AFAIK, there isn't an order of Mystique cards and their clocks. All the chips can appear in more clock variants. I have a suspicion Matrox card numbering (the xxx-xx format) can encode it, but I do not know enough cards to examine that.

I've just found those informations on dosdays.co.uk about the Millennium:
Core Clock:
50 MHz (IS-STORM-R2 and MGA2064W-R2)
60 MHz (MGA2064W-R3)

So apparently the "best version" is the r3 with 4mb of memory.
I will try to find if there is anything similar about the Millennium 2 and the Mystique 220

Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-04-21, 17:02:

The information I found so far is that the first Millennium is less 3d capable than the Mystique, while the Millennium II is 3d capable as the Mystique\220.
I know that in dos the compatibility of matrox card is inferior compared to s3 cards, but the 2d quality is much better.

Keep in mind that the original Millennium's 3D capability is extremely rudimentary. There are only a handful of titles that were written to use it and it didn't even support texture mapping. It's much more accurate to view it as world class 2D hardware for that specific era. You're correct that it has some of the best analog image quality out there, but a case could be made that it's well into diminishing returns territory. In motion at period relevant resolutions for games, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between a millennium and a ViRGE from a quality vendor. The issue there is that there was a huuuuuuge gap in quality from low end vendors and the high end, so you would need to do your homework. That said, the compatibility issues are somewhat unlikely to bite you on the millennium and it's all well documented so you can see if anything you plan on running would even be effected.

Original Millennium 3D capabilities were designed with CAD in mind. So it's still a 3D accelerator, just not for gaming.

I see, so it may be even worse than the vanilla Mystique?
I've been able to get a Millennium 4mb rev R3.
Now I need to get a Mystique 4mb, the Millennium II AGP and the 8mb Millennium II if ever.
When I get it I'd like to do a comparison between all of those.
What configuration I should use? A 440bx paired with a pentium 2-3? Which windows applications other than final reality?

Thanks

Millennium 1 is almost 2d-only card regardless of the chip and memory size that is used there. Very limited 3d functionality.
Mystique and Mystique 220 cards have huge rendering quality, missing a lot of common features. Graphics looks more like on PlayStation 1 though some people like it. Millennium 2 is slightly better in rendering but still very far from perfect.
Mystique cards series have support of their own 3d API - MSI. Original Mystique is most compatible in MSI games but the slowest, 220 - less compatible but faster, Millennium 2 - minimum compatibility but maximum speed. There are also hybrid Mystiques with early chip and 220 MHz RAMDAC - compromise in compatibility, speed and quality.
The original Mystique has slowest RAMDAC meaning it has worst available image quality modes in lineup. But it is still great for its time.
AGP bus for those old cards means almost nothing except of interface itself. They are too slow to use faster bus effectively.
Shortly, all those early Matroxes are useful mostly for 2d and especially good in combination with Voodoo 1 or 2 because of signal quality loss in pass-through cable. Their 3d capabilities are limited though performance of Mystique was good for late 1996- early 1997.

Thank you for the complete answer and the precious informations
Do you think that this version is hybrid version you mentioned? The video chip is the old one but the memory is faster than common Mystique and the back is labelled as 220:

Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-04-22, 09:08:

Thank you for the complete answer and the precious informations Do you think that this version is hybrid version you mentioned? […]
Show full quote

Thank you for the complete answer and the precious informations
Do you think that this version is hybrid version you mentioned? The video chip is the old one but the memory is faster than common Mystique and the back is labelled as 220:
001.png
002.png

Yes, that seems to be the case. MGA1064SG chip there. Inscription "Copyright 1997" on top is common for Mystique 220. Also it is labeled "MY220" on back side.

https://vintage3d.org

I'm doing the tests. I've also played a bit with biosses those are my findings:
Mystique bios are the same for both first and 220 mhz version. I've been able to recover 3 of them: v1.2, v1.5, v1.8. Performance wise there are no noticeable differences.

Compatibility wise the Mystique was able to run Chris 3d benchmark at 640 only with version 1.2, all the other cards give me a black screen and hang up system. I tried to flash the v1.2 on the mystique 220 but it didn't fix the benchmark furthermore I had black screen with Quake at 640. So it's not worth. All the other cards give the same issue with Chris 640 benchmark, updating the bios didn't help.

Millennium and millennium 2 have different bioses, the agp version of millennium has a different bios too.

Dos wise performance there is almost no difference. In Windows, weird enough on pc player bench the Mystique 220 is faster even than Millennium 2 agp, which is faster than the pci version. I suppose the difference are just due to the agp 66 mhz bus.

I still lack: Millennium 2 8mb which seems very expensive too much to try to buy it. The hybrid version of Mystique, which may be worth for compatibility purposes.
I also found a Mystique 220 with faster memory chips but I think it's not really worth. I'd still like to have the Matrox Millennium with R3 revision chip but again seems too expensive to just have it for collection purposes since performance wise in gaming it's probably worse than the mystique.

I'd be curious to try the Mechwarrior for Mystique, according to your knowledge, does it has a benchmark feature integrated?

Edit: A website containing some information that I found useful is this one: http://www.512bit.net/matrox.html It's not complete though and according to my data some frequencies are wrong (I checked mine with powerstrip).