upgrade from Stealth64 Vram to Mystique : your opinion please

My current home machine is a P120 (overclocked to 133) - Zappa motherboard, 24 Mo RAM with a Diamond Stealth64 VRAM 4Mo. Above all, I use to play DOS games ( AH64 Longbow, Quake, GrandPrix 2, ...) and some Win95 games (Monster Truck, Diablo). I also use Win95 Office, Linux 2 and 3DStudio. Before a CPU upgrade, I think to change my display adapter for a 4Mo Matrox Mystique. But I noticed that my good old Stealth is still up in the benchmark results. So my question is : Is this upgrade from my Stealth64Vram 4Mo to a Mystique 4Mo worth the price of the Mystique ? Will I see a real improvment in the frame rate of the games I talked about, especially the flight and racing sims ? All your opinions are welcome, in this group or via E-Mail. Thanks. Have a nice spring ! Emmanuel.

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>My current home machine is a P120 (overclocked to 133) - Zappa >motherboard, 24 Mo RAM with a Diamond Stealth64 VRAM 4Mo. Above all, I >use to play DOS games ( AH64 Longbow, Quake, GrandPrix 2, ...) and >some Win95 games (Monster Truck, Diablo). I also use Win95 Office, >Linux 2 and 3DStudio. >Before a CPU upgrade, I think to change my display adapter for a 4Mo >Matrox Mystique. But I noticed that my good old Stealth is still up in >the benchmark results. So my question is : >Is this upgrade from my Stealth64Vram 4Mo to a Mystique 4Mo worth the >price of the Mystique ? Will I see a real improvment in the frame >rate of the games I talked about, especially the flight and racing >sims ? All your opinions are welcome, in >this group or via E-Mail. >Thanks. >Have a nice spring ! >Emmanuel.

One thing to bear in mind is that there is curently no linux X windows driver for the mystique so you will have to use VGA 640x480x16 (there should be a driver available in a few months - see http://www.bf.rmit.ed u.au/~ajv/xf86-matrox.html for information on this) -- Mark Dyball

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> My current home machine is a P120 (overclocked to 133) - Zappa > motherboard, 24 Mo RAM with a Diamond Stealth64 VRAM 4Mo. Above all, I > use to play DOS games ( AH64 Longbow, Quake, GrandPrix 2, ...) and > some Win95 games (Monster Truck, Diablo). I also use Win95 Office, > Linux 2 and 3DStudio. > Before a CPU upgrade, I think to change my display adapter for a 4Mo > Matrox Mystique. But I noticed that my good old Stealth is still up in > the benchmark results. So my question is : > Is this upgrade from my Stealth64Vram 4Mo to a Mystique 4Mo worth the > price of the Mystique ? Will I see a real improvment in the frame > rate of the games I talked about, especially the flight and racing > sims ? All your opinions are welcome, in > this group or via E-Mail. > Thanks. > Have a nice spring ! > Emmanuel.

Hello, I just purchased a Screamin 3D card and let me tell you it screams! Best choice of all! Gene PIT ROAD http://www.pitroad.com/

>Is this upgrade from my Stealth64Vram 4MB to a Mystique 4MB worth the >price of the Mystique ? I think the Mystique is a fine card. It is excellent for DOS games and has good support for its 3D features. A friend recently bought a new Mystique 2MB from a local dealer for 114 UK pounds (180 US Dollars, 1020 French Francs) including 17.5 percent tax. Very good value for this country. Matrox are very reliable and regularly issue updates to their drivers and video BIOS. There are faster cards, but consider how well they are supported. It seems likely that some of the current 3D cards will lose in the battle for support from the software houses. I used to have a Stealth 64 DRAM and was unhappy with the DOS speed and the awful Windows drivers that introduced new bugs with each release. It ruined my faith in Diamond - and I can name others who have had difficulties with their cards. Please take this as just an opinion ! By the way - the Matrox web site also has several pages in French (although there were some grammatical mistakes)

I think a 3dfx voodoo add on card from Diamond (Monster) or Orchid (Righteous 3D)!

> By the way - the Matrox web site also has several pages in French > (although there were some grammatical mistakes) I find that most interesting, since the Matrox page is hosted from the province of Quebec (where Matrox is based), where the OFFICIAL language is French! Mais oui, c'est vrai! Neil -- Neil Yeatman Ajax, Ontario, CANADA My REAL email address is:

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> Before a CPU upgrade, I think to change my display adapter for a 4Mo > Matrox Mystique. But I noticed that my good old Stealth is still up in > the benchmark results. > Thanks. > Have a nice spring ! > Emmanuel.

I would say no. I have a Mystique, and although one of the fastest 3-D cards at 2-D, a dissapointingly small number of 3-D games support it, and it is not up to the standard of the dedicated 3-D cards. If you must upgrade now I would advise adding something like a 3dfx to your existing video card, which will not effect your existing 2-D games, but will make me very jealous when talking about the 3-D games. Alternately it might be better to wait till better 2D/3D combo's are available later this year, but then who knows what will be just around the corner then? -- The Future's Bright............The Future's Tangerine! ======================================================= Dundee United Homepage:- http://www.dcs.napier.ac.uk/~bsc5106/dufc.htm =======================================================