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  • G450 and MX twinview review

    Since nothing is happening on the Matrox front (where is Ants G450 review, and why has nobody overclocked their G450 yet?) I thought I would post this.
    http://www.gamepc.com/reviews/hardwa...susmxtv&page=1

    It gets into the differences between DualHead and TwinView a little.

    Ali

  • #2
    Just reading this review, and one thing I found bothered me a little and that was statements such as this :
    There are also a host of other options in Matrox's Powerdesk setup, which make this a better DualHead solution, for "business-type" work anyways. Of course, this is to be expected, as this is Matrox's second generation multi monitor card.
    Yeah, the G450 is Matrox's second generation multi monitor card, but the software implementation of DualHead is the same as it was for the G400. The technology may have improved from a hardware point of view (ie, faster secondary ramdac, etc) but there was no functionality added to the software.

    The screenshots they showed of the DualHead tab in the Advanced setting are still exactly what I saw when I first got my G400 DH, and yet they make it sound as though the functionality of the first-generation drivers seen on the G400 were perhaps as limited as nVidia's are now.

    From a software functionality point of view, I feel the G450 is no better as a business solution than the G400 was. The G450 wins by a nose (due to the new hardware specs), but the MX is quite a few lengths behind (in software and most likely in hardware, too).

    Correct me if I'm wrong.

    Cerb

    <i>Shampoo is better! I go on first and clean the hair!</i>

    Athlon 700, K7V, 192Mb RAM, 32Mb G400 DH (v5.52), SBLive!, 26.4GB HDD, Win2k Pro, Actima 8xDVD, LG 32x4x4x CD-RW, CTX VL950T 19"

    Comment


    • #3
      Agreed, Cerb. I had the exact same thought when I read that too. I looked for a quick- comment on this article page, but didn't see anything. Good thing, for them.

      ------------------
      Ace
      "..so much for subtlety.."

      System specs:
      Gainward Ti4600
      AMD Athlon XP2100+ (o.c. to 1845MHz)

      Comment


      • #4
        Agreed, Cerb. I had the exact same thought when I read that too. I looked for a quick- comment on this article page, but didn't see anything. Good thing, for them.

        ------------------
        Ace
        "..so much for subtlety.."

        System specs:
        Gainward Ti4600
        AMD Athlon XP2100+ (o.c. to 1845MHz)

        Comment


        • #5
          Yeah, I thought about tracking down an e-mail address on the website and mentioning my thoughts to them, but I'm at work so didn't want to take too long (although I ended up posting a lengthy reply here, didn't I. :-P )

          Cerb
          <i>Shampoo is better! I go on first and clean the hair!</i>

          Athlon 700, K7V, 192Mb RAM, 32Mb G400 DH (v5.52), SBLive!, 26.4GB HDD, Win2k Pro, Actima 8xDVD, LG 32x4x4x CD-RW, CTX VL950T 19"

          Comment


          • #6
            Broken link? Typos? Suggestions? webmaster_at_gamepc.com

            I cant be bothered myself, and its no big deal. Somebody might want to put them straight though.

            I put that _at_ in there so no Email bots will log their address and spam them (had that happen to me, and it SUCKS)!

            Ali

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            • #7
              on the O/C'ing note, I remember reading someone who O/C'ed their sample, but didn't get very far...
              they said they didn't even reach Max clock rates... when Matrox was asked they said that the Internal RAMDAC and TVout might be reasons why higher clock rates aren't very applicable...

              though I have no idea if he tried to actively cook it or not....


              Craig
              1.3 Taulatin @1600 - Watercooled, DangerDen waterblock, Enhiem 1046 pump, 8x6x2 HeaterCore Radiator - Asus TUSL2C - 256 MB Corsair PC150 - G400 DH 32b SGR - IBM 20Gb 75GXP HDD - InWin A500

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              • #8
                You know, I just don't get it. Whenever we see a review like this involving a Matrox card they usually only use 3DMark2000, which we know is bias toward the nVidia cards, or Quake III, which we know the Matrox card will be slower because of it's ICD. Why don't they ever do any D3D comparsions? Why don't they actually post screen shots to show us the image quality difference? Makes you wonder.

                Joel
                Libertarian is still the way to go if we truly want a real change.

                www.lp.org

                ******************************

                System Specs: AMD XP2000+ @1.68GHz(12.5x133), ASUS A7V133-C, 512MB PC133, Matrox Parhelia 128MB, SB Live! 5.1.
                OS: Windows XP Pro.
                Monitor: Cornerstone c1025 @ 1280x960 @85Hz.

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                • #9
                  Because then maybe there would be a demand for them!

                  Anyways, i'm not a fan of GamePC. several good products they have tried and failed to get working, mostly as a result of their stupidity. Especially when other people have good luck w/ it, they always say, 'its crappy'. Even when the boards they got were preproduction engineering samples that got accidentally leaked. oh well.

                  Working at a computer store, we evidentally had Matrox cards for sale a while ago. No one bought them tho - either too pricy or too unknown. i dunno why - they have always been a name for me to recognize.

                  -Luke
                  "And yet, after spending 20+ years trying to evolve the user interface into something better, what's the most powerful improvement Apple was able to make? They finally put a god damned shell back in." -jwz

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                  • #10


                    <BLOCKQUOTE>
                    Why don't they actually post screen shots to show us the image quality difference?
                    </BLOCKQUOTE></P>

                    I hope you're not suggesting that people use screenshots to compare RAMDAC output quality. Think about it for a moment. </P>

                    Sure you can compare the "correctness" of 3D rendering, but that's only half of the story.</P>

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      For the most part, I thought it was pretty balanced and that he liked the G450. He covered and took a stand on 2D performance without trying to quantify it with a meaningless 2D benchmark. He said, flat out and without reservation, that the 2D output of the G450 was superior, particularly at high resolutions.

                      In my opinion, benchmarking Direct3D performance is just a minefield of problems. 3DMark 2000 is the standby, but many reviewers and users are very suspicious of it. Are the numbers valid? Does it measure anything other than 3DMark 2000 performance? It's hard to say, and it does seem to favor NVIDIA boards, from the TNT2 to the GeForce2 GTS, by a fairly wide margin over same generation boards from every other manufacturer.

                      UT has its problems as well. The game itself appears to have CPU-related bottlenecks. It scales poorly from resolution to resolution and bitdepth to bitdepth and sometimes from board to board. Ironically, the GeForce2 seems to put up some really lackluster UTBench numbers.

                      DMZG is heavily optimized for NVIDIA products and Expendable is getting old. I just started messing with the Evolva timedemo, so I haven't had a chance to really shape an informed opinion. I'm a little suspicious of it simply because it's a D3D benchmark.

                      I believe the most valid and reliable benchmarks are OpenGL tests, and this plays right into NVIDIA's hand. It's what they're good at. It's very frustrating.

                      Paul
                      paulcs@flashcom.net

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        I'm not an expert on Dual Head by any stretch of the imagination. However, I've also noticed that many sites have implied or stated that Matrox's software implementation of Dual Head has somehow "evolved," that Matrox has added features in drivers over time, and that's why the Dual Head implementation of the G450 is more sophisticated than the MX.

                        I suspect many sites are looking at the feature, in depth, for the very first time. Matrox seems to have sent the G450 to every gaming site on the planet and sent it to Ant late. Certain assumptions about Dual Head were made early on in the G450's review cycle, others picked up on them, and a myth begins to circulate. It's why, I think, Matrox ought to get the board to Ant first (as opposed to last). Reviewers read each others work, and Ant has some authority when it comes to Matrox products.

                        Paul
                        paulcs@flashcom.net

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