Matrox Millennium G550

Matrox is taking on the 3D graphics market with its new Parhelia-512 chip and a £279 retail board. So how does it stand up against nVidia's GeForce4?

Even if HeadCasting doesn't appeal, the Millennium G550 is still an excellent card for business users.

Inexpensive DualHead adapter with DVI support ; excellent image quality and 2D performance

Poor 3D performance ; proprietary vertex shader only assists HeadCasting

Fantastic graphics Incredible potential Cons:Occasional stallingHigh cost

Occasional stallingHigh cost

DualHead Monitor - desktop extends twice lengthwise (this mode is very popular among such cards, NVIDIA GeForce2 MX TwinView has it as well); DVD Max - full-screen playback of DVD movies on...

The Parhelia gives graphics pros and hard-core gamers the ability stretch their digital view across three displays.

The Parhelia gives graphics pros and hard-core gamers the ability stretch their digital view across three displays.

Fast 16X-antialiased 3D performance ; peerless 2D performance ; 10-bit color with billions of hues ; excellent visual quality ; three-display-surround gaming

Not as fast as Nvidia's best offering ; control panel requires installing Microsoft's .Net ; compatible with only Windows 2000 and XP

Though it's not as fast as the latest Nvidia graphics card, the Parhelia's decent clip and three-display-surround gaming make it a compelling option for gaming gourmands.

Review: Matrox makes it clear that the audience for its new $125 dual-monitor Millennium G550 video card is business and home users--not gamers. You won't find anything close to acceptable 3D performance on this graphics card. What you will find is...

Lots of features ; good price ; innovative function for visual chatting online ; dual-display with any combination of CRT, LCD, and TV ; long warranty

Poor 3D for gaming ; HeadCasting applications are hard to use

Dedicated 3D gamers need not bother, but home or business users will appreciate the solid 2D performance and a new approach to face-to-face communication over the Internet.

This Matrox card has Dual Head capability for home or business users who want the ability to work on two displays at the same time.

Matrox didn't position the Millennium G550 for the gaming crowd. To play Test Drive 6 we had to disable fog effects, and frame rates in most of our test games were acceptable only at 640 by 480 resolution. For example, we slogged through Unreal...

High-end 3-D is not the only advanced feature you get by adding a new graphics card to your system. The Matrox Millennium G550 Dual-DVI is the first card to offer support for two digital LCDs, which, along with its many different dual-display modes,...

ATI and nVidia continue to battle each other for all-out 3-D supremacy among gamers, and although the Matrox Parhelia doesn't win any drag races, it delivers very good 3-D performance. Add to that excellent image quality and the TripleHead...

Works with anything, Autocad and Microstation is A+

Poor tech support from Montreal office

I'm Matrox users since..... long time, always a very good quality or display. But I bought a G550 DualHead DVI Didn't succeed output on a TV

Fantastic graphics, Fantastic Performance. Dual Screens.

The driver is just so poor, it has killed my machine twice. My second monitor does not always work, and no it's not the monitor. The card rarely tuns back on after the power management turns the monitor off, (the macine is still running and the only way

got it for 270 euros from ebay, no problems s... 

Excellent Card and Software for the price

Unfortunately not compatible with SMT KINGDOM SOFTWARE

I was enchanted by the 10Bit color and the Tr... 

got it for 270 euros from ebay, no problems so far, all games run similar to ti4200 at 1280 with all features enabled plus the versatile dual/triplehead features

I was enchanted by the 10Bit color and the Triple-Head support. I purchased the Parhelia even though I read countless articles on how it underperformed in 3D gaming. However, my biggest problem with this board is that Matrox markets it as a 3 monitor...

Don't be fooled by the brain-dead game addict... 

Unsurpassed image quality, TripleHead is amaz...