The G200 is a 2D, 3D, and video accelerator chip for personal computers designed by Matrox

Matrox

Matrox is a producer of video card components and equipment for personal computers. Based in Dorval, Quebec, Canada it was founded by Lorne Trottier and Branko Matić....

. It was released in 1998.

History

Matrox had been known for years as a significant player in the high-end 2D graphics accelerator market. Cards they produced were excellent Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 accelerators, and some of the later cards such as Millennium and Mystique excelled at MS-DOS

MS-DOS

MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...

 as well. Matrox stepped forward in 1994 with their Impression Plus to innovate with one of the first 3D accelerator boards, but that card only could accelerate a very limited feature set (no texture mapping

Texture mapping

Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture , or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974.-Texture mapping:...

), and was primarily targeted at CAD applications.

Matrox, seeing the slow but steady growth in interest in 3D graphics on PCs with NVIDIA, Rendition, and ATI's new cards, began experimenting with 3D acceleration more aggressively and produced the Mystique. Mystique was their most feature-rich 3D accelerator in 1997, but still lacked key features including bilinear filtering

Bilinear filtering

Bilinear filtering is a texture filtering method used to smooth textures when displayed larger or smaller than they actually are.Most of the time, when drawing a textured shape on the screen, the texture is not displayed exactly as it is stored, without any distortion...

. Then, in early 1998, Matrox teamed up with PowerVR

PowerVR

PowerVR is a division of Imagination Technologies that develops hardware and software for 2D and 3D rendering, and for video encoding, decoding, associated image processing and Direct X, OpenGL ES, OpenVG, and OpenCL acceleration....

 to produce an add-in 3D board called Matrox m3D using the PowerVR PCX2 chipset. This board was one of the very few times that Matrox would outsource for their graphics processor, and was certainly a stop-gap measure to hold out until the G200 project was ready to go.

Overview

With the G200, Matrox aimed to combine its past products' competent 2D and video acceleration with a full-featured 3D accelerator. The G200 chip was used on several boards, most notably the Millennium G200 and Mystique G200. Millennium G200 received the new SGRAM memory and a faster RAMDAC

RAMDAC

Random Access Memory Digital-to-Analog Converter is a combination of three fast DACs with a small SRAM used in computer graphics display adapters to store the color palette and to generate the analog signals to drive a color monitor...

, while Mystique G200 was cheaper and equipped with slower SDRAM

SDRAM

Synchronous dynamic random access memory is dynamic random access memory that is synchronized with the system bus. Classic DRAM has an asynchronous interface, which means that it responds as quickly as possible to changes in control inputs...

 memory but gained a TV-out port. Most G200 boards shipped standard with 8 MB RAM and were expandable to 16 MB with an add-on module. The cards also had ports for special add-on boards, such as the Rainbow Runner, which could add various functionality.

G200 was Matrox's first fully AGP

Accelerated Graphics Port

The Accelerated Graphics Port is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a video card to a computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. Since 2004 AGP has been progressively phased out in favor of PCI Express...

-compliant graphics processor. While the earlier Millennium II had been adapted to AGP, it did not support the full AGP feature set. G200 takes advantage of DIME (Direct Memory Execute) to speed texture transfers to and from main system RAM. This allows G200 to use system RAM as texture storage if the card's local RAM is of insufficient size for the task at hand. G200 was one of the first cards to support this feature.

The chip is a 128-bit core containing dual 64-bit buses in what Matrox calls a "DualBus" organization. Each bus is unidirectional and is designed to speed data transfer to and from the functional units within the chip. By doubling the internal data path with two separate buses instead of just a wider single bus, Matrox reduced latencies in data transfer by improving overall bus efficiency. The memory interface was 64-bit.

G200 supported full 32-bit color depth rendering which substantially pushed the image quality upwards by eliminating dithering artifacts caused by the then-more-typical 16-bit color depth. Matrox called their technology Vibrant Color Quality (VCQ). The chip also supported features such as trilinear mip-map filtering

Trilinear filtering

Trilinear filtering is an extension of the bilinear texture filtering method, which also performs linear interpolation between mipmaps.Bilinear filtering has several weaknesses that make it an unattractive choice in many cases: using it on a full-detail texture when scaling to a very small size...

 and anti-aliasing

Anti-aliasing

In digital signal processing, spatial anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution...

 (though this was rarely used). The G200 could render 3D at all resolutions supported in 2D. Architecturally, the 3D pipeline was laid out as a single pixel pipeline with a single texture management unit. The core contained a RISC processor called the "WARP core", that implemented a triangle setup engine in microcode.

G200 was Matrox's first graphics processor to require added cooling in the form of a heatsink.

Performance

With regards to 2D, G200 was excellent in speed and delivered Matrox's renowned analog signal quality. The G200 bested the older Millennium II in almost every area except extremely high resolutions. With 3D, it scored similar to but generally behind a single Voodoo2 in Direct3D

Direct3D

Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface . Direct3D is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems , and for other platforms through the open source software Wine. It is the base for the graphics API on the Xbox and Xbox 360 console systems...

, and was slower than NVIDIA Riva TNT

RIVA TNT

The RIVA TNT, codenamed NV4, is a 2D, video, and 3D graphics accelerator chip for PCs that was manufactured by Nvidia. It was released in mid 1998 and cemented Nvidia's reputation as a worthy rival within the developing consumer 3D graphics adapter industry. The first RIVA TNT based card released...

 and S3 Savage 3D. However, it was not far behind and was certainly competitive. G200's 3D image quality was considered one of the best due to its support of 32-bit color depth (assuming driver bugs weren't a problem).

G200's biggest problem was its OpenGL

OpenGL

OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...

 support. Throughout most of its life G200 had to get by, in popular games such as Quake II

Quake II

Quake II, released on December 9, 1997, is a first-person shooter computer game developed by Id Software and distributed by Activision. It is not a sequel to Quake; it merely uses the name of the former game due to Id's difficulties in coming up with alternative names.The soundtrack for Quake II...

, with a slow OpenGL-to-Direct3D wrapper driver. This was a layer that translated OpenGL to run on the Direct3D driver. This hurt G200's performance dramatically in these games and caused a lot of controversy over continuing delays and promises from Matrox. In fact, it would not be until well into the life of G200's successor, G400

Matrox G400

The G400 is a video card made by Matrox, released in September 1999. The graphics processor contains a 2D GUI, video, and Direct3D 6.0 3D accelerator...

, that the OpenGL driver would finally be mature and fast.

Early drivers had some problems with Direct3D as well. In Unreal

Unreal

Unreal is a first-person shooter video game developed by Epic MegaGames and Digital Extremes and published by GT Interactive in May 1998...

, for example, there were problems with distortions on the ground textures caused by a bug with the board's subpixel accuracy function. There were also some problems with mip-mapping causing flickering in textures. As drivers matured these problems disappeared.

G200A & G250

Around 1999, Matrox introduced a newer version of G200, called G200A. This board used a newer 250 nm manufacturing process instead of G200's original 350 nm. This allowed Matrox to build more graphics processors per wafer at the factory as well as to reduce heat output of the chip, and the G200As came without even a heatsink. Some G200A boards were named G250, which were clocked slightly higher than the normal G200, and sold only to OEMs, with Hewlett Packard perhaps being the only buyer.

Models

Board Name	Core Type	Process Semiconductor fabrication Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to create the integrated circuits that are present in everyday electrical and electronic devices. It is a multiple-step sequence of photolithographic and chemical processing steps during which electronic circuits are gradually created on a wafer...	Core (MHz)	Memory (MHz)	Pipe Graphics pipeline In 3D computer graphics, the terms graphics pipeline or rendering pipeline most commonly refers to the current state of the art method of rasterization-based rendering as supported by commodity graphics hardware. The graphics pipeline typically accepts some representation of a three-dimensional... Config	T&L?	Memory Interface	Notes
Millennium G200	Eclipse	350 nm	84-90	112-120	1x1	N	64-bit	SGRAM. "SD" model uses SDRAM SDRAM Synchronous dynamic random access memory is dynamic random access memory that is synchronized with the system bus. Classic DRAM has an asynchronous interface, which means that it responds as quickly as possible to changes in control inputs... . "LE" max 8 MB SDRAM. 250 MHz RAMDAC RAMDAC Random Access Memory Digital-to-Analog Converter is a combination of three fast DACs with a small SRAM used in computer graphics display adapters to store the color palette and to generate the analog signals to drive a color monitor... . AGP Accelerated Graphics Port The Accelerated Graphics Port is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a video card to a computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. Since 2004 AGP has been progressively phased out in favor of PCI Express... /PCI Peripheral Component Interconnect Conventional PCI is a computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer...
Mystique G200	Eclipse	350 nm	84	112	1x1	N	64-bit	SDRAM SDRAM Synchronous dynamic random access memory is dynamic random access memory that is synchronized with the system bus. Classic DRAM has an asynchronous interface, which means that it responds as quickly as possible to changes in control inputs... . 230 MHz RAMDAC. TV out. AGP.
Marvel G200	Eclipse	350 nm	84	112	1x1	N	64-bit	SDRAM. 230 MHz RAMDAC. TV in & out. Breakout box for extra I/O. AGP/PCI
G200 MMS	Eclipse	350 nm			1x1	N	64-bit	Quad GPU graphics card for 4 monitor support. Some have TV input. PCI
Millennium G200A	Calao	250 nm	84	112	1x1	N	64-bit	Die-shrink Die shrink The term "die shrink" refers to a simple semiconductor scaling of semiconductor devices, mainly transistors. The act of shrinking a die is to create a somewhat identical circuitry using a more advanced fabrication process, usually involving an advance of lithographic node...  G200. "LE" max 8 MB SDRAM. 250 MHz RAMDAC. No heatsink. Power Consumption 4 Watt Watt The watt is a derived unit of power in the International System of Units , named after the Scottish engineer James Watt . The unit, defined as one joule per second, measures the rate of energy conversion.-Definition:... s. AGP/PCI
Millennium G250	Calao	250 nm	96	128	1x1	N	64-bit	overclocked G200A, OEM-only.