Just replaced my PC, on which I have always had two lcd's driven by a Matrox G450 AGP. Switching over to a PCIe card I took a chance on an EVGA geforce 6200 card, due to the fact that I was having some driver/card related problems(I now am pretty sure the G450 was on its way out). I have often read that Matrox has the sharpest graphics around, and compared to the EVGA card it seems to be true, as the graphics are simply not sharp, vertical lines especially being somewhat fuzzy. Also, I just noticed some very unstable waviness in a small blue area, so I'm thinking the card may be defective. I did uninstall the ATI driver that came on the PC, installed Nvidia's driver, and adjusted the monitors, so I'm wondering if these graphics can be tweaked, or should I go back to a Matrox card. Thanks. Alan
I doubt the G450 is "on the way out". Matrox Tech Support says there will be an updated driver sometime to get *some* 3D performance out of all their workstation cards. Suggest you remove all video drivers (see Driverheaven cleanup program, too), then reinstall the Matrox and see how it looks. http://www.drivercleaner.net/professional.html
I guess I didn't make myself clear, I got rid of the Matrox because it is an AGP, and wanted to switch to PCIe. But I think it was on its way out, though, 4 years old and doing some very weird stuff at the end. Alan
OK. You could get either a G450 or G550 PCI card. Matrox has PCIE cards, too... a G550, a dualhead x1, and others. If I were in your shoes, I'd try a Matrox card before drawing conclusions. You at least have past experience with Matrox as a point of reference.
I guess I stayed clear of the Matrox this time around because the G550 PCIe is only PCIe x 1. I know it's still faster than PCI, but isn't it a little strange that they didn't try to maximize the benefit of the new slot? Or is this irrelevant as it pertains to bringing up charts? Thanks. Alan
Hmmm... Matrox cards are designed for workstation apps, not gaming. They *really* are not much good for anything 3D. (Even my cool Marine Aquarium screen saver won't run on my P4 rig with a G450... no 3D capability.) Therefore I think they've done the most logical thing... making a x1 card which will work in all PCIE slots. If you think about it, a x16 card for charting would be waaay overkill. It would work OK, but that much bandwidth capability would be completely unnecessary. Working from memory... I believe that even PCIE x1 has greater bandwidth than AGP (??). For charting apps, you should see zero reduction in performance. Too bad they're so new... not likely to pick one up on eBay for cheap. FWIW... I'm sticking with AGP for trading until either my current machines die or the extended support for XP Pro runs out... 2012, or so.