P650 ?

Hello all,

I'm considering about ordering a P650 but I wanted to know whether some of
people here could answer some questions about it.
I have a G550 (after I had a G400) and I'm rather happy with it, except
these facts :

- I cannot find a driver that perfectly works with my system (Asus TUSL2-C,
Celeron 1300 and Windows XP Home). The last ones (5.8 are the best (the
5.86 are a plague for my system that often reboots or has garbage on screen
with them). With the 5.88 there still are some apps that hang or make my
system reboot (Netscape 7/Mozilla, some IRC clients, some games) - my system
is ok besides (I tested my SDRAM with MemTest etc. and the G550 driver seems
to be faulty - with my system I mean, I assume they might work fine with
others)

- I have to change the resolution to see movies on my TV (switch from
1280x1024x32M colors to less colors or a lower resolution), which is not a
big problem I admit it

- this card is rather slow with 3D games. Ok I know this is not a card for
gamers, but I'm not actually a gamer either. I just play some games
sometimes... and I don't need the last ATI/nVidia card for them.

And here are my questions about the P650 :

- Does the tv-out work fine ? Is my resolution problem solved (with a better
ramdac ?) ?
- Are the drivers ok ? I mean, for a current use... Graphic apps, Internet,
etc. and Windows XP...
- Does it work correctly with games ? I don't expect it to be very fast...
But just faster than my G550... That's all.
- Does it have the same banding problem than the Parhelia ?
- Is it not dangerous it has not a fan but only a heatsink, comparing to the
Parhelia or the P750 ?
- Are there problems I'm don't know about ?

And why I still want a Matrox and not another graphic card :

- I'm very maniac about the quality/sharpness display. The Matrox cards
shows a display and characters sharp and crisp... The other graphic card are
not that good and I don't want a blurry display. The colors are very good
too (I have a digital camera and use to spend time in modifying pictures I
take).
- I don't consider the P650 very expensive comparing to other graphic cards
made by a known brand...

Could you tell me what you think about all this ?

Thanks all

JR

Ash wrote:

 > Hello all,
 >
 > I'm considering about ordering a P650 but I wanted to know whether some of
 > people here could answer some questions about it.
 > I have a G550 (after I had a G400) and I'm rather happy with it, except
 > these facts :
 >
 > - I cannot find a driver that perfectly works with my system (Asus TUSL2-C,
 > Celeron 1300 and Windows XP Home). The last ones (5.8 are the best (the
 > 5.86 are a plague for my system that often reboots or has garbage on screen
 > with them). With the 5.88 there still are some apps that hang or make my
 > system reboot (Netscape 7/Mozilla, some IRC clients, some games) - my system
 > is ok besides (I tested my SDRAM with MemTest etc. and the G550 driver seems
 > to be faulty - with my system I mean, I assume they might work fine with
 > others)

It sounds very odd for video drivers to cause a system to reboot when launching
IRC clients and Mozilla. Maybe the heatsink on your video card has been knocked?
You could try getting one of the overclocking utilities for the Gxxx cards, and
try underclocking it and see if that improves things.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->