Matrox Marvel G200.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
12/01/98
Computer Gaming World
COPYRIGHT 1998 Golden Empire Publications Inc.
The Marvel G200 is just a bit slower than the Millennium G200, which Matrox attributes to the use of slower SDRAM on the Marvel. Despite the lack of speed, this card is quite versatile. Think of it as the sport utility vehicle of graphics cards. It won't get you there as fast as a funny car, but you can really load it up.
Inside the Marvel G200 package is a blue, contoured plastic box that connects to the back of the Marvel G200. The box contains connections for video-in and video-out, audio-in and audio-out (including cable connection) and a cable TV or antennae input. The Marvel G200 uses the Zoran motion JPEG CODEC chip to capture and compress video at resolutions at 30fps at 704x486 NTSC. We looked at the Marvel G200 TV (available only in North America), which also has an onboard TV tuner. The blue breakout box, which connects to the card via a three-foot cable, makes connections to camcorders, VCRs, and cable TVs much easier. This is truly a "convergence" graphics accelerator. The only thing you might want to add to it is a hardware DVD decoder, available separately. Matrox tosses in a copy of Avid Cinema, a handy nonlinear video-editing package formerly available only on the Macintosh.
Until now, the ATI All-in-Wonder Pro had the field virtually to itself, but the Marvel G200 ups the ante for this type of Swiss Army Knife product. And if the 3D performance isn't quite up to the competition, you can always toss in a Voodoo2 card.
CGW Rating: 4 Stars Matrox Marvel G200
$349 for 16MB; $299 for 8MB.
Matrox, (514) 822-6320. www.matrox.com
Pros: Pretty good overall performer; lots of video goodies added in; good image quality; nice video editing package.
Cons: Performance doesn't stack up well against the competition.
|
