I didn’t buy it or receive it today, but I got this Matrox G550 PCIe in the mail this last week. I’ve been putting it through its paces, and I have to say…I’m disappointed.
I bought it to see if the G400 drivers for Windows NT 3.51 and Windows 3.1 would work with it. I had not seen anywhere that anyone had ever attempted it. Unfortunately, neither OS’s driver would recognize the card. I bet it might be possible to modify the driver to identify the G550’s PCI ID since Matrox derived the design from the G400. I don’t have the skill or time to do that.
I also tried the card with Windows 95 (Retail Gold) in the hope it would become my go-to PCIe card. While both the Windows 95 drivers for the G450 and the Windows 98 drivers for the G550 (with modified .INF files) worked with the card, I had a number of issues.
The Windows 95 driver would not allow me to modify the signal parameters to match VESA 1080P (it always reverted to a Sony proprietary signal). The Windows 95 drivers at least provided Direct3D support, but it had horrible performance at high resolutions. I wasn’t hoping for Crysis-like performance, but, dang, I didn’t expect it to be so bad.
The Windows 98 drivers worked at all desired resolutions (including proper 1080P signaling), but didn’t integrate into the Display Properties or DirectX. Without those, I couldn’t get any 3D acceleration.
I also discovered that I had to disable PCI Bus Mastering or else Windows 95 would crash after opening a couple of windows.
For good news, the OS/2 Warp (Versions 3 and 4) drivers for the G450 work with the G550 without any modification. I also got 1080P resolution by modifying the MGA.MON file to correct the HDTV signal parameters. This will become my go-to card for OS/2 Warp at least.
Despite the poor 3D performance, the card did produce excellent quality images using analog VGA. The addition of DVI support and dual monitors is a nice bonus. It just isn’t compatible enough with older OSs to suit all of my needs. Fortunately, I only paid $20 US (shipped) to test it out.