(Above: The Matrox G550 Video Card)

The Technology

This card has an advanced Headcasting engine containing...

• An Extended Vertex Shader
• A DirectX 8 Palette Skinning Matrix
• and Real-Time Accelleration  for Photo Realistic Faces

These are great features but there is one downside (and a large one at that). This extended vertex Shader and Palette skinning matrix can only be used for communication using 3D Rendered Heads (more on that in a moment). This is the only thing it can be used in , it can't be used in games like the Geforce 3's Pixel And Vertex Shaders can. 

Remember this card is not meant for games, it is meant for business and office use.

It comes with DualHead technology. This is similar to Nvidia's Twinview technology but has the following advantages over Twinview...

• True Multi Monitor Support under Windows 2000
• Dual Integrated RAMDACs 
• Integrated TV-OUT

There is also eDualHead Browser Enhancements.

The Matrox G550 also claims to have the best DVD playback on a TV (inc. DVDMax which will be discussed in a moment also). It also claims to have the best analog output quality.

It has Dual Integrated DVI. The Matrox G550 has two dual textured rendering pipelines (like the Geforce2 MX).