Matrox comes out of its cave, offers new video cards


You may remember Matrox. They were a significant competitor back in the days when the graphics card scene was TNT2 vs. Voodoo3. The dark horse was always Matrox, whose dual-display-oriented cards always perplexed and intrigued me. I still don’t use more than one monitor but it’s far more common these days, with people like our own Doug, who is rocking I believe four monitors at this point. In any case, Matrox kind of disappeared for a while, possibly because they couldn’t really compete in the 3D market once the NVIDIA/ATI arms race started. Well, they’re back.

Their new cards are not intended for multi-screen gaming but for basic support for two, three, or four monitors in a desktop or custom environment — say, for web developers or built-in displays in a security office. Prices for custom enterprise quad-monitor display cards are pretty high, so I think that’s the market Matrox is going after, not you, which explains the pricing compared to GeForces and Radeons. It’s good to know they’re still out there.