Wish Matrox would make a true gaming GPU

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.matrox (More info?)

would be nice

Henrik

"tod" <no_spam_i@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:T4LOe.763$z2.586@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> I've been a Matrox supporter for almost 10 years.
> And their P series (650 & 750) do some great things.
> But It would be nice if they came out with something
> to rip the gaming spot light from ATI & NVIDIA.
> Some other graphics chip manufacturers (S3, Trident) tried to come out
> with
> gaming GPUs with smaller die size.
> Maybe if Matrox came out with something with a small transistor count.
>

I know what you mean, at the beginning of 3D acceleration Matrox was a key player with cards such as the Mystique 220, which was possibly the first graphics card to offer properly an all in one graphics card with 3D acceleration designed for use with Direct 3D (although 3DFX did produced an all-in-one version of it's Voodoo chipset called Voodoo Rush it was designed with glide in mind), which is all you get nowadays, but once nVidia came good with the TNT then GeForce series Matrox seemed to give up on mainstream graphics and concentrated on professional graphics - something at which they had always excelled. The fact that the company are still going strong is a testiment to the success of this strategy whereas other players in mainstream graphics have been swamped by the nVidia / ATi machine, S3, PowerVR and notably the company that started the ball rolling - 3DFX. With nVidia & ATi's grip on the market I can't see Matrox marketing a graphics card which is capable of major ploriforation in the mainstream retail market anytime soon, which is a shame as for sheer quality they are hard to beat.

You're not the only one.

There are a few of us Matrox fans out there, but even the Parhelia series was hard to buy with such a steep price tag for a card that had so many limitations (as well as benifits).

Alot of us were hopinh their first PCIe card woul be a solid gamer (at least at the X700 level, but it turned out to be the P650 with PCIe interface.

I don't even hope for a gaming card anymore since their game relations department was disbanded about 2 years ago.

Sucks but they are focusing on what they still do best 2D/business solutions.

OH ... Parhelia ... My Brother Was A Matrox Fan & Had A Matrox Parhelia About 2 Years Ago ... But That Was Terrible ... It Couldn`t Reach My Gainward MX440 in CounterStrike ...  

Yeah I'd have to see them side by side because in all likelyhood your MX was running at Far worse IQ, and with Matrox nearly no penalty Fragment AA it likely had far more headroom.

Considering the Parhelia competed very well with the GF3 and R8500LE, I doubt that MX was running anywhere near the same settings.

Matrox is more into 2d graphic.

Check out the Parhelia Qid and the tripple head to go, then you know where Matrox is headed.

I wish Voodoo would come back and makes graphics cards. They were among if not the first to came up with a 3D graphics cards. But I never heard of them ever again (cricket chirping). That and maybe Intel would come up with something and make some graphics/physics card, their onboard graphics processor is almost useless for gaming.

3DFX was purchased by nVidia, thus no more Voodoo.

Yes thanks for poiting out the obvious, I never would've guessed. :roll:
PErhaps if you read the thread, especially the title of this ancient thread you dug-up, you'd get an idea of the flow of conversation.

Before I would say Matrox owns 2D, now everyone else has pretty much caught up. The only area I'd still say they likely lead in 2D is in the real-time capture hardware solutions, in the graphic card section everyone has caught up.



Triple head to go is interesting, the QID is overpriced and under utilised, and their future is going to become extremely limited given the level of 2D/Video focus of the Big 3 (ATi/Intel/nV) and their support for Vista.
Matrox doesn't have a 3D desktop Vista fully compliant card right now, so if their view of the future is limited to niche professional market and niche PC appliance markets, it really spells the end of their involvement in graphics cards.

It's possible they have a low/mid-end DX10 (or worse DX9) complaint part coming out like SIS does, but they've been pretty tight lipped about anything. And with the quality of the 1300 and GF7300 being what it is and even Intel making quality parts with the GMA950 and GMA965/3000, it's tougher than if they already had some products out there to give them some R&D feedback, versus the DX8.1+ P series.

You are one easy to piss off fellow.

Anyway, the focus in 2D has alot of applications. If you look at it in purely gaming/windows, then yes, you are completely right almighty one.

For those enthusiasts about Matrox 3d cards. Matrox just posted an ad for 3d programmer. So that probablly solved the debate.

Yeah shame they quit the gaming market but they did the right thing to survive as a company. Had a couple of their cards in the past and actually I'm just getting my old G400 dualhead back so I can use it in the spare box. At least the G400 can do different refresh rates on it's two screens so might try it on HTPC duties.

Yep matrox is still alive indeed, i also was a supporter at one time, but my main function for my PC is gaming, you know where this bit of the story goes.

No, everyone else has not caught up in 2D, i think i read something in here that implied this, if you didn't mean to impy it then ok i'm wrong life goes on =P

Just saying Matrox makes really good 2D cards is also WAY off, the few workstation cards they have is not the only product they make, do some reading folks. www.matrox.com

Desktops are trending towards a 3D environment and will eventually require a very robust 3D card to even use the OS. Maybe Vista doesnt require a top of the line card yet, but what about after Vista, and after that? What happens when/if a 3rd party shell comes out that everyone falls in love with and it requires a super card to use it... If matrox really wants to stay in the desktop segment at all, chances are these are all things they are thinking about, Simply put the OS is not a niche product, well windows isnt anyhow, if any company wants to stay onboard with the single most popular OS they will do what they gotta do.

IMO, it would be nice to have choices beyond what ATI/nV provide. It would provide more competetion, boost innovation, and lower prices.

There was a company that tried about 2 years ago...they failed miserably...
XGI Volari

http://www.xgitech.com/products/products_2.asp?P=2
http://www.xgitech.com/products/products_2.asp?P=3
http://www.xgitech.com/products/products_2.asp?P=4

And a good few screenshots of the dule gpu volari
http://img.presence-pc.com/news/x/g/xgi_volari_v8_duo_d...
http://www.ixbt.com/video2/images/volari-duo/collage2.j...
http://img.presence-pc.com/news/x/g/xgi_volari_v8_duo_c...

But it had all sorts of issues:
http://www.tomshardware.pl/graphic/20031107/images/ut-2...
http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/07/IMG0007...
http://prohardver.hu/html/vga/volari_v8_2/fsaa/_wolf/2x...

And it couldn't run 3dmark:
http://www.tomshardware.pl/graphic/20031107/images/3dm-...
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2004/0128/tawada_15....
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2004/0128/tawada_24....
http://www.pcstats.com/articleimages/200407/XGIvolariv8...

Matrox still makes the best 2d cards on the market then ati then nvidia but then again i dontcare unless thats ALL it will be used for. If thats it then i would defanitly have a matrox.

Understand the context of the 'everyone else has caught up' part; "in the graphic card section everyone has caught up."

Their custom solutions are still good, but the GRAPHICS CARD portion of their solutions is now equalled and exceeded for DVI by the X1300 and GF7300 (FireMV and Quadro) products. The only area they still may have the argument as to being better would be the VGA segment, and even that is a minior difference at best.

As for their other products I allude to that in the rest of my comments, but that is truely the niche segment of their solutions, they need at least an X1600Pro level card IMO for HD acceleration.



Which is what all the talk is about with regards to their future, there are many people who deal with Matrox on a regular basis who are having this discussion right now. Matrox is leaving this too last minute for most because they have to test products long before we recommend them for 20+ computers. For us Matrox wasn't even on the list they got weeded out long before the testinf phase because even the GMA900/950 had more capabilities. And from the discussion in the Matrox forums alot of people who have many Matrox graphics card in their system have already started transitioning to ATi and nV products because the talk of a Matrox solution came too late for them to test Vista RC1 and their early Betas. While VISTA isn't the be all and end all, and neither is the 3D desktop, losing commercial clients who are finally moving from Win2K to Vista like half the PCs where I work (about 500 pcs under my direct line of sight [and it's not even my 'job', just the only one who can talk to the suppliers on a tech level]), Matrox being caught wrong footed on this is just shortsighted.

Check the Matrox forums and look at all the defectors, most don't want to leave, but the software programs just don't suppport the old Matrox cards, and of course the gamers are almost all long gone save for the triple monitor gamers who have no other options without buy 2 products the triple monitor 2 go and then a gaming card, even that is becoming attractive compared to terrible gaming driver support.

And I say this as a Matrox booster, the problem is that it looks like even they don't want to be in the graphics card business anymore, and without another product announcement soon, it's really hard to say otherwise.

Its Very Sad Indeed that Matrox just steped out of gaming cards. With that AA that the Parhelia had, the image quality, and inovations, they should still be in the bussines.
I think that perhaps now that microsoft has unified DX10 setings, and Vista will be using a lot of 3D power, they got the incentive to develop a new GPU, so I wish.
Even S3 is betting high with new line of cards, for the XGI I fell sory, if they worked out their drivers to work with major aplications, they could have grown(I heard they are strong in Asia), I like Nvidia and ATI, but more competitors in the race would be awesome.

Fragment AA an SurroundGaming were their strongpoints, raw power wasn't. But now driver support is their big weakness.



Well they are forced to make a new card for Vista if they want to continue making cards for current builds. They are expected to launch something next summer though, just like S3.



XGI is owned by ATi... which is owned by AMD. XGI will never come back as anything more than another niche player, if that.

I didn`t know that ATI bought XGI, now I found a press release confirming it.
AMD-ATI is becoming pretty big.

That means only S3 can be the third player.
Or perhaps Intel will do something about it.

Well, I've read that the 3DLabs is an independent company (no longer belongs to Creative) so, we might see some stuff from them (maybe Intel will buy them...)