Montreal (Canada) – Let’s be realistic, the glory days of Matrox and blockbuster graphics cards such as the legendary Millennium are over. But despite the rise of Nvidia and ATI, Matrox is still around and is catering to an industry running workstations and mission critical applications. The manufacturer recently introduced a handful of new cards that can run up to four LCDs, but come with prices that got us thinking.
 
Matrox has been left out of most graphics decisions in recent years, with the exception of its Dual Head 2 Go and Triple Head 2 Go products that are really the only devices left that may appeal to an enthusiast graphics crowd which the company once helped to create. But if you are running workstation software such as financial or industrial monitoring applications, there is a good chance that you are still familiar with this brand, even if Nvidia and AMD (ATI) are dominating these market segments and there are very few niches left for Matrox to compete in.

The company recently introduced five new graphics cards, all powered by the companies M-series chip, which Matrox says is the industry’s first “QuadHead GPU”. QuadHead refers to the claim that the chip integrates native support up to four displays on one card and a maximum resolution of 4 x 1920 x 1200 pixels – or about 9.2 megapixels. The M9140 LP PCIe x16 model is the only model to support this feature out of the box and sells for $599 MSRP. The M9120 Plus LP PCIe x16 ($329) and the M9120 Plus LP PCIe x1 ($329) can also support up to four LCDs, but require a $99 after-market cable.

There are two cards that are limited to two outputs, the M9120 PCIe x16 ($259) and the M9125 PCIe x16 ($399). The M9120 supports digital output of up to 1920x1200 pixels and analog output of up to 2048x1536 pixels, while the M9125 ups the digital output to 2560x1600 pixels. All cards are passively cooled.

Let’s recap. Matrox is offering a low-profile graphics card will set you back about $600. Seeing that price tag, we had to remember ourselves that, for the same money, you can get two ATI Radeon 4870 512 MB graphics cards, and drive four 2560x1600 monitors. Or you can buy three 4850 512 MB, and drive six 2560x1600 monitors.

Performance-wise, Matrox’ graphics chip can hardly be called a GPU. Instead, it is clear that the company focused on delivering (analog) native quad-monitor support, so we are not surprised to see that DirectX compliancy was not mentioned. We managed to find out that M-Series supports DirectX 9.0 in a way to run Windows Vista’s Aero interface and OpenGL 2.0. There are no technical specifications available on the GPU.

Display Quality

Jun 30, 2008 18:28     

Up until about 5 years ago, I ran Matrox cards on my non gaming platforms because the display was ... better. As in the DAC was better. A G200/G450 looked infinitely better at 2D than a geforce FX5xxx etc. In a day of LCD's and such, there might be less use for a Matrox card, but in the analog days, their color representation and overall look were just ... better. Hard to describe without seeing it side by side. Long ago, Matrox was talking about VOIP style video conferncing where it would create a 3d model from a webcam and texture that, rather than sending raw video frames... etc. While a neat idea for possibly low bandwidth solutions, not overly useful. I believe Matrox's assembly area was shown on Discovery's How It's Made show, as well. Being focused in the 2d market these days, if they focused on wonky accelerated 2D things and were very open source friendly, they'd have a possible fit in the 2D workstation world... or if their desktop driver/software package allowed for interesting/useful approach to multimonitor setups...

anon report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +5

There is still a market for these card.

Jun 30, 2008 19:38     

Those in the market for a Matrox card is not in the market for a gaming card and vice versa. For a corporate environment a gaming card would not be even considered as they generate a lot of heat, use a lot of electricity and they are very loud. So while the card is very expensive for what it offers. There is still a niche market for it. I supposed you could SLI to lesser Nvidia or ATI cards and get 4 monitor support. But again, its just not fit for the corporate environment. Just my .2

Brent report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

$600? REALLY? No, REALLY??

Jun 30, 2008 20:57     

NVIDIA's got the Quadro NVS 440, and had it for awhile now. Matrox is playing catch-up here.
Waethorn report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Back in the days...

Jul 01, 2008 10:33     

Wow, last time I used a Matrox was when I had a G400 upgraded to 16 megs paired with an SLI Vodoo II card. And since then I've still been on their mailing list since. This takes me back to my Mech Warrior and Wing Commander days, not that Wing Commander needed it.
DevonM report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

nVidia Already Has Their Quadro NVS 440

Jul 01, 2008 10:56     

nVidia came out with their Quadro NVS 440 PCIe x16 (and x1) card over a year ago. The x16 model only costs about $450: http://tinyurl.com/3toece I'd recommend against the x1 model. Another thing I like about the nVidia 4 monitor card is they don't have any fan. This will give you a quiet work environment as the 440's are used in business, not gaming. They are designed for 2D, not 3D gaming. However, to use digital LCD's, you must purchase a "PNY 59PIN LFH TO DUAL DVI CABLE" for about $40: http://tinyurl.com/452oxv I prefer the nVidia for 4 monitors as a secondary card over the Matrox. I'd probably use a higher-end ATI as a primary card.

Cypherdude report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

re: There is still a market for these card, and even more rants

Jul 03, 2008 17:24     

There is still a market for cards with support of anything. But even chips capable of any purpose, are sold with different drivers for artificially different markets, as if where different cards. (see nVidia/Quadro mods). What a multimonitor card need to do is support for software like BetWin. It would justify expensive cards because it allow to save money on CPU, memory, hard disk, motherboard, and maintenance. My MSI GeForce 8800 GT OC included BetWin trial version for XP. It was amazing software, but crashed frequently with that nvidia card. I had once an AGP Matrox Millenium with an PCI S3 card, and Betwin worked fine, allowing play two gamers simultaneously with Age of Empires 2, or playing Tomb Raider 2 and simultaneously Autocad 2000; both on Windows 98. It was wonderful. I miss those days.

mm report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0