kjliew]

ALi V chipsets do have an AGP slot, I think. Go for Voodoo3 AGP version. Even if your ALi V chipsets happen to be a crappy AGP implemented earlier version, V3 will mostly work well, too.

If you're 100% sure that your ALi V chipsets is pretty decent enough to have good AGP (I'm not sure which revision...), then get TNT/TNT2. They should be quite cheap now. TNT/TNT2 has some nasty incompatibilities with earlier revision of ALi V chipsets. You can forget about Rage128, I don't think it is any good as compared to TNT/TNT2.

An CPU upgrade is almost, I think, a MUST. Cyrix P166+ FPU performance isn't even as good as Intel Pentium at 133MHz. You can get a used Pentium MMX 233MHz, or at least AMD K6-2 350MHz. If you dare, overclocked them as high as you can.

[kjliew]

Thundrchez,

I don't think the NASCAR bundled with Millenium I did make use of any Millenium I 3D capabilities. Millenium I only supports hardware accelerated Gourand shading and Z-buffer. At that time, NASCAR is a DOS game. Matrox didn't even have any propriety 3D API for Millenium. Matrox MSI only officially supported Mystique and Millenium II, and it needs texture mapping which is lacking in Millenium. Millenium 3D capabilities can only be accessible with WinNT MCD and CAD drivers supplied by Matrox. It's a professional display card. Never targetted for gaming market, but Matrox did make it very fast for DOS games such DOOM/2, Duke Nukem3D etc. which can make use of VESA graphics modes.

Probably, NASCAR did take advantage of Millenium high-speed DOS VESA 2.0 graphics modes with 32-bit protected-mode and linear framebuffer, which is a niche at that time.



[This message has been edited by kjliew (edited 02 December 2000).]

[leech]

Actually, Mechwarrior 2:Mercenaries did run with hardware on the matrox millenium 2 through direct3d (with the 18mb patch you can download) but still looked ugly as sin as the millenium 2 doesn't have a great many 3d features built into it. At the time, I thought it looked beautiful on the 3dfx card though.

Leech

[Greebe]

Leech, how does a software patch impliment hardware support for a card that doesn't have the hardware?

[kjliew]

I think the thread is refering to Millenium I or MGA-2064W chip, not Millenium II MGA-2164W chip. The later has the same 3D features as Mystique 220.

Quite a number of earlier Direct3D/MSI games do playable on Mystique/MilleniumII though they may look ugly.

[Greebe]

kj, I bet your right.