The video hardware market must be the most competitive portion of the gaming hardware scene this year. Its incredible how rapidly the advances come; and just as incredible how quickly the hardware of yesterday seems archaic.

When I was still relatively new to the gaming scene Matrox was about to release its first Millenium. Based on the specs I made my order and soon found myself with one of the best video boards ever designed. True, I did have a weird com port glitch that I never did pin down, but WIN95 fairly flew!

That was then, and this is now. Matrox stayed near the top of the heap for desktop acceleration, but seemed to fall behind the times in the 3d arena. I wondered if they would ever make a significant entry again.

With the arrival of the G200 in 8 meg and 16 meg incarnations, Matrox appears poised to re-enter the 3d marketplace in a big way this year. Matrox will release two boards based on this chipset: the 3rd Millenium and a new Mystique, the main difference between the two being slightly faster memory on the Millenium and a higher frequency DAC.

According to raw specs the G200 is about 15% weaker compared to the Voodoo2 but compensates for this in picture quality, 2D/3D integration, and price. (2d speed is FASTER than the Millenium II!) Placed side-by-side with all other 3D cards, you'll be pleased to see how this 32-bit color processing graphics card is giving others a run for their money! (Most other cards only use 16-bit palletes throughout the entire rendering process, whereas the G200 does 32-bit rendering then dithers down to 16-bit thus making transitions a smoother. Where a game supports 24 or 32 bit color Matrox is ready.)

In addition, Matrox has plans to have drivers for OpenGL ready for the July release. After comparing screenshots from six different 3D chipsets, it was apparent that Matrox will be delivering a winner. Feature-wise, the card offers a 128-bit DualBus architecture which is composed of two 64-bit buses working in parallel.

Falcon 4.0 at 1152x864 under DX6

The introduction of DirectX 6.0 and the new Windows 98 and NT 5.0 operating systems will bring a new set of features to the PC (such as AGP 2X). MGA-G200 is equipped to fully exploit them. Having recently installed the DX6 beta, I was curious to see if there would be any difference in performance in the Total Air War beta and the European Air War alpha.

I decided to compare the new Mystique to two other boards in my collection: the Orchid Righteous 3d II and the STB Velocity 128ZX. The R3d II is a 12 meg Voodoo 2 based board, and the 128ZX is the new 8 meg version of the nVidia Riva chipset. The Mystique G200 I have in hand is an 8 meg AGP board and Matrox has not yet decided whether they will build a PCI version. My expectation was that the Mystique G200 would outperform the 128ZX but not the Voodoo 2 board.

Unfortunately, I had a pallete problem or other graphics glitch with the 128ZX under both DX5 and DX6 beta. It was tough to tell under these conditions whether I was getting an accurate reading on frame rate. Apparently the old Riva chipset plays tricks with D3d that result in this kind of problem. Chris Cottrell at Interactive Magic commented:

I actually was the first person at Interactive Magic to test the MGA-G200 card. I think it is a fantastic card. Finally there is a card that runs Direct3D as well as 3dfx cards run Glide! This makes development MUCH easier for us. This is also the first AGP card that I have used that actually works; I have a Riva128 based AGP card at home and the image quality is pathetic. The best thing is, we didn't have to do anything special to get good performance out of the MGA-G200. It just works. If the price is competitive with Voodoo2 cards then I would recommend anyone to buy it.

The team at Rage software were similarly impressed. Here are their comments:

The exhausted Incoming team wearily removed the panel from their favorite Pentium II system and placed in yet another video card. The drivers loaded unexpectedly easily. The team satisfied, the machine was reset. This was the new MGA-G200 from Matrox, they had read the specs and, as usual, they had sounded excellent. Incoming should work.... Incoming was launched.

Suddenly the room became agitated, people began to gather around. This was good! After 12 months of hard work we had all gotten used to Incoming, but this was as if we were seeing it for the first time, as it really should be seen. The frame counter settled down to an almost too fast level. But what was most noticeable was the display, it was sharp, and the colors looked startlingly bright and distinct. We notched up the resolution, and the display remained crisp and the frames per second satisfyingly high..

Installation of the Mystique went without a hitch, running side by side with my dual Voodoo2 setup. It also ran everything I threw at it flawlessly, from Team Apache to Falcon 4, Longbow 2, Total Air War and Fighter Squadron Screamin Demons. F4 and FSSD were alphas, others were final or near gold versions. Team Apache was particularly impressive at 800x600 with maximum detail and effects. Frame rate remained fluid but without a frame counter I would only be guessing at 25 fps (PII 300).

My frame rate in EAW under the Velocity 128ZX was about 20% slower than the Mystique. I could not compare image quality because I had graphics problems with the 128ZX that washed out the images and textures. My frame rate in EAW with the Voodoo2 was about 50% faster than the Mystique.

The maximum frame rate in Total Air War varied more than the minimum framerate (the V2 frame rate maximum was 2x the Matrox max) but I have charted only the minimum frame rate. (I have not graphed the frame rate in Glide since Glide is a V2 specific API, but under Glide the frame rate was 40% greater at minimum and 100% greater at maximum - 50 fps).

Click to continue . . .

The image quality was identical in my eyes, and this fits the facts since these sims run in maximum 16 bit color so can't take advantage of the 32 bit color processing of the Mystique. Here are two comparison shots:

EAW on Matrox Mystique G200

EAW on Voodoo 2-12 meg

As you can see, visually there is no difference. The beauty of this board is that under D3d you will be able to run games at very high resolution and 32 bit color, where a V2 board will max out at 1024x768 and 16 bits. What games can you run higher than that? Falcon 4, EAW, Janes WWII Fighters, MS Combat Simulator, Fighter Squadron, Fighter Duel 2.0, Flanker 2.0 and many other future sims.

In fact, I was able to obtain 13-17 frames per second on my PII 300 in the Falcon 4 alpha at 1152x864! I was a bit shocked by that figure (For comparison F4 ran at 34 fps on my SLI V2 setup at 1024x768 under DX6). 13-17 fps was running under Direct3d and the DirectX 6 beta with all detail to the maximum and in the campaign. Here is a shot at 1600x1200 (click for larger):

In spite of access to higher resolutions where you want maximum speed, you will still do better under D3d with a Voodoo 2 board. However, the V2 D3d drivers are already highly optimized whereas the Matrox D3d drivers are still quite early, so later release version drivers should close this gap partially.

However, if a simulation supports Glide the speed difference could be as high as 100% and more, since the coming Glide 3 has advanced support for the dual texture units on V2 boards. The ultimate will still be two V2 boards.... at a MUCH higher cost of course! And if you want/need to run GLIDE (the only way to enjoy Total Air War or Janes F15), then you need Voodoo.

In all other cases, why spend the bucks? The Mystique G200 can be had for $149.99 with 8 meg and is upgradable to 16 meg (for about $49 US). In order to run V1 or V2 you have to invest two PCI slots or an AGP/PCI duo: one for 2d and another for 3d. Until 3dfx Banshee is on silicon the Matrox Mystique will be an excellent option for many gamers who need excellent speed, solid D3d compatibility, a single card solution and a reasonable price, and the Mystique could be faster than the Banshee in D3d.

As for AGP support, Matrox uses a full feature set and is ready for AGP smart games:

The Matrox Mystique G200 AGP 2X device fully benefits from the 528 MB/sec bandwidth offered by the AGP bus. These capabilities are now fully exploited with DirectX® 6.0 and Windows® 98. The Matrox Mystique G200 supports all advanced AGP 2X functions, including side band addressing, extremely deep read and write pipelining and high speed texturing from AGP memory (Direct Memory Execute).

A feature that sets the Matrox Mystique G200 apart from other graphics accelerators on the market is its ability to texture directly from system memory. Accessing such a large amount of textures allows game developers to fully exploit the Matrox Mystique G200's Symmetric Rendering Architecture (SRA) and provides users with outstanding in-game artwork and never-before-seen levels of detail within game textures.

Additionally, unlike other AGP chips available, the MGA-G200 supports read operations from system memory and write operations to system memory. In addition, the MGA-G200 employs a unique bus mastering method called Intelligent Scatter Gather Bus Mastering. This method is capable of bus mastering scattered data from the entire range of system memory without requiring the host CPU or the AGP chipset to process graphics data. These unique chip features ensure that Mystique G200 will maintain maximum performance in 2D and 3D applications.

The Mystique G200 also features TV output and SVHS output for your viewing pleasure. I didn't try this feature but I understand filtering quality is excellent, and as you can see from the configuration options Matrox takes these features seriously!

The only serious challenge to this board as a 2d/3d solution this year will be the new Riva TNT, the S3 Savage3d and the Number Nine Revolution IV.

For all around quality, flexibility and ease of use, we award the Mystique G200 our "Top Pick."