So so
Written: Mar 12 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good gaming card
Cons: poor OPENGL support
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| rshiroma's Full Review: Matrox Marvel G200-TV |
I initially purchased matrox cards starting with their first millenium series and was sold on the brand for several years thereafter. When the G100 hit the market I snatched a few for some new systems I was adding to an existing network. I immediately noticed bright vibrant colors and truly amazing resolutions with a 21" Viewsonic monitor. The glitch came when I found a bug with the card shutting off sporadically. I could not find a way to bring the image back. It occured very rarely and many times occurred while doing actual work like typing so this immediately was not from any energy star or screensaver setting. I used ATI rage cards as a temporary hold over while trying to get new G100's but the same effect occurred. Support told me I needed to flash the G100 bios which requires DOS. Unfortunately, all my computers with AGP slots run Windows NT4 or 2000 where the bios flasher will not run. In fact, when I tried to flash the bios from a DOS boot disk, the flasher could not back up the existing bios on the card and aborted the flash. I shelled out more money to upgrade to the G200 and the problem went away however, the G200 is a noticeable bottleneck in system performace. The G200 cards, even with the latest drivers, seems to have a high processor overhead. Applications now take 5-7 seconds to open verses 0.25 seconds with an ELSA Winner 4000. Things are just not "snappy" like before. I am even running 10,000 rpm U2Wide SCSI drives and the G200 put these monsters down like an epidemic. System performance is not bad but is definitely not good. CAD programs that we use must have good OPENGL drivers which matrox has yet to release. With the release of the G400, I feel that the G200 has been abandoned by matrox support and I am about to write a loss on this once proud company. One thing for certain, this card is really good for games which I have noticed an enhanced image verses the Voodoo2 cards but will suffer with games that need OPENGL drivers. Yet, windows are just not fluid moving and flashy when opening, closing and minimizing applications especially when using 3 or more windows (our engineering firm uses approximately 3 to 15 open windows avg). The effect seems as if the windows are "sticky" or redraws the screen in steps instead of a smooth and quick flash like the ELSA or Millenium II. Dragging windows around is a bit jerky and turning off view object while dragging is the only helpful solution. I have used 8 other vid cards in these systems including Diamond (bleh) and they performed nicely albeit a more dullish color palette than the G200. I am now sold on the ELSA brand which is a German company that has pleased me endlessly since 1993.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
rshiroma
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Member: Randy Shiroma
Location: Hawaii
Reviews written: 29
Trusted by: 4 members
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