· Good cost/performance value
· Best 2D visual quality of group
· Best TV-Out quality

· A quart low in 3D processing power
· Still no true OpenGL driver support

The Mystique is a great step forward for Matrox, which has traditionally been a company that has neglected the gaming and 3D audience in their products. Unfortunately for people that place "gaming" at the top of their priority list when purchasing PC cards, the Mystique needs a steroid injection when compared to the rest of this field.

The Mystique did continually stun us by showing the clearest and most crisp text at resolutions above 1280x1024 in Win95/98. It also is the only card in this roundup that will allow true full screen/full frame rate DVD support through the purchase of an additional daughtercard (available in December).

The software bundle with the Mystique is fair at best, while the TV-Out capabilities of the card offered the highest resolutions and sharpness.

We're still waiting for Matrox to finish the OpenGL driver for their G200 line of cards, so far the best they'll commit to is "sometime this year". In the meantime they're supplying an OpenGL "D3D wrapper", which does allow gamers to play OpenGL games, but at frame rates that are about half of what a single Voodoo2 card can currently hit.

Still, the new G200-based cards offer impressive jump in performance compared to the previous Millenium 2 and Mystique product lines, and Matrox is to be congratulated for finally having a product that plays with the biggest dogs in the junk yard.

Overall the Mystique is probably best considered for purchase by those that play games on their PC only an hour or two a week, and desire the best possible visual clarity for their Win95/98 business/graphic applications. This goes for the Millenium G200 as well, which retains an identical performance rate in 3D games as the Mystique but ups the possible refresh rate of the monitor by including a higher speed RAMDAC controller.