AFAIK, there isn't an order of Mystique cards and their clocks. All the chips can appear in more clock variants. I have a suspicion Matrox card numbering (the xxx-xx format) can encode it, but I do not know enough cards to examine that.

I've just found those informations on dosdays.co.uk about the Millennium:
Core Clock:
50 MHz (IS-STORM-R2 and MGA2064W-R2)
60 MHz (MGA2064W-R3)

So apparently the "best version" is the r3 with 4mb of memory.
I will try to find if there is anything similar about the Millennium 2 and the Mystique 220

Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-04-21, 17:02:

The information I found so far is that the first Millennium is less 3d capable than the Mystique, while the Millennium II is 3d capable as the Mystique\220.
I know that in dos the compatibility of matrox card is inferior compared to s3 cards, but the 2d quality is much better.

Keep in mind that the original Millennium's 3D capability is extremely rudimentary. There are only a handful of titles that were written to use it and it didn't even support texture mapping. It's much more accurate to view it as world class 2D hardware for that specific era. You're correct that it has some of the best analog image quality out there, but a case could be made that it's well into diminishing returns territory. In motion at period relevant resolutions for games, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between a millennium and a ViRGE from a quality vendor. The issue there is that there was a huuuuuuge gap in quality from low end vendors and the high end, so you would need to do your homework. That said, the compatibility issues are somewhat unlikely to bite you on the millennium and it's all well documented so you can see if anything you plan on running would even be effected.

Original Millennium 3D capabilities were designed with CAD in mind. So it's still a 3D accelerator, just not for gaming.

I see, so it may be even worse than the vanilla Mystique?
I've been able to get a Millennium 4mb rev R3.
Now I need to get a Mystique 4mb, the Millennium II AGP and the 8mb Millennium II if ever.
When I get it I'd like to do a comparison between all of those.
What configuration I should use? A 440bx paired with a pentium 2-3? Which windows applications other than final reality?

Thanks

Millennium 1 is almost 2d-only card regardless of the chip and memory size that is used there. Very limited 3d functionality.
Mystique and Mystique 220 cards have huge rendering quality, missing a lot of common features. Graphics looks more like on PlayStation 1 though some people like it. Millennium 2 is slightly better in rendering but still very far from perfect.
Mystique cards series have support of their own 3d API - MSI. Original Mystique is most compatible in MSI games but the slowest, 220 - less compatible but faster, Millennium 2 - minimum compatibility but maximum speed. There are also hybrid Mystiques with early chip and 220 MHz RAMDAC - compromise in compatibility, speed and quality.
The original Mystique has slowest RAMDAC meaning it has worst available image quality modes in lineup. But it is still great for its time.
AGP bus for those old cards means almost nothing except of interface itself. They are too slow to use faster bus effectively.
Shortly, all those early Matroxes are useful mostly for 2d and especially good in combination with Voodoo 1 or 2 because of signal quality loss in pass-through cable. Their 3d capabilities are limited though performance of Mystique was good for late 1996- early 1997.

Thank you for the complete answer and the precious informations
Do you think that this version is hybrid version you mentioned? The video chip is the old one but the memory is faster than common Mystique and the back is labelled as 220:

Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-04-22, 09:08:

Thank you for the complete answer and the precious informations Do you think that this version is hybrid version you mentioned? […]
Show full quote

Thank you for the complete answer and the precious informations
Do you think that this version is hybrid version you mentioned? The video chip is the old one but the memory is faster than common Mystique and the back is labelled as 220:
001.png
002.png

Yes, that seems to be the case. MGA1064SG chip there. Inscription "Copyright 1997" on top is common for Mystique 220. Also it is labeled "MY220" on back side.

https://vintage3d.org

I'm doing the tests. I've also played a bit with biosses those are my findings:
Mystique bios are the same for both first and 220 mhz version. I've been able to recover 3 of them: v1.2, v1.5, v1.8. Performance wise there are no noticeable differences.

Compatibility wise the Mystique was able to run Chris 3d benchmark at 640 only with version 1.2, all the other cards give me a black screen and hang up system. I tried to flash the v1.2 on the mystique 220 but it didn't fix the benchmark furthermore I had black screen with Quake at 640. So it's not worth. All the other cards give the same issue with Chris 640 benchmark, updating the bios didn't help.

Millennium and millennium 2 have different bioses, the agp version of millennium has a different bios too.

Dos wise performance there is almost no difference. In Windows, weird enough on pc player bench the Mystique 220 is faster even than Millennium 2 agp, which is faster than the pci version. I suppose the difference are just due to the agp 66 mhz bus.

I still lack: Millennium 2 8mb which seems very expensive too much to try to buy it. The hybrid version of Mystique, which may be worth for compatibility purposes.
I also found a Mystique 220 with faster memory chips but I think it's not really worth. I'd still like to have the Matrox Millennium with R3 revision chip but again seems too expensive to just have it for collection purposes since performance wise in gaming it's probably worse than the mystique.

I'd be curious to try the Mechwarrior for Mystique, according to your knowledge, does it has a benchmark feature integrated?

Edit: A website containing some information that I found useful is this one: http://www.512bit.net/matrox.html It's not complete though and according to my data some frequencies are wrong (I checked mine with powerstrip).

I was able to find the Mystique hybrid model for a "reasonable" price.
It came with 10ns memory chips (I saw rare and expensive versions with 8ns chips too but those are plain 220), bios v1.8 (latest one), I tried to downgrade it to v1.2 but it didn't fix the issue with Chris 3d 640, I really wonder what's wrong between matrox cards and that benchmark, the ramdac is 220 mhz and the stock frequency is 60\90, with 4mb of memory.
Performance wise it's par\subpar with the standard Matrox 2mb, I noticed that in windows it's identified as Matrox Mystique (not 220).
I also tried to overclock the card to 220 clock (67/100) and it brought to an increase of performances in general similar to 220 model in windows.
I was also able to overclock this specific model up to 76/115, performance wise was a bit faster than the 220 model bust still slower than the Millennium 2, faster in 16 bit and slower in 32 bit.
It would be interesting to check the performance of the Mystique cards with MSI api, to see if it's worth to get such hybrid cards or not compatibility wise.

Guys we need an updated guideline for matrox cards and DOS compatibility, the moment i started using CPUs at the required speed for those problematic games i had no more issues, i think who did the testing at the time didn't take all variables into consideration.

I remember having similar issues with my Mystique 220 (VBIOS 1.8, GPU 66 MHz, memory 99 MHz) with Chris's 3D at 640x480. Something to do with VESA supported modes as I remember. I ran it again just now to confirm, and what it does for me is black screen for a bit over a minute before the display comes back and it does the benchmark like nothing happened. There is a fix for it. Using UniVBE (SciTech Display Doctor) will make it run with no issues. Just run univbe.exe and then run the benchmark again. It's a TSR and you'll need to run it every time the system is restarted.

Agent of the BSoD wrote on 2024-07-18, 01:37:

I remember having similar issues with my Mystique 220 (VBIOS 1.8, GPU 66 MHz, memory 99 MHz) with Chris's 3D at 640x480. Something to do with VESA supported modes as I remember. I ran it again just now to confirm, and what it does for me is black screen for a bit over a minute before the display comes back and it does the benchmark like nothing happened. There is a fix for it. Using UniVBE (SciTech Display Doctor) will make it run with no issues. Just run univbe.exe and then run the benchmark again. It's a TSR and you'll need to run it every time the system is restarted.

Thank you, I didn't know, I'm done with testing matrox cards for now. I just wonder why it works fine with the older v1.2 bios.

So I decided to add the incoming benchmark to the roundup but with the Matrox Mystique 2mb and the standard windows driver when I try to run the benchmark that's what I get:

This thing doesn't happen with any other matrox card.
So my question is if this is due to the 2mb or the video card is broken? I don't have any issue with other benchmarks

Yes apparently the issue is that the game requires a 4mb card.

Ok, I'm redone the tests. I used again the P2 450 with Abit BE6-2 and 256 mb of ram plus a 8gb cf card.
Some observations:

• Mystique cards come with drivers in windows 98 se but they don't work fine (at least with incoming they don't render some things), performance are the same between the windows drivers (I used the w9x_412).
• The original Mystique is faster (I suppose it is due to the older bios) despite the lower clock (60\90), it has no room for overclock at all due to the memory chips uses (12ns). Also the 2mb didn't allow to do some of the tests (incoming don't have any texture), or pc player bench d3d didn't run at 32 bit and z-buffer.
• All Mystique cards have 2-2-4 memory timings, which are the fastest.
• Incoming is broken with the original mystique, I don't know why it hangs with artifacts in different moments while running the benchmark (I used the demo version).
• I think there are no differences architecture wise between the Mystique and the 220.
• I found on my stash 2 different 220, despite they look the very same the older one (week 36 year 97 has the lower clock (90\60 vs 99\66), both are able to reach the 76/115 clock frequency, I think the limiting factor here is still the memory (as said earlier there are rare models with 8ns memory), so it's not just a matter of chip, Matrox back in time also labelled newer chips (1164SG-A) with older speed frequency, I think the standard frequency is in the pll chip, not the bios because using the bios of the other card didn't make the older card to use 66/99 as standard frequency.
• Overclock wise Mystique they reach without any trouble the 76/115 frquency, the 80\120 can be reached but they need some cooling (mainly the memory chips which are in my opinion the limiting factor once again), strange enough the hybrid card was able to reach 80\120 but the performance difference was negligible.
• Millennium II are a different story, the original clock speed is 66 (for core and memory), I'm not discovering hot water saying that the limiting factor is the memory (once again), I suppose it's also the reason why it's not vastly superior compared to the 220, if the clock was like the mystique it would have been possible to get higher core clocks. Both versions were able to achieve only 72 mhz, even one mhz more and the screen becomes completely broken.

Here are the results, I removed most of dos benchmarks since they were giving always the same numbers:

Edit: I was able to flash the "pins" of one mystique 220 on the other (the faster one over the slower one), unlucky the pins are not described so to avoid any mistake I used the pins of the faster one.
I was able to do it thanks to this precious website:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080516034057/ht … g.html#progbios
https://web.archive.org/web/20080705130623/ht … atrox/bios.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20080420153828/ht … x/mgaclock.html

Edit: I received the Matrox Millennium R3, 590-05 Rev: B. It had the v2.3 bios version, clocked at 60 mhz. With such bios version the Chris 3d 640 benchmark works fine, after updating to the latest version (3.0) it doesn't anymore (one minute delay). Performance wise there are no differences between 2.3 and 3.0. I was able to overclock the card to the crazy speed of 75 mhz (25%) overclock. Dos performance are lower than the Matrox Mystique 2mb in every benchmark, quake, doom everything is slower (despite the overclock).
In windows the card is pratically useless, direct 3d benchmark shows no texture and Final Reality benchmark refuses to run.