I bought the NEW Matrox Graphics Card...for $30

[@SantaKlausFrosty]

I would love to see Matrox make a comeback into the gaming world given to how stable they are.

[@MazeFrame]

With Nvidia and AMD (and Intel) having abandoned the sub 300€/$ (= mid-range) market, I can see the potential.

[@Spido68_the_spectator]

@@MazeFrame it would be vs Intel then. Gonna be fun

[@aleksazunjic9672]

Would not happen. Even with this card, they essentially took budget AMD chip and added additional circuits to make it more stable so it could run 24/7 on public displays.

[@spentcasing3990]

@@MazeFrame Given he price of cards. Having a budget option that could offer decent performance would be a gold mine for them

@@aleksazunjic9672 Budget chip? It's worse than budget.

[@longdang2681]

If Intel were to get Matrox to fix their arc gpu drivers problems, that would really be the start of interesting times for the GPU market.

[@z0mb1e564]

Or AMD to make their drivers more stable and effective

[@ernon69]

I would say AMD drivers are fairly stable right now, compared to what it used to be, and it's evolving really fast, making older hardware way more capable than what it was supposed to be, it's definitely more customer friendly than Intel or Nvidia

[@SpaceGh0st]

@@z0mb1e564 Gotta level with you, my experience with a 2080 Super and two 3080s has been terrible. Sure, the FPS are great but the drivers are horrible. Random crashes, but worst is the screen loses video entirely... often... and in game... I never had driver issues like this with my recent AMD cards. I can't wait until I can pick up a new AMD 7900XT

[@ted_van_loon]

and instead to make it a trade, Matrox can use intell's FPGA's, if they use those in a GPU with good stable drivers that would be insane, for emulation but also performance and future proofing. they are already many times faster than a rtx 3090ti while having a extremely low TDP, but none of the companies wanted to write drivers for it because it is kind of new in the gaming market.(only some hobbyists)

[@banaanimies8870]

@@ted_van_loon FPGA's are not as dense as taped out silicon and can't be clocked as high. They're decent for certain kind of applications but high-performance graphics isn't it.

[@Breakfast_of_Champions]

The main point about the Matrox C-series is that they are meant to drive multi-monitor setups and display walls. This C-420 has 4 dsiplay ports and their software is specialized for this use case. Excellent stuff!

[@averyoldYoutubeuser]

Even if they are not meant to be gaming, I still glad to see it's capable of decent apps today

[@ricky4673]

Would love a full gaming card that could do that for a Lan party.

[@3333218]

That's awesome!!!

[@JimUK]

Seeing Matrox still around makes me happy, my first graphics card was a Matrox G200 with a massive 8MB of VRAM, good times.

[@marblemunkey]

Me too. My first card was a Mystique back in the 90's (came bundled with a custom version of Mechwarrior 2), and a few years later I had my first multi-monitor setup after picking up a used Millennium and Millennium 2 to drop into my machine.

[@HuntingCatIsBack]

@@marblemunkey That was my first GPU purchase too.

[@Xalgucennia]

I had a Matrox millenium II, ah the memories 😢

[@anonymousanonymous3707]

Orchid Righteous 3dfx voodoo 1 4mb ... GL quake with transparent water my eyes couldn't believe it 😂😂

[@Jefitus]

@@anonymousanonymous3707 S3 Virge with extra 1mb of vram totaling 2 megabytes, Cyrix 120mhz processor and 48mb of ram... ran Halflife Uplink somehow on software 320x240 :D

[@samuelchan699]

Matrox made the most stable video card I've ever owned. They were one of the first companies to make a card with multi-monitor support and it always worked and never crashed in the multiple builds I put it in over a decade. Since they left the video card market, I switched to nVidia Quadro cards, but they still are not as bullet proof as the Matrox. I'm glad to see there are people out there that still appreciate the workhorse that it was.

[@jamieimbusch]

i cant believe how stable the frame rate is. ive never seen 30 fps GTA run so smooth

[@truckerallikatuk]

Matrox key features were always image quality and reliability, and that's from before the Millenium and Mystique. Wonderful cards, I loved them.

[@andersjjensen]

Yes. My Matrox G200 lived in every workstation I had until it wouldn't fit in the slots any more. That card was able to make any entry level CRT monitor look like a high end one. With a bit of tinkering I was able to "overclock" my monitor in Linux because the Matrox CRT driving was a good deal tighter than what the spec called for.

[@LucasCunhaRocha]

My dad had a Mystique, it came with a copy of Destruction Derby 2, it was an amazing card indeed.

[@Domspun]

@@LucasCunhaRocha Hello son! lol I also had a Mystique and still have my copy of Destruction Derby 2. Also came with other demos.

[@narwhal4304]

I'd love to see this card tested with Linux in some way. With the reputation NVIDIA and AMD drivers have between Windows and Linux, I'd be interested to see how Matrox drivers compare between Windows and Linux as well.

[@SianaGearz]

Matrox Linux driver? If they haven't missed it, it's going to just run the standard Radeon or amdgpu drivers. Like why would Matrox even care about Linux, where would any budget for that come from.

[@JordanPlayz158]

@@SianaGearz I mean tbf, if they are targetting businesses that want stability, any business that wants stability would choose linux over windows or mac any day so it would make sense if they had a linux driver as that is likely what their target market would use

[@CheapBastard1988]

@@SianaGearz Server use cases. High stability isn't really that important on a gaming PC but a server has to be able to run stable for years, without rebooting. Which is why nearly all servers run Linux. This GPU with the Matrox drivers and firmware could serve a remote management UI, embedded in the motherboard or as an expansion card (with an integrated LAN port). Because not all server users are necessary capable in using the command line.

[@SianaGearz]

@@JordanPlayz158 businesses plain don't run Linux, they don't have skill in administrating a fleet of Linux client machines. There is standard Microsoft training and certification but there is no such thing for Linux, and MS Office with Outlook is the bloodline, there would be a revolt and lots of lost time from transitioning to something else. Could Linux be of advantage? Yeah but "nobody was ever fired for buying IBM" so the business saying goes, or whatever the standard stuff that everyone else uses. Businesses have a crazy amount of overhead but as long as there's nobody in particular to blame for it, it's fine. I have worked at a number of large engineering companies, one where we were all issued pretty wimpy laptops and we had to use Linux development tools, which was great, running in VMware on Ubuntu on Windows which was constantly held up by lack of ram, CPU, disk speed, and that bloody corporate antivirus, which wasn't great. The amount of time wasted. Or months waiting for basic supplies. OMG. We were forbidden to bring privately acquired things like flash drives, SD cards, Ethernet cables, etc but we needed them to do the job, so we did. But hey it was nobody's fault so it was "fine". And Matrox is a small company, the only way they can survive at all is by focusing hard on one thing at a time. They haven't even designed the PCB for this one, it's a standard reference card without fan or heatsink shroud and custom BIOS.

[@SianaGearz]

@@CheapBastard1988 why would a server need a little quad head GPU? The only GPUs on a server are either as compute accelerators, in which case anything Matrox can offer fails right at the premise, plus there's a basic iGPU for emergency/troubleshooting use. If you want a server to run a desktop software, it's either remote X or software emulated with RDP all via remote access.

[@flamingscar5263]

I would love to see Matrox make a comeback for the budget gaming scene, since both AMD and Nvidia have seemingly given up on the budget side of things, with Nvidia not releasing anything at all and AMD releasing both the 6500xt and 6400xt, both of which lacking a H26.4 encoder, which is a deal breaker in the modern day, plus at $200 the 6500xt is far from budget

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

I kind of miss my Matrox M3d card. It was pretty cool, I just wish the rest of my computer had been better at the time.

[@durschfalltv7505]

exactly. Where is a gtx 1050 card. lp and single slot for not above 75 Euros with all the features.

[@Nine-Signs]

@@SmallSpoonBrigade "No floating point... No Quake for you!" Don't we all 🙃

[@nevilovermann797]

I REALLY didn't expect any of these games to be "playable" on the new Matrox cards. They are targeted at a very specific market and gaming is very far from what they were built to handle. Thank you for this video! This was a LOT of fun!

[@AnalogX64]

I worked for a company in the 90's that used Matrox cards to do OCR letters on a conveyor belt for the Postal Service, it was amazing how fast it would scan and convert to text.

[@ironhead2008]

This makes me wonder what Matrox could do with GCN 4.0 cores ported to GF 12nm.

[@ChezRG-YT]

That'd be great

[@emperorSbraz]

inb4 128 cores, 1gb of ddr3 ram, FOURTEEN VIDEO OUT connectors! much wow.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@emperorSbraz Doesn't sound too bad for a setup with a ton of monitors. Your local stock broker would love it.

[@emperorSbraz]

@@HappyBeezerStudios also poker players and CCTV installations. :) those however are words i heard just before matrox's last breath, in a time where everyone went the other direction and thrived.

[@ut2k4wikichici]

Gcn holds up pretty well

[@saintuk70]

I loved my Matrox cards in the mid to late 90's - the quality was excellent.

[@ian_b]

Still got a G550 in an old PC. It's an Athlon XP system.

[@cybernit3]

Ya I had a Matrox Mystique back in the mid 90s was good for its time. I'd like to see a low cost but very low power that can be used on SLIM PCs. I have a 7th gen i3 lenovo SFF PC and need to improve the gfx on it; but can only handle low power gfx cards.

[@thePretendgineer]

@@cybernit3 It would more than likely be cheaper to just replace the entire machine with something newer with decent onboard graphics.

[@grimmpickins2559]

Thank you. I want a Matrox comeback, especially considering the general malaise in GPUs in the post-2020 world. A 15w GPU that won't crash? Brilliant. I love this sort of stuff - please try another one at some point :)

[@aceofhearts573]

Matrox would need a lot of money. Surprised Intel didnt team up with them to make a GPU instead of going at it alone.

[@grimmpickins2559]

@@aceofhearts573 That would have been great... In my fantasy universe that definitely happens...

[@BomberBlur07]

​@@aceofhearts573 Matrox is actually selling Arc GPUs now

[@razorsz195]

Imagine a world where AMD Makes the GPUs, Matrox makes the drivers..Good cards, good price, good drivers!

[@gljames24]

Add in TSMC making the chips and you have the triumvirate of processing!

[@enterthenuttmeister]

@@gljames24 AMD uses TSMC to produce their chips....

[@Cloudef]

Linux has that world. The drivers everyone uses are open source and not developed just by amd but various people including valve. It's at the point the open source drivers are better than AMD's own "AMDGPU-Pro" drivers.

[@cooltwittertag]

AMD drivers are better than Nvidia drivers in my Experience

[@letto18]

Better than something like the GT 710 I'd bet. I'd say with the big 2 (AMD & Nvidia, still need to wait & see how things go with Intel & their GPUs) focusing more on the more expensive higher end and not caring as much about the low end (looking at you RX 6400 & RX 6500 XT for AMD and the lowest of current gen for Nvidia is the RTX 3050), perhaps Matrox could slide in to handle the sub $100 budget range for GPUs, like perhaps make something that could beat the RX 6400 in performance & features, but offer it for less?

[@hrayz]

I would love to see a showdown of budget (office) graphics cards. GT 210/610/710 vs this.

[@MasterDrood]

that would be really interesting to see, imagine a $100 card that gives 60fps at 720p with h264 codec, and why not some 1080p 30 fps

[@jurisjancevskis9076]

@@MasterDrood at what game though?

[@DGTelevsionNetwork]

Lmao Intel can't even be bothered to have drivers for motherboards made 5 years ago. Their integrated graphics are notorious. Their cpus can't have a single socket design for over 6 months. Any card they release is going to flop hard, I guarantee it.

[@MissingNumb]

760's can do everything you want, around $100. Got one for $50 in 2016, but times are strange...

[@danialonderstal3564]

The stability is really impressive, If matrox made a comeback I would at the very least keep a eye out and invest if performance was good for modern AAA titles.

[@ewangardner5020]

Personally, I am loving the "graphics card in a hanging bird feeder" B-roll.

[@danagoyette7932]

Out of curiosity, I searched eBay for Matrox, and apparently there's a PCIe version of the G550. I wonder if such a thing would even support UEFI? For this AMD-based one, I'm curious what special features it supports. For example, can it emulate monitor presence? And what DisplayPort version?

[@Fddlstxx]

It came out in 2015, so the 2015 standards of DisplayPort. Also I assume API support implies it could emulate

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Looking at the fact that the G550 is advertised with it's hardware T&L and vertext shader, hinting at DirectX 8.0, I'd say no. I'd go so far that any OS that would require UEFI boot wuldn't support the card anyway. And any OS that would have drivers for it, wouldn't run in UEFI boot.

[@danagoyette7932]

Just realized I mixed two wildly different topics in one message (old card and new card). Might make replies hard to understand.

[@koushiroizumi0]

Why emulate monitor presence?

[@KenjiUmino]

@@koushiroizumi0 because this is needed in some special cases ... there are hardware solutions for this you can buy like VGA/DVI/DP "dummy plugs" that do nothing else but send EDID to the computer to make the GPU think that a monitor is present.

[@victorhugofranciscon7899]

The best combination, watching a Budget Builds video while waiting to meet the doctor at a emergency service.

[@grizzlyindustries7593]

Oh my gosh! Hope everything is okay!

[@victorhugofranciscon7899]

@@grizzlyindustries7593 nah it is just a small illness, perhaps the flu or a common cold

[@victorhugofranciscon7899]

It is called emergency service because I translated the name of the public health facility and that was the result, maybe not as accurate but whatever.

[@u0aol1]

@@victorhugofranciscon7899 Kind of like the Dr's office? Or a hospital ER? Either way I hope you feel better soon bro

[@grizzlyindustries7593]

@@victorhugofranciscon7899 Oh okay. Still hope you'll get better.

[@kintustis]

now the question becomes: can we run the AMD card with the Matrox drivers?

[@dh2032]

and it will not (absolutely) not do, or work with coin mining software of any kind 🙂

[@kintustis]

@@dh2032 tbh matrox would be better off making mining asics

[@mehmeh1999]

@@kintustis Not asics but FPGAs. Like graphics cards but more efficient and faster when programmed to do certain applications.

[@LadBooboo]

The nice thing about multiple companies making GPUs is the drop in pricing. The annoying part is all those damn proprietary software. People forget that trying to play games in the 90s was annoying if you didn't have the correct hardware combination.

[@LatitudeSky]

And before that, you had to hope the game you wanted to play was supported by the sound card you happened to have. People today take for granted that any game they want to play will work with any modern GPU and the PC will just support sound and go. It was not always like this.

[@LadBooboo]

@@LatitudeSky or heaven fobid be stuck with the beepboops of the chassis speaker. Man, what I'd give to have the amount of free time I had as a kid now.

[@sukhoikip]

Gotta say, I'm having a lot of fun with this card's FirePro version, the W4100. I've gotten a 55% core OC and 27.5% memory OC. It seems to have a similar cooler but with a shroud and a fan.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Yeah, the surprisingly big oc headroom of cards like these. Got +60& chip and +10% Mem out of my old 7300 GT

[@IanSlothieRolfe]

This video brought back some memories, Back in '96 I built a PC using a Matrox Millenium graphics card and loved it. I wasn't much into gaming back then, I used the card for 3D design and data visualisation, but I was impressed with the stability and the performance on the 3D games I tried. Other people were on forums and bullitin boards asking for advice on how to stop crashes in circumstances I found the Millenium just sailed through. I moved that card from PC to PC for years until basically motherboards stopped having a slot for it! It did develop a colour problem due to a crack in the PCB or bad solder joint which meant I had to use a rubber band to apply a slight twist to the board to prevent purple horizontal lines, but I used it like that for a couple of years before it was retired in the next PC.......

[@ChristopherWoods]

God I wanted a Parhelia so badly when I was younger. Could never afford one. Now I look after systems which all use Matrox cards for broadcast video output and compositing and it makes me quietly happy. Great video.

[@a84888888]

I think it is very suitable for office pc. Nvidia and AMD now rarely focus on stability. For a low profile card, it has acceptable performance and decent power consumption. I would consider replacing some entry level cards such as GT1030 with this card if i could buy one.

[@StormsparkPegasus]

Only issue is, there is no market for it. Almost all CPU's these days contain integrated graphics more than adequate for office PC's.

[@urnoob5528]

It s not even better than 1030 smh

[@bujfvjg7222]

If you even have a 1030 in your life (in ANY form), I think you should stick to playing Snake on your Nokia 3210...

[@cc67-94]

@@bujfvjg7222 richy mcgee over here..

[@Cat_Stevens]

What a great video! I love the longer-form content from you, even though I know it takes longer to produce and write, it's great.

Omg, there are more?! I think so many of us now want to see the higher end Matrox card as well!

[@frshunter]

Loved Matrox cards back in the day. Glad to see a semi-public card once again!

[@TheSpotify95]

Thanks for the insight into this graphics card - I was certainly not expecting a Matrox card back on the channel! This looks like it could go nicely into a small form factor or low power PC (where power is a concern), because 15W power consumption is incredibly impressive. Plus, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that card also have 4 display outputs via display port (or mini display port)? So even as a display adapter, for running four monitors, it's a bloody good card.

[@MasterDrood]

Wow I never though I will see another usable Matrox card, specially in 2022, it brings my curiosity pretty high on the most powerful ones. Great video

[@xSGTBONGRiiPPxxADVENTURESx]

its crazy how much tech has improved even just since this came about. i know this is low power but 300mhz is crazy, even my lower power laptop 2060 can overclock comfortably a higher clock in just oc, well beyond the matrox total clock. but its crazy i havent seen a matrox logo since my old xp pc. great video!

[@Lollllllz]

even my 15w apu clocks higher

[@xSGTBONGRiiPPxxADVENTURESx]

@wakenbaker-uk lmao very true everything has its purpose. ive seen some fast minis but i see what youre saying. lol

[@tsonaqua]

I'd tell you good luck with that. I maintain pcs for a line of movie theaters that have used these fanless cards for all 12 years I've worked with them. Those fanless heat syncs from Matrox are held on with tiny plastic clips that eventually get brittle and then fall off. Now the video card, believe it or not, will continue running cooking everything else in the chassis till it dies. If you're familiar with Dell Optiplex and all those blue plastic components that help make the chassis toolless. Last week I cracked open an Optiplex, that was still running, but was running soo hot that all the blue bits inside the Dell crumbled as soon as I touched them. It was a new one for me. It was hard to believe that the thing had still been running.

[@Thebee211]

Hi, first off big fan of your work. Second there are 2 more matrix graphics cards from this series. The C680 and C900 which seem alot more powerful with the C680 having a max TDP of 50W. I would love to see you review it if you find them. Thank you again for your work and never stop.

[@dodolurker]

Wow, nice 🙂. I never had a Matrox card back in the day, but I did read about them and remember everyone saying they had excellent image quality and OK 3D performance. So when I started my retro collection a couple of years ago, I made sure to get some Matrox cards in there, too. I have a couple in my Pentium 1 and Pentium 2 systems, for example. 3D done by 3Dfx, 2D done by Matrox. And I must say - the image quality and drivers really are excellent 😊

[@cominturismoengineer4012]

Nice video, but I think a point was missed here. Matrox cards were known for their great image quality, and I haven't seen any mention of that with the new card. Would love to know if that still holds true, even with it being an AMD chip underneath.

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Given it’s a digital signal it’s a bit hard to compare to other cards (I do touch on this in my G550 and Parhelia videos though) it can however manage 1440p over 4 displays which isn’t bad for a 15watt card.

[@SianaGearz]

Yeah I remember back in the day if you had a DiamondPro monitor you could easily tell the clock out stability of the VGA port visually. And many graphics cards would fall into unusable territory at high horizontal retrace rates, so high refresh rate and resolution combo. You had to have either a Matrox or an ELSA, or something else with professional ambitions. Ever since LCDs came about, even VGA driven, it became pretty moot, since they didn't actually scan out as fast as a pro grade CRT and didn't even rely on a well formed pixel signal edge, they would sample the signal at settling time.

[@swdev245]

They could have a gold plated HDMI- or Displayport- cable included with the card, so that the zeros and ones that are being transferred would be extra premium!

[@FoxMulder78]

We're not in VGA land anymore, mister.

[@SianaGearz]

@@swdev245 HDMI and DP pins are hard gold plated as per spec. Shroud plating is purely cosmetic and optional though. So essentially all HDMI and DP cables including the dollar store ones actually are gold plated.

[@TheTardis157]

If Matrox could build an improved RX590 they would take so much share of the 1080p gaming segment it wouldn't be funny. The Polaris cards are still highly regarded (my 580 is still doing great) in 1080p gaming to this day due to great power to performance and the large amount of VRAM for its price point. Combining that with Matrox stability would be amazing.

[@hashbrownsorhashbrown]

Ok but can the Matrox render the Matrix?

[@carltonleboss]

I guess you could say they took the red pill

[@enilenis]

My first accelerator was a Matrox. I own all cards in G-200 line, Marvel, Mystique, Millenium etc. I thoght it was going to lead against 3DFX, ATI, Nvidia, but it lost out. So glad that they still exist as a company and I find their chips in unexpected places. I was building an HP server farm, and onboard graphics was actual G200 chips. I don't know if they're surplus, or being manufactured to this day, but I always liked the company. Back when no card worked correct with every single game, Matrox never given me trouble, and could output composite signal under DOS. That was how I captured games in the early days onto VHS tapes. I did a lot of video work, so Matrox and ATI were really the 2 options for me, and I didn't like completition drivers and software.

[@griff5476]

Always had a soft spot for matrox. The G400 transformed my Unreal Tournament experience back in the 90s. Better fps and visually vibrant compared to the original Riva TNT it replaced. Good times.

[@qumefox]

Matrox never died. They just weren't in the 3d gaming market space anymore. They've been primarily making cards for medical imaging and large scale multi-monitor applications. If you've ever seen a video wall comprised of a bunch of monitors, it was most likely being driven by matrox cards.

[@dragogos]

As someone who is interested in embedded systems, this GPU is awesome and I would love to get my hands on one. The stability features are really really nice.

[@somehow_not_helpfulATcrap]

Right, see, well, heres the thing. You've just reviewed a FirePro W4100 at half its default clock speed and maybe a couple bits disabled for a dinky power budget. Almost the same PCB (only so many ways to skin a cat) different clock speed cause its passive but pretty much the same card. If you ever have a W4100 and this card a comparison would be very interesting.

[@SianaGearz]

The PCB is a reference design FirePro w4100. I wonder how much you'd be able to get out of it by slapping on a little fan and modding the BIOS, and how much difference there is to upstream FirePro drivers.

[@Trusteft]

I keep forgetting this card existed. Last Matrox card I owned was a Mystique in the mid 90s. Thanks for the video. I don't know who Harry is, but rest in peace.

[@daemonspudguy]

"Powerful?" describes Matrox perfectly.

[@ninetenduh]

Matrox Pahelia, damn, I haven't heard that name in Decades, back then when browsing the catalogues it always picked my interest, but I also had a ATi Radeon 9600 XT, which served me well for several years. Would love to see Matrox get back into the game, but the chances for that are about non-existing without getting a massive financial aid.

[@jeremyandrews3292]

That Matrox card would have been looking really good to me in 2021 during the graphics card shortage. I would have been happy to get this for $100 or so, because I wound up having to shove an ancient GTX 560 Ti I had lying around into a brand new system and use it that way for a year until I could get a GTX 3060. I even had to replace the fans on that poor old card and repaste the heatsink, something I usually don't bother with because I have a new card by the time such steps are needed. Was just shaking my head the whole time thinking, "I can't believe I need this card again." Gaming isn't the primary thing I do with my PC, so it wasn't terrible, and there were a lot of older games from pre-2010 I could play, but it was still frustrating. This card was so much better than that one it's not even funny. I do count myself lucky that I wasn't among those who have to abandon a system build for want of a GPU, though.

[@LatitudeSky]

Just did the same clean and repaste on a GTX550ti, which was all I had. It got the PC working. Eventually replaced it with an RX6600. Just a leeeeetle bit faster, you know.

[@batyanko8283]

AMD card with drivers that actually work? We need more of this!

[@necro_ware]

If this is a modified AMD card, I wonder, if it works in Linux with AMDs open source drivers.

[@andersjjensen]

You probably need to hack in the PCIIDs in the radeongpu driver, but that's easy as tatters.

[@1pcfred]

AMD Linux drivers suck.

[@unfa00]

There was also a company called Maxtor. I remember an HDD of their making had a chip spray out a flame and smoke one time. Thankfully I've just finished backup it up.

[@jackochainsaw]

Maxtor was bought out by Seagate. Seagate don’t have the best reliability.

[@MrKillswitch88]

One of the hardest brands to find is by S3 and they did make some limited runs of their cards a decade back that were pci-e however they were only low end cards.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Or trying to find a Volari V8 Ultra

[@MrKillswitch88]

@@HappyBeezerStudios It has been years since I last seen one while the S3 cards are just extinct. I've bought some pretty rare cards myself like the EVGA GTX295 Red Edition even though they only made 500 of those as a limited release. The Volari V8 Ultra is something else and the few times they ever turned up there were issues often with a dead or failing gpu.

[@KrisDouglas]

Matrox GPUs in servers, despite being old and based on old kit, they're absolutely rock solid.

[@daviddavies3637]

Never owned one but remember really wanting a Matrox Millennium and then the Mystique cards. Shame how the market ended up being dominated by just two companies.

[@Jerrec]

They are back? Well this card was released 8 years ago, so they arent back. This was a digital signage card. The whole line up to the C9** is again already discontinued, and no graphic card is currently sold by matrox (as far as I know).

[@Alphamatrix01]

Awesome video. That card should be quite good to use as a legacy boot GPU so we can use UEFI modern GPU's on X58 systems for example. 15W TDP is magical. Congrats for the video mate, and thanks for the content.

[@docal2]

What's next, 3dfx in 8k gaming? Cirrus logic with raytracing support?

[@armorgeddon]

Would've been interesting to see if this card, being based on GCN 1.0, is recognized by the two open source Linux drivers available for it. And also if it's got a driver for Windows XP or if original AMD Radeon drivers for Windows XP can work with it.

[@alexdhall]

I'm wondering the same thing. It might be a good alternative to the multi-display card for my Dell Optiplex SFF PC...

[@-fuzzy-7125]

Awesome, I've tried to find anyone that has tried running a game on these. Haven't watched it just yet, but super excited to see this!

[@AnonyDave]

Something that often gets missed is matrox post about 2010 (or somewhere around there) went into the video production market. That's why that card has the coax connectors on the back, it's meant to be in a pc appliance thats generating sdi video to be fed into your broadcast systems.

[@CantankerousDave]

They were doing broadcast video editing cards in the late 90s - I still have a working Matrox Digisuite system from back then (with a Parhelia card in it). We users got fed up with them because they would constantly SQUIRREL! their way to new projects and leave existing users stuck with fairly new - and very expensive - doorstops.

[@leangxd]

So amazing Matrox should start writing drivers for all of older grafix cards that'd be cool if they recieve such an utilization

[@arky9002]

Intel should acquire the Matrox driver team. That would ensure a significantly higher success percentage for the blue team. That being said, I would like for Matrox to make a proper comeback of their own.

[@herrakaarme]

It wouldn't help Intel. This Matrox isn't a gaming card. Intel is looking for maximum performance with more or less tolerable stability, just like AMD and Nvidia (for the gaming market). If Intel needed to halve the clocks to obtain enough stability for the Matrox driver team, Intel's gaming cards couldn't compete at all.

[@andrewyork3869]

@@herrakaarme the GPU explosion in the data center is the exact opposite they have a bright future if they can scrape out a good server card. Honestly even a mining card could give them a good boost.

[@herrakaarme]

@@andrewyork3869 I have no doubt Intel is better on schedule on the server side than the gaming side. They have big deals for supercomputers already, which they can't afford to fail. I would go as far as guessing Intel's graphics division has the best people working to finish the server compute cards as soon as possible, leaving less talent for the gaming cards.

[@andrewyork3869]

@@herrakaarme I was referring to Matrox, but yes I agree. I do hope for there own sake they are not trying to use x86 in a gpu.

[@ketxxx1]

Maybe AMD quietly hired the Matrox driver team for their Adrenalin drivers, would explain the DX11 "code cleanup" thats recently happened that increased performance in DX11 titles quite considerably. You could also test that OpenGL performance against an equal AMD version with Basemark GPU, AMDs OGL performance has been absolutely horrible for years and needs as much expose ure as the lacklustre DX11 performance issue.

[@n00blamer]

You're closer to the truth than you realise; Intel did buy the contractor that was working on AMD drivers.

[@ketxxx1]

@@n00blamer I wouldn't consider that a bad thing as that contractor was doing an absolutely terrible job with the Adrenalin drivers there are known bugs that haven't been resolved in well over a year, old bugs that kept recurring with supposedly newer driver releases that actually used an older fork, etc.

[@braapybobby]

@@ketxxx1 I wouldn’t say terrible. Yes bugs are kinda crappy, but it’s overwhelmingly better than driver support from AMD in the past, especially from an average performance perspective

[@ketxxx1]

@@braapybobby "overwhelmingly better" is a matter of perspective, I've had as many intel systems as AMD ones and without doubt the quirks with AMD systems have got a lot better, but AMD still have quite a gap to close to really get a handle on all of the firmware and driver bugs. Just check some Basemark GPU results on Guru3D OGL performance between AMD and nvidia cards, its embarrassingly bad because AMD gave up on it years ago for no good reason. Then there are bugs like Enhanced Sync causing black screens for pretty much everybody if a feature can't be fixed remove it and go back to the drawing board. Don't even get me started on how AMD can't seem to ever release an AGESA update thats reliable at least for a majority of people. The good news though is that the new team of people working on drivers thus far seem to be a lot more competent if the DX11 code cleanup is anything to go by so we can hope that will in the not too distant future extend to an OGL overhaul and get stupid bugs fixed in the chipset drivers like not all drivers installing on some older chipsets and the user having to manually install them vie device manager.

[@bujfvjg7222]

I've had more nVidia driver issues than AMD.....MANY MORE! And the die on my EVGA GTX1070ti desoldiered it's own copper die connections. i decided to give nVidia the finger since......

[@wiredmind]

Those frame times and lows are making me feel a certain type of way. Now I really want them to come back, damn.

[@RealRaynedance]

Half wonder if AMD could improve their driver situation by contracting Matrox to co-develop them.

[@0101_root]

I've been using an RX 580 i bought from a miner for two and a half years and i've had 0 issues with drivers. Before that i had 2 Nvidia cards and i never had any driver issues with those cards either. I was probably lucky i guess, but so far i have never had any driver issues with any card i've owned.

[@RealRaynedance]

@@0101_root Same here, to be fair. I just know it was enough of an issue that it was known and it's less of a problem now.

[@juanignacioaschura9437]

Despite being older, the Durango GPUs in the XBOX ONE are actually more related to the Bonaire GCN2.0 SKU (R7-260 or HD7790) rather than the Cape Verde family (which tops out at 640SP, 48TMU and 16ROP).

[@TheCreaperHead]

I didn't even know this card existed lol

[@MrChrodo]

I was half-joking when i've answered one of your last polls with "Matrox", count me surprised when it turned out to be true! Damn, i'm a sucker for such niche graphic cards, the underdog, still around, still being a valueable option, if one could get hold of it. Really hope that you will be able the better ones somehow.

[@alpaykasal2902]

in the context of multi-desktop, historically, Matrox was always #1, followed by AMD's Eyefiinity, and Nvidia just sucked... still does. AMD would still be the go-to for managing many displays. But yeah, Matrox was the absolute king.

[@nicestorm1425]

What I find amazing is how stutterfree the experience looks, it is only 30fps, but absolutely smooth as if on rails

[@Ametisti]

I had seen Matrox had some AMD based cards, but hadn't looked into 'em, was just more pleased Matrox wasn't actually dead. Only one of their cards I have, and have ever had, is a 32MB G550. Haven't found a good chance to put it to use though, and it does have DVI so can accept more modern monitors happily while is handy. I picked it up off ebay for less than a tenner I think just so I had a Matrox card. Did the same thing with an S3 card as well, I think slightly nicer one but I forget which one, really wanna buy a Cyrix CPU at some point and throw those two together.

[@Amber57499]

Watching this is so much more interesting than the super high end cards we get today. Great video, subscribed.

[@ImreBertalan86]

Hello Budget-Builds! I was very excited when I saw your thumbnail and title of the video about the Matrox graphics card. Your video was excelent at showing the gaming and productivity benchmarks and honestly, I did expect all of these. However, you've mentioned only the tasks where the card is "not that bad" or just not good enough at all. However, what I think is a missed opportunity in your video is the fact you've not included the possible usage of the card. For example. The 4 Mini-Display ports are crazy on this card. What I would have loed to see is: how many displays can it run at the same time with 4K content for example. Can it run any 4K content at all? Is the card an excelent Home Media Server card for watching recent 4K videos, or your only usage is in a server as a standard display output? Or can you use it for something else? Like an AD server where you can use 3 TVs as displays for ads in your small office and 1 for the computer itself. I think this type of chapter in your video is a HUGE missed opportunity. Matrox cards are always like this. Belive me, I know. 🙂 Worked with a few of them back in my days.

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

I already have some plans to cover this in a build video focussing out output and stability, but I’m glad you enjoyed the video. It’s always hard to talk about stability in depth, as it’s hard to show it without living with it in the real world for a few months (which I do intend to do)

[@ImreBertalan86]

@@BudgetBuildsOfficial Can't wait to see it. :) Thanks for the reply!

[@justsomeguywashwd_jbm821]

Having seen this vid, it would be very interesting to see them have a go at making their own version of latest gen AMD cards.

[@mrkemblegilstrap]

hi! I've watched a ton of this type video and not one mentioned what the source of the game is. a CD? via the internet? if it's internet what kind? ethernet? wifi? Lan? what is your download/upload rate? your ping? are these games single player or multi-player? thank you.

[@Plague_Architect]

I’ve never heard of Matrox before (I was born in 98), but seeing this video it would be really cool to see what a new higher end GPU from them would be like and compared to the competition. Stability is something I desperately need right now 😭

[@brianmiller1077]

They were big in the CAD workstation market.

[@WilliamAndrewPhilipBodie]

You can buy a Matrox brand new here in Germany. but from 273,24 € up to 625,71 €. they have DDR2 from 512Mb up to 1GB 😀

[@mesterak]

I hope to get one of these someday. Thanks for sharing!

[@Googlag]

MATROХ is an engineering department without its own production facilities. The chip was bought from AMD, and the element base is assembled at one of the thousands of factories in China. That's the whole secret. There are also such companies in Russia; they develop an engineering design for processors and manufacture processors in China. Brands such as Elbrus and Baikal.

[@charlescurl8925]

I'll never forget my matrox millenium AGP card, my first real graphics card.... Would love to see a comeback, alongside 3DFX! I want a new Voodoo!!!!

[@lezbriddon]

Matrox made some great video cards for the desktop productivity people, their video cards aimed at vivo and editing where top notch, i wished they would come back to the soho market and bring in some h265 goodness to speed up compression etc. I hope if they do that they leave gaming to other companies and stick to their old niche.

[@ScottPSilver]

I would buy Matrox again in a heartbeat if they would put out at least a lower mid-range card today. I check the Matrox sight and find nothing in the way of GPU's...

[@krashd]

Matrox were my graphics cards of choice throughout the 90's with the Mystique and the Millennium but then I got Half-Life, Half-Life had 3Dfx support and that meant getting a Voodoo card as my next upgrade or possibly never seeing what the game looked like in 3Dfx, and I had fallen in love with that game so much that it was a no brainer and I bought a Voodoo Banshee. I think my next card after that was a Rage 128 from ATI and every card since has been ATI/AMD. Hah. I just remembered that my first ever graphics card before the Mystique was something by Cirrus Logic and it had a whopping 1MB of VRAM!

[@crckdns]

I've loved my old Matrox G400 DualHead and G450! that video is really exciting, good news!

[@ugzz]

Oh nice! The office I started walking at in 2000 ran exclusively Matrox. G400 dual head VGA. Wasn't the best for 3d, but it did run pretty much everything. Ran dual 19" Trinitrons, the setups were awesome!

[@ocudagledam]

Guys, I have to spoil it for you, but as someone who used a GCN 1.0 card up until January 2019 (the more powerful, but closely related Radeon 7950), I can tell you that gaming on that generation of GPUs was extremely trouble free. I got the card second hand, the guy came to my place, I pulled out my old 6950, put the GCN card in, turned on the PC, fired up a game (AC Unity, a notoriously buggy Nvidia sponsored title of the day, which barely worked on the 6950 as that card wasn't officially supported), jacked up the settings, and it ran perfectly without even a driver reinstall. So, getting a GCN 1.0 card to run fine did not require any Matrox magic, they merely had to not break what had already been working flawlessly.

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Debatable, as a user of a lot of GCN1 cards in some cases they worked brilliantly, one of my personal favourite cards is GCN1, but to say AMD left these cards with adequate final drivers, or didn’t break them at all during the time they were on the market would be a tad misleading. When it comes down to stability, OpenGL performance, etc… I’m not too sure what Matrox have done but it certainly held up in intensive situations where I’ve had AMD cards crash out etc..

[@kazriko]

I was a major Matrox user back in the late 90's and early 2000's, because they were one of the best cards for OS/2. When I ended up switching from the G450 to the Nvidia cards, I regretted it. The Parhelia, if I recall correctly, lagged ATI in triangles per second, but actually had more layers of effects that were supported, so if you designed a game for it, you could have made something that looked better. Almost nobody ended up making games specifically for it though. My server still uses a G200 chipset.

[@Adammyers1995]

I've been waiting for this 🎉

[@cskillers1]

i remember seeing this exact matrox 2gb gpu on matrox website not so long ago, just that i couldn't find it anywhere, happy to see a video about it

[@Featinwe]

Matrox G450 was my first GPU in my first PC sometime around 1999... it's good to see it still exists!

[@avejst]

I would use a HDMI recorder for the screen records. It don't put pressure on the graphics card, but connect to the USB3. Great video update 👍

[@SockyNoob]

Holy moly, those frametimes are rock solid for most games. And the fallback mode is genuinely impressive. Sure, it'll be slow, but it's far better than crashing an entire system or displaying nothing.

[@aceofhearts573]

Anyone here remembers the rumors about the Matrox G800? I remember going to forum after forum asking people about it during the really early 2000s. Sadly it never came out and all the Matrox fans jumped to Nvidia or ATI. By the time the Parhelia came out all the costumers had gone to the competition. Another rare GPU was the bitboys hardware that was cancelled. It had eDRAM like game consoles but was too expensive

[@Tiger351]

I still have a HTPC with an R7 250 in it, it would be interesting to see a head to head between this card and its AMD equivalent(s).

[@aus-reviews8462]

Great choice of numbers for the card name, well done matrox

[@ishaqahmed._]

Love your partner just how Budget Builds loves Matrox

[@Nobe_Oddy]

OH. MY. GOODNESS. This lil card is AMAZING!!!! I wish you would have showed us more emulation - ESPECIALLY the OG Xbox!!! (PLEASE, could you do another video about this card kicking butt in some emulation?!?! and FOCUS on the OG XBOX PLEASE!!! - I cannot believe it ran so well!!!!!) I watch another channel that focuses mainly on Emulation and small computers and THIS would be RIGHT UP HIS ALLY!!!! - And when he sees how smooth the OG Xbox is running he's gonna go and buy 3 of these cards!!! The frame-time on it is almost unbelievable!!! WOW!!! THANK YOU!!! Thanks for finding this little gem.... MAYBE if the word REALLY gets out about it and people start buying this thing then Matrox will re-think things and get BACK IN THE GPU GAME!!! (fingers crossed!!) 🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞

[@Caruniom]

A few years ago (~2016) I remember installing these in PCs used in a operation room, as they were certified to work with some special displays used in there.

[@84567297]

Wow this things actually pretty impressive. Interested to see more of their cards.

[@Russell970]

Thanks for accepting my suggestion on buying a new matrox, I'm satisfied :3