Benchmark Results
The 3D benchmarks are not representative of the Millennium G550s performance since this isnt a gamers card, but they are at the very least an indicator of
why Matrox cards are not for gamers. The G550 just pails in comparison to NVIDIAs offering just as we suspected. Also as we suspected, Matrox achieves much greater image quality (as I detailed earlier) which is more important to the productive power user anyway. I could care less how many frames per second I can get in Homesite or Excel, what about you?
What is good to see though, is that the G550 does perform better than its predecessors, namely the G450.
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| Quake III & MDK 2 TimeDemos |
Same story here.
And the G550 performs significantly better than the Geforce2 Ultra and shows a hefty improvement over the G450. It goes to show that despite popular belief, benchmarking isnt cut and dry; the results are heavily tied into what you plan on doing with the product being tested (which seems obvious enough but is often forgotten). Just because the Geforce 2 Ultra can absolutely crush the G550 (or the G450 for that matter) doesnt mean the Geforce2 Ultra is the best video card in the world. If you dont plan on gaming then those results mean nothing to you. Something to think about
Conclusion
Well, as we knew all along, the G550 is no gaming video card its meant for maximizing productivity. Whether you want it for the office or your a power user or otherwise chances are, your boss doesnt want you to play games on the company issued computer in the first place. In this situation the lack of gaming performance would actually benefit the G550. And hey, you probably have enough stuff to do without the allure of CounterStrike knowing at your toes.
I dont mean to sound like a broken record, but I hear and read a lot of flack about Matrox and their supposed inability to keep up with the cutting edge of 3D gaming technology. It isnt even a question of whether they can keep pace or not because that is irrelevant to the fact that they make some really cool cards. DualHead has been around for years and there still is no worthy competition for it to vie against. I havent heard anyone complain about that before. Who knows, maybe power users are a more humble folk than the gaming crowd :-| .
Bottom Line
| Box Contents: | 84% |
| Features: | 90% |
| Stability: | 90% |
| Image Quality: | 91% |
| Performance: | 78% |
| Value: | 91% |
Overall Score: 90%
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