De mannen van GamePC hebben een review online gezet over de nieuwe Matrox kaart, de G550. Deze kaart is praktisch gelijk aan de G450, maar heeft twee puntjes waarop hij zich onderscheid. Ten eerste zijn er twee keer zoveel texture units aanboord waardoor z’n 3D performance iets hoger ligt dan die van de G450. Daarnaast is er een geavanceerde versie van matrix palette skinning aanwezig voor de HeadCasting Engine, een soort van 3D chatprogramma. Weinig nieuwe features dus, en dat is dan ook het probleem:
The question is, if you already own a G400 or G450, is there any huge reason to upgrade? Unfortunately, not really. The G550 will hopefully be a little cheaper than the G450 when it hits store shelves, and it does have a DVI output, if that's what you need. Also, there's the "HeadCastingEngine", if that interests you. Although I have yet to run into one person who's seen the HeadCasting software in action who hasn't called it "creepy", "weird", or "robot-like". Are any of these features that will make people run out to stores and pre-order G550's? I think not.
The G550 IS a great business card, but it's going to take a lot more than cards like this to compete with Nvidia and ATI. Both companies are rapidly adding better multi-monitor features to their next generation cards, and have just as good business-class graphics performance as the G550 does.
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