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**Joel** · 3 November 1999, 14:33

I have an AMD K6-2/400 system and I am quite happy with the G400's performance in business apps, games, and DVD playback. So if you want the best image quality available and decent gaming performance then go with the G400. If you don't care about image quality and want the fastest gaming performance then go with the V770. Of course most of this is a matter of opinion and I just gave you mine.

Joel

**Zwisch** · 3 November 1999, 19:35

I had a Viper 770 Ultra before and changed it for the MAX. And to be honest, I like my MAX much better than my TNT2 Ultra. The features are better and image quality is best out there. I would not change back...

**Borg** · 4 November 1999, 02:54

MAX !

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PIII450@465,P2b,128mb,Matrox Mill-G400 32SH,SB.Live !(value)...

**UncleJoe** · 4 November 1999, 04:42

Hmm... I have tested TNT2 U and I own G400SH32M (Vanilla & no oc)and have to say that image quality of G400 is clearly better. And what comes to speed my Cel400@500 runs G400 with equal fps with tnt2 U in direct3D but in OGL TNT2 U is clearly faster (waiting for new drivers from M ... ). If you use Win98 I say: go for G400, but if you use mainly WinNT4 i would possibly consider TNT2... (Matrox support for OGL in WinNT have been less impressive ).

J.

**Cloudy** · 4 November 1999, 06:36

My friend has an overclocked CL TNT2U (I have a vanilla G400 OC to 150/200) and we did some comparisons:

* TNT2U is faster in Opengl, especially under NT (hey matrox...)
* TNT2U has Anistropic filtering
* TNT2U has less compatibility problems
* TNT2U is cheaper

BUT:
* TNT2U has dreadful DVD playback while G400 has a perfect picture.
* G400 trilinear filtering is as good as any other cards anistropic filtering.
* G400 has the DualHead andd EMBM
* Visual quality is a little better (little, but still noticable)
* G400 has the cool matrox Pixeltouch (zoom) feature that is hard to live without once u get used to it.

I chose the G400 especially because of the DVD playback and exellent visual quality.
My friend was totally shocked by the Matrox techdemo and visual quality, but he's very happy with his TNT2U.

If you decide to go for the G400, read the threads about G400 and SbLive! issues.
Good luck.

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Cloudy
Asus P2B-DS, 2 x Celeron 400@75Mhz, 128Mb Ram, Xitel Storm Platinum,
2 x IBM 4.3Gb scsi,IBM 22GB IDE, Pioneer DVD ROM scsi, G400 32MB DH (Oc to 150/200).

**paulcs** · 4 November 1999, 10:03

Just to add to what Cloudy said, if you upgrade to a fast Pentium III, the Max is a faster OpenGL board. Colors will be prettier with the Max.

If you decide to go for the TNT2, you might want to consider going with someone other than Diamond. I've heard the most terrible things about their support, and now that they have severed relations with nVidia, I suspect it won't improve.

The Guillemont TNT Ultra is a faster board, and the driver support appears to be much better. (And they bought Hercules! Good for them.) It's more expensive than the Viper, but I think Guillemont is a better company. Again, I'm not familiar with Diamond's decoder, so compatibility might be an issue. (I appears Diamond hasn't update drivers for this part in *years*. I really think they are an awful company.)

The G400 does not have a decoder. It uses a software solution, which is pretty good, but having a fast CPU helps a lot. I have no idea if it will work with your Diamond decoder, however.

Having said that, if you intend to upgrade your processor anytime soon, I think you should seriously consider going with the Max. (I'm not sure if your motherboard is proprietary or not. Can you upgrade to a PIII?)

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

**DuRaNgO** · 4 November 1999, 17:53

that depends on whether you want to cook breakfast while using the computer as the tnt2u runs hot enough to cook an egg, hence can cause other problems in your case like limiting the potential to o/c your cpu and hdd failures as well, plus you'll become a MURCaholic
jim

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PIII-500mhz @ 620 ! with an Abit BE6 mobo
128mb pc-100
Mill G400 (YAHOO!!!) 32mb @ 165/205 with MGATweak-410mhz, 2.5, 2), PD 5.30 & bios 1.5-22
Maxtor 14.3 gb Uata66 hdd
SB Live!
Winblows 98se & DX7
32 lbs. of fans, heatsinks and aluminum ductwork

3DMark Result 5954.69 3DMarks
Synthetic CPU 3D Speed 9325.69 CPU 3DMarks
Rasterizer Score 2791.72 3DRasterMarks
Game 1 - Race 65.07 FPS
Game 2 - First Person 54.89 FPS
Fill Rate 268.79 MTexels/s

**GerryR** · 5 November 1999, 11:51

Hi guys,

Sorry I that haven't responded sooner... real busy at work. Thanks for all your posts, I appreciate the help. You've convinced me! I'm going to go for the G400Max (now, if I could only find one ). I already felt it was the better choice... just wasn't sure how it would perform with my current setup and wanted to get a few opinions from people who were actually using it.

paulcs -

I'm not sure on the motherboard. Not sure how much tweaking (if any) Micron does to the BIOS's on their machines. I went to Intel's site and there appears to be a BIOS upgrade listed that will allow my current motherboard to accept a PIII 450 (but, that's the limit). I'll have to check with Micron (and I'll probably look into replacing the motherboard in the future). Thanks for the tip.

Re: Diamond's "support". Only tried them once, and it wasn't pretty. The current drivers they have posted on their site for my V330 (2nd of only 2 updates for the entire life of the card) are a disaster. Never could get them installed and was damn lucky to get the original drivers re-installed (after wasting about 4 hours). Read tons of postings on various message boards telling the same story. Their "tech" support made me very nervous. Had call back 3 times before I found someone who seemed to have a clue… and they couldn't help either. The tech that I spoke with even mentioned that there were a lot of problems with this particular release and felt that the installer was corrupt is some way (P.S. - believe it or not this driver is still posted on their site). Never did find anyone that figured out how to install it successfully. From what I've heard from others, all of their driver updates are a pain to install.

andrei -

I know how you feel… can't find this card (retail) anywhere. I've wanted to upgrade my video for a while now, and I really don't want to wait any longer so… I guess that I too will be buying from Matrox's online store. (P.S. - if it's any consolation, the only retailers that I found that actually claim to have the card in stock wanted over $300(U.S.) for it… so, the $249 price from the web site doesn't seem too out of line).

Re: the SBLive! I've seen posts elsewhere mentioning various SBLive! compatibility problems but, I haven't had any conflicts so far (and it's even in the slot next to my current AGP card). I read the other posts that you mentioned. I think that I'll follow the suggestions and move the SBLive! when I install the G400… just to be safe.

DuRaNgO

Seeing as I'm always running late in the morning, and never seem to have time for breakfast anyway… I don't think that I will be able to take advantage of the TNT2 feature that you mentioned . Another reason to go with the G400.

Re: potential to become a MURCaholic… don't worry I'm sure that I'll be back with questions… hopefully not caused by the SBLive!

**UncleJoe** · 5 November 1999, 12:59

<imf src="http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/icons/icon10.gif" >

<H2>Wellcome to Club</H2>

J.

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