My Matrox Millennium displays vertical bars and doesn't always fit the screen \ VOGONS

My Matrox Millennium displays vertical bars and doesn't always fit the screen

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First post, by Kahenraz

Posted on 2022-10-11, 23:29

Kahenraz Offline

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I bought a Matrox Millennium that is exhibiting some odd behavior. It's rendering, very subtly, vertical bars across the screen. I could barely see it on black, but something just didn't look right. Brighter colors at low contrast, like the menu in Quake, make it more obvious.

I also had problems where it doesn't always fit the display. I noticed this first at the BIOS screen, which does not fit to the screen at all, even when I try to use auto-adjust on my LCD. Most of the render resolutions on Quake do fit alright, but some do not, with 640x400 and 640x480 being the worst. 800x600 causes Quake to blink, but 1024x768 does not.

Does anyone have any experience with this card? Have any of you experienced these light vertical bars or problems with the screen geometry not fitting properly?

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Last edited by Kahenraz on 2022-10-11, 23:43. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 6, by pentiumspeed

Posted on 2022-10-11, 23:42

pentiumspeed Offline

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Refer to Gona's video card compatibility matrix. Does mention this issue.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 2 of 6, by Kahenraz

Posted on 2022-10-11, 23:52

Kahenraz Offline

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The BIOS on my card is version 1.5, probably one of the earliest revisions. I wonder if a new BIOS would improve things.

Reply 3 of 6, by Kahenraz

Posted on 2022-10-12, 03:07

Kahenraz Offline

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The 1.5 BIOS seems to be the original release version. I found a website that talked about flashing to the latest 3.0 version.

This new BIOS fixed the problem I had with the screen geometry at some resolutions, flickering in Quake at 800x600, and the vertical bars are reduced, but still present. I also get horizontal waves that strobe across the screen at some resolutions.

I think these abberations are more of a compatibility problem with LCDs, and I would assume that they would be less noticable, or possibly non-existent on a proper CRT.

Maybe the experience is better with the Millennium II. I'm not all that impressed with this Millennium.

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Reply 4 of 6, by darry

Posted on 2022-10-12, 04:56

darry Offline

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The Millennium an Millennium II use TVP3026 RAMDAC variants rated at either 175MHz, 200MHz or 25oMHz ( there may be other variations). I have one of theses somewhere and could probably test it on some LCDs .

Do you have more than one LCD on which to test this ? Do they all behave the same way ?

Reply 5 of 6, by Joseph_Joestar

Posted on 2022-10-12, 07:55

Joseph_Joestar Offline

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Kahenraz wrote on 2022-10-12, 03:07:

Maybe the experience is better with the Millennium II. I'm not all that impressed with this Millennium.

I have a Millennium II and the image quality on an LCD is excellent all the way up to 1280x1024 when using 16-bit colors. However, if you increase the color depth to 24-bit, some very faint vertical lines will appear at that resolution. Lower resolutions work fine with 24-bit colors.

At a guess, the 4MB on-board memory is hitting its limits when high resolutions are used with an increased color depth.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
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PC#3: Core 2 Duo E8600 / Foxconn P35AX-S / X800 / Audigy2 ZS
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 6 of 6, by Kahenraz

Posted on 2022-11-18, 10:57

Kahenraz Offline

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Following up on this. I have the same issue, but with a slightly better output, on a DELL monitor (the other one was from HP). There is no difference in output whether the memory upgrade is attached or not.

I have no other card to test against, but there appears to be an issue with the display output of this one. I don't know if it exists on other cards. I also believe that this would be less visible on a CRT. It's probably some issue with VGA timing that is just more visible on an LCD.

Of anyone wants to test this, an easy way to get a low resolution set with a high display brightness is to load Quake 1 and jump in the water in the level selection map. You can also try changing the resolution to see if it's any different.

I would like some some more data on this, to know if it's a problem with other cards.

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