Sweet Sweet Graphics
Written: Dec 20 '00 (Updated Dec 30 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Beautiful 2d/3d, Duel Head, Price
Cons: Not the Fastest Card
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| Turin's Full Review: Matrox Millennium G400, (16 MB) AGP Video Card |
I have had my 32meg G400 for a year now. I have never been happier with a card (not even when all my friends drooled and hated my old sli-v2 setup).
Picture Quality:
-2d:
Beautiful, it's just a beautiful card. Matrox is known to be king of the 2d arena. I run 1280x10245x32bit@85 hz for my desktop. I could run 1600x1280 except that I don't feel like going blind. I have a Mitsubish Diamond Pro 91TXM 21" monitor. I loaded the monitor's downloadable color settings into the g400's power desktop and it's just a beautiful combination for sharp accurate clear 2d graphics.
-3d:
--OpenGL
OpenGL games look very nice on this card. Matrox has always been about excellent image quality. They carried this over to their 3d engines.
--D3D
This card has some of the best looking D3D I have ever seen.
Performance:
I have not had trouble playing ANY game so far in 1024x768x32 with settings at medium detail. That's pretty darn good. Running MadOnion's 3dmark this card score over 3000. It outperformed the TNT2 Ultra, but fell short of the Geforce's frame rates. While the Geforce and other new cards may outperform the G400 in sheer frame rates, at 1024x768x32 this card is still good enough for me.
DVD:
This card comes with some of the best looking DVD software I have seen. The card's dvd playback are very sweet. The picture quality is great and the image is smooth.
*note to win2k users* The software bundled with the G400 DOES NOT SUPPORT Win2k to my annoyance. An update has been promised and is in the works*
Duel Head:
I love the duel head feature available for this card. Before I got this 21" monitor I had the duel head (second monitor out) hooked up to my tv. The nicest part about the duel head is its customability. It can be set to auto play dvd's on the tv so you can still work on your monitor, or with the tv or or a second monitor you can expand the desktop or use two separate desktops for multitasking. It's a great unique feature.
Environmental Bump-mapping:
This is another special feature for 3d rendering on the card. You have to see it to believe it. I highly recommending downloading MadOnion's 3dmark test to test your current hardware and your new hardware. It's demo mode is some of the best looking visuals I have ever seen. The difference with and without bump mapping is huge when you see what it's capable of. http://labpro.madonion.com/products/
Overall this is a beautiful card for work, gaming, and entertainment. It's very versatile and performs very well at everything it does and looks beautiful doing it. I am going to continue holding on to this card until I see what Matrox has in store for us with the G800.
The G400 32mb version sells for around $100 now.
It sells for around $130 with the Duel Head feature.
The G400max sells for around $200 now and has a little added umph to it. I was able to overclock my G400 to beyond max specs however if you want to go that route. I could not increase the memory clock rate on the card however. For $130 without even overclocking it this card is a great steal
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Turin
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Reviews written: 77
Trusted by: 63 members
About Me:
23 year old Computer Technician/Network Admin into Games, Music, and of course Computers.
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