Matrox P650

[Buck]

Has anyone used one of these cards for office work? Has anyone used one of these cards for Age of Empires: The Conquerers? It does support DirectX 8.1, but I'm wondering at how well it will play AOE. Since that is the only game I play when I have time, that is the only game I'm worrying about. Other then that, I want excellent 2D support which I know I'll get from that card. Plus, the option of two DVI LCD displays.

 

[Buck]

I suppose there is only one true way of finding out. I'll let you know how things go when I get it installed.

 

[The JoJo]

Please do, I've always wanted to get a Matrox for myself, but haven't.

Mostly due to the fact that I've played games also. Nowadays that doesn't seem to happen so often, so I just might try one out on my main rig. I already swapped the Geforce4 TI4200 to another box, and replaced it with a Geforce2 with the fan ripped out (Been working ok like that for ages).

 

[Buck]

I have two cards installed. One is in a PIII 1.2Ghz system the other in a Athlon 1400C system. Cards work beautifully and play AOE just fine. The 2D quality was a huge increase in the Athlon system as I was previously using a GeForce2 MX 400 card. This 2D difference was especially noticable once I jumped to 1152 x 864 with my Viewsonic A95f monitor. However, the quality is not so good at 1280 x 960. I'm guessing this might be a limitation of the monitor. On the PIII system, I have upgraded from a ATI 9000, which already is a nice card. So there was little difference in quality at 1024 x 768 with my 17-inch Gateway2000 Vivitron monitor. However, at 1152 x 864 it is still good, although the monitor won't let me bump the refresh up to 85Hz; I'm stuck at 75Hz.

The installation was easy even with ATI and GeForce drivers and software installed for the previous cards. Windows XP does a nice job up updating hardware.

 

[SteveC]

Thanks for the update, Buck. If you get the chance to try them out on monitors that do 1600x1200, could you let us know how they look?


P.S. I hope you're not too close to those fires out there.

 

[Buck]

Thanks for the update, Buck. If you get the chance to try them out on monitors that do 1600x1200, could you let us know how they look?


P.S. I hope you're not too close to those fires out there.

Rodger Dodger. I was thinking of upgrading one of these monitors soon, so if the money truck hits me just right, I'll make the switch to a new monitor and try some higher resolutions.

Thanks for the interest in the raging fires, although I've been in the clear. The only problem that I've had to contend with, until today, was the thick layer of smoke that has polluted our skies, turning the sun run, and causing ash to rain upon us all day and all night long. However, the winds out of the east have stopped and we are back to our normal on-shore flow, which brings ocean air out of the west. This has helped clear our skies along the coast and bring us some much-needed fresh air and cooler temperatures (I believe mubs should be feeling these benefits too). Unfortunately, this has also affected the fires negatively as their path of consumption has switched, endangering new areas to the east. All of which are thankfully far from me, but ruinously close to thousands of other Californians. Sorry for the long story, but I couldn’t figure out any other way to explain the situation in a concise manner.

 

[Mercutio]

Do you actually live on San Juan Capistrano? Isn't that an island?

 

[Buck]

San Juan Capistrano is a city in south Orange County, which in turn is a county sandwiched between Los Angeles County to the north and San Diego County to the south in the state of California. We are not on an island, however, San Juan is a city in Puerto Rico, which is an island.

 

[Mercutio]

I think I'm confusing it with Catalina.

 

[Buck]

I think I'm confusing it with Catalina.

Yes, Santa Catalina is a small island off our coast.

 

[mubs]

Yep, Buck's report is pretty good. An orange orb in the sky instead of the sun, smoke strong enough to make it unpleasant outdoors, and ash! Ash everywhere. The latest count is 16 dead, 1800+ homes and 600k+ acres burned. People build in unsafe areas, won't clear brush, and this is the result. All it takes is a nut to start the fire. The San Diego area fire (the worst) is known to have been started by a lost hunter who set off a flare. It's suspected that some of the other fires are arson as well. Bad, really bad.

Anaheim is in the northern part of Orange County. Orange county as a whole, thankfully, has been unscathed.

Re. the video card:

I've never used an nVidia card, so don't know how good/bad it is. I was a Matrox guy till my current card, a first gen Radeon (32 DDR). How do the Radeons compare in 2D quality to the Matroxii?

 

[Buck]

Mubs,

With my older Gateway2000 Vivitron, the difference at 1024 x 768 is negligible. I cannot say what the difference would be with a good or high-end monitor in comparison to the Radeon family for 2D quality. There are just to many limititions with this not-really-vivid Vivitron.


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PS for a previous post: I should have stated that the sun was red not run, I'm not trying to rhyme sun with run or fun for that matter.