Although new video cards have an amazing performance and memory volumes, many computers still contain 32 MB graphics cards. Actually, this hardware is sufficient to solve many tasks, for instance the servers that must not provide much graphical information to users will appreciate the 32MB video card.
The most popular time for the 32MB video card was the end of the last century. There were many announces from NVIDIA, ATI and 3dfx. NVIDIA announced GPU GeForce256 and S3 Savage2000; 3dfx proposes the chip VSA-100 and a group of video cards on its basis. ATI Technologies started the lines of the famous Radeon with the first 32MB video card of this family. Matrox G400 was another example of the 32MB video card from those times.
Actually, the 32MB video card could be very efficient for the 2D graphics handling. The adapters of this level are able to work with 3D images and process games, popular in those times- Quake3 and some others. Therefore, their possibilities in this branch of the graphics industry seem too low for today. The reason is that many producers were not able to provide some good ICD OpenGL drivers, but they had other parameters on a very high level. Hence, it can be said that there were no one product, which could be almost perfect.
Matrox were the only company, which announced the mini-driver TurboGL. The reason for this release is multiple claims from the users about the absence of the proper ICD OpenGL driver. The Matrox product was done in a hurry and it has some leaks. Thus, in some time the company succeeded with the next driver's version for their video cards on the base of the G400 video processor. This branch of the 32 MB video card was able to work without performance looses. It was a perfect step forward, comparing to the elder G400 video cards in the Direct3D mode.
The G400 video cards were not positioned as gaming ones, but also as professional and sub-professional cards for the work with the 2D graphics. They are popular for the owners of big and very big displays, supposed for the work with the complicated graphics, when the keen redrawing of thin lines and the speed of images changes are important. Additional features of 32MB video cards are good for work with the 2D graphics, when two displays are used at once. The ability to have an output to the monitor and TV was also appreciated by many users. That is the reason why video cards Maxtor acquired their own circle of users due to their efficiency and a low price.
Let us consider the 32MB video card configuration - Maxtor G450:
-0.18 mcm technology.
-256-bit DialBus architecture.
-64-bit DDR/SDR memory bus.
-Full support of AGP 4x, including a bus mastering mode.
-Support for AGP 1x, 2x and 4x.
-Built-in secondary RAMDAC (230 MHz).
-Embedded TMDS transmitter.
-32MB 6ns DDR SDRAM
-Hardware support of Environment Mapped Bump Mapping.
-Technology Vibrant Color Quality2 (VCQ2) rendering.
-Support for Matrox DualHead Display Technology.
The main differences of G450 from its predecessor are a more complicated technology for the chip development. This enhancement permits the increase of the clock rate for the graphical kernel and the decrease heating of the chip at work. These directions lead to an appearance of the next generation of 32MB video cards, which will become the base for new achievements in this industry.