Matrox Meteor Hardware FAQ

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This information is taken from the Hardware-FAQ file distributed with version 1.4c of the Linux driver distribution. If you have other information to contribute, feel free to send it to me.

What Pentium motherboard chipsets does the Meteor work with?

To get full bandwidth (768x576x32bpp @ 25fps = 45Mhz, 640x480x32bpp @ 30fps = 37Mhz) grabbing into memory you need at least a Triton (430FX) chipset on your motherboard. The newer Triton chipsets (Triton II, 430VX and 430HX) should also work [does anyone have any relative performance for these three?] It will work with the much older Neptune chipset, but not at full bandwidth.

What Pentium Pro motherboard chipsets does the Meteor work with?

Older PPro chipsets (Orion) were buggy and had quite low bandwidth for video transfer [this may be fixable via the bios... anyone?]. This was supposed to be fixed in newer Orions. The latest chipset Natoma (440FX) should be able to handle the necessary bandwidth, however some nasty problems have been reported, particularly when using YUV planar modes which make use of 3 DMAs simultaneously (all other modes use only one DMA and seem to be ok). It seems this is a problem which affects the Meteor under Windoze as well as Unix. Philips and Matrox are looking into it (it is some weird interaction between Natoma and the Philips SAA7116 on the Meteor).

What hardware can cause problems with the Meteor?

NCR SCSI devices have caised problems in the past but should be ok now. The problem originated from PCI latency timers being set too high.

Last modified: Mon Dec 22 16:59:15 1997