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In the mid 2000-s we were researching what video card to use for a product with very long life time and extremely tedious certification. Once completed, you can't replace one component with another without invalidating the certificate. While both Ati and Nvidia would offer better performance and features, Matrox was the only supplier promising to keep stock for the next 10 or so years.

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ATI had an infuriating tendency to make their cards as impossible to identify, visually, as possible. Two different cards of the same model sold a year apart might have little in common.

Matrox may not have had cutting-edge cards, but you could at least tell what card you had.

Not only that but they would change the behavior of a chip between revisions, so drivers for one revision, if they didn't take into account the changes, would suddenly stop working even though you bought the same ( but unknown to you, newer) version of the card.

(source: me, who worked at a company that made commercial Linux drivers for Matrox, ATI,NeoMagic etc. chips )

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