Matrox has been around since the dawn of 3D graphics. Their Millenium actually harbored a 'few' 3D features but the subsequent Mystique, PowerVR PCX2 and G200 parts were far from being 'real' gaming boards. The performance and feature list was way below par for the Mystique and the G200 just couldn't cope with Quake 2. 1997 to the present hasn't been exactly fruitful for Matrox. Gamers in particular have always sided with 3dfx or NVIDIA. With only a few OEM design wins for the G200, Matrox clearly had some work to do for their next generation G400 chipset.

The shrink to .25 micron? Done and dusted. Increased clock speed? Matrox has it covered. More 3D features and blazing quick 2D? Enter the G400MAX…

The fill rate of the G400 MAX is certainly up there with the best of the bunch at 333MTexels per second (and identical to that of the Voodoo3 3000). The G400 MAX processor also supports single cycle multi-texturing (great for those 3D first person shooters). As with most of these new 2D/3D chips, the G400 MAX is on a .25micron five layer metal process technology. It also harbors Matrox's 256-bit DualBus architecture with true 128-bit external bus to video memory. Although we've yet to witness the Camino and APG 4X, the G400MAX is AGP 2X/4X capable with Multi-threaded Bus Mastering. It's ably backed up by 32MB of SGRAM.

Matrox hasn't actually come out and said what their clock speed is but with a 333Mtexel/sec fill rate, it's pretty easy to work out that 'magic' number. Bearing in mind that it is two cycles per clock you simply divide 333 by two and are left with 166MHz. Even though a heat sink and fan combination sits directly over the chip itself to keep things 'relatively' cool, we haven't yet experimented with 'overclocking'. We will let you know…