Baby Matrox  

Product name : Matrox Mystique 4Mb
Manufacturer : Matrox Graphics inc. (http://www.matrox.com)

Overview

This board has been around for about one year, and is quite known in the computers world. Matrox is a very important Canadian firm, famous for its very fast boards with 3D features, such as the Millenium board, one of the best choices for CAD users, able of very high resolutions at very high refresh rates.

When the Mystique hit the market, it was advertised as a very good choice for gamers and low-end and mid-range graphics applications, leaving the mid-high end ones to the Millenium. Almost one year has passed, and many new boards have come out, but the Mystique remains a good and cheap choice for everyone who wants a fast 2D and an acceptable 3D. Besides, the Mystique can be a very good choice for who wants to put a 3Dfx VooDoo based board for 3D games.

The boards comes in a good box, with the colorful logo and a short description on the front, and more deep description on the back. One one side there are the images of the included games and programs. In the version I have, the games are:

• Mech Warrior 2
• Destruction Derby 2
• Scorched Planet

There is also a software MPEG player and a 3D WIRL browser, which takes advantage of the 3D features, via Direct3D. On the other side there is the warranty (3 years) and the address of the firm.

Inside the box there is the wonderful manual, very complete and easy to understand and the CD-ROMs with the games and programs.

An important and interesting feature of this board is the possibility to add two modules, one called Rainbow Runner Video, which allows hardware MPEG and AVI video playback, video input and output, and the other called Rainbow Runner TV, an ISA TV tuner for viewing TV on your PC.

The board’s layout is very good, with the main chip (MGA1064SG) in the middle and some connectors, both for the Rainbow Runner modules and memory expansion (up to 8 Mb). A negative aspect is that’s impossible to connect the Rainbow module and the memory expansion at the same time.

The drivers support is wonderful. Matrox is always releasing new and more and more optimized ones for its boards, both under Windows95, 3.1,NT and OS/2. There are also drivers for AutoCAD and MicroStation to take advantage from 2D acceleration.

The 3D side is fast, but there some important features aren’t supported, such as bilinear filtering and fogging. This makes this board good for 3D in general, but not excellent. In fact these functions are fundamental for the new 3D games, since they make the graphics looking better.

Please note: when you read this review, a new version of the board, called Mystique 220 can be found in shops. The main difference is the chip (MGA1164SG) with a fastest RAMDAC (220Mhz) . It should be faster and allows higher refresh frequency at the same resolutions.

 Technical informations

 As told before, the board is based on the MGA1064SG chip, which is made by Matrox and grants hardware acceleration for 3D texture mapping, Windows, video and DOS. The boards comes with 4Mb of single-ported SGRAM memory (a kind of SDRAM devoted to graphics) upgradeable up to 8Mb, a 170Mhz RAMDAC and a standard DB-15 connector with DDC support and a Rainbow Runner input/output connector.

 Display modes

All the most used resolutions, even the wonderful 1152x864, are supported and always at very high refresh rates. The board is perfect for a 17" or 19" monitor. If you have a bigger monitor, than you would probably prefer a Millenium or a board which allows 1600x1200 at a higher refresh. Anyway at 1280x1024 it is possible to reach 90Hz, that’s very good. On the 3D side, the board can do 1152x864 at 65K colors and 800x600 at 16.7M colors.

Copyright 1999 - All rights reserved Hilbert Hagedoorn