is matrox video cards any good?

I am in the market for a new video card
I have a 128 meg card now and i need 256 or something and i was looking around and i found matrox 's site and was looking at thier best card and it looks like it is better than both ati raedeon 9800 xt and it looks better than nvidias card too but i have never even heard of matrox. they bill it as a high end card capable of multiple displays and junk. I guess my main question is i want the best video card in the world. I want to be able to play games like far cry on maximum details and 1024X768 with every bell and whistle and be able to run through the woods and not have any chop. is that even possible yet?

i have a p4 2.4 ghz with 1024 ram too so i dont get why i cant do that already so it must be i need a 256 video right?

help me make the right decision, i dont care what the card costs even if its like idustrial so as long as it works with all of todays games
thanks ronny

I'm guessing you're talking about the matrox parhelia? Do they have a new one? If it's the original, then it was good 2 years ago, sucks now. Either way, if you want the best there is, get a radeon 9800xt.

yeah that matrox card i was looking at was 3.99 us dollars and it was called parellia or something like that.
but i didnt want to wait for shipping so i went to the local store to try to buy the best vid card they had and they only had 1 brand of video card that was 256 meg.

it was a chaintech geforce fx 5200. and it was 129.00

I guess i made a mistake buying it because im not happy with the performance of it. it almost seems like my geforce4 ti4600 was faster and its only 128 meg. do you think the matrox card would give me what im looking for? cause if it would i dont mind paying the 400 bucks for it. or is the radeion 9800 xt the card i should just get everyone tells me that card is the best but it is no where near 400 bucks so im thinking that a 400 dallar card is going to be better than a 200 dollar one right?

dam i was looking more close, it is 399 us for the 12 meg card and 599 us for the 256 dam how can a readion 9800xt be better than this card.

There is much more to video card performance than just the amount of memory. The matrox card would probably do pretty well, but it is set up to be a workstation card. It is only agp 4x, and doesn't have directx 9, which you need for new games. It costs so much b/c it supports up to 3 monitors, all with 3d graphics.
For gaming, the 9800xt is best, followed very closely by the geForce FX5950 Ultra. Both have 256mb ram, but they are much faster than the one you bought because their processors are faster and more powerful, and their ram operates at higher frequency.
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/index.html
has a massive test of many different cards, you can see the results for yourself. Don't buy based on the "because its expensive its good" way of thinking. Read reviews on tomshardware, anandtech, and others. Those are places that cater to gamers and power users, and don't have an interest in one company or another.

thanks for your help, i am going to get the radion 9800xt

im with karsh44 on this one. ATI have taken the graphics card market at the moment. im running a radeon 9800 at the moment and its damn good, so i see no reason why the 9800xt shouldnt be any better. geforces cards are definately worth a look but are a bit power hungry. id go for the ati.