Matrox Video Announces Intel Arc-based LUMA Graphics Cards

[GFreeman]

Video technology innovator Matrox Video today announced the launch of its new Matrox LUMA series of graphics cards with Intel Arc GPUs. The series consists of three single-slot cards: the LUMA A310, a low-profile fanless card; the LUMA A310F, a low-profile fanned card; and the LUMA A380, a full-sized fanned card.

Matrox Video developed the LUMA range to satisfy significant demand in the mainstream graphics market for driving multiple screens, with a balance between size, reliability, and performance for different applications. The new LUMA series is aimed at high-reliability and embedded PC applications in the medical, digital signage, control room, video wall, and industrial markets.



The LUMA A310 card is the only modern, low-profile fanless card. The fanless design offers quiet operation and eliminates a point of failure (the fan), thereby increasing reliability and extending the card's life. The LUMA A310 is the perfect choice for anyone needing a small card that fits in a small-form-factor system. Examples include industrial systems that sit on a table or behind a monitor, or surgical displays in an operating room, where there are stringent requirements for reliability.

The single-slot, low-profile LUMA A310F card is perfect for applications requiring more performance, such as in commercial gaming, where casino machines or arcade games require a small card and extra performance to drive video and 3D rendering. Another application is in the retail space to drive multimonitor graphics, such as digital signage and digital menu boards.

The full-sized, single-slot LUMA A380 card packs even more performance and more GDDR6 (6 GB versus 4 GB) than the other LUMA models. In the health care market, the LUMA A380 can power volumetric rendering in medical workstations. In transportation and aviation applications, it delivers multimonitor graphics and video with the best possible performance. In federal and defense applications, such as live operation control rooms and PC-based simulators, users can rely on it to control medium to large video display walls showing multiple video feeds.

All three LUMA cards have four outputs and can drive four 5K60 monitors. (All three can also drive up to 8K60 or 5K/120 displays but are limited to two outputs when doing so.) They are compatible with all the latest graphical capabilities, supporting DirectX 12 Ultimate, OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan 1.3, and OpenCL 3.0, as well as Intel's oneAPI for compute tasks and the Intel Distribution of OpenVINO toolkit for AI development. The cards also have class-leading codec engines that can both encode and decode H.264, H.265, VP9, and AV1.

Close collaboration with Intel made it possible for Matrox Video to customize certain features of the LUMA cards to address specific market needs and offer several qualities that are in high demand but aren't available elsewhere:

• The A310 is the only fanless board of its class on the market.
• All LUMA cards support DisplayPort 2.1 and can output up to 8K60 HDR.
• All LUMA cards have a life cycle of seven years, with dedicated customer support. Manufacturers that use LUMA cards in their offerings can reliably sell their products for years without needing to change anything or recertify their systems.
• All LUMA cards carry a three-year warranty, with the option to extend it.
• The cards come with Matrox PowerDesk desktop management software to easily configure and manage multidisplay setups.
• TAA-compliant SKUs are available.

"The market has consistently looked to Matrox for high reliability, high stability, multi-head graphics cards with a long life-cycle," said Daniel Collin, senior product manager at Matrox Video. "With the LUMA family, we are pleased to continue satisfying these requirements in critical environments. Indeed, the alignment with Intel has resulted in a palette of additional features that extend the value we can uniquely bring to our customers as their future needs unfold."



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[KrazyT]

Matrox... Intel based card...
Is it SciFi or ?

 

[TheLostSwede]

That was unexpected.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Previous ones were AMD based...

So Intel is giving away them for peanuts.

 

[Daven]

Matrox is a specialty AIB for 2D video applications.

 

[Dristun]

First Sparkle, now Matrox - Intel's getting the entire old gang back together.

 

[diatribe]

I miss the old days when Matrox was a major competitor in the consumer graphics market. Anyone remember the Mystique and Millennium PCI cards from the late 90's?

 

[AsRock]

I miss the old days when Matrox was a major competitor in the consumer graphics market. Anyone remember the Mystique and Millennium PCI cards from the late 90's?

Yes, with the upgrade memory modules , still did not stop me swaping it out soon after for a 3DFX card though haha.

 

[karl53]

Why Matrox did not declare the A310F and A380 fans noise (dBA)? I don't see those details in the specs sheet.

 

[5 o'clock Charlie]

That was unexpected.

Same. Up to this point, have they ever used other gpu chips other than their own?

I miss the old days when Matrox was a major competitor in the consumer graphics market. Anyone remember the Mystique and Millennium PCI cards from the late 90's?

I sure remember both of these card series, though I never bought one. During the late 90s I had a STB graphics card, but that was AGP.

 

[Kohl Baas]

Why Matrox did not declare the A310F and A380 fans noise (dBA)? I don't see those details in the specs sheet.

Because it's irrelevant?

 

[TheLostSwede]

Same. Up to this point, have they ever used other gpu chips other than their own?

They sadly stopped that a long time ago. They've used AMD GPUs for several years, not sure if they ever worked with anyone else.

 

[karl53]

Because it's irrelevant?

It's not irrelevant if you are building workstations or regular PCs in silent environments. Not everyone could accept GPUs noisy fans. And eventually declaring simply silent is not enough: "In the health care market, the LUMA A380 can power volumetric rendering in medical workstations"; you would need those dBA declared.

 

[Dragokar]

That was unexpected.

Well I guess Intel is paying well That's why you see Acer, Sparkle, Matrox and even ASRock jumping the gun. Intel is flooding the market to gin market share, simple to recognize.

Previous ones were AMD based...

So Intel is giving away them for peanuts.

They still have the M-series cards, but probably Luma is the new kid on the block for them.

 

[CGLBESE]

I miss the old days when Matrox was a major competitor in the consumer graphics market. Anyone remember the Mystique and Millennium PCI cards from the late 90's?

I had the first revision of the Mystique, with 2Mb SGRam (wasn't able to afford the 4Mb at that time). If I remember right, they went for the Mystique 220 (which was related to the RAMDAC fequency, raised from 180 to 220, if my memory doesn't fail me)... It was bundled with a retextured version of Mechwarrior 2.

And once paired with a 3DFx, you got all your bases covered... Good old times

How I wish they didn't fail so hard with the G200 to G550 series. Those were good mid-range cards, but quite too overpriced to seriously compete.

 

[Penev91]

First Sparkle, now Matrox - Intel's getting the entire old gang back together.

With EVGA out of the market I'm waiting for BFG to make a comeback

 

[Dr. Dro]

With EVGA out of the market I'm waiting for BFG to make a comeback

BFG is perma-dead. Scott Herkelman's at AMD these days. Speaking of which, with Jacob Freeman of EVGA having joined Nvidia, EVGA has pretty much dug itself out of the business at this point.

I still hold a faint hope that we'll see EVGA Radeon cards, but all indicates they are still very much averse to the idea. Shame.

 

[fibre]

finally some new fanless cards

 

[vvkvvkvvk]

That tiny passive one looks great for Linux transcoding duties

 

[5 o'clock Charlie]

They sadly stopped that a long time ago. They've used AMD GPUs for several years, not sure if they ever worked with anyone else.

AMD GPUs as in specifically workstation class?

 

[Dristun]

With EVGA out of the market I'm waiting for BFG to make a comeback

I think as Dro above me said, BFG are unfortunately very much dead - but Leadtek are still alive! Maybe some others too, I can't quite remember who else was on the market.

 

[Dr. Dro]

AMD GPUs as in specifically workstation class?

Neither. Built to specification by AMD's semicustom business, they were GCN cards developed and maintained by Matrox.

Their in-house GPUs are all spun from Parhelia in one way or another, so while it failed as a gaming GPU and succumbed to Radeon and GeForce, it had quite a bunch of happy children that live on to this day in the video wall space.

They've also worked with NVIDIA for some of their D-series cards:

D1480 Quad DisplayPort Graphics Card Technical Specifications | Matrox Video

D1480 Quad DisplayPort Graphics Card technical specifications table.

video.matrox.com

I guess their arrangement works in general, they service a niche no company is *too* interested in capturing, and by licensing their IP, I suppose everyone is happy.

 

[zlobby]

So, that's the hill they decided to die on?

 

[Dr. Dro]

So, that's the hill they decided to die on?

Matrox? Yeah, they're a video wall/industrial (high-reliability, low-performance) vendor now. Less of pro-viz (CAD/DCC) and more of the display niche. That D1480 I mentioned is based on the GP107/Quadro P1000, and paired with some of their QuadHead2Go gizmo's you can get it to drive 64 1080p monitors off one card. Neat-o.

If you mean EVGA, though, it seems that it indeed what they chose to do, fold the graphics business, and remain on "perfectly good terms" with Nvidia, instead of switching sides like XFX did. I guess the CEO doesn't like or trust AMD's products, and left the door open for whenever market conditions are more favorable.

 

[80251]

I still have my Mystique 220, but not the Mechwarrior 2 CD it came with. The Mystique graphics were a step above CPU generated graphics but 3Dfx brought that to a whole other level.