Hardware News

Nuggets: Matrox' G400 - more features than a Victorian semi!

Justin Pearse ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 18 Mar 1999 11:02 GMT

Is it a bird, is it a plane?

Matrox, has announced its sixth generation graphics chip and given it one of those memorable labels -- the G400.

Matrox reckons the chip represents the first 256-bit DualBus architecture with support for AGP 4X and AGP 2X. As well as a 128-bit interface to memory and support for up to 32MB of synchronous memory, the G400 uses a 3D Rendering Array Processor to help achieve that elusive real-life performance.

The Matrox G400 is fully DirectX6 and OpenGL compliant, supporting 3D features such as single cycle multi-texturing, Environment Mapped Bump Mapping, anisotropic filtering -- which apparently improves image quality -- and stencil buffering. Other new features include DualHead display, an integrated RAMDAC of up to 300Mhz using Matrox' UltraSharp DAC technology.

All that and not a card to see it on!

Matrox says the chip should find a home by Summer and be available on a card by mid Q2.

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