3Dgaming MGA-G200 Feature Benefit List

Matrox has long been known for their excellence in quality, both in hardware and in software and the G200 chip certainly continues on in that tradition. The Matrox Mystique G200 is a well rounded product that quickly replaced the STB Velocity 128 that had previously resided in my second system. With visual quality on a par well above what can be achieved with the NVidia Riva 128, and with 3D acceleration comparable, there really was very little choice.

First Impressions

To say that my first impression of the G200 was good is an understatement. The box design was nice (not great), but what surprised me was the contents- these guys actually have a printed manual! Now, I realize that many of you don't read manuals, but in my previous life in tech support and MIS, I remember how handy it is to have a printed manual, just in case. Also inside was the card, and 3 CD-ROMs, one of which was an evaluation disk that I understand is not standard.

TheCD-ROMs included contain a full version of Motorhead and Incoming (both enhanced for use with the Matrox G200), and an OEM version of Tonic Trouble. There is also a host of other great demos of games if you are not satisfied with the main selections, but I think you will be.

I was particularly pleased with the bundled games because they were all child friendly- not necessarily all non-violent, but it is hard to object to Tonic Trouble and Motorhead, and while you are constantly shooting things in Incoming there is no foul language or blood. In fact the only problem that I had was getting my 4 year old to stop asking me to play Tonic Trouble, but there are worse problems to have- the game is great (review to come later).

I was also pleased with the SoftDVD performance. While I have not finished analyzing the frame drops and quality. I gave it a quick test with the DVD title I had on hand, Spawn, and it played it better than the i740 or the NVidia, and I would say is close to, if not better, than ATI. While playing Spawn I gave a quick look to system resources and they were consistantly under 50% on the Pentium II 266MHz system. This puts it in good position compared to the other new generation chips from NVidia and 3Dfx which need serious help from the processor and I believe that both currently require Pentium II 400 or better machines to achieve 30fps.

Final Findings

While the rival chips from NVidia and 3Dfx are definitly faster than the Matrox G200 in general game play, the Matrox wins out as the all around chip with game performance that will likely be enough for most and the multimedia performance that surpasses the others. This is the card to get for the family, and unless the Savage 3D can match its all around features, or the ATI 128 improves it's schedule I don't think there will be any competition for Family graphics card for christmas.

As a final note: I have tried the TV out and it seems to work very well. You can see the results of the Matrox TV out at 800x600, captured with an ATI card in the below screenshots:

Most of you will notice that the background black of the screenshot is greyish, this is due to a very dark output from the Matrox card to the video in of the ATI. I had to compensate for this by increasing the brightness in Matrox's advanced screen properties. At this time I do not know if the problem is on the Matrox side or the ATI side, but I should have an update in a week or so.

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