Related Articles

Matrox has long been hailed as the industry leader in 2D performance and image quality; and when the G400 MAX was released about three years ago, the company also boasted some impressive 3D performance as well. But since that time, Matrox has seen more and more of its support from the gaming community slip into the hands of the competition – namely 3DFX and NVIDIA (and now just the latter of the two…).

This probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise since the These are core hasn’t undergone any sweeping changes since the G200. Whether this is a conscious business decision or the result of other circumstances is impossible to say for sure, but my guess is that the lack of 3D performance is no mishap.

If you look at the consumer-level video card market, each of the major companies has created its own: NVIDIA has cornered 3D gaming performance, ATI has the jack of all trades/master of none thing going on, and Matrox is sitting pretty in the business and power user arenas relying on its superior image quality (most notably at higher resolutions), excellent 2D performance (again, especially at higher resolutions), and let us not forget the uber cool DualHead technology. By not entering into the FPS race, Matrox has been able to keep development and production costs low which further increases the value and attractiveness of the G line. For these reasons (as well as a few others, including the availability of TV in/out on the Marvel models), the G550 and its predecessors are the ideal choice where productivity is paramount.

“Ideal” assuming the G550 lives up to the greatness that its older siblings achieved -- but I guess that’s why I’m here :] .

One aspect of Matrox that is often overlooked is the fact that they also produce some wickedly powerful (and expensive) cards designed for professional-quality, realtime video editing and post-production. They have also been in the industry since the 70’s so they’ve been around the (video card) block a few times.

Shall we?