Once Mighty Matrox Launches Line Of AMD-Powered Graphics Cards

Award yourself 500 geek points (can be traded in for geek cred) if you remember Matrox, one of several big players in the 1990s that also included NVIDIA, AMD, ATI (since absorbed by AMD), and 3DFX (since absorbed by NVIDIA). You don't see Matrox in the headlines too often these days, though the company is still around. It's still producing graphics cards too, including two recent entries -- the C420 and C680, both powered by AMD.

Matrox C420

The C420 is a low-profile, PCI-E x16 graphics card capable of driving up to four displays or projectors at up to 2560x1600 (each output). It's based on AMD's Cape Verde GPU architecture as found in the Radeon HD 7700 line and has 2GB of GDDR5 memory. Supported graphics standards include OpenGL 4.4, OpenCL 1.2, and DirectX 11.2.

It's a passively cooled card that runs silent, making it a good fit for small form factor and embedded systems. Home users won't have much use for the card, though like Matrox's other offerings, it will end up serving commercial and enterprise customers.

Matrox C680

For clients who need something more powerful and robust, the C680 is a beefier version of the C420. It's a single-slot solution that's actively cooled and able to power up to half a dozen displays at up to 4096x2160 per output. Like it's little brother, it has 2GB of memory and supports the same APIs.

Matrox has priced the C420 and C680 at $760 and $930, respectively.