Matrox G400
Encyclopedia
The G400 is a video card made by Matrox
, released in September 1999. The graphics processor contains a 2D GUI
, video, and Direct3D
6.0 3D accelerator. Codenamed "Toucan
", it was a more powerful and refined version of its predecessor, the G200
.
The Matrox G200 graphics processor had been a successful product, competing with the various 2D & 3D combination cards available in 1998. Matrox took the technology developed from the G200 project, refined it, and basically doubled it up to form the G400 processor. The new chip featured several new and innovative additions, such as multiple monitor output support, an all-around 32-bit rendering pipeline with high performance, further improved 2D and video acceleration, and a new 3D feature known as Environment Mapped Bump Mapping
.
Internally the G400 is a 256-bit processor, using what Matrox calls a "DualBus" architecture. This is an evolution of G200's "DualBus", which had been 128-bit. A Matrox "DualBus" chip consists of twin unidirectional buses internally, each moving data into or out of the chip. This increases the efficiency and bandwidth of data flow within the chip to each of its functional units. G400's 3D engine consists of 2 parallel
pixel pipelines with 1 texture unit each, providing single-pass dual-texturing capability. The Millennium G400 MAX is capable of 333 megapixels per second fillrate at its 166 MHz core clock speed. It is purely a Direct3D 6.0 accelerator and, as such, lacks support for the later hardware transform and lighting acceleration of Direct3D 7.0 cards.
The chip's external memory interface is 128-bit and is designed to use either SDRAM
or SGRAM. Matrox released both 16 MiB
and 32 MiB versions of the G400 boards, and used both types of RAM. The slowest models are equipped with 166 MHz SDRAM, while the fastest (G400 MAX) uses 200 MHz SGRAM. G400MAX had the highest memory bandwidth of any card before the release of the DDR
-equipped version of NVIDIA
GeForce 256
.
Perhaps the most notable feature of G400 is its ability to drive two separate monitors to display a single desktop. This feature is known as "DualHead" and was a decisive edge for Matrox over the card's competitors at the time. The DualHead capability not only offered desktop widening but also desktop cloning (two screens showing the same thing) and a special "DVDMAX" mode which outputs video overlays onto the second monitor. Matrox's award-winning Powerdesk display drivers and control panel integrated Dualhead in a very flexible and functional way that become world-renowned for its effectiveness. However, contrary to the video mode's name, G400 does not support full DVD decoding hardware acceleration. G400 does have partial support for the DVD video decoding process but it does not perform inverse discrete cosine transform IDCT or motion compensation
in hardware (the two most demanding steps of the process).
The G400 chip supports, in hardware, a texture-based surface detailing method called Environment Mapped Bump Mapping (EMBM). EMBM was actually created by BitBoys Oy
and licensed to Matrox. EMBM was not supported by several competitors such as NVIDIA's GeForce 256
through GeForce 2, which only supported the simpler Dot-3 BM, but was available on the ATI Radeon 7200
. Due to this lack of industry-wide support, and its toll on the limited graphics hardware of the time, EMBM only saw limited use during G400's time. Only a few games supported the feature, such as Dungeon Keeper 2
and Millennium Soldier: Expendable
. EMBM requires either specialized hardware within the chip for its calculations or a more flexible and programmable graphics pipeline, such as later DirectX 8.0 accelerators like the GeForce 3 and Radeon 8500.
G400's rendering pipelined uses what Matrox called Vibrant Color Quality 2 (VCQ2), a functionality in which all internal 3D calculations are done with 32-bit
precision. The goal was to prevent dithering and other artifacts caused by inadequate precision when performing calculations. The result was the best quality 16-bit
and 32-bit color modes available at the time.
Matrox was known for their quality analog
display output on prior cards and the G400 is no exception. G400 was the benchmark for signal quality for several years, significantly outperforming some competitors (notably pre-GeForce4
NVIDIA cards). Where many cards were crippled by blurry output, especially as the resolution
and refresh rate
increased, the Matrox cards delivered very sharp and clear images.
G400 is the first Matrox board compatible with AGP
4X. Most G400 boards actually only support 2X mode, but there are later revisions, identifiable by their model number, that are fully 4X compliant and run at the higher speed if the motherboard is capable as well.
ICD). With regard to its hardware, G400's triangle setup engine, called the "Warp Engine" ironically, was somewhat slower than the counterparts aboard the competition's cards. However, the Warp engine was programmable which theoretically enhanced flexibility of the chip. Unfortunately Matrox never described the functionality of this component in-depth so little is known about it.
As said earlier, G400 suffered at launch from driver problems. While its Direct3D performance was admirable, its OpenGL installable client driver (ICD) component was very poor. The situation was eerily similar to what had happened with the older G200, with its near-total lack of credible OpenGL support. Matrox made it very clear that they were committed to supporting OpenGL, however, and development rapidly progressed. G400 initially launched with a Direct3D to OpenGL wrapper driver
, like G200, that translated an application's OpenGL calls into Direct3D (a slow and buggy solution). Eventually a native OpenGL driver called "TurboGL" was released, but it was only designed to support several popular games of the time (i.e. Quake3). This driver was a precursor to a fully functional OpenGL ICD driver, a quick development to improve performance as fast as possible by offering an interim solution. Since TurboGL didn't support all OpenGL applications, it was essentially a "Mini ICD" much like 3DFX
had used with their Voodoo boards. TurboGL included support for then-new SIMD technologies from AMD and Intel, including SSE1 and 3DNow!
. In mid-2000 the G400 received a fully compliant OpenGL ICD which offered capable performance in most OpenGL-supporting software. The G400 continually received official driver updates into 2006.
Even with initial driver difficulties, Matrox G400 was very competitive. 2D and Direct3D performance were more than competitive with the NVIDIA RIVA TNT2
, 3dfx
Voodoo3
, and ATI Rage 128 Pro. In fact, prior to the release of the NVIDIA GeForce 256
, the Millennium G400 MAX was a respectable Direct3D card, competitive with Voodoo3 3500 and TNT2 Ultra. 3dfx had an edge in some games with its low-overhead Glide API
and NVIDIA was, for a long time, king of OpenGL
.
. The problem was with the Zoran chip used for hardware MJPEG
video compression on the Marvel G400 card. Matrox tried to make stable drivers for several months but with no luck. A Matrox user going by name Adis hacked original drivers to make the card work under Windows 2000. The driver was later updated for Windows XP
, and then for Windows Server 2003
. Video capturing was possible but drivers are still based on VfW
. Hardware MJPEG capturing can be unstable but software compression, using a good video codec, gives much better results anyway. There are no WDM
drivers available for this card.
was to the G200
, G450 was primarily a die shrink of the G400 core from the 250 nm semiconductor fabrication process to 180 nm. By shrinking the core, costs are reduced because more chips are made per wafer at the factory, and Matrox can take the time to fix earlier mistakes in the core, and trim or add new functionality. Matrox clocked the G450 core at 125 MHz, just like the plain G400. Overclocking tests showed that the core was unable to achieve higher speeds than G400 even though it was manufactured on a newer process.
Perhaps the biggest addition to G450 was that Matrox moved the previously external second RAMDAC
, for the second monitor connector (DualHead), into the G450 chip itself. RAMDAC speeds were still different though, with the primary running at an excellent 360 MHz, but the secondary running at only 230 MHz. This meant that the primary monitor could run much higher resolutions
and refresh rate
s than the secondary. This was the same as G400. The G450 also had native support for TDMS
signaling, and thus DVI
, but this was not a standard issue connector. Boards shipped with dual analog VGA
connectors.
G450 was adapted to use a DDR SDRAM
memory interface, instead of the older single data rate (SDR) SGRAM and SDRAM used on G400. By doing this they were able to switch to a 64-bit memory bus and use the DDR memory to equal the previous memory bandwidth by clocking the RAM again at 166 MHz. A 64-bit bus reduces the board's complexity (and cost) because fewer traces
have to be used, and potentially the pin-count of the graphics processor can be significantly reduced if the chip is designed only for a 64-bit bus. However, DDR is not 100% as effective as a SDR memory on a faster bus, so performance actually dropped somewhat.
The new G450 again had support for AGP
4X, like some later-produced G400 boards. The 3D capabilities of G450 were identical to G400. Unfortunately, because of the identical core clock and due to lower memory bandwidth, G450 was slower than G400 in games.
Marvel G450 eTV not only had a TV tuner, but also was a launchpad for Matrox's new eDualHead dual display enhancement. It added some new features to DualHead that worked with Internet Explorer
to make pages show up on both screens at once.
On 2005-7-13, Matrox Graphics Inc. announced the availability of Millennium G550 PCIe, the world's first PCI Express
x1 graphics card. The card uses Texas Instruments
XIO2000 bridge controller to achieve PCI Express support.
, in that Parhelia is a 4 pipeline DirectX 8 GPU with 4 texture units per pipeline.
Matrox
Matrox is a producer of video card components and equipment for personal computers. Based in Dorval, Quebec, Canada it was founded by Lorne Trottier and Branko Matić....
, released in September 1999. The graphics processor contains a 2D GUI
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
, video, and Direct3D
Direct3D
Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface . Direct3D is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems , and for other platforms through the open source software Wine. It is the base for the graphics API on the Xbox and Xbox 360 console systems...
6.0 3D accelerator. Codenamed "Toucan
Toucan
Toucans are members of the family Ramphastidae of near passerine birds from the Neotropics. The family is most closely related to the American barbets. They are brightly marked and have large, often colorful bills. The family includes five genera and about forty different species...
", it was a more powerful and refined version of its predecessor, the G200
Matrox G200
The G200 is a 2D, 3D, and video accelerator chip for personal computers designed by Matrox. It was released in 1998.-History:Matrox had been known for years as a significant player in the high-end 2D graphics accelerator market. Cards they produced were excellent Windows accelerators, and some of...
.
Overview
Bump mapping
Bump mapping is a technique in computer graphics for simulating bumps and wrinkles on the surface of an object. This is achieved by perturbing the surface normals of the object and using the perturbed normal during lighting calculations. The result is an apparently bumpy surface rather than a...
.
Internally the G400 is a 256-bit processor, using what Matrox calls a "DualBus" architecture. This is an evolution of G200's "DualBus", which had been 128-bit. A Matrox "DualBus" chip consists of twin unidirectional buses internally, each moving data into or out of the chip. This increases the efficiency and bandwidth of data flow within the chip to each of its functional units. G400's 3D engine consists of 2 parallel
Superscalar
A superscalar CPU architecture implements a form of parallelism called instruction level parallelism within a single processor. It therefore allows faster CPU throughput than would otherwise be possible at a given clock rate...
pixel pipelines with 1 texture unit each, providing single-pass dual-texturing capability. The Millennium G400 MAX is capable of 333 megapixels per second fillrate at its 166 MHz core clock speed. It is purely a Direct3D 6.0 accelerator and, as such, lacks support for the later hardware transform and lighting acceleration of Direct3D 7.0 cards.
The chip's external memory interface is 128-bit and is designed to use either SDRAM
SDRAM
Synchronous dynamic random access memory is dynamic random access memory that is synchronized with the system bus. Classic DRAM has an asynchronous interface, which means that it responds as quickly as possible to changes in control inputs...
or SGRAM. Matrox released both 16 MiB
MIB
MIB may refer to any of several concepts:* Master of International Business, a postgraduate business degree* Melayu Islam Beraja, the adopted national philosophy of Brunei* Motion induced blindness, a visual illusion in peripheral vision...
and 32 MiB versions of the G400 boards, and used both types of RAM. The slowest models are equipped with 166 MHz SDRAM, while the fastest (G400 MAX) uses 200 MHz SGRAM. G400MAX had the highest memory bandwidth of any card before the release of the DDR
DDR SDRAM
Double data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory is a class of memory integrated circuits used in computers. DDR SDRAM has been superseded by DDR2 SDRAM and DDR3 SDRAM, neither of which are either forward or backward compatible with DDR SDRAM, meaning that DDR2 or DDR3 memory modules...
-equipped version of NVIDIA
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
GeForce 256
GeForce 256
The GeForce 256 is the original release in Nvidia's "GeForce" product-line. Released on August 31, 1999, the GeForce 256 improves on its predecessor by increasing the number of fixed pixel pipelines, offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting engine, and adding...
.
Perhaps the most notable feature of G400 is its ability to drive two separate monitors to display a single desktop. This feature is known as "DualHead" and was a decisive edge for Matrox over the card's competitors at the time. The DualHead capability not only offered desktop widening but also desktop cloning (two screens showing the same thing) and a special "DVDMAX" mode which outputs video overlays onto the second monitor. Matrox's award-winning Powerdesk display drivers and control panel integrated Dualhead in a very flexible and functional way that become world-renowned for its effectiveness. However, contrary to the video mode's name, G400 does not support full DVD decoding hardware acceleration. G400 does have partial support for the DVD video decoding process but it does not perform inverse discrete cosine transform IDCT or motion compensation
Motion compensation
Motion compensation is an algorithmic technique employed in the encoding of video data for video compression, for example in the generation of MPEG-2 files. Motion compensation describes a picture in terms of the transformation of a reference picture to the current picture. The reference picture...
in hardware (the two most demanding steps of the process).
BitBoys Oy
Bitboys Oy is a hardware development and licensing company based in Finland, founded in 1991 and acquired by ATI Technologies for up to US$44M on May 2, 2006...
and licensed to Matrox. EMBM was not supported by several competitors such as NVIDIA's GeForce 256
GeForce 256
The GeForce 256 is the original release in Nvidia's "GeForce" product-line. Released on August 31, 1999, the GeForce 256 improves on its predecessor by increasing the number of fixed pixel pipelines, offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting engine, and adding...
through GeForce 2, which only supported the simpler Dot-3 BM, but was available on the ATI Radeon 7200
Radeon R100
The Radeon R100 is the first generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The line features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 7.0 and OpenGL 1.3, and all but the entry-level versions offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting engine, a major...
. Due to this lack of industry-wide support, and its toll on the limited graphics hardware of the time, EMBM only saw limited use during G400's time. Only a few games supported the feature, such as Dungeon Keeper 2
Dungeon Keeper 2
Dungeon Keeper 2 is a strategy game developed by Bullfrog Productions and published by Electronic Arts in 1999 for Microsoft Windows. It was released in Europe and North America in June 1999. It was the sequel to Peter Molyneux's Dungeon Keeper and predecessor to the canceled Dungeon Keeper 3...
and Millennium Soldier: Expendable
Millennium Soldier: Expendable
Millennium Soldier: Expendable is the title of a shoot 'em up video game that was released by British developer Rage Software for Microsoft Windows in 1998, the Sega Dreamcast in 1999, and the PlayStation in 2000. It is in the format of a modern arcade game...
. EMBM requires either specialized hardware within the chip for its calculations or a more flexible and programmable graphics pipeline, such as later DirectX 8.0 accelerators like the GeForce 3 and Radeon 8500.
G400's rendering pipelined uses what Matrox called Vibrant Color Quality 2 (VCQ2), a functionality in which all internal 3D calculations are done with 32-bit
32-bit
The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....
precision. The goal was to prevent dithering and other artifacts caused by inadequate precision when performing calculations. The result was the best quality 16-bit
Highcolour
High color graphics is a method of storing image information in a computer's memory such that each pixel is represented by two bytes...
and 32-bit color modes available at the time.
Matrox was known for their quality analog
Analog signal
An analog or analogue signal is any continuous signal for which the time varying feature of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity, i.e., analogous to another time varying signal. It differs from a digital signal in terms of small fluctuations in the signal which are...
display output on prior cards and the G400 is no exception. G400 was the benchmark for signal quality for several years, significantly outperforming some competitors (notably pre-GeForce4
GeForce4
The GeForce4 refers to the fourth-generation of GeForce-branded graphics processing units manufactured by Nvidia. There are two different GeForce4 families, the high-performance Ti family, and the budget MX family. The MX family spawned a mostly identical GeForce4 Go family for the laptop market...
NVIDIA cards). Where many cards were crippled by blurry output, especially as the resolution
Display resolution
The display resolution of a digital television or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution is controlled by all different factors in cathode ray tube , flat panel or projection...
and refresh rate
Refresh rate
The refresh rate is the number of times in a second that a display hardware draws the data...
increased, the Matrox cards delivered very sharp and clear images.
G400 is the first Matrox board compatible with AGP
Accelerated Graphics Port
The Accelerated Graphics Port is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a video card to a computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. Since 2004 AGP has been progressively phased out in favor of PCI Express...
4X. Most G400 boards actually only support 2X mode, but there are later revisions, identifiable by their model number, that are fully 4X compliant and run at the higher speed if the motherboard is capable as well.
Performance
G400 was known for being particularly dependent on the host system's CPU for high 3D performance. This was attributed both to its architecture and to the poor drivers it relied on for much of its life (especially OpenGLOpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
ICD). With regard to its hardware, G400's triangle setup engine, called the "Warp Engine" ironically, was somewhat slower than the counterparts aboard the competition's cards. However, the Warp engine was programmable which theoretically enhanced flexibility of the chip. Unfortunately Matrox never described the functionality of this component in-depth so little is known about it.
As said earlier, G400 suffered at launch from driver problems. While its Direct3D performance was admirable, its OpenGL installable client driver (ICD) component was very poor. The situation was eerily similar to what had happened with the older G200, with its near-total lack of credible OpenGL support. Matrox made it very clear that they were committed to supporting OpenGL, however, and development rapidly progressed. G400 initially launched with a Direct3D to OpenGL wrapper driver
Adapter pattern
In computer programming, the adapter pattern is a design pattern that translates one interface for a class into a compatible interface...
, like G200, that translated an application's OpenGL calls into Direct3D (a slow and buggy solution). Eventually a native OpenGL driver called "TurboGL" was released, but it was only designed to support several popular games of the time (i.e. Quake3). This driver was a precursor to a fully functional OpenGL ICD driver, a quick development to improve performance as fast as possible by offering an interim solution. Since TurboGL didn't support all OpenGL applications, it was essentially a "Mini ICD" much like 3DFX
3dfx
3dfx Interactive was a company that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units and, later, graphics cards. It was a pioneer in the field for several years in the late 1990s until 2000 when it underwent one of the most high-profile demises in the history of the PC industry...
had used with their Voodoo boards. TurboGL included support for then-new SIMD technologies from AMD and Intel, including SSE1 and 3DNow!
3DNow!
3DNow! is an extension to the x86 instruction set developed by Advanced Micro Devices . It adds single instruction multiple data instructions to the base x86 instruction set, enabling it to perform simple vector processing, which improves the performance of many graphic-intensive applications...
. In mid-2000 the G400 received a fully compliant OpenGL ICD which offered capable performance in most OpenGL-supporting software. The G400 continually received official driver updates into 2006.
Even with initial driver difficulties, Matrox G400 was very competitive. 2D and Direct3D performance were more than competitive with the NVIDIA RIVA TNT2
RIVA TNT2
The RIVA TNT2 was a graphics processing unit manufactured by Nvidia starting in early 1999. The chip is codenamed "NV5" because it is the 5th graphics chip design by Nvidia, succeeding the RIVA TNT . RIVA is an acronym for Real-time Interactive Video and Animation accelerator...
, 3dfx
3dfx
3dfx Interactive was a company that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units and, later, graphics cards. It was a pioneer in the field for several years in the late 1990s until 2000 when it underwent one of the most high-profile demises in the history of the PC industry...
Voodoo3
Voodoo3
Voodoo3 was a series of computer gaming video cards manufactured and designed by 3dfx Interactive. It was the successor to the company's high-end Voodoo 2 line and was based heavily upon the older Voodoo Banshee product. Voodoo3 was announced at COMDEX '98 and arrived on store shelves in 1999...
, and ATI Rage 128 Pro. In fact, prior to the release of the NVIDIA GeForce 256
GeForce 256
The GeForce 256 is the original release in Nvidia's "GeForce" product-line. Released on August 31, 1999, the GeForce 256 improves on its predecessor by increasing the number of fixed pixel pipelines, offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting engine, and adding...
, the Millennium G400 MAX was a respectable Direct3D card, competitive with Voodoo3 3500 and TNT2 Ultra. 3dfx had an edge in some games with its low-overhead Glide API
Glide API
Glide is a 3D graphics API developed by 3dfx Interactive for their Voodoo Graphics 3D accelerator cards. Although it originally started as a proprietary API, it was later open sourced by 3dfx. It was dedicated to gaming performance, supporting geometry and texture mapping primarily, in data...
and NVIDIA was, for a long time, king of OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
.
Marvel G400-TV - Zoran chip
Matrox stopped support for Marvel G400-TV early because there was no way to make it fully functional in Windows 2000Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...
. The problem was with the Zoran chip used for hardware MJPEG
MJPEG
In multimedia, Motion JPEG is an informal name for a class of video formats where each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is separately compressed as a JPEG image...
video compression on the Marvel G400 card. Matrox tried to make stable drivers for several months but with no luck. A Matrox user going by name Adis hacked original drivers to make the card work under Windows 2000. The driver was later updated for Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
, and then for Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 is a server operating system produced by Microsoft, introduced on 24 April 2003. An updated version, Windows Server 2003 R2, was released to manufacturing on 6 December 2005...
. Video capturing was possible but drivers are still based on VfW
Video for Windows
Video for Windows was a multimedia framework developed by Microsoft that allowed Microsoft Windows to play digital video.-Overview:...
. Hardware MJPEG capturing can be unstable but software compression, using a good video codec, gives much better results anyway. There are no WDM
Windows Driver Model
In computing, the Windows Driver Model — also known at one point as the Win32 Driver Model — is a framework for device drivers that was introduced with Windows 98 and Windows 2000 to replace VxD, which was used on older versions of Windows such as Windows 95 and Windows 3.1, as well...
drivers available for this card.
Matrox G450
In Fall of 2000, Matrox introduced the G450 chip (codenamed Condor) as a successor to the G400 line. Like the G250Matrox G200
The G200 is a 2D, 3D, and video accelerator chip for personal computers designed by Matrox. It was released in 1998.-History:Matrox had been known for years as a significant player in the high-end 2D graphics accelerator market. Cards they produced were excellent Windows accelerators, and some of...
was to the G200
Matrox G200
The G200 is a 2D, 3D, and video accelerator chip for personal computers designed by Matrox. It was released in 1998.-History:Matrox had been known for years as a significant player in the high-end 2D graphics accelerator market. Cards they produced were excellent Windows accelerators, and some of...
, G450 was primarily a die shrink of the G400 core from the 250 nm semiconductor fabrication process to 180 nm. By shrinking the core, costs are reduced because more chips are made per wafer at the factory, and Matrox can take the time to fix earlier mistakes in the core, and trim or add new functionality. Matrox clocked the G450 core at 125 MHz, just like the plain G400. Overclocking tests showed that the core was unable to achieve higher speeds than G400 even though it was manufactured on a newer process.
Perhaps the biggest addition to G450 was that Matrox moved the previously external second RAMDAC
RAMDAC
Random Access Memory Digital-to-Analog Converter is a combination of three fast DACs with a small SRAM used in computer graphics display adapters to store the color palette and to generate the analog signals to drive a color monitor...
, for the second monitor connector (DualHead), into the G450 chip itself. RAMDAC speeds were still different though, with the primary running at an excellent 360 MHz, but the secondary running at only 230 MHz. This meant that the primary monitor could run much higher resolutions
Display resolution
The display resolution of a digital television or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution is controlled by all different factors in cathode ray tube , flat panel or projection...
and refresh rate
Refresh rate
The refresh rate is the number of times in a second that a display hardware draws the data...
s than the secondary. This was the same as G400. The G450 also had native support for TDMS
Transition Minimized Differential Signaling
Transition-minimized differential signaling is a technology for transmitting high-speed serial data and is used by the DVI and HDMI video interfaces, as well as other digital communication interfaces....
signaling, and thus DVI
Digital Visual Interface
The Digital Visual Interface is a video interface standard covering the transmission of video between a source device and a display device. The DVI standard has achieved widespread acceptance in the PC industry, both in desktop PCs and monitors...
, but this was not a standard issue connector. Boards shipped with dual analog VGA
Video Graphics Array
Video Graphics Array refers specifically to the display hardware first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, but through its widespread adoption has also come to mean either an analog computer display standard, the 15-pin D-subminiature VGA connector or the 640×480 resolution...
connectors.
G450 was adapted to use a DDR SDRAM
DDR SDRAM
Double data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory is a class of memory integrated circuits used in computers. DDR SDRAM has been superseded by DDR2 SDRAM and DDR3 SDRAM, neither of which are either forward or backward compatible with DDR SDRAM, meaning that DDR2 or DDR3 memory modules...
memory interface, instead of the older single data rate (SDR) SGRAM and SDRAM used on G400. By doing this they were able to switch to a 64-bit memory bus and use the DDR memory to equal the previous memory bandwidth by clocking the RAM again at 166 MHz. A 64-bit bus reduces the board's complexity (and cost) because fewer traces
Printed circuit board
A printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, tracks or signal traces etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. It is also referred to as printed wiring board or etched wiring...
have to be used, and potentially the pin-count of the graphics processor can be significantly reduced if the chip is designed only for a 64-bit bus. However, DDR is not 100% as effective as a SDR memory on a faster bus, so performance actually dropped somewhat.
The new G450 again had support for AGP
Accelerated Graphics Port
The Accelerated Graphics Port is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a video card to a computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. Since 2004 AGP has been progressively phased out in favor of PCI Express...
4X, like some later-produced G400 boards. The 3D capabilities of G450 were identical to G400. Unfortunately, because of the identical core clock and due to lower memory bandwidth, G450 was slower than G400 in games.
Marvel G450 eTV not only had a TV tuner, but also was a launchpad for Matrox's new eDualHead dual display enhancement. It added some new features to DualHead that worked with Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
to make pages show up on both screens at once.
Matrox G550
MGA-G550 processor added a second pixel pipeline, hardware transform and lighting, and the HeadCasting Engine, a hardware implementation of a vertex shader for accelerated matrix palette skinning. It does this by improving on the 96 constant registers specified for by Direct X 8.0 to a total of 256. Despite the feature, it is inaccessible by DirectX driver. Matrox only supports HeadCasting feature through the bundled Matrox Digimask software, which have never become popular.On 2005-7-13, Matrox Graphics Inc. announced the availability of Millennium G550 PCIe, the world's first PCI Express
PCI Express
PCI Express , officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a computer expansion card standard designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X, and AGP bus standards...
x1 graphics card. The card uses Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...
XIO2000 bridge controller to achieve PCI Express support.
Unreleased products
Findings within a release of Matrox graphics drivers (MGA64.sys v4.77.027) mentioned a never-released Matrox Millennium G800. The MGA-G800, codenamed Condor 2, would have been clocked at 200 MHz core with 200 MHz DDR memory (6.4 GB/s bandwidth). The chip had 3 pixel pipelines with 3 texture units each. It was also equipped with a hardware transform and lighting unit capable of processing 20-30 million triangles per second. Further speculation included a memory controller that could support DDR SDRAM and DDR FC-RAM, DirectX 8.0 compliance, and a faster version running at 250 MHz. These specifications are somewhat reminiscent of Matrox ParheliaMatrox Parhelia
Matrox Parhelia-512 is a GPU with full support for DirectX 8.1 and incorporating several DirectX 9.0 features. It was best known for its ability to drive three monitors and its Coral Reef tech demo.-Background:...
, in that Parhelia is a 4 pipeline DirectX 8 GPU with 4 texture units per pipeline.
Models
| Board Name |
Core Type |
Process | Core (MHz) |
Memory (MHz) |
Pipe Config |
T&L | Memory Interface |
Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Millennium G400 | Toucan | 250 nm | 125 | 166 | 2x1 | N | 128-bit | 32 MiB SGRAM or 16 MiB SGRAM/SDRAM SDRAM Synchronous dynamic random access memory is dynamic random access memory that is synchronized with the system bus. Classic DRAM has an asynchronous interface, which means that it responds as quickly as possible to changes in control inputs... |
| Millennium G400 MAX | Toucan | 250 nm | 150 | 200 | 2x1 | N | 128-bit | 32 MiB SGRAM. Needs fan. Highest memory bandwidth until GeForce 256 DDR GeForce 256 The GeForce 256 is the original release in Nvidia's "GeForce" product-line. Released on August 31, 1999, the GeForce 256 improves on its predecessor by increasing the number of fixed pixel pipelines, offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting engine, and adding... . 3.2 GB Gigabyte The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is... /s |
| Marvel G400-TV | Toucan | 250 nm | 125 | 166 | 2x1 | N | 128-bit | 16 MiB SGRAM. Video capture & TV tuner. |
| Millennium G450 | Condor | 180 nm | 125 | 166 | 2x1 | N | 64-bit | DDR SDRAM DDR SDRAM Double data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory is a class of memory integrated circuits used in computers. DDR SDRAM has been superseded by DDR2 SDRAM and DDR3 SDRAM, neither of which are either forward or backward compatible with DDR SDRAM, meaning that DDR2 or DDR3 memory modules... . Integrated 2nd RAMDAC into core. TDMS Transition Minimized Differential Signaling Transition-minimized differential signaling is a technology for transmitting high-speed serial data and is used by the DVI and HDMI video interfaces, as well as other digital communication interfaces.... /DVI Digital Visual Interface The Digital Visual Interface is a video interface standard covering the transmission of video between a source device and a display device. The DVI standard has achieved widespread acceptance in the PC industry, both in desktop PCs and monitors... option. |
| Marvel G450 eTV | Condor | 180 nm | 2x1 | N | 64-bit | TV tuner. eDualHead. | ||
| Millennium G550 | Condor | 180 nm | 125 | 166 | 2x2x1 | Y | 64-bit | 32 MiB DDR SDRAM |