Matrox MGA Millennium II
Matrox MGA Millennium II (1997)
Summary
| Launched | August 1997 | Part #s | MIL2P/4/220, MIL2P/4I, MIL2P/4/DELL, MIL2P/8/HP, MIL2P/8/DELL2, MIL2P/4G, MIL2P/4/DELL2 |
| Bus Type | PCI or AGP 1x | FCC IDs | |
| Chipset | MGA-2164W Mistral or MGA-2164WP-C | BIOS Versions | |
| Core Clock | 62 MHz or 66 MHz | VESA Support | VBE 2.0, DPMS, DDC-2B |
| Memory | 4 MB or 8 MB of dual-ported WRAM, upgradable to 16 MB | API Support | DirectX 3, DirectVideo |
| Memory Speed | 66 MHz (50ns chips) | Prices | $299 (4 MB) - list price at launch $399 (8 MB) - list price at launch $498 (mid-1997, 16 MB WRAM version) |
| RAMDAC | Texas Instruments TVP3026 | Competitors | ATI 3D Rage Pro Diamond Viper VP330 Number Nine Revolution 3D STB Velocity 128 3D |
| RAMDAC Speed | 250 MHz | ||
| Ports | 15-pin DSUB (analog VGA out), Media XL connector (Audio + composite video in/out) |
Introduction
The MGA Millennium II, codenamed Mistral, was first announced in May 1997 and arrived in August of that year. Rectifying one of the key missing ingredients from its forebear, the Millennium II came with a Direct3D-compliant 3D engine.
Matrox took their Mystique chip and upgraded it for their 6th-generation chipset, with faster 2D performance, higher maximum resolution, AGP support, double the video memory capacity (16 MB) and a higher-clocked RAMDAC. Millennium II's new MGA-2164W processor had a more powerful 3D Gouraud shading engine than the Millennium's MGA-2064W, support for a 32-bit Z buffer, up to 16MB of fast dual ported WRAM and hardware accelerated perspective correct texture mapping. It also integrated an enhanced video scaler with X and Y interpolation for faster, higher-quality video playback performance.
Despite these upgrades however, it still lacked bilinear filtering just like the 1064SG on Mystique.
Millennium II offered new ultra-high resolutions up to 1920 x 1200 or 1800 x 1440, optimized for top-of-the-line 21" monitors. It supported up to four monitors (one board per monitor), providing a desktop of 3600 x 2880.
"The Matrix Millennium II is a top-notch 2-D graphics accelerator aimed at power users and graphics and CAD professionals who need a mature, trouble-free accelerator for use under Windows NT and Windows 95. Matrox is behind the industry curve on integrated 2-D/3-D acceleration, however, and corporate users can now find just-as-good 2-D and much better 3-D acceleration from competitors such as AccelGraphics, Diamond, and Number Nine.
Installation is simple and straightforward under both Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0, and the Millennium sports a full complement of display control utilities. The MGA PowerDesk control panel now includes Desktop Navigator, a small desktop preview window that gives you quick access to off-screen areas of your virtual desktop. MGA Diagnostic helps you troubleshoot display problems, and the MGA Settings folder tab contains descriptive icons that let you adjust your virtual desktop settings with a single click.
The Millennium II can maintain extremely high refresh rates at high resolutions and color depths, making it a good choice for large-screen applications.
Performance on our 2-D benchmark tests was consistently in the top tier, including on our High-End Winstone and WinMark test suites in Windows NT. The Millennium II placed dead last on our 3-D benchmark tests, and 3-D rendering quality was poor, as the chip set lacks support for many Direct 3D modes. Matrox offers a 3-D only add-in, the M3D ($99), to boost 3-D functionality for those who need it. In our testing, the M3D improved 3-D rendering speed dramatically, and image quality also improved.
If you play 3-D games, or if you think 3-D business apps are in your future, the Millennium II is not a good choice without the extra upgrades. But if your main priority is 2-D performance, the Millennium II will suit your needs admirably."
PC Magazine, Dec 1997
The Millennium II was, like the Millennium, aimed at the business market. As such it came bundled not with games titles to showcase its 3D capabilities, but products designed for image editing. These included Picture Publisher 7, Colorific (colour calibration to your monitor), Micrografx's Simply 3D (create 3D stills and animations), CompCore SoftPEG 2.2 (an MPEG player), Kai's Power Tools 3, and Vream Wirl (a VRML browser).
Dell shipped their Dimension XPS range with Matrox Millennium II cards in mid-1997, and Compaq did the same on their Pentium II desktops toward the end of that year (Deskpro 6000). US-only PC maker, Quantex also shipped some Pentium II systems with the Millennium II. You could also upgrade a Millennium II card with the Matrox Rainbow Runner Studio, which gave the card video editing, video conferencing, and PC-to-TV capability with hardware MPEG-1 video.
Competition
Millennium II arrived at a time when we were seeing the first AGP cards come onto the market, but as with numerous other graphics card vendors, Matrox rushed to convert their PCI-based cards to the new bus without implementing much, if any, of the features AGP afforded. As a result, savvy buyers who wanted the best of 2D and 3D bought two separate cards: something like the cheaper Mystique or Millennium for 2D, and a 3dfx Voodoo for 3D. By late 1997, the original Millennium was super cheap and provided the best 2D image quality with high resolutions in Windows and great DOS compatibility. This, coupled with a Voodoo for 3D gaming gave you the best of both worlds. nVidia's RIVA 128 had arrived 6 months prior, and while performance wasn't on par with Millennium II, it did give you excellent 3D compatibility on a combined 2D/3D card. Moving into early 1998, the nVidia 128ZX would have given you an extra performance bump.
Number Nine's Revolution 3D was probably the closest match to the Millennium II performance-wise, but similarly lacked AGP texturing capability.
1997 saw the graphics accelerator market awash with cards based on S3's ViRGE series. The DX, then the GX followed by the GX/2. None of them were great performers and had buggy drivers.
Just around the corner in 1998 the mighty nVidia RIVA TNT arrived, and really left these somewhat compromised 1997 cards in the dust.
Interestingly, Millennium II's announcement press release on 13th May 1997 mentioned the card came with a 220 MHz RAMDAC, but by the time of its actual release all cards got a 250 MHz one. Whether Matrox suddenly realised they needed to eek out more performance to be competitive, or had been busy testing the faster RAMDAC but weren't sure if it would work reliably at that speed, nobody knows. Just an interesting bit of trivia, I thought.
In December 1997, PC Magazine ran a comparison of Pentium II desktops for professionals/enthusiasts, and the Matrox Millennium II was considered the best graphics card alongside the Number Nine Revolution 3D, though these did not fare much better than the PCI-based machines due to a lack of AGP features on these early AGP cards such as AGP texturing. As they mentioned, you can think of these AGP cards as basic redesigns of their PCI equivalent to run on the AGP bus.
The AGP-based systems used five graphics solutions: the ATI 3D Rage Pro, Diamond Viper V330, Matrox Millennium II, Number Nine Revolution 3D, and STB Velocity 128 3D. Though each card uses the AGP slot and talks to the system chip set at 66 MHz, the cards are no more adept at 2-D graphics than their PCI counterparts, as measured by our 2-D-oriented benchmark tests Graphics WinMark and Winstone. The Millennium II and the Revolution produced above average Graphics WinMark scores, but many of the leading performers used PCI cards. Though the PCI bus runs at only 33 MHz, its 100-Mbps bandwidth had no problems handling the graphics data in our 2-D benchmark tests. Many graphics board vendors admitted we would see little if any difference between their PCI and AGP boards in Winstone tests.
AGP-based systems fared no better in our 3-D testing, for only one could accelerate texture mapping by using AGP Texturing. The Millennium II and the Revolution, though admirable 2-D performers, are not yet capable of AGP Texturing. These cards, essentially PCI devices redesigned to use the 66-MHz AGP slot, benefit from the additional bandwidth but support few other AGP-specific features. The Rage Pro, Velocity, and Viper support AGP Texturing but only when accompanied by three particular pieces of software.
Eventually, as mainstream applications become more dependent on photo-realistic 3-D textures, AGP solutions - combined with larger frame buffers and larger on-chip texture caches - will be required. At the moment, though, most AGP implementations are still a bit immature and afford little advantage over PCI graphics."
PC Magazine, Dec 1997
Supported Graphics Modes
The Millennium II supported the following graphics modes:
| Maximum 2D Resolutions and Colors | ||||
| Colors | 4 MB | 8 MB* | 12 MB** | 16 MB** |
| 256 | 1920 x 1200 | 1920 x 1200 | 1920 x 1200 | 1920 x 1200 |
| 65K | 1920 x 1080 | 1920 x 1200 | 1920 x 1200 | 1920 x 1200 |
| 16.7M | 1280 x 1024 | 1920 x 1080 | 1920 x 1080 | 1920 x 1080 |
| Maximum 3D Resolutions and Colors | ||||
| Colors | 4 MB | 8 MB* | 12 MB** | 16 MB** |
| 65K | 1152 x 864 | 1920 x 1080 | 1920 x 1200 | 1920 x 1200 |
| 16.7M | 800 x 600 | 1152 x 864 | 1280 x 1024 | 1280 x 1024 |
* Either 8 MB from factory or 4 MB card from factory with 4 MB memory expansion daughtercard.
** Memory daughtercard required.
| Refresh Rates | ||||
| Display Resolution* | Horizontal (kHz) | Vertical (Hz) | ||
| 640 x 480 | 31 - 102 | 60 - 200 | ||
| 800 x 600 | 38 - 114 | 60 - 200 | ||
| 1024 x 768 | 48 - 113 | 60 - 140 | ||
| 1152 x 864 | 54 - 110 | 60 - 120 | ||
| 1280 x 1024 | 64 - 107 | 60 - 100 | ||
| 1600 x 1200 | 75 - 113 | 60 - 90 | ||
| 1920 x 1080 | 70 - 94 | 60 - 80 | ||
| 1920 x 1200 | 75 - 95 | 60 - 76 | ||
| 1800 x 1440 | 89 - 104 | 60 - 70 | ||
*Maximum refresh rates are attainable when using 8- or 16-bit color palettes. Maximums may not be attainable at the highest display resolutions with a 24- or 32-bit color palette.
Memory
The Millennium II came as standard with either 4 MB or 8 MB of Samsung-branded WRAM (windowed RAM) from factory. The card had a 64-bit bus width to the memory, allowing for up to 496 MB/second bandwidth.
The 8 MB variant had four more WRAM chips on the reverse side of the board.
All cards could be upgraded to a maximum of 16 MB of video memory by fitting one of the following daughtercards:
- 4 MB upgrade for the 4 or 8 MB version (part #MGA-MIL2/MOD (for MIL2P/4 and MIL2P/8)
- 8 MB upgrade for the 4 or 8 MB version (part #MGA-MIL2/MOD8 (for MIL2P/4 and MIL2P/8)
- 12 MB upgrade for the 4 MB version (part #MGA-MIL2/MOD12 for MIL2P/4)
These were completely different to those made for the original Millennium, with four rows of pins on each connector on Millennium II cards compared to two rows of pins on the original Millennium. Also unlike Millennium daughtercards, Millennium II cards had male pins on both connectors, so it is especially important you orient the daughtercard correctly - just know that the daughtercard sits fully on top of the graphics card, not sticking out the back.
Ports
For the Millennium II, Matrox did away with the proprietary 26-pin "Media XL" port that was on the Millennium, so the only port that is standard on the Millennium II is a DB-15 video out connector on the backplate and the standard VESA feature connector at the top of the card.
PCI versions also got a DVI video out on the backplate.
Switches
The Millennium II is fully PCI Plug & Play, so no configuration is necessary.
The Video BIOS
The Millennium II's video BIOS is in the form of a 32-pin 128 KB flash memory chip from Texas Instruments, part number TMS28F010, or a pin-compatible equivalent such as the AMD AM26F010 or ST Microelectronics M28F256. The BIOS is compatible with these VESA 1.2 and 2.0 modes in pure DOS:
| Resolution | 16 colours (4-bit) | 256 colours (8-bit) | 32K colours (15-bit) | 64K colours (16-bit) | 16.7M colours (24-bit) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 640 x 400 | - | 100h | - | - | - |
| 640 x 480 | - | 101h | 110h | 111h | 112h |
| 800 x 600 | 102h | 103h | 113h | 114h | 115h |
| 1024 x 768 | - | 105h | 116h | 117h | 118h |
| 1280 x 1024 | - | 107h | 119h | 11Ah | - |
| 1600 x 1200 | - | 11Ch | 11Dh | 11Eh | - |
Note that DOS applications that require a VESA mode are not supported by the Windows 3.1 driver in a DOS window when the Device Bitmaps acceleration feature is enabled. You can disable it in the MGA Control Panel's Advanced Setup dialog.
Flashing the BIOS to a new version required the use of a Matrox utility called UPDBIOS.EXE which ran in pure DOS. This and other utilities are available for download in the Downloads section further down - just look for Matrox Setup & Utilities Rev 3.51.
Adverts
Matrox advertised the MGA Millennium II in popular computer magazines between June 1997 and mid-1998.
Single-page advertisement (June 1997)
Reception
Like the Mystique that arrived around the same time, the Millennium II was praised for its very high-quality 2D output and excellent performance, but its lack of AGP features meant other cards coming onto the market would very soon supercede it. The nVidia RIVA 128 had already been available for 6 months, and while it wasn't great for 2D it did support 3D very well up to a certain resolution and was better for gaming. When the RIVA 128ZX arrived in February 1998 with its 8 MB SGRAM and faster RAMDAC, it was arguably the better choice over this. This was the period where if you were serious about 3D you would have something like the Millennium or Mystique for 2D and a 3dfx Voodoo for 3D. Justifying the high-ish price tag for a Millennium II probably wasn't worth it.
If you are looking to buy one today, it's much easier to get your hands on a decent Millennium II, as there weren't as many variants to look out for as with the original Millennium. All Millennium II cards feature a 250 MHz RAMDAC and have either 4 or 8 MB of WRAM installed on the card. Likewise, the memory chips were all made by Samsung. If you need a DVI out port, you must go for the PCI bus variant.
1) Some [few] cards came with 50ns WRAM chips instead of 60ns ones, so try and find one with 50ns chips.
2) Getting an 8 MB card is worthwhile, especially if you want to run Windows at higher resolutions and colour depths. 8 MB memory expansion cards seem to be more rare than 4 MB ones, so getting 8 MB on the card and finding a 4 MB upgrade to get the full complement of 12 MB is easier.
There's more information on these in the Images section, plus examples of the different model variants.
Upgrades and Successors
One of the main upgrade options for the Millennium II was Matrox' Rainbow Runner Studio (Part #MIL2/RRSTN, released in first quarter of 1998 for $279). This add-on card allowed for video capture and editing, and live video conferencing. It added hardware MPEG-1 playback functionality to the Millennium II and added a PC to NTSC/PAL video output for connection to a television.
A Matrox Millennium II with Rainbow Runner card installed
A separate card called Rainbow Runner TV (Part #MGA-RR/TVN) was a TV tuner upgrade board for both the Millennium II and Rainbow Runner Studio. It cost $89 at launch.
Both of these upgrades were also made available for the Matrox Mystique, and while the RR TV was universal across both cards, the Rainbow Runner Studio was different and incompatible. If you're looking to get one for your Millennium II, check the part number is MIL2/RRSTN and *not* MGA-MYST/RRSTN, which is for the Mystique.
The Rainbow Runner daughtercard used the same sockets as used for memory upgrades, so you could not have both a RR and memory upgrade daughtercard connected at the same time. The RR did still expose the VESA feature connector on the main card, should you need to use that for anything.
The two Rainbow Runner add-on cards for Millennium II and Mystique
In terms of successors to the Millennium II, Matrox introduced the Millennium G200 in 1998. This was their first fully AGP-compliant graphics processor. While the earlier Millennium II used the AGP bus, it did not support the full AGP feature set. The G200 came with an excellent 2D core (something Matrox were famous for) and a full set of AGP functionality. Early Direct3D tests put it on par with Voodoo 2, but OpenGL drivers were not available at launch. Ultimately, the 3D core was not as fast as 3dfx Voodoo2, but in most cases it offered a significantly better image quality thanks to its 32-bit color rendering and a 32-bit Z-buffer.
Images
While there weren't many revisions of the Millennium II board, the Millennium moniker was used on a lot of Matrox cards, so it can be a little bit confusing.
All MGA Millennium II cards had chipsets and model numbers with "MGA-MIL2/" or "2164" on them, as follows:
- MIL2P/4F - Millennium II 4 MB PCI
- MIL2P/8F - Millennium II 8 MB PCI
- MIL2A/4F - Millennium II 4 MB AGP
- MIL2A/8F - Millennium II 8 MB AGP
If you see a card with other codes, these are other Matrox models (1064=Mystique, 1164=Mystique 220, MIL/ or 2064=Millennium, etc). Likewise, anything with a G-code like G+, G2+, G200, etc, are also different [and later] models.
Millennium IIs are easy to spot in pictures as they have thicker memory expansion headers with four rows of pins in each header. Original Millennium cards have two rows in each.
MGA Millennium II Part Numbers
All AGP cards have part number 672-xx.
672-03 was the first, followed by 672-04.
4 MB PCI cards all have part number 708-00.
8 MB PCI cards all have part number 703-00.
MGA Millennium II 4 MB AGP 1x card (672-03 Rev. A, OEM version):
...
MGA Millennium II 4 MB AGP 1x card (672-04 Rev. A):
 |
 |
| Model and Part #: MIL2A/4BN/20, 672-04 Rev.A Main Chip: MGA-2164WA-B, dated Week 39, 1997 RAM: 4 MB Samsung SEC KM4232W259AQ-60 (60ns) DAC: Texas Instruments TVP3026-250CPCE (250 MHz) BIOS Chip: (Unknown) |
MGA Millennium II 4 MB AGP 1x card (Unknown model):
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| Model and Part #: MIL2A/4BI/20, 672-04 Rev.A Main Chip: MGA-2164WA-B, dated Week 41, 1997 RAM: 4 MB + 4 MB daughtercard (MIL2/MOD4) DAC: Texas Instruments TVP3026-250CPCE (250 MHz) BIOS Chip: ST Microelectronics M28F256 (128 KB flash) |
MGA Millennium II 8 MB PCI card (703-00 Rev. A, Retail Version):
MGA Millennium II 8 MB PCI card (703-00 Rev. A, Retail Version):
MGA Millennium II 8 MB PCI card (703-00 Rev. A, HP OEM Version):
MGA Millennium II 4 MB PCI card (708-04 Rev. A):
Downloads
Built into most of Matrox's own driver sets is a set of Windows utilities, which they called "MGA PowerDesk". Matrox provided drivers for Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, NT 3.51, OS/2 Warp 3.0 and 4.0, AutoCAD for DOS and MicroStation for DOS. For Windows ME, it came with Millennium II drivers built-in (Matrox never released any others for ME). See also my main Matrox Downloads page for more.
Click on an icon in the table below to download the file.
Millennium II Installation Guide
The user manual for the Matrox MGA Millennium II card, covering installation, software drivers, and more. |
Windows 3.1x Driver For Millennium, Millennium II and Mystique. |
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Windows NT 3.51 Driver Unzip using the -D option to retain the directory structure. |
Windows NT 3.51 Driver Unzip using the -D option to retain the directory structure. |
Windows NT 4.0 Driver For Millennium, Mystique, and Mystique 220 |
Windows 95 Driver Unzip using the -D option to retain the directory structure. |
Windows 95/98 Driver
For Millennium, Millennium II PCI/AGP, Mystique, Mystique 220, Productiva G100 and Millennium G200 cards. |
Windows 95/98 Driver For Millennium, Millennium II PCI/AGP, Mystique, Mystique 220, Productiva G100 and Millennium G200 cards. |
Windows 95/98 Driver For Millennium, Millennium II PCI/AGP, Mystique, Mystique 220, Productiva G100 and Millennium G200 cards. |
Windows 95/98 Driver For Millennium, Millennium II PCI/AGP, Mystique, Mystique 220, Productiva G100 and Millennium G200 cards. |
Windows 2000/XP Driver For Millennium, Millennium II, Mystique, Mystique 220 and G100/G200/G400/G450/G500 models. |
Matrox Setup & Utilities For Millennium,
Mystique, Mystique 220, Millennium II, Productiva G100, Millennium G200,
Mystique G200, Marvel G200, Marvel G200-TV, Millennium G200 SD, and Millennium
G200 LE. |
BIOS I do not have any BIOS dumps for the Millennium II. If you have one, please let me know. |
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RR Software for Windows 95
Includes Windows 95 drivers for the Matrox Rainbow Runner
Studio add-on card, and the Matrox PC-VCR Remote program for Windows 95,
which lets you quickly access Rainbow Runner features. |
RR Software for Windows 9x
Includes Windows 95 drivers for the Matrox Rainbow Runner Studio add-on card, and the Matrox PC-VCR Remote program for Windows 95, which lets you quickly access Rainbow Runner features.
|
RR Software for Windows NT 4
Includes Windows NT drivers for the Matrox Rainbow Runner Studio add-on card, and the Matrox PC-VCR Remote program for Windows NT, which lets you quickly access Rainbow Runner features
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