Are Matrox Video Cards Considered Good?

[Luddite]

Sorry, I'm not a gamer and so not up on the latest video card wars. I understand Matrox are expensive, but are they worth the price compared to ATI and Invidia?

I have an Asus P5Q-EM board with Intel integrated graphics and thinking about getting a passive descrete card with mini displayport to run an Apple 24" LED cinema display. I was looking at the Matrox M-series which seemed to fit the bill, but don't know anything about the brand itself.

Thanks for any suggestions

 

[Schadenfroh]

Historically, Matrox has superior multi-monitor support and 2D image quality via VGA out. They cater to business users that have these specific needs.

 

[HeXploiT]

Matrox has made quality hardware in the past but they've been out of the game for some time. Are you gaming, doing photo work or business apps?

 

[alyarb]

as it has been said before, matrox is in business primarily for their superb analog performance of multiple outputs. simply because they make cards that support displayport doesn't mean that's the card intended for your display. a $5 DVI adapter will allow you to use mainstream digital cards like a $30 radeon 4350 with the display.

 

[BD231]

Stay away from matrox if you're a gamer.

 

[Tsavo]

They had fantastic cards.

12 years ago.

 

[Lonbjerg]

They had fantastic cards.

12 years ago.

I once owned a Matrox Mystique...for a week.
It was not all they said it was.

 

[BFG10K]

Matrox hasn’t been competitive in 3D space since the late 1990s.

 

[tviceman]

A rendition Verite is where it's at.

 

[Zargon]

They had fantastic cards.

12 years ago.

+1

I have rma'd a billion of them at work and we moved to older low end ati/nvidia stuff for multimonitor support

 

[Tsavo]

I once owned a Matrox Mystique...for a week.
It was not all they said it was.

I should have said...Matrox's last good card was the Millennium II.

 

[Lonbjerg]

I should have said...Matrox's last good card was the Millennium II.

Agreed.

 

[Fox5]

Matrox's current cards likely can't keep up with intel's integrated graphics in 3d.

 

[MrPickins]

I should have said...Matrox's last good card was the Millennium II.

I just built a "Frankenputer" out of spare parts. It's running a PCI Millennium II.

Windows 7 works fine, just no Aero (obviously).

 

[evolucion8]

What about the Parhelia, with its 4 pixel pipelines, 16 TMU's, 4 vertex shaders, 256-bit BUS and 16x Fragment Anti Aliasing? The Millenium P750 is only half of the parhelia.

 

[Fox5]

What about the Parhelia, with its 4 pixel pipelines, 16 TMU's, 4 vertex shaders, 256-bit BUS and 16x Fragment Anti Aliasing? The Millenium P750 is only half of the parhelia.

The Parhelia was a geforce 3 competitor (directx 8.1 iirc on the matrox part) and underperformed even then. Most integrated graphics are faster.

 

[Kyanzes]

Matrox cards went out of fashion like 7 years ago. G550 was probably the last that was considered a good buy. Well, I remember ppl singing odes about its 2D quality. Yeah, there's Parhelia but, aside from the multi-monitor support, it had no mentionworthy feature. Think it was able to display 48 bit color.

 

[nitromullet]

The Matrox M9138LP is probably a tad bit pricey, but it looks like it would meet your needs.

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/graphics_cards/m_series/m9138lppciex16/

 

[alyarb]

nm

 

[Luddite]

alyarb, I didn't quite get what you meant by this:

. a $5 DVI adapter will allow you to use mainstream digital cards like a $30 radeon 4350 with the display.

What kind of adapter? From another thread I posted specifically about Apple LED on a PC, it sounds like I need a $150.00 converter, not an adapter.

If I just get the matrox minidisplayport video card, would I just use a mini displayport connector to plug one into the other?

 

[evolucion8]

The Parhelia was a geforce 3 competitor (directx 8.1 iirc on the matrox part) and underperformed even then. Most integrated graphics are faster.

Parhelia was a hibrid DX8/DX9 card, it could process DX9 pixel shaders, but it could only do DX8 vertex shaders.

While the Parhelia was slower in overall than the GeForce Ti 300, it was never that far behind, specially when Anti Aliasing was cranked up, Parhelia did a good match against the 4600 in this review, but it lost hopelessly when anti aliasing was off, but when it was on, it was so close in performance, and the image quality was so great, ATi and nVidia should do something like the Fragment Anti Aliasing, little impact in performance and great image quality, Super Sampling, CFAA and TRAA are simply much of a burden in current GPU's with many demanding games today.

http://firingsquad.com/hardware/parhelia/page11.asp

 

[alyarb]

you only need the $150 converter for dual-link connections.

1920x1200 is the native resolution of your apple display, and single-link DVI is enough for that display mode. since the apple display uses a mini DisplayPort input, I would just use the apple adapter.

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.as...ingid=65681223

don't take my word for it since I don't have any experience with displayport, I just know that apple makes an adapter and they say it's good for single link DVI (turns out it isn't bidirectional - sorry. see below.). find someone who has put it into practice before and they will tell you how well it works.

better solution:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143210&nm_mc=OTC-RSS

 

[BFG10K]

ATi and nVidia should do something like the Fragment Anti Aliasing, little impact in performance and great image quality, Super Sampling, CFAA and TRAA are simply much of a burden in current GPU's with many demanding games today.

Uh, this is a terrible idea. Fragment AA only affects first-class polygon edges because all of the Z values are the same. That means large parts of the scene get absolutely no AA. It’s also incompatible with many titles.

nVidia’s CSAA is much better because it delivers the coverage benefits of Fragment AA without the disadvantages. CSAA can always fall back to the base level of MSAA too, so it’s more robust.

 

[nitromullet]

you only need the $150 converter for dual-link connections.

1920x1200 is the native resolution of your apple display, and single-link DVI is enough for that display mode. since the apple display uses a mini DisplayPort input, I would just use the apple adapter.

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.as...ingid=65681223

don't take my word for it since I don't have any experience with displayport, I just know that apple makes an adapter and they say it's good for single link DVI (turns out it isn't bidirectional - sorry. see below.). find someone who has put it into practice before and they will tell you how well it works.

He needs exactly the opposite. Apple's adapter will allow him to hook up a Mac with a mini displayport to an LCD with a DVI plug. There are cheaper alternatives to this from monoprice than the Apple branded adapter. What he needs is a plug that will convert the male mini displayport hard wired to his Apple monitor to a DVI plug that will plug into his PC, which does not exist.

better solution:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...&nm_mc=OTC-RSS

This would probably work, but he will still need a mini displayport to displayport adapter.

 

[AzN]

Uh, this is a terrible idea. Fragment AA only affects first-class polygon edges because all of the Z values are the same. That means large parts of the scene get absolutely no AA. It’s also incompatible with many titles.

nVidia’s CSAA is much better because it delivers the coverage benefits of Fragment AA without the disadvantages. CSAA can always fall back to the base level of MSAA too, so it’s more robust.

I think Nvidia bit off Matrox actually except that Nvidia isn't as efficient.