Digital Trends

Matrox Millennium P750 July 3rd, 2003 | by Doug Hall

And now, a word from our sponsor:

"The Millennium P750 is the latest edition to the Matrox family of professional graphics accelerators. With 64MB of fast DDR memory and advanced DualHead features, it augments technologies found in the Millennium G450 and G550, while incorporating similar features introduced with the Parhelia. It also capitalizes on the growing move towards digital flat panel displays, expected to outpace CRT sales growth for the first time this year.”~Seb

What does it all mean?

Since the release of the G450 some years back, Matrox seems to have found their niche in the world and are considered by many to be the leaders in the video card world of graphics design, desktop publishing and video editing solutions. 3D Studio Max and Cad being pretty much what this card is designed to run. The cost is negligible for a professional grade graphics card, especially compared to the Parhelia line with the same technology behind it. In all the testing we did, there are very few complaints as far as compatibility and rendering exercises. We are currently using TurboCAD ver.8 and are quite pleased with the way things went. One of the major gripes that engineers have is the way that certain graphics cards will leave (artifacts), or certain parts of the drawing, left behind when you move an item from one place to another in a CAD drawing. Usually this is the selection outline that is produced by selecting an item and dragging it to another place within the drawing itself. While this particular artifacting did occur, (especially in 2D drawings) it was minimal at best and not the usual bother it has been in the past with other cards. It can become quite troublesome when moving multiple items at once and usually disappears when you hit F5, or refreshing the screen. In very detailed work where you might have many items close together it can be a bear.

To bench or not to bench?

Since the P750 is supporting 8x AGP 3.0 we did run it in 3Dmark03. It did complete all of the tests available to it, but to no one's surprise it tanked and the DX 9  specific tests were not available at all. That is probably because the pixel shaders supported are coded using ver 1.3 and Vertex shaders are version 1.1. DX 9 extensions.   For the nature tests, version 2.0 are used. Also, the P750 has been in development for a while and was released as a DX 8.1 compliant card. Again it did very well in CAD 3D graphics and content creation as well as Photoshop and Ulead Photo Express. Video editing was a breeze as well. DVD play back in WinDVD combined with Sigma Studio's Real Hollywood MPEG2 decoder was smooth and without incident. Compatibility was no problem and DX 9.0a worked without a snag, it just did not support all of the features in it.

The P750 being designed for the business of doing business, is all work and not a lot of play. Doing exactly what it was designed to do and doing it well. In CAD it out performed the Ti-4600 in drawing tasks consistently in regards to quality and kept all of the three monitors running through most all of the testing except where the applications could not support it. You would be quite impressed with the TripleHead support and once you go to multiple monitors, you might never go back. It is difficult to comment on all that this card is capable of in the space that we have here. We are focusing on the most viable and newest of the technologies; surround gaming being one of the coolest. This is a software device that was written for the Parhelia line of cards that runs in the background (sort of how the GL drivers run for current games on older VooDoo cards). Performance on the P750 in surround gaming was mediocre at best, but then again, it only supports it because the P750 utilizes the Parhelia ICS. It was not intended for that sort of 3D graphics. However, if you are still playing Diablo on a Pentium Pro machine and Windows 95, You will not notice the difference. Testing in Splinter Cell went well and any lag in the graphics rendering was not noticeable at all though the resolution was lower than we would seriously care to use.

Gimme the video

If video editing is your thing, then you will not be disappointed in the quality of the images or the ease of use that multiple monitors can give you. The P750 was designed with just that sort of use in mind. Included are all the cables and adapters to configure you choice of mix and match display and television hardware. A DVI to analog, DVI to s-video or RCA, DVI to twin analogs for that three monitor hook up or almost any combination from one to three output devices. Photoshop and Ulead ran with the same ease and no issues with drivers or patches were necessary. A tribute indeed to an industry that is getting used to patching right out of the box.

Second and third monitor hook ups. Cables for any situation are included.

The fact that this card will run multiple monitors is not such a big deal. Lot's of video cards will run more than one monitor at a time. It is quickly becoming an industry standard on almost all graphics cards from mid-range and up. Some lower-end gaming cards are showing up on the scene with DVI and analog support as well. So it is becoming quite common on the face of the technological revolution. The inclusion of DVI heads on gaming cards was a gimme to the fact that High end users were gaming on DVI LCDs and it was cheaper to include a connector on a typical card than it was to setup a new PCB and reconfigure a given card for mass production. Dual desktop software was a by product of that situation. The software was written to introduce Dual monitor support as an added bonus secondly, though the P750 appears to be made for it primarily.

So what is so great about the P750? 

First off, the hardware was designed to have certain capabilities that the ordinary, (if there is such a thing) dual monitor graphics card either did not have or did not implement very well. Spanning monitors has been around for a while, but usually there is a primary monitor and a secondary one. Most of your typical applications be they benchmarks or photo editing software will need to use the primary monitor to run the main body of the program; the software that runs will require it. The palettes and tool bars are easy to set in the next desktop, but little flexibility is supported for the main application window. Adobe After Effects and Microsoft PowerPoint are two such applications. Either program can get quite cluttered on a single monitor if you are building a major presentation. The P750 has the ability to create two desktops and supports full features and functionality in both of them at the same time. The software was designed to do that from the start and the hardware was built to support it. A major step in the right direction on the part of Matrox. Also designed around photo and video editing, you can add a TV to the mix and check out you presentation when it is finished and see how it will look when you show it to the board of directors later.