Dual Head or not to Dual Head? (Matrox Millennium G400)

Member Name: tweedmat

Product:	Matrox Millennium G400
Date:	15/07/02 (761 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Affordable Quality, Dual Screens, Good tech support

Disadvantages: Need extra cable for dual screens

Before you go out and purchase a graphics card you should ponder over what your gonna use it for.. I bought this graphics card about 6 months ago on ebay for just over £40 and have been extremely happy with its performance. While the matrox G400 is not a dedicated card for gamers - who should probably be more at home buying a Geforce card - it is an excellent product for professionals who like the idea of combining the quality of a 32mb graphics card with the ability to run their system on multiple monitors.

Dual Head
You may wonder why you would ever need 2 monitors, but if you run complicated audio software like cubase or graphics packages like photoshop you probably know how annoying it can become with the amount of windows overlapping each other. With the flexability of two screens, you can spread your work and get on with it alot easier. The card has two monitor ports on the back to connect directly to 2 computer monitors, or you can use the cable provided to connect to the video or super-vhs socket on a normal television.. this means you could playback your dvds through your computer and onto a normal tv set, or just use the tv in the same way youd use another monitor. the only downside to this cable is that the connections can not be directly used, it is necessary to purchase another cable to connect from the tv to the cable connectors..

DAWs
My main reason for buying this card was the amount of people who recommended matrox cards for use in a DAW (digital audio workstation). As i do alot of recording with my computer using cubase it is nice to have the song arrangement with playback keys on one screen and monitoring/mixing controls with effects in the other.

Gaming
Though this card may not compare to a top of the range geforce it has never let me down when playing games. The graphics have always been smooth and crisp and with 32mb onboard its unlikely that ill need to upgrade in the near future. plus you have to reaso
n that a top of the line geforce is quite significantly more expensive.. especially when your tryng to build a quality pc at a budget price.

Support
Though ive never needed support, the website is a fantastic forum to find up to date drivers (as the ones which come with the G400 on the cd are quite old now) including Win XP drivers. And there is also a tech support forum and links to manuals

As an all round middle of the range card, this is excellent. it provides excellent graphics for games as well as flexibility for professional use, at an affordable price.

Highly recommended :)

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