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Preview: Matrox G450

There's one thing many manufacturers forget in their fight for higher framerates: 2D quality and Features. With G450, Matrox wants to give this to the users who need those issues combined with a fair price.

G450 is based on the successful G400 which seems to be rather old today. The chip is produced in 0.18 Micron process and is running at higher clockrates than its successor - but there are no detailed informations found in the specs about the final clockspeeds yet. For Memory Matrox is going the NVIDIA and ATi way and uses DDR-RAM for the card, but on G450 it is only with 64Bit buswith, so you can't expect GeForce (2) and/or Voodoo5 5500 (2 x 128Bit) 3D performance. Matrox is using DDR memory here to keep costs low. The board is a lot cheaper with 64Bit memory implementation instead of 128Bit SDRAM.

Matrox has modified the G400 chipcore and included a 64Bit DDR memory interface and an DVI solution that allows to connect digital Flat Panels or monitors. It seems there are no changes to the main 3D core logic.

Matrox will offer the DualHead option even in the retail G450 version. DualHead means the use of a second monitor with its own resolution on the card - or TV Out. It is made possible by a second integrated 360MHz RAMDAC chip. The DualHead technology is a Matrox-only feature yet.

The G450 won't compete on top of current graphiccards when you look on 3D performance. But if you don't want to play 3D shooters or other games frequently on very high details and/or framerates but want solid 2D quality, performance (also in Windows NT) the G450 may be a very good choice. Applications like AutoCAD, Photoshop, Director or Adobe Premiere are much better to use when you have two monitors. The TV-Out on the G400 DH was one of the best TV-Out solutions on the market with very strong features and a bunch of settings. The only thing that's worrying a bit is the fact that the G400 core had problem in high polygon 3D games/scenes. The framerate dropped dramatically in those games. A higher clockrate won't solve this problem. So don´t expect the card to compete on a high level in 3D games. But let's wait and see what Matrox will deliver. They plan to be in shelves in August. The pricing will be about $145.