I don't think there's anything particularly quirky about G200's OpenGL. It just took them forever to get it working. G200 and G400 both got full OpenGL around the same time (early/mid 2000). G200 wasn't exactly a hot topic anymore at that point though obviously.

What does hardware-acceleration mean in terms of MGA G100 G200 ?
It confuses me, because G100 and G200 are somehow D3D compatible but lack an ogl-icd. so what about this:

http://forum.amiga.org/index.php?topic=51676. … 45173#msg545173

Video (with hardware acceleration & refresh rate/resolution control)

Card / Chipset Supported By Status Notes
nVidia TNT2 Native Confirmed
nVidia GeForce 256 Native Confirmed
nVidia GeForce 2/2MX Native Confirmed
nVidia GeForce 3/3Ti Native (update) Confirmed
nVidia GeForce 4 MX GCK Unconfirmed
nVidia GeForce 4 Ti GCK Confirmed Minor visual issues
nVidia GeForce FX GCK Unconfirmed
nVidia GeForce 2 Go GCK Unconfirmed
nVidia GeForce 4 Go GCK Unconfirmed
Matrox Millennium Native Confirmed No hardware block-move
Matrox Mystique Native Confirmed No hardware block-move
Matrox G100 Native Confirmed
Matrox G200 Native Confirmed
Matrox G400 Native Confirmed
Matrox G450 Native Unconfirmed
Matrox G550 Native (update) Unconfirmed
Video (without hardware accelearation or refresh rate support)

Card / Chipset Supported By Status Notes
3dfx Voodoo 3 Native Unconfirmed VESA only
3dfx Voodoo 4/5 Native Unconfirmed VESA only
ATI Radeon R100 Native Confirmed VESA only
ATI Radeon R200 Native Confirmed VESA only
ATI Radeon RV200 Native Confirmed VESA only
ATI Radeon RV250 Native Confirmed VESA only
ATI Radeon R300 Native Unconfirmed
Sound Cards / Sound Chips

For Kernel 3.10
https://web.archive.org/web/20110812155440/ht … m/gfxcards.html

The list shows only G200 AGP this is also somehow strange. Voodoo3 is not usable in 3D that's a bit crazy.

I am currently checking for suitable hardware for a Amithlon build and I am thinking about a Matrox-GFX card for it.
Don't know yet if it will be an early K6/2-450 P2/333 P3/500 P3/1400 or one of my shuttle XPC's.

dr.zeissler wrote on 2021-12-22, 21:41:

What does hardware-acceleration mean in terms of MGA G100 G200 ?
It confuses me, because G100 and G200 are somehow D3D compatible but lack an ogl-icd. so what about this:
[...]

Their issues were with software (drivers) not hardware. So if you have good drivers for your OS, they can work fine, as they eventually did in Windows too.

I currently own one Matrox G100 and one G550, many years ago I have a G400, but I have sold it because of not working on 478 pin mainboard. It has no 1,5 Volt compatibility. Thus it requires a Pentium III mainboard to run only. The G550 can work on 478 pin mainboard, so I have shifted them, many years ago around 2006 or 2007. G550 has no Windows 3.1x drivers I want to add, up to G400 only. The performance point, well you can have an Intel i740, a low budget card, works well. The jpg quality of it was tremendous, you can not see much noise on pics, I wonder how did they do it? Matrox, actually has no real specialty, except their utilities. I have rescued two cards only once each, with their "Restore BIOS" recover utility on G100 and G400. The dual head option was hmm so so. G550 AGP can run on Windows 7 with limited support. I am using G100 as well as i740 and i815e's on board graphics if I want to run Windows 3.1x. (I have Intel D815EEA with Pentium III 1GHz, Asus A7V with AMD Athlon 800, Asus P3V4x with PIII 600E and P3C-E with Tualatin P3-S 1400.) I don't own a nVidia TNT or equivalent so I can not make a comparison with early nVidia, as well as ATI Radeon 256.

G400 is certainly AGP 2.0/1.5V signalling compatible.

G400 did not run on Asus P4T-533C mainboard (it was a AGP 4x) a red protection and warning led was lighting nearby AGP Slot on mainboard with G400, but G550 successfully worked. I think there were a compatibility issue.

I tested my G400 cards on a Pentium 4 (Intel 865something chipset) mobo and they worked flawless. Either your individual card had a defect or it was another issue entirely.

Can be, there must be have an issue.... But, the G400 card was working on PIII mainboards, as well as the motherboard was working with G550 and nVidia 6800 cards.

Wake up call for myself to study seller pics carefully.
(Removed the heatsinks myself after it came in)

It was too much work to restore the solder pads.

Yes, the regulator chip might have been a problem.

Any chance to fix the vsyc issue with the G550? Lot's of demos complain Vsync not set and even with the matrox tweak-tool vsync still does not work?
What is the best driver for win2k for a G550? I am currently using 5.82. Thx!

dr.zeissler wrote on 2021-12-22, 21:48:

I am currently checking for suitable hardware for a Amithlon build and I am thinking about a Matrox-GFX card for it.
Don't know yet if it will be an early K6/2-450 P2/333 P3/500 P3/1400 or one of my shuttle XPC's.

I checked that.

Matrox is supported in Picasso96 with the Amithlon kernels.

- MGA Mystique is working fine with "video=matrox + video=vesa" with the original kernel but it requires 1.31 update to do so!
- G100 gives me a corrupt screen, can't fix this
- G200/G400/G450/G550 do all work but G450/550 requires the newkenerl and 1.31 update to get hardware acceleration (dual monitor support is nice!)

It seems that Nvidia cards are faster, but matrox is still my favorite.

PhilsComputerLab wrote on 2016-09-03, 10:11:

Yea it depends on what you're after.

For Direct3D games the Matrox is terrific. It also supports EMBM, a cool feature, sometimes only supported with Matrox cards 😀

On win2k and HL1/Guman OpenGL is the way to go on G550...D3D is noticeable slower, vsync does not work on G550.

Can I buy "expendable" as ready to go EMBM version via digital distribution?
I always se the regular version and the EMBM patch does not word on these.

https://web.archive.org/web/20061202154015/ht … forums.murc.ws/

Is there any copy of the very interesting forums threads?

Interesting that G400max beats out G550 - on paper the G550 is more advanced. I have both cards, wonder which one I should use in my retro pc.

I use G550 in my Desktop machines, because G550 is low-profile. I currently don't have a G400 in use.

G550 - Pro
- silent
- low-profile
- native OS/2 Warp3/4 driver, including WinOS/2, so native 256, true- and Highcolor Win3x!!!
- native Win9x/2k/XP drivers (and later too, but I am for retro)
- native support in Amithlon (2d acceleration with the newkernel)
- dual monitor support
- 32MB DDR-Ram
- excellent Image Quality
- OpenGL/D3D Support
- EMBM Hardware-Support
- highly compatible to older software/games

Cons:
- tends to get warm
- no usable pixel/vertex-shaders and no tnl.
- slow compared to other 64Bit LP cards like FX5200 or R7000
- has a very annoing bug in the vsync implementation (vsync variable not set)

G400 has access to earlier drivers and to TurboGL.