Way to play off the least attractive "feature" of the new gen of cards to try to stay in the game with nvidia and ati. Why not try graphic horsepower and sub $1000 cards LOL.

"Consumers wanting a wall full of PC gaming goodness will need to fork out a whopping $1995 USD for one card."

I cant even begin to explain how exceedingly ignorant this sentence is.

No one in their right mind will buy any Matrox card for any sort of PC gaming.

Considering that the ATI 5000 series cards can each support 6 display port monitors, through daisy chaining, and that a 5770 is likely more powerful than that matrox card, just about anyone would be better off with two 5770s.

Matrox has always been the # of monitors king. They have also been the performance lemming. They make Intel integrated graphics look like the cutting edge of performance.

Eight monitors, wouldn't that put the monitor seam right down the middle again? (uhg)

As you can see, Matrox isn't even targeting gamers with their products. They're only in the professional sector since about a decade ago.


This sentence was written by Tom's Convenient.. I mean Tom's Hardware, so no need to bash Matrox.

Seriously, how can Matrox still be afloat?

$1299 for an 8 port card seems reasonable compared to buying 4 graphics cards and have no pcie slots left. This setup is for linux boxes and airport monitors as well as displaying stock charts or multiple security cameras or running your own digital tv station.

They sell pro products for multi monitor single card solutions, don't think any other company could compete with them and still can't. You don't need to sell video cards for gaming to make money.

Because they diliver products like this for a niche audience.

It's sad how 3DLabs died out but Matrox survived, since Matrox is Canadian, I believe, perhaps the Canadian Gov't kept them afloat with subsidies? I was a real 3DLabs workstation graphics fan back in the day. Time does moveth along.

This is slightly off the subject but I used to build computers for a print shop years ago & I always put matrox graphics cards in them since they accelerated 2d or workstation type graphics better than the competition at the time & had cleaner visuals. Nowadays nobody tests 2d graphics anymore. I think the print shop wants me to build some more computers again but I don't have a clue which card would work best now. They use adobe programs & some corel. Do any you guys have a link for some 2d video card testing or have any ideas.

Got to love those big ass adapters hangin out the back, we don't need any more fucking clutter...

DAAAAAAAMMMMNNNNN!!! Now that is a lot even for that. Two or three 5870s 2gb can be had for less. Even quadros would be cheaper except Tesla cards.

But..... can it run Crysis? XD

too bad it isnt 48 Ghz like the one they wrote about yesterday...

Matrox is still a great card for 2d apps. And in many cases, cheaper for the performance when compared to AMD and Nvidia's workstation offerings. I've built a few Matrox workstations, and they've performed admirably. And for a printshop who wont be doing 3d rendering, they're still the logical choice.

2d performance has a ton more to do with Drivers than it does raw horsepower.

i haven't about matrox in a long time. its interesting to see there are more the just the main 3 left.

I had a Matrox GPU once. It was the year 1997 and in a Pentium 1 system. Good times.

we use matrox cards for our process control rooms. One dcs system, four monitors. It has been 7 years since install the quad monitor systems, i think we might actually go with an eight monitor setup per dcs. Monitoring trends on one set and alarm/pressure indication on the other set.

"and a lost of mouse work"

...who edits these things?

I used to be a Matrox fan, ahh, good old days of Millennium/Mystique, G200 Series ...

they messed up with Parhelia, big time, sure it has 512 bit and stuff, but with no optimzation/compression. it was a joke and it almost killed Matrox.

After that they start playing "better be safe than sorry" game and left the performance game.

oh well.

Keep in mind that Matrox has the best picture quality.

if you're in the graphics field. You will know right away.

if you like slideshows , yes .

Nice card. Lots of RAM too, which actually surprises me.
I'm just imagining a X58 board with 4 of these cards in it, and a Matrox TH2G in each one, running (4 cards x 8 displays per card x 3 monitors per port) 96 168 0x1050 monitors... 169,344,000 pixels... (assuming all horizontally lined) 161,280x1050 resolution at a aspect ratio of 153.6:1. Not that would be wide screen gaming goodness.

Someone send me a screen shot of a pic like that. -_-

I remember when Matrox was one of the big names in 2d video acceleration, I also remember Cirrus Logic and Trident were big 2d names amongst others. I don't know of any 2d testing of video cards lately, but programs from adobe may support GPU acceleration from Nvidia or ATI. It might be worth looking into, since that can greatly increase productivity and time savings.

Ah, that is true. I hadn't thought of CS4's OpenCL acceleration. But it also depends on how large the print-shop is. I know of a smaller one that doesn't process so many images at a time that they'd prefer to have faster effect rendering over higher image quality. Photo Rendering is fast enough now days on standard quad-cores that it'd be a waste unless they processed hundreds or even thousands per day.

I suppose a simple x58 system with 3 of those cards could run video surveillience for a big hotel - or run advertisement screens for a big supermarked etc. Plenty of options. Obviously the length limitation for the cables would make the latter a bit complicated, but I'm sure there'll be a nice use for those cards.

This system is for the business professional.
It does not support DX11, and it does not have the ability to display DX or OGL content on more than one monitor.
Meaning you can hook up 8 displays but you'll be playing your games on one.
This is in contrast to the ATI card that will upgrade your resolution to fully utilize all six screen's resolution by splicing up a 3D image into each display port.

ATI infinity

multiple cores and now multiple display ports. when will we get multiple salary pay? 8 security monitors would look great. but maybe one big monitor subdivided into 8 small video areas would be serve the same purpose. you can just zoom in to the video that requires more scrutiny.

I still have a G450 in one of my computers. It's a 10 year old card and it does 2D flawlessly (better than my current ATI). Not to mention the dual monitor feature.
I remember setting up networks in investment firms, and many computers would have multiple monitor setups to follow up multiple markets simultaneously. Professionals like these guys are the target for this product, not gamers. And for them, money invested in money made.