On 8 Jun 99, at 22:53, miron dumitrescu wrote:

> Is there anything bad I should be aware of before buying a Matrox
> Millenium G200 card? As far as I already know, it delivers supreme quality
> in both 2D and 3D, excellent 2D performance but the 3D speed i not very
> convincing. I have a MVP3 Super 7 motherboard, so I'm not so sure it would
> work as good as it can.

  I use one with the VA-503+, which I believe is using MVP3.  Early G200s got
very hot, and even my later one seems to run warmer than I'd like.  I'm
seriously considering adding a heatsink to the *back* of the card.

  Just recently, I've been having an odd problem.  I'm running Win98 SE on
that machine, with (currently) the drivers it supplies (which I suspect may
have gotten corrupted).  By default, the "Always On" profile in the Power
Management Control Panel appletwill turn off the video signal after an hour
of inactivity.  It appears that lately, if it does this, the card jumps to
some frequency that my poor MultiSync 4FG monitor can't handle, and power off
is the only recovery.
  This is avoidable by unchecking that option in Power Management, but I have
also now downloaded the latest drivers from Matrox's site and will be
installing them.  [Matrox seem to be better than most video card makers at
issuing revised drivers and BIOS updates for their cards, even for models
that are 2-3 years old; these often provide performance improvements rather
than bug fixes....]

  I currently have five (different) Matrox video cards on systems at home --
six if you also count the Rainbow Runner Studio card partnered with the PCI
Mystique 220.  Call me a satisfied customer.

  [If you don't much care about 3D, you can get 2D very comparable to the
G200 for less money in the G100 Productiva.  Note that while the G200 comes
with 8MB and is expandable to 16MB, the G100 is stuck at 8MB -- but for 2D,
that should be enough.]



David G

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