Matrox MGA Impression
The MGA Impression arrived in 1993. It was the first Matrox card to use their new MGA-II (Matrox Graphics Architecture II) chipset.
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Released | 1993 |
| Bus | ISA or VESA Local Bus | |
| Chipset | MGA-II (Dubic, Titan and Helena) | |
| Standards | Hercules, CGA, EGA, VGA | |
| Memory | 3 MB VRAM (+ up to 2 MB DRAM expansion) | |
| Ports | 15-pin DSUB (video out) 26-pin VGA Feature connector |
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| RAMDAC | Brooktree Bt 485KHJ170 (175 MHz) | |
| Part # | - | |
| FCC ID | - | |
| Price | At launch: $999 | |
| See Also | MGA Impression Plus, MGA Impression Pro |
Aimed at the CAD (Computer-Aided Design) and specialist graphics rendering market, this card was the first from Matrox to use their new homegrown graphics chipset instead of a third partys. Impression was the single chip, cheaper version compared to Impression Pro, though the card was still very expensive.
The MGA-II chips on Impression supported PCI, VLB and ISA, and were codenamed Dubic and Titan. Helena was the codename for the Impression Lite and Impression Plus Lite.
It came with integrated 3D hardware acceleration, so it could handle 3D Gouraud shading in real-time at a resolution of 1280 x 1024 in 8-bit colour, as well as hardware pan and zoom. On the ISA version of the card, 3D shading support was limited to 800 x 600 but this did support full 24-bit colour.
Owners could purchase a 2 MB DRAM memory add-on for $200, which could act as a Z-buffer and improve 24-bit colour performance by using this additional memory for off-screen bitmap caching.
Its core clock ran at 33 MHz.
Board Revisions
I have no board revision information for the MGA Impression.
Competition
In the Media
Setting it Up
I have no information on configuring the MGA Impression card.
Downloads
Operation Manual Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
Original Utility Disk Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
Video BIOS ROM Get in touch if you can provide this missing item!
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