DON'T BUY MATROX, UNLESS...

The problem may not be quite what you think it is. A while back I had a perfectly good 486/66 system with a Diamond Viper video card in it running Windows 95. One of the memory chips on the Viper developed a problem and the card needed to go to Diamond for repairs. I couldn't afford any downtime because my wife and I both used the computer to do school work, so I simply bought an ATI Graphics Pro Turbo card to replace the Viper. After I installed the newer card and its drivers, Windows 95 crashed periodically and sometimes hung when booting. It took a while to get through to Microsoft technical support, but when I did I was told that "some ATI cards have problems with older system BIOSes when running Windows 95." When I subsequently replaced the computer's motherboard (which was a couple of years old) with a newer one that had a newer BIOS, the ATI card worked fine. What does this have to do with your problem with a Matrox card? If your situation is anything like mine was, perhaps you're seeing a combination of events that revolves around installing the Matrox card. For example, what vintage were the three other video boards that worked? And how old is your computer and BIOS? It would be unfortunate if you now have one of the hardware/firmware/software combinations that doesn't work well, but it's hardly impossible given all the combinations possible with PCs. There are so many people successfully using Matrox video boards (I have a Millenium that works great) that I suspect the problem isn't quite as simple as "Don't buy Matrox unless you want to throw away your money." Had I not done more investigating, I wouldn've made the same claim about an otherwise perfectly good ATI product. Frank Calloway > ... you want to throw away your money. > (stuff deleted) > Be warned: DON'T BUY FROM MATROX, UNLESS YOU WANT A HEADACHE AND HAVE > MONEY TO THROW OUT OF THE WINDOW.

... you want to throw away your money. Here's the story: based on the input on their previous products, I've made the mistake of purchasing a Matrox Mystique video board. The board speed is great, but... I've installed it in a perfectly working machine; it worked before with no problems with 3 different video boards, which means there is really a problem either with Matrox hardware or its drivers. Specifically, Windows 95 crashes with no apparent reason, everytime I try to use any software that writes to the video, either using DirectX or not. First time I've installed it, it crashed with a simple screen saver; I couldn't run Matrox's bundle of applications (MechWarrior2) or Microsoft's Monster Truck Madness. Then I reinstalled it, and it seemed to work for a while (2 days!); then it started to crash again, and now with sound (*.WAV) applications! I've tried Matrox support, via e-mail, because I happen to live in Brazil, and their support is an electronic and stupid version of their lousy manual; they keep asking the same stupid questions (after a delay of 7 days or more). I mean, I'm no newbie to PC hardware; I've written a detailed e-mail describing the problem, but their answers were obnoxious. Be warned: DON'T BUY FROM MATROX, UNLESS YOU WANT A HEADACHE AND HAVE MONEY TO THROW OUT OF THE WINDOW. -- ________ / |__ \ Eduardo Piovani Dias - Systems Programmer / | \ \ State University of Campinas, SP - Brazil (UNICAMP) / | ) \ "Gleb Wataghin" Physics Institute (IFGW) (------ |__/ ) "John David Rogers" Computing Center (CCJDR) \____|___/ -- ________ / |__ \ Eduardo Piovani Dias - Systems Programmer / | \ \ State University of Campinas, SP - Brazil (UNICAMP) / | ) \ "Gleb Wataghin" Physics Institute (IFGW) (------ |__/ ) "John David Rogers" Computing Center (CCJDR) \____|___/

This whole post is pretty extreme. Matrox is responsive to criticism. Their products are of the highest quality and tech support is good. There may be a debate as to which video card is best but in my opinion there is no debate as to Matrox's quality and com- patibility at least with my system (Micron P133 Home Pro). Alan

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> ... you want to throw away your money. > Here's the story: based on the input on their previous products, I've made > the mistake of purchasing a Matrox Mystique video board. The board speed is > great, but... > I've installed it in a perfectly working machine; it worked before with no > problems with 3 different video boards, which means there is really a > problem either with Matrox hardware or its drivers. Specifically, Windows > 95 crashes with no apparent reason, everytime I try to use any software > that writes to the video, either using DirectX or not.

What kind of motherboard do you have? The mystique works just fine in my system, and so do the bundled games. My only complaint against it is that the dos performance was a little less than i expected, but other than that it is a damn fine card.. Since when did the mystique have MTM bundled? Whatever bud. You're either a moron that doesn't know how to troubleshoot computer problems, or your motherboard is flakey. actually, probably both.

MONEY TO THROW OUT OF THE WINDOW. I have been using Millennium and now using Mystique with NO problem. Mystique runs PERFECTLY in my machine with all options on.

> ... you want to throw away your money. (snip) I've been running a Matrox Mystique for about three weeks with no problems whatsoever (in Win95 AND WinNT). Before that I was running a Matrox Millenium for 1 year, also without a hitch. I think you should make sure it's the video card before you start slamming a perfectly good manufacturer. Bruce.

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> ... you want to throw away your money. > Here's the story: based on the input on their previous products, I've made > the mistake of purchasing a Matrox Mystique video board. The board speed is > great, but... > I've installed it in a perfectly working machine; it worked before with no > problems with 3 different video boards, which means there is really a > problem either with Matrox hardware or its drivers. Specifically, Windows > 95 crashes with no apparent reason, everytime I try to use any software > that writes to the video, either using DirectX or not. First time I've > installed it, it crashed with a simple screen saver; I couldn't run > Matrox's bundle of applications (MechWarrior2) or Microsoft's Monster Truck > Madness. > Then I reinstalled it, and it seemed to work for a while (2 days!); then > it started to crash again, and now with sound (*.WAV) applications! I've > tried Matrox support, via e-mail, because I happen to live in Brazil, and > their support is an electronic and stupid version of their lousy manual; > they keep asking the same stupid questions (after a delay of 7 days or > more). I mean, I'm no newbie to PC hardware; I've written a detailed e-mail > describing the problem, but their answers were obnoxious. > Be warned: DON'T BUY FROM MATROX, UNLESS YOU WANT A HEADACHE AND HAVE > MONEY TO THROW OUT OF THE WINDOW.

There is a problem with the millennium on certain hardware. Matrox is addressing those issues. Most should be fine with the card though. -- Edmond Underwood U Software Bench32 1.21 - Now available at the Bench32 web site. Bench32 web site: http://www.rmii.com/~underwoe/bench32.html

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>> ... you want to throw away your money. >(snip) >> Be warned: DON'T BUY FROM MATROX, UNLESS YOU WANT A HEADACHE AND HAVE >> MONEY TO THROW OUT OF THE WINDOW. >I've been running a Matrox Mystique for about three weeks with no >problems whatsoever (in Win95 AND WinNT). Before that I was running a >Matrox Millenium for 1 year, also without a hitch. I think you should >make sure it's the video card before you start slamming a perfectly good >manufacturer. >Bruce.

I've tested some Millenium cards and recently installed a Mystique 2MB RETAIL .. .. no probs at all ! The only problems are related to weak and stupid Windows95 , DirectX and so on.. .. that's the only real problem , the OS !! I hope Windows97 will solve a lot of issues when it comes, however Windows95 it's a very hard thing to configure .. ! Just make a thing in a different way and your system could go in a "blind" state .. all the registry entries screwed-up and so on .. !! That's the good and the bad of the PnP , ESCD and so on features in PCs ... However Mystique it's a great card.. I'm trying to find a 4MB RETAIL .. I want to buy one and probably I'll also add the powerful RainbowRunner for Video options (Hardware MPEG-1 & AVI coprocessor, StillFrame Digitizer from PAL/NTSC, converter to PAL/NTSC and other good features to speed up video functions to the limit !)

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> > ... you want to throw away your money. > (snip) > > Be warned: DON'T BUY FROM MATROX, UNLESS YOU WANT A HEADACHE AND HAVE > > MONEY TO THROW OUT OF THE WINDOW. > I've been running a Matrox Mystique for about three weeks with no > problems whatsoever (in Win95 AND WinNT). Before that I was running a > Matrox Millenium for 1 year, also without a hitch. I think you should > make sure it's the video card before you start slamming a perfectly good > manufacturer. > Bruce.

Seconding Bruce, I have a MGA Millinium in my system for some time now. I'm the kind of guy who is constently trying new hardware and software in my computer and I think MGAs are the easyest and the best performant cards going arround these days. Alain Roussel

>> ... you want to throw away your money. >(snip) >> Be warned: DON'T BUY FROM MATROX, UNLESS YOU WANT A HEADACHE AND HAVE >> MONEY TO THROW OUT OF THE WINDOW. >I've been running a Matrox Mystique for about three weeks with no >problems whatsoever (in Win95 AND WinNT). ---snip snip snip--- All the success stories with Matrox are great, but I think the issue here is that is does not work in this machine for some reason, and the necessary technical support doesn't seem to be forthcoming. Cheers Adrian -------------------------------------------------------------- "It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations." -- Tolkien --------------------------------------------------------------

>> Be warned: DON'T BUY FROM MATROX, UNLESS YOU WANT A HEADACHE AND HAVE >> MONEY TO THROW OUT OF THE WINDOW. >I've been running a Matrox Mystique for about three weeks with no >problems whatsoever (in Win95 AND WinNT). ---snip snip snip--- All the success stories with Matrox are great, but I think the issue here is that is does not work in this machine for some reason, and the necessary technical support doesn't seem to be forthcoming. Cheers Adrian PRR While this thread is rather off-topic, I don't recall that the bot would cancel -replies- to articles, like it's been doing to me all of a sudden... -------------------------------------------------------------- "It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations." -- Tolkien --------------------------------------------------------------

It seems that some guys either can't read plain english, or my spell checker is lousy too. I'm not blamin Matrox for the quality of their hardware or even their drivers: what I'm trying to say is, their support is obnoxious. Also, it is stupid to blame Windows 95 for it; it has been around for enoughf time for Matrox to know it's idiosyncrasies. Enough of that.

Matrox aren't any worse [or any better] than many other manufacturers, however I'm beginning to believe PC tech support is becoming/ has become impossible. This thread started off as a "Don't buy" thread, mainly because a few people had problems with tech support. However, from various postings and my own experiences, I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that all companies are poor at PC tech support and it's up to you to either take the product as is and sort any problems you have out, possibly by Internet support, or return it for something else. The poor support is due to the magnitude of PC hardware/ software combinations out there which no manufacturer can be reasonably expected to completely cover. If you wan't an almost completely reliable computer DON'T BUY A PC!! :-). I personally wish to God that a 68K based machine had been *** over the last 15 years, 'cos we wouldn't have to worry about: I/O Ports )68K is memory mapped I/O Lack of Interrupt lines )most 68K systems happily daisy-chain interrupts Segmented Memory Paged Memory Low Memory High Memory Conventional Memory Extended Memory Expanded Memory **"$"%%! memory 8086 mode, 80286 mode, 80386 mode etc IDE (most non-PCs seemed to go SCSI early on) Bill Gates & Microsoft [ wishful thinking :-)] with Windows 1, 2, 3.1, 3.11, 95, NT , OS/2 Don't get me wrong, the 68K isn't perfect, but life would be much simpler [cue the diverging thread, sorry about the rant] -- Mailshot Prevention - Remove any asterisks from end of reply-to address before replying. Disclaimer - Neither I nor any company I work for are responsible for the any problems caused as a result of reading or acting on my email. |\/| /\ |-\ | | /__\ |_/ | | / \| \

????!! The problems related to Win95 are so much difficult to resolve that only Microsoft could fix them !! All the 3D cards will have problems under Windows95 .. that's not a question of the support by Matrox (that's the best I've ever seen on a card for now!!) .. but with the support by Microsoft that knows all of the bugs in Windows95 and hasn't released a good fixpack (oops..! Yeah! I'm a OS/2 Fan! ^-^ ) for them yet !! Also it seems that Windows97 could not be out until Summer'97 to address all of these problems .. anyway users of Windows95 are in lack of support .. ..and all of us will have to re-buy and so re-pay for Windows97 !!! This is crazy! Anyway.. Win95 has problems with : - Configuration - DirectX extensions - DirectX installer without de-installer nor detailed info/instructions and so on !!!!! - FAT16 and now FAT32 .. - OSR2 new probs and only for OEM with new PCs !!! - A lot of bugs - Green Book unsupported by DOS7.0's MSCDEX integrated !! - Bugs with SystemRegistry and config - Bugs with Large HDDs addressed only for USA version! - Winsock hangs the system .. ISDN 1.1 only for USA version...?! More and more bugs.. so........ is that a problem by Matrox or Win95 it's not an OS but a mere Win4+DOS7 that has too many bugs ?!

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> > ... you want to throw away your money. > > Here's the story: based on the input on their previous products, I've made > > the mistake of purchasing a Matrox Mystique video board. The board speed is > > great, but... > > I've installed it in a perfectly working machine; it worked before with no > > problems with 3 different video boards, which means there is really a > > problem either with Matrox hardware or its drivers. Specifically, Windows > > 95 crashes with no apparent reason, everytime I try to use any software > > that writes to the video, either using DirectX or not. > This sounds like drivers from the other three cards you tried still left in the registry and system.ini . Use a good file remover or MS Regclean 3 and all should be well. > What kind of motherboard do you have? The mystique > works just fine in my system, and so do the bundled games. > My only complaint against it is that the dos performance > was a little less than i expected, but other than that > it is a damn fine card..

snip!! Be warned: DON'T BUY FROM MATROX, UNLESS YOU WANT A HEADACHE AND HAVE

I brutalized a Mystique (both 2 and 4mb) in my system for a few weeks as an evaluation unit. No problems at all. This was in a DFI 586IPC machine with a Cyrix 166+ (don't you dare start the Cyrix sucks thread). No problems, no lockups, no erratic screens. By the way, the Mystique got better Winbench 96 numbers then the ATI 3D Xpression+ PC2TV I have in my system now. -- Thomas Mosher

On 27 Nov 1996 15:24:07 GMT, "Eduardo Piovani Dias"

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>It seems that some guys either can't read plain english, or my spell >checker is lousy too. I'm not blamin Matrox for the quality of their >hardware or even their drivers: what I'm trying to say is, their support is >obnoxious. Also, it is stupid to blame Windows 95 for it; it has been >around for enoughf time for Matrox to know it's idiosyncrasies. >Enough of that.

I don't think it would be fair to blame either Microsoft or Matrox. There are just too many possible hardware/software combinations on ones computer to possitively predict possible problems. I don't know how Matrox's customer support is because I have had only good (make that great) times with my Millenium and have therefore had no need to call them. Actually, when I first got the card, I installed DirectX AFTER I installed the drivers. This was a problem that "I" created. When I emailed Matrox they responded in a reasonable amount of time. So other than myself not following the proper order of installation the card has been beautiful. Adam Yalonetsky

Any hardware/device could have problem on another hardware/device, no need to blame Matrox or what ever the brand, just swear that you're bad luck.

:>Matrox aren't any worse [or any better] than many other manufacturers, :>however I'm beginning to believe PC tech support is becoming/ has become :>impossible. :> :>This thread started off as a "Don't buy" thread, mainly because a few :>people had problems with tech support. However, from various postings :>and my own experiences, I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that all :>companies are poor at PC tech support and it's up to you to either take :>the product as is and sort any problems you have out, possibly by :>Internet support, or return it for something else. The poor support is :>due to the magnitude of PC hardware/ software combinations out there :>which no manufacturer can be reasonably expected to completely cover. If :>you wan't an almost completely reliable computer DON'T BUY A PC!! :-). I :>personally wish to God that a 68K based machine had been *** over :>the last 15 years, 'cos we wouldn't have to worry about: Actually, if people took more interest in how things work together in their respective systems, everybody would be much better off. I don't buy anything without considering it's impact on my ewxisting hardware/software. The best thing anybody can do is research their own system to find available IRQ's and I/O addresses, and then research the genre of item they wish to buy. (Is knowledge the price we pay for backward compatibility?) Does it require an IRQ and do you have one available? Is the I/O address selectable, and if so, are at least two of the addresses available for use by your system as it exists at that time (or can you make it available by reconfiguring your existing hardware)? Does it come with drivers for your OS of choice? Like you said, the manufacturer can't hope to conceive of every possible hardware combination, so it's up to the PC owner to ensure that what he's buying stands a good chance of working in his system. I've been doing PC's since the XT was a good idea, and I have NEVER bought/installed a piece of hardware (that was not defective) that did not work pretty much the first time I turned on the system after installing it. It's called "thinking", and most people nowadays do precious little of it. Of course all of the above is simply my own humble opinion and should be considered as such. /===================================================\ | John Simmons (Redneck Techno-Biker) | | http://www.paddedwall.org/john | \===================================================/

John: Like most canadian companies support can be a problem. I have found the MATROX cards excellent for NASCAR performance and I have tried them all... Don Wilshe

I thoroughly agree. Everyone expects everything to work perfectly. Consider how many different kinds of motherboards, CPUs, monitors, modems, etc. there are. How can any one manufacturer test every possible configuration? I've found that you have to experiment and take every installation as a first. What works in one system may not work the same way in another. I see this even between systems built by the same manufacturer. At the company where I work we have multiple Dell built systems. Although they appear to be the same machines, each one has its own peculiarities. What works in one will not necessarily work in another. -- Thomas Mosher

[snip] I do love it when people manage to keep these debates restrained, civilized and polite! Neville Young

i have a Mystique in my system now as well. i have tried NUMEROUS cards over the last 3 weeks and am sticking with this one.. i have had no problems with it and i am amazed at its dos speed.. i was expecting ALOT less and i find it is only 1 fps less in all resolutions of quake as my old Dynamite/128 which hauled ass in dos.. only probs with mystique is the lack of bilinear filtering and fog.. . i am VERY happy with this and the direct3d suport is very nice.. i DID have probs with this card once and that was due to a VERY crappy MotherBoard. hCS

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> I brutalized a Mystique (both 2 and 4mb) in my system for a few weeks as > an evaluation unit. No problems at all. This was in a DFI 586IPC machine > with a Cyrix 166+ (don't you dare start the Cyrix sucks thread). No > problems, no lockups, no erratic screens. > By the way, the Mystique got better Winbench 96 numbers then the ATI 3D > Xpression+ PC2TV I have in my system now. > -- > Thomas Mosher

What exactly does ESCD means, ever so often I see this message "ESCD updated" just after POST and just before the operating system loads. Thanks!

As a newbie to this newsgroup, I couldn't help but notice these messages in particular. While I agree that computerists need to do a bit more thinking before they buy, there is a growing tendency among computer and peripheral manufacturers to get products "out there" before they are ready. After trying out three modems before one worked well, three video cards which all had problems with my system, and numerous instances of software not delivering as promised, I have decided that the best thing we can do (and the hardest) is to put the brakes on our need for the latest and greatest. If you're interested in more thoughts on this topic, head over to: http://www.infi.net/~cnash/index.html and then link to "Yombute's World." I'd be very curious to hear any comments on YOMBUTE's latest rant. (Now: could someone please help me find a video card....?) YOMBUTE