16-04-2012, 08:41 AM
My experience of Matrox cards is that they generally work under Linux, but are just rather slow because the drivers aren't able to make good use of the hardware acceleration features, so have to do a lot of the "donkey work" in software. I've yet to see the symptom you describe. Of course, anything is possible.
It's a real shame, because Matrox made some fantastic hardware. I've got dozens of them, pulled from beige boxes en-route to the WEEE skips. I use a G550 in my Windows machine. My Linux machine uses an Nvidia of some sort because support for the Intel 845G chipset was pulled from Ubunutu/Debian a couple of years back (that was really annoying, as this wasn't publicised, and no mention was made during the exhortations to upgrade to the latest release, and a live CD didn't suggest this would be a problem either - just another reason why I won't be a Linux-only person for some time yet!). Said Nvidia is a wholly average performer under Windows. Ultimately, it's an issue of how much information about the internal architecture of the chipsets is released into the public domain so that drivers can be developed...
I can't quite see from the picture, but that card is using either PCI or AGP, and eBay is full of Nvidia cards that'll fit in there. I'm afraid that if you want to use Linux, that'll be your best bet.
It's a real shame, because Matrox made some fantastic hardware. I've got dozens of them, pulled from beige boxes en-route to the WEEE skips. I use a G550 in my Windows machine. My Linux machine uses an Nvidia of some sort because support for the Intel 845G chipset was pulled from Ubunutu/Debian a couple of years back (that was really annoying, as this wasn't publicised, and no mention was made during the exhortations to upgrade to the latest release, and a live CD didn't suggest this would be a problem either - just another reason why I won't be a Linux-only person for some time yet!). Said Nvidia is a wholly average performer under Windows. Ultimately, it's an issue of how much information about the internal architecture of the chipsets is released into the public domain so that drivers can be developed...
I can't quite see from the picture, but that card is using either PCI or AGP, and eBay is full of Nvidia cards that'll fit in there. I'm afraid that if you want to use Linux, that'll be your best bet.
