Head Two Head: Matrox Millennium G450 — THG.RU

Millennium G450: Did Matrox Miss The Market?

A modern graphics card for 3D gamers has to provide high frame rates, it must come with fast memory and also support as many 3D functions as possible — without being too expensive. The Millennium G450 does not fulfill any of those criteria.

So, why does Matrox produce and sell such a product? Only some years ago, their cards used to provide the best 2D performance and top notch signal quality. That’s still the same today, but the competitors gradually came closer. Today, graphics cards are usually rated by 3D performance and features — something which leaves the Matrox cards behind the times. The performance leader, nVIDIA, releases graphics chips on steadily shortened product cycles, outshining predecessors and outclassing other companies’ products.

Todays graphics chips also come with some functions to accelerate and to enhance DVD/MPEG2 playback. Back in the times of the good old Matrox Millennium (MGA 2064W) or the Diamond Fire GL 1000 Pro, the 2D or Windows performance had already reached its plateau. No ultra-fast ATI Radeon or nVIDIA GeForce 2 Ultra board is able to draw windows and text faster.

Matrox’s new Millennium G450 does not surpass the former top model G400MAX in terms of performance, even though the name might imply it. Actually, the new model is as fast as the standard G400, as the modifications merely concern optimizations for the business and OEM market.

Features: What’s New?

The predecessor was available in several versions, as the G400 series was shipped with varying clock speeds for chip and graphics memory. The addition «MAX» signifies higher clock speeds. In addition, there are two models available, G400 SH and DH. SH stands for Single Head, DH means Dual Head which is Matrox’s technique to drive two outputs using one graphics board (monitor/TV or monitor/monitor).

This variety is no longer available since the Millennium G450 comes with two «heads» by default. A splitter cable which is included lets you attach a TV or VCR via S-Video or Composite. You can also get the G450 with a DVI port if you want to attach a digital flat panel. The version coming with 32 MB or DDR memory is primarily meant for the retail market. Bulk and OEM versions are also available, but with only 16 MB DDR SDRAM or SDR SDRAM. Please see the table on the next page for more details.

Comparison Table

More technical details can be found in the following table.

Matrox changed their production from 0.25 µm to 0.18 µm for the G450 without increasing the clock speed. That’s why all G450 cards can live without fans. It’s quite obvious that Matrox is trying to maximize the yield. Both the unchanged clock speed and the smaller chip size contribute to lower costs.

Looking at the price for a 32 MB card, the Millennium G450 can only be characterized as competitive if the Dual Head Feature comes onto the scene. If you don’t care about that, the new Matrox card is either too slow or far too expensive — a GeForce 2 MX board would then be the better choice.

If you are in the market for a dual monitor solution, I would think about a 16 MB version as well. If you don’t need 3D at all, you can also live with the smaller video memory size. 16 MB are still enough to run two monitors e.g. at 1024x768x32 and ergonomic refresh rates. The prices for 16 MB bulk versions should level off at approximately $120.

Will Dual Head Be Enough To Survive?

Even with the G400 chip Matrox was not able to provide top performance. Let me clarify something — the Matrox chips are not bad at all, as they support all standards and the 3D features which are important today. They just lack the required performance for fast 3D game flow at high resolutions. When the G400 MAX was released in summer 1999, it was definitely fast enough to beat 3Dfx’s Voodoo3 cards, but could not top the performance of a TNT2 Ultra. As you can imagine, the recent chips from nVIDIA and ATI are playing in a different league. 3Dfx performed the jump to faster 3D performance far too late. By using several graphics chips on a single graphics card, today’s Voodoo 5 solutions are fast but expensive to produce. nVIDIA was the first to realize how the market would develop. Today they have products both for the performance user and with a good price/performance ratio.

Even though the Matrox cards are not able to compete with other chips in terms of pure 3D performance, they can still be recommended. The most important catchword is Dual Head, which means that you can attach either two monitors or one monitor and a TV. nVIDIA is now launching a similar concept, but the graphics card will require a second RAMDAC. In contrast, Matrox integrated the second RAMDAC directly into the graphics chip, which reduces the cost for the graphics card. In addition, Matrox is the only company, which integrated a TV encoder into the chip, making the G450 a decent basis for video and TV freaks.

Two Hearts

Every G450 board comes with two outputs. You may either attach two monitors (the first up to 2048x1536x32, the second at max. 1600x1200x32) or a monitor plus a TV. Of course you can also attach a video camera, VCR or other video devices.

Under Windows 98, you can spread and expand your desktop onto both monitors or use the second display for DVD playback. The G450 supports all important video features to reduce the CPU load while playing a MPEG2 video stream. There is just one limitation in Windows NT — the resolutions of both monitors have to be the same. In Windows 98 and 2000, a window will open as soon as you plug in the second monitor, asking you if you want to use Dual Head

Color Depth, Refresh Rate and Resolution

Only a few years ago, those three things were crucial for graphics cards. With the introduction of 3D acceleration, the hardware requirements almost exploded. Today, even the cheapest graphics cards with only 8 MB of video memory are able to display 1600×1200 flicker-free at 32 Bit colors. The most important factor for a sharp picture is a fast RAMDAC (Digital Analog Converter). This function has been integrated into almost all graphics chips for some time now (300 MHz and more), so that you don’t need to bother about resolutions and refresh rates any more.

A large amount of memory (> 8 MB) is only needed for 3D modes at high resolutions and color depths. However, we do not recommend less than 16 MB today, since 8 MB cards usually come with older graphics chips.

Drivers

The Matrox homepage offers drivers for all common operating systems including Linux. Their Windows drivers have been stable and well designed, as we did not encounter any problems during our tests and benchmarks. I did not take screenshots of the windows to change the color setup and the resolution, as most of you will be aware of the available options.

This window shows some functions offered by Matrox’s software called Power Desk. Here you may enable or disable the Quick Desk utility, which is loaded by default when Windows starts up. Power Desk is also able to save the position of your windows and icons. After a system crash, the software will automatically restore their positions. «Performance» allows you to change some parameters which concern the 3D modes.

Here you can enable the Dual Head feature. «Clone» will show you the same screen on both monitors. «Zoom» will enlarge a section of the first screen and splash it onto the second. «DVD Max» makes it possible to show a DVD movie in the secondary screen. Finally, using «Multi Display» lets you expand the desktop onto both monitors.

Test System

Benchmarks

SYSmark 2000

I gave up benchmarking with BAPCo’s SYSmark quite early, as there is hardly any difference among the tested cards. All four cards score excellent 200 SYSmark points, mainly thanks to the GHz processor.

MDK2 Demo

At 16 Bits, the Millennium G450 is clearly slower than the cards from nVIDIA and ATI. A Radeon or GeForce 2 MX will give you approximately double the frame rates of the G450.

A similar result at 32 Bit color depth. Due to the limited memory bandwidth of the G450 chip, the results are only average. Even the lowest resolution we tested (1024×768) is hardly playable.

Mercedes Benz Truck Racing

The G450 does not emerge glorious in this benchmark. Again, the competitors are clearly faster.

As you can imagine, the performance does not increase at 32 Bit.

Quake III Arena

1024×768 at 16 Bits are quite playable, but at 1152×846 the frame rate drops below 30/s.

At 32 Bit you can play Quake III with all three competitors at up to 1280×1024. With a Matrox G450, you will have to switch down to 800×600 or to 640×480.

Overclocking

The chip and memory clock speed are linked with the G450, just as with ATI’s Radeon family. Of course you may overclock using utilities like Powerstrip, but both parameters will always be altered simultaneously. Matrox uses 6 ns SDRAM chips that are almost not overclockable. A little utility called MGA Tweak 1.20b makes overclocking easier, as you may also change the clock relationships:

You may download MGA Tweak at www.matroxusers.com.

I’m sorry to say it but even with this utility, which is supposed to be more powerful, we were not successful with overclocking. You can increase the basic clock speed by some MHz, however, the system quickly crashed at 175+ MHz. That speed will give you a little extra performance, but compared to the strong competition, the additional performance is still a drop in the ocean. Therefore, forget about overclocking — it’s hardly worth the effort in this case.

Conclusion

The Power Desk feature will most likely preserve Matrox’s market shares in the business sector. 3D performance is still on the same level as it was in late 1999. Consequently, 3D gamers should consider some of the other graphics cards out there. For 2D usage, I can imagine lots of possible applications and potential savings especially if you want to use two monitors.

That’s why the card can be recommended for business-only users. Think about the workplace of a web designer, developer, purchaser or even a dispatcher. Two monitors are certainly useful for those kinds of tasks. Matrox is still the reference point in this sector, but we’ll have to keep an eye out for nVIDIA’s launch of their own TwinView system for GeForce 2 MX cards. For the time being, the solution provided by Matrox makes a very good impression thanks to flexible setups and intelligent drivers. Taking this into consideration, the price of approximately $149 is certainly acceptable.

Ever since 3D acceleration became popular, the graphics market has changed. Of course you can still divide it into high and low end, but the Millennium G450 cannot be pegged as one or the other. The skinny 3D performance makes the G450 a low-end 3D-board, while the 2D features are definitely high-end. Don’t be surprised — that’s probably exactly what Matrox wanted.

The next chip generation called G800 is meant to get close to the top of the performance pile again. Hopefully this attempt will be successful, as Matrox still has a lot of support in the market along with a respectable market share of approx. 8%.