SPCR

Hello:

Has anybody tried the Matrox Millennium P650 yet?



I'm *this* close to getting one, but I'm hoping to hear about any 1st hand experiences...

I received one a couple of weeks ago and I like it a lot. I don't do gaming so I really can't give you any performance comparisons. The picture that you posted is not really accurate - there is a heat sink covering the graphics chip. My case temperatures have not changed since installing the card (I had a real cheap card while I waited for the 650 to come).
I purchased the card from http://www.axiontech.com/ and it came real quick.

Hello Barry:

Thanks! I have ordered one -- does it come with a DVI to VGA convertor dongle? (If not, it's too bad that the Axion site doesn't suggest that you buy one -- they are just $7, and it would save a lot on shipping to include it in the main order...)

BTW, 2nd Day UPS was just $15 here to Massachusetts. Quite reasonable!

Last week I finally bought my new system ( with the help of this great place), with the P650.
If you have an Asus mb, as I have (P4P800, P4 2,4c, Win.XP), you can get problems after installation of the p650 with getting into your bios: an incompatabilty between the Asus bioslogo-setting and the P650.

I could not open the bios any longer and this is a problem with at least Asus mb's.
It did cost me days to figure it out and finally to get to the patches at the Matrox site.
First look for the newest drivers for your mb and te card itself at the Matrox support forum.
Still , at this moment, the drivers of the card are not recognized in XP (settings), (red cirkel) but it works great now.

Neil, the card comes with 2 DVI->VGA adapters.

T ter Berg wrote:Last week I finally bought my new system ( with the help of this great place), with the P650.
If you have an Asus mb, as I have (P4P800, P4 2,4c, Win.XP), you can get problems after installation of the p650 with getting into your bios: an incompatabilty between the Asus bioslogo-setting and the P650.

I could not open the bios any longer and this is a problem with at least Asus mb's.
It did cost me days to figure it out and finally to get to the patches at the Matrox site.
First look for the newest drivers for your mb and te card itself at the Matrox support forum.
Still , at this moment, the drivers of the card are not recognized in XP (settings), (red cirkel) but it works great now.

I do have an Asus motherboard -- but I have the Asus boot screen turned off -- does this get me off the hook? I also am running Win2K SP3...

Neil, the card comes with 2 DVI->VGA adapters.

That's awesome -- they list it as an "OEM" but I guess that doesn't mean just the card alone.

[quote="NeilBlanchard"]
I do have an Asus motherboard -- but I have the Asus boot screen turned off -- does this get me off the hook? I also am running Win2K SP3...

/quote]

You will not have that problem than : I had to install another card to be able tot get into the Asus bios to switch the logo option off.
see:
http://www.matrox.com/mga/support/drive ... /home2.cfm

[quote="NeilBlanchard"]
I do have an Asus motherboard -- but I have the Asus boot screen turned off -- does this get me off the hook? I also am running Win2K SP3...

/quote]

You will not have that problem than : I had to install another card to be able tot get into the Asus bios to switch the logo option off.
see:
http://www.matrox.com/mga/support/drive ... /home2.cfm

I have a Asus P4S8X and have not had any problems. The boot screen is just fine without the Matrox logo fix patch.

Hello:

My P650 is supposed to arrive tomorrow -- I hope that the power outage doesn't delay it! (I hope I'm not being too selfish... )

Hello:

It arrived on time...nice. The HS is not tiny -- it's about 2"x2" and the pins are almost 3/8" long! It might just fit next to a card in the first PCI slot -- but only just! The image quality is vintage Matrox.

I did find out that you need the patch (mentioned above) if you have a dual boot to Linux and Win2K -- the GRUB boot loader screen gets scrambled and squashed up to the top of the screen! It's unrecognizable, but it doesn't hang things up, thankfully. My default boot is Win2K so I installed the patch and all seem to be back to normal, though I have not booted to SuSE Linux yet.

More anon.