Matrox G450 Announcement!


Matrox's G450 Announcement! - Page 1

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Matrox's G450 - Smaller, Faster and Highly Integrated

By Dave "Davo" Altavilla
 
 

 


Montreal, Canada, June 14, 2000-Matrox Graphics Inc. today announced the Matrox Millennium G450 Series, based on the Matrox G450 chip which integrates DualHead, DVI, and TV output. This new series of graphics cards consists of the Millennium G450, a powerful dual-VGA, 2D, 3D, DualHead, and DVD graphics card, and the Millennium G450 DVI, which adds DVI support.  As the company that pioneered DualHead technology, Matrox is now taking its award-winning dual-display feature set to a new level. The Millennium G450 Series brings DVI and next-generation DualHead features to the corporate desktop market at a time when the competition is just beginning to implement introductory-level dual-display support. In addition to highly advanced technologies like DualHead, the Millennium G450 Series' leading-edge image quality, driver stability, and all-around performance have readied this card to blaze trails in the world of corporate productivity and multitasking.  In addition, the Millennium G450 Series doubles as a well-rounded entertainment solution for home users with 2D, 3D, DVD, TV output, DualHead gaming, and more.
 
The Millennium G450 Series:
Equipped with up to 32 MB of Double Data Rate (DDR) memory, the Millennium G450 Series is designed around the highly integrated Matrox G450 2D, 3D, and DVD graphics chip. As the Millennium G450's power source, the Matrox G450 chip builds on the Matrox G400's award-winning technology. Plus, it integrates a digital flat panel transmitter, TV output encoder, secondary RAMDAC, and 64-bit DDR memory interface. Hosting all of these components onboard the Millennium G450 has allowed Matrox to introduce a more feature-rich product series that is set to standardize DualHead across more markets than ever before. The Millennium G450 Series' DualHead technology provides immediate and valuable benefits by letting users double their display real estate by connecting two displays to a single graphics card. In fact, the Millennium G450 supports as many as six different configurations of VGA monitor, analog flat panel, and TV via two VGA connectors and one adapter cable. The Millennium G450 DVI supports an additional three display configurations.

Merging business and entertainment:
The Millennium G450 AGP 4X/2X Series features an impressive array of productivity-boosting hardware and software. The cards' powerful 2D engine, 256-bit DualBus architecture, and 360 MHz primary UltraSharp RAMDAC pump out super crisp 2D image quality at resolutions up to 2048 x 1536, at the highest color depths and refresh rates. Users in the mainstream and high-end corporate desktop markets, as well as in the 2D and entry-level 3D workstation markets, will benefit from the Millennium G450 Series' DualHead feature. Businesspeople and professionals can now enhance the way they use everyday applications with a selection of DualHead operational modes and next-generation software utilities. Finally, the Millennium G450 Series is equipped with Matrox's high-quality unified drivers, making it easy for users to install, manage, and update their graphics capabilities when needed.  But even serious business types such as the Millennium G450 Series have to kick back and have fun. Because these cards build on the Matrox G400's 3D and video core, they also double as a well-rounded entertainment solution. Value-conscious home users and mainstream gamers will find the Millennium G450 Series flexible enough to power educational applications, home finance applications, Web browsing, email access, DVD playback, and 3D gaming-including DualHead-enhanced head-to-head gaming and Environment-Mapped Bump Mapping (EMBM) enabled games. EMBM title support is growing steadily, with more than 25 currently-shipping games taking the visual reality of 3D gaming to unprecedented levels with never-before-seen special effects and intricate visual details. These easy-to-install cards also pack unique features like Matrox's DualHead DVDMax and TV Output, both of which will leave users pleasantly surprised. With DualHead DVDMax, people can output high quality video full-screen to a TV while simultaneously using the desktop displayed on their monitor. For someone surfing the Web for a music video, for example, this means never losing sight of the Web page on the monitor while streaming video directly out to TV. 
 
Well timed to respond to trends:
The Millennium G450 Series is well positioned to respond to trends that are currently changing the worlds of business and entertainment. Digital content creation is booming, with professionals and home users alike designing their own Web sites. The convergence of PC and TV offers home users more entertainment options than ever before. The Internet is feeding new, unique content into homes-content that isn't available on TV. These trends make the combination of the Millennium G450 Series' graphics and DualHead capabilities even more appealing since they introduce new and enhanced ways of getting more out of the PC for these and other applications.
 
Pricing and availability:
The Millennium G450 will be available via traditional distribution channels in Q3 '00, while the Millennium G450 DVI will follow in Q4 '00. Retail pricing will be announced as the Millennium G450 cards begin shipping.

Drivers and OS support:
Matrox offers support for Microsoftâ Windowsâ 2000, Windows 98, and Windows 95; Windows NTâ 4.0; Linux; OS/2; and the upcoming Windows Millennium Edition.

Software bundle:
The Millennium G450 Series bundles Micrografxâ Picture Publisherâ 8, Micrografx Simply 3DT 3, the Matrox Software DVD Player, and a handful of the latest playable game demos enhanced by DualHead and EMBM.

About the Matrox G450
The 0.18-micron Matrox G450 2D, 3D, and DVD graphics chip leverages a die shrink of Matrox G400 chip technology to become the most highly integrated discrete graphics chip on the market. In addition to the components and capabilities that made the Matrox G400 such a successful productivity and entertainment accelerator, the new Matrox G450 integrates a Transmission-Minimized Differential Signaling (TMDS) digital flat panel transmitter, TV output encoder, second RAMDAC, and 64-bit DDR memory interface. The chip also hosts two CRTCs, which form the support base for Matrox's DualHead feature. DualHead allows a single chip to simultaneously support independent output to two physically separate displays, including a VGA monitor, analog or DVI-based digital flat panel, or TV. Fully OpenGL and DirectX compliant, the Matrox G450 supports hardware-accelerated Environment-Mapped Bump Mapping for real-time special effects and stunning visual detail in 3D games. Furthering image quality, Matrox's Vibrant Color Quality2 (VCQ2) rendering architecture preserves trademark true-to-life color quality for cutting-edge, 32-bit color in single- and multi-textured software applications.
 
Information about Matrox products, drivers, technical support, and more can be found at www.matrox.com.

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