VOGONS


Matrox Mystique: opinions?

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First post, by snorg

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I seem to remember this being one of those funky cards in the era right before there was a clear winner for consumer 3d cards.
I can't remember if I actually owned one or if it was one of the cards that I considered before ending up with a Voodoo 3. I think it does not support hardware mip mapping, true transparency and fogging, so the 3d was probably not the best. It does support OS/2, though, so it would be a way to
get a higher end graphics card in an OS/2 / Win 95 / NT system if I went with a PCI 486 board.

Reply 2 of 62, by F2bnp

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It's a nice card actually. Its 3D features and performance are equally dreadful, however it has good compatibility with DOS (worse than the S3 Virge) and offers far fetter picture quality than most S3 Virge cards.
A lot of people, me included, tend to pair it with Voodoo 1/2 cards on Pentium and Pentium MMX builds.

Reply 3 of 62, by vetz

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Actual 3D performance in MSI games I would rate higher than many other cards of the time. The target of the Mystique were raw FPS on the cost of graphical fidelility options.

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Reply 4 of 62, by Gamecollector

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Unfortunatedly this card isn't even DX5 compatible. No bilinear filtering, no transparency (stippled textures), no mipmapping.

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Reply 5 of 62, by Unknown_K

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I use the Mystique (or Millenium) for early 2D Windows gaming paired with a Voodoo 1 for 3D. You are better off with a TnT1 if you want real 3D.

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Reply 7 of 62, by Dominus

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Why pair anything with a voodoo3? At least anything like the Matrox Mystique doesn't bring anything better to the 2D desktop nor to the 3D one...
I had one and wasn't impressed with it... Eventually bought a V2 for the 3D 😉

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Reply 8 of 62, by Putas

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Gamecollector wrote:

Unfortunatedly this card isn't even DX5 compatible. No bilinear filtering, no transparency (stippled textures), no mipmapping.

It is compatible. Perhaps you meant full compliance, in which case the Mystique would fail every d3d release. Missing features do not mean incompatibility.

Reply 10 of 62, by swaaye

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Matrox Mystique / Millennium II:

-DOS compatibility pretty good but not perfect. I can't specifically remember the problems I've seen though...
-GUI performance good for 1996/7. Good VGA signal quality.
-3D is fugly but the point-sampled look can be appealing compared to bilinear-filtered, low resolution textures. Stippled alpha is not really appealing though. I also remember some drivers break stippled alpha and just go opaque.
-Prone to lock-ups in 3D and sometimes have font / mouse cursor corruption. Can cause audio problems because of some PCI bus buffer hacks that improve benchmarks.

Putas' site is full of lots of information and screenshots about these cards.
http://vintage3d.org/index.php

Reply 11 of 62, by Tetrium

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I know it's not really on topic, but while googling I found this
I never even knew they ever made an ISA variant of that card!

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Reply 13 of 62, by rgart

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I think its great card. Not quite as fast as the Matrox Millenium but hook a mystique up to a PCI 5x86 and you will have a responsive Windows 98.

I notice a big difference in speed and how solid the colours are between a Matrox Mystique/Matrox Millenium and a generic S3 card in Windows 98 on a 5x86.

=My Cyrix 5x86 systems : 120MHz vs 133MHz=. =My 486DX2-66MHz=

Reply 14 of 62, by Unknown_K

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Tetrium wrote:

I know it's not really on topic, but while googling I found this
I never even knew they ever made an ISA variant of that card!

I have the VLB version. Never figured out how to make it detect the extra 2MB (4MB total) RAM.

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Reply 15 of 62, by vetz

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Unknown_K wrote:
Tetrium wrote:

I know it's not really on topic, but while googling I found this
I never even knew they ever made an ISA variant of that card!

I have the VLB version. Never figured out how to make it detect the extra 2MB (4MB total) RAM.

The extra RAM is probably only for programs that support it. I have the same on my STB Velocity S3 Virge VX . Windows can only use 4MB of the total 8MB. The last 4MB is only available to supported applications like AutoCAD.

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Reply 16 of 62, by Unknown_K

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Windows 3.1 drivers would support higher resolution and color depths. The Matrox card was a high end 24 bit card and has jumper for settings but I don't know what hey do.

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Reply 17 of 62, by Jacques

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Hello Everyone,
back in the mid 90's I owned box version of Matrox Mystique (2 MB, games bundle included), recently I managed to buy Mystique 220 (4MB) alone.
Does anyone by a chance have ISOs of Mystique versions of Destruction Derby 2, Monstertruck Madness and Mechwarrior I had back in the days?

Reply 18 of 62, by Dominus

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Please don't ask that here. While old, copyright doesn't expire for ages ;(
And I had those mystique versions of the games until recently ;(

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