MGA Plus
15 messages in this thread
Has anyone used the Matrox 64bit Impressions Plus card yet?
Any reviews or comments about its use in a 3D Studio environment?
I'm torn between it and a high-end Diamond card.
Thanks,
Danny…
Danny,
>> Has anyone used the Matrox 64bit Impressions Plus card yet? <<
it doesn't seem to supported yet. They say real soon now. In the meantime you
can use vesa mode (great :< )
>> I'm torn between it and a high-end Diamond card. <<
I've owned and used Diamond Stealth 64 4mb vram cards and they do the trick
NOW. Seem stable in Windows and 3ds and have been for 3 months.
I've had a couple of Diamond cards so far. I was thinking of getting the
Diamond PCI Viper with plenty of RAM. I've read some pretty good things about
it. Do you think the Stealth 64 with 4Mb is a better card than the Viper?
Bummer about 3DS not supporting the Matrox in its accelerated mode yet. I
guess I'll hold off until its supported.
Thanks Martin,
Danny…
Danny,
>> Do you think the Stealth 64 with 4Mb is a better card than the Viper? <<
This is an area I'm not sure I want to get into <G>. There's fans of both, but
I chose the Stealth 64 because it's supposed to be the fastest and Windows and
causes no problems in 3ds. The Viper has it's fans and I argue with Alan
Iglesias about this constantly, since that's his choice. You'd probably be
happy with either, but my vote goes for the Stealth because it works for me.
Yeah, he'd probably be happy with either. <g>
-Alan
Alan,
re: Viper and Stealth 64
>> Yeah, he'd probably be happy with either. <g> <<
Certainly would.
Danny,
>> Do you think the Stealth 64 with 4Mb is a better card than the Viper?
If you're going to be playing any flics from VESA mode, the Stealth 64 is about
10 times faster than the Viper.
John
Are you absolutely sure about this, John? I use the Viper with AApro (VESA
mode) every day and it fairly flies playing back FLx files, faster, in fact
than any machine I've ever used. Is there a benchmark I could check?
-Alan
Alan,
>> Is there a benchmark I could check?
Well, I was going by the standard PCBENCH 8 benchmarks by Ziff Davis. I suspect
what might be happenning is that the Matrox VESA implementation might be making
use of the actual Matrox chipset, which would account for the good performance.
PCBENCH just checks the basic DOS speed, which I assumed is what the VESA modes
would make use of. It looks like I'm wrong. Thanks for the heads-up!
John
Ah, the ever-popular Ziff-Davis DOS benchmarks! Yeah, it would seem that they
can be fairly misleading at times.
I've been told that the Viper's VESA mode uses the P9000/P9100 for
acceleration, and the performance seems to bear this out, but I'm not sure.
I can tell you that, in addition to AApro, all the DOS-based VESA-oriented SVGA
games (7th Guest, USN Fighters, NASCAR Racing, etc.) crank right along with the
Viper line of cards.
-Alan
I've seen it wot-rk but not in 3DS, and it seems a great card. It will probably
be supported soon for 3DS.
I have both, the Diamond Stealth 64 w/4meg vram, and the Matrox Impression+
w/4meg vram. I had a problem with the Impression and 3DS with one of my
pentiums, but that disappeared after I replaced the Opti PCI motherboard for an
Intel PCI motherboard. They both work well, and are about equal in my opinion
for photoshop and painter under windows.
Thanks for the feedback Andrew (and everyone else! <g>).
I think I'll go for the Diamond Stealth 64 w/4meg.
Danny…
The Diamond is a more recent addition to one of my machines, and after using it
with Premiere 4.0 for a solid two days, I would have to recommend it over the
Matrox. Much better performance.
Thanks Andrew, that just confirmed my choice of the Diamond over the MGA. (for
now).
Regards,
Danny…