Mystique has very limited 3D. It's buggy and lacks many features. That's the prob. Best to use a different card for 3D games

Note that the Mystique G200 is a different beast and much better. I am referring to the original Mystique and the 220.

Thanks

But the Matrox Mystique is on the list of supported cards for Dungeon Keeper Direct3D.

Would overriding DirectDraw's refresh rate help getting the DirectDraw versions running?

Would a 3D Accelerator card such as this help? Is it even possible to attach one to a Mystique?

Thanks

To answer your last two questions: yes and yes. The Voodoo (1&2) cards are designed to work with your existing graphics card via a passthrough cable (or you can just either make your own cable or yank out the VGA cable from your primary graphics card and plug it into the Voodoo card when running an accelerated game).

Personally I wouldn't bother with the old Millennium and Mystique for accelerated games - running games on them looks as if no 3D acceleration was done at all (the lack of bilinear filtering support really kills it).

The Matrox Millennium cards are quite nice for 2D though, so they go well with a Voodoo 1 or 2.

SquallStrife wrote:

The Matrox Millennium cards are quite nice for 2D though, so they go well with a Voodoo 1 or 2.

+1

The only reason for matrox was for their first class 2d quality. A matrox card with a voodoo setup is extremely common.

its a shame, if they were as good at 3d as their 2d... ati and nvidia wouldnt have had a chance.

Another Matrox + 3dfx fan here. Have used Mystique 220 + Voodoo Graphics and Millenium G200 + Voodoo^2 for years. A true, unforgettable classic.

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So how exactly does a 3D accelerator card work? Would it take over from the normal video card or would they work together when playing a 3D game?

I also take it they only work in 3D games and have no effect elsewhere?

Also what kind of passthrough cable would I need and how common are they? (because I definitely don't have the expertise to make my own)

And does anyone know what the difference between this and this is?

I'm actually sort of trying to create a "perfect setup" that runs slow enough for games like Theme Park, while not slowing games like Dungeon Keeper down too much (I realise that's probably impossible).

Thanks

AdamP wrote:

And does anyone know what the difference between this and this is?

One is black the other is not, politically (no racism) I have to say they are equal 😉

they are "equal" for all intents and purposes. That being said, the card you pictured are Voodoo2 cards. you should only buy the 12mb version. Which has memory chips on both sides of the card.

Also, you can use 2 of these cards in tandem. If you do this, make sure you get a pair of identical cards. Not so much that you HAVE to get a matched pair, it just makes life easier for the uninitiated.

As for connecting them; I found a nice site from gateway (of all places) that makes it look easy.

http://support.gateway.com/s/vidcard/stb/v008 … /V0080406.shtml

The black cables tend to hit ebay for a few $ every so often as does the ribbon cable to connect 2 cards together (sli cable). If you are skilled with a knife, you can make your own sli cable. Instructions can be easily found with a google search.

AdamP wrote:

But the Matrox Mystique is on the list of supported cards for Dungeon Keeper Direct3D.

Would a 3D Accelerator card such as this help? Is it even possible to attach one to a Mystique?

That probably means the game will run with it with some specific driver revision. But still the Mystique and Mystique 220 are very basic 3D chips and as I said are missing a lot of features. Their rendering looks like software rendering because they lack texture filtering and alpha blending, among other things. And their drivers are buggy (or hardware semi-broken) resulting in various weird image issues.

Also, the Mystique and Millennium II tend to be somewhat picky about what motherboards they like. I've had lots of lock up problems with them in some boards, even on 440BX / 815 boards. You may also run into hardware mouse cursor and font corruption in Windows.

You can look at the stickied thread about 3D Accelerators for some more Mystique screenshots.

I'd get a Voodoo3/4/5 or a GeForce 3/4, personally. Voodoo2 is ok but it will be slow for some Glide games and is limited to 800x600 max whereas Voodoo 3/4/5 can do whatever rez you want. Voodoo 1 (Voodoo Graphics) is not a good choice for anything beyond some DOS Glide games. Avoid Voodoo Banshee as it's just a much slower Voodoo3-like chip.

Hi

I still haven't decided if I'm going to get a Voodoo, but does anyone have any idea why my LCD refuses to display the DirectDraw versions while an old CRT monitor displays them fine?

Thanks

I have just tried Dungeon Keeper Gold on Mystique 220. What I observed - game starts with animation during which screen refresh rate is set to 85Hz and my monitor displays "bad signal". After pushing "Esc" I can get to menu and problem disappears. Normally I have set 60Hz in windows monitor properties. It seems that Mystique in some games increases screen refresh rate automagically - no matter what you set in windows display properties. I have noted the same problem in Screamer 2 with Mystique patch. Maybe that is a cause of your problems?

AdamP wrote:

Hi

I still haven't decided if I'm going to get a Voodoo, but does anyone have any idea why my LCD refuses to display the DirectDraw versions while an old CRT monitor displays them fine?

Thanks

Its easy LCD monitors usually support 60Hz, on analog vga cable sometimes also 70 and 75Hz. So when matrox switch refresh rate to any different refresh rate, your lcd is unusable. Seen few radeons with bad bios, so they used not standart refresh rates in dos - result was that you wont enter into bios and wont seen anything till windows started booting.

Old CRT monitors showed almost everything, most LCD are much worse at refresh rates.