Matrox G400 Revisited

Conclusion

The G200's OpenGL ICD ended up being too little, too late, and Matrox may run into the same problem with the G400's TurboGL. The next generation of cards from NVIDIA, 3dfx, and S3 are due within the next few months and all promise more features and raw power. Thus, if you can, it is probably a good idea to wait a little while and see how things pan out in the next generation. At the very least, the price of the current generation will probably drop significantly when the new cards are finally available.

However, for anyone that needs to buy a card now the TurboGL definitely brings the G400 back into contention as a great all around 3D accelerator. Just remember that the TurboGL only works with Pentium III and Athlon CPUs. Without the TurboGL, the G400 is severely crippled, making a TNT2 or Voodoo3 a better choice for Pentium II, Celeron, or K6 users. Unfortunately for Matrox, that takes out a huge chunk of the market.