Matrox Video Cards?

[Canuckgd]

Does anyone use a Matrox video card of any description with any Battlefront releases (CMBB, CMBO, CMAK)? As per Redwolf's suggestion, I would like to go with NVidia, but my main work with the computer involves photo-editing, and Matrox have come very highly recommended for that job, but they also stress that it's not a game card. At the moment, the only games I have are CMBB and Flight Simulator 9, and I may soon only have CMBB and CMBO on my system as games (FS takes a LOT of room and I seldom have time for it anymore). As such, if I go with Matrox, does anyone know if it will give acceptable performance with CMBB (etc.), and can you see fog effects? The Matrox is within my budget now, whereas at the moment a new 6800 GT is pretty tough to afford (later maybe).

Thanks!

Glenn

[Schrullenhaft]

I've used some of the older Matrox videocards with good results - G200, G400, G450 & G550. Fog and alpha-blending (transparencies) effects do work. The performance is OK, but I wouldn't necessarily call it great. The 'G' series doesn't offer the higher end effects of anti-aliasing, etc. In fact I'm not sure how good their filtering is compared to other cards, but I haven't really had any complaints. However I also don't use these videocards for a lot of gaming so I haven't done detailed comparisons.

I'm not really familiar with the performance and compatibility of the newer cards - P650, P750 and Parhelia. I would assume that these cards may be similar in capability/compatibility of the G series. However I assume that they may support anti-aliasing and higher filtering levels, etc. which may mean that there could be other driver issues.

Matrox offers pretty decent online support, but as others have said, gaming isn't a strong-suit of the Matrox cards (generally for performance reasons). Matrox has always excelled at 2D image quality and 2D performance.

[Canuckgd]

Thanks very much for your comments on this. Since I do do a lot of photo-editing on this computer, it does sound like the Matrox would fit the bill for that. As for gaming, I do so little of it that as long as I can get decent performance out of the Matrox, it may work for my purposes. However, that might limit me a bunch in the future if I do decide to do a bit more gaming with more "graphics-intensive" systems. Decisions, decisions

Thanks again for your help. Time to start pricing these things and making a final decision (it looks like I'm going to need a new monitor as well, judging from the "jumping" around this one is starting to do :confused: ).

Glenn

[Redwolf]

I think they should be fine for CM.

I don't think you need any advanced texture filtering in CM as you usually don't sweep over textures up close rapidly (that is more for the FPS crowd running down a textured corridor).

I bet 45 cookies CM doesn't use hardware transform acceleration and surely it doesn't use lightning.

So it comes to down to draw triangles with textures, and the Matrox cards seem to do that pretty good.

The lack of AA would be noticable, but if the card is fast enough to give you high enough resolution, then higher resolution is obviously a superset of AA.

[Canuckgd]

Thanks once again Redwolf. Appreciate the feedback as always. Man, when it rains, it pours! My monitor has started going south on me now, so it looks like I'll have to purchase both a new monitor AND a video card! Some days.... .

Anyway, I'm really hoping I can swing the NVidia, which all things considered (including "down the road"), would be the better bet overall for me. I'll let you know

Glenn