nVidia TwinView

[Rags]

Paul,

I really wasn't trying to be argumentative, I was just trying to get my general point of view across, that's all. I could care less what card another person uses.

Himself,

I am sorry if I appeared like I was bashing you, but I don't feel like I was. Yes, marketing(all companies) do overstep their boundries sometimes (most times ). And to the comment about beta testers not telling matrox about slow performance, etc. That is just silly. Of course we do, but we don't decide what hardware they are going to build, we just test their drivers in as many things as we use, and report the bugs and performance issues. Matrox, I am sure, has people who study markets, and feel the waters for what trends are, these are the people who help decide which features are important. Not some no-name forum visiters, and beta testers

Take Care,

Rags

[Ant]

The Millennium G450 32MB DDR board will sell at an ESP of $149. I still think the marketing is wrong it does not fit in with Matrox's supposed view of the G450 being just a OEM/business tool. Joe Bloggs walking into his hardware store will pick up the box, see the pretty gaming shots and long list of supported game titles (EMBM), ask the guy in the store if this is the latest Matrox card and will think it should be comparable to the latest nVidia cards. A little simplistic view maybe but you get the idea.

Matrox released the G250 as an OEM/business tool, exactly what they have been saying about the G450 but how many of you heard about that? How many review boards were sent out? How many reviews have you seen? But yet it has done the job and been a successful OEM/business board. I really do not see where Matrox are trying to go with the G450. They seem to be putting far too much effort into what is a minor upgrade to an old product.

[paulcs]

Hi Rags. I was referring to some of the Anti-Matrox sentiments that have popped up recently. This stuff often gets a rise out of the regulars, particularly if negative comparisons are made.

Himself, I wouldn't have gone so far as to use the T-word. I didn't think it was quite that bad, although sometimes I think the effect is similar.

I think the G450 appears to be a bit of a weird release, given that Matrox hasn't put out a new gaming card is quite some time. I don't know why they haven't come up with a gaming solution in some time, but I suspect the G450 plays into their strengths, and avoids, at least for the time being, a direct competion with NVIDIA in the retail gaming market. I suspect going head to head with NVIDIA at this level is a mistake, because NVIDIA is on a roll, and the retail gaming market isn't as profitable or as safe as the OEM market.

(I'm thinging out loud here.) It looks like a great OEM board. It's relatively inexpensive, and it seems like a great choice for the business desktop and "content creation" crowd. As a retail board, it's definitely a reasonable upgrade choice for G200 users, although I assume quite a few of them have already upgraded or couldn't be bothered.

If it performs like we think it will perform, then it's not a particularly good upgrade choice for G400 users. The G400 is more than adequate for many gamers, but I doubt that it makes sense to make a lateral move and replace your G400 with a G450. This appears to genuinely upset some people, as upgrading one's videocard annually has become somewhat of a tradition for gamers.

I really think Matrox is being smart about this. It just seems that anyone who competes directly with NVIDIA where NVIDIA is strongest is in trouble. 3dfx is doing OK against them in the retail market, but can't penetrate the OEM market. As I've said before, I think the Radeon is too little, too late. They're just playing catch-up, and the board is too expensive for most OEM systems. S3 is practically history. Soon, they'll find themselves in "integrated solution purgatory." 3DLabs has completely abandoned the gaming and home PC market.

Meanwhile, I have these visions of the Matrox Brothers driving truckloads of Canadian currency to the bank every day and Celine Dion singing at their children's birthday parties. (I'm assuming this board is aimed primarily at the OEM market. If that's not the case, then I'm not sure what the heck they're doing.)

Personally, I'd worry more about how the GeForce2 MX as a gaming solution is going to effect Kyro sales than the MX as a business solution is going to effect Matrox. The fact that the MX board got to market well before the Kyro board has got to hurt.

Neat technology or not, will it be fast enough to get a significant number of GeForce and Voodoo5 users to switch camps? I doubt it. Are there enough disaffected Matrox users, sick of waiting and/or fascinated with tiling? Absolutely not. Will there be enough budget gamers left to sustain Kyro in a very tight market? I don't know, but I think it's something to be concerned about.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[This message has been edited by paulcs (edited 05 September 2000).]

[paulcs]

Boy, I'd feel a lot more confident about all that nonsense I wrote earlier if the early numbers weren't so discouraging.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[dZeus]

ok, summing up what was said here:

Because of the lack of 3D performance compared to the current competition, and the higher price, this card won't be very populair with gamers.

The difference between this card and the G400 is mostly the lower price (I assume the price will drop sometime soon to quite a bit below the G400 vanilla level), and the perfectionised dualhead support (2 identical ramdac's and also integrated into the core (just like the tv-out chip).

Mainly OEMs will buy this card, since they want a card with a 'name' and good support + drivers. Since the G450 is not much different from the G400, the drivers are very mature already. This card also is targeted mainly for it's dualhead use and great 2D image quality. If a developer needs fast OpenGL acceleration coupled with some level of dualhead, they better look at the Geforce2MX. Since the GeForce2MX has a kind of 'pre-G400' level support for Dualhead (as my original post stated, OEMs better think twice about using that card for this funcitonality.

The Geforce2MX will probably find it's way to the market as a cheap gamers card, and not as an good alternative to Matrox Dualhead support.

[Ant]

What you are going to see consistantly from the Millennium G450 reviews is that as far as 3D performance goes it is slower than the G400 MAX. Now Matrox have said that the G400s will be replaced by the G450, where is the sense in that, no the MAX is not a top 3D performer compared to the latest nVidia offerings but isn't it crazy to replace your best 3D performer with a slower board? I really am struggling to understand what Matrox are doing here.As far as a G450 being the best upgrade for a G200 user then from the evidence so far it would seem that a G400 MAX would still be the best option and not the G450.


It should also be pointed out that the review boards have problems, they come with a huge grounding wire for the heatsink and according to Matrox are underclocked. Why would you send a board out in this state to reviewers? I know I'm very downbeat on Matrox on the G450 but I think there are very good reasons. The G450 will be a good OEM/business card, its marketing is being handled in the wrong way in my opinion and will just attract a lot of bad press for Matrox. They have sent a large number of review units out to many 3D related sites who aren't going to be interested in whether or not it is supposed to be a OEM/business card they will just throw Quake 3 benchmarks at it and judge it on that.

[This message has been edited by Ant (edited 05 September 2000).]

[Himself]

Frankly, I don't think Matrox should even bother hyping this one, they should issue a press release and move on.

As for hiding from NVIDIA, I don't think that is a good strategy, they will eventually eat everybody's breakfast if nobody takes them on.

MX hurting Kyro sales, perhaps, that's why I'd buy one just to support them.

[LAMFDTK]

Ant, I at least like "Trains"....

[paulcs]

Well, I thought it a viable upgrade from the G200 because I figured the non-DVI, OEM version would be available for US$100.00 in a couple of months. I'm not sure if the Max will ever be priced that low.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[xortam]

I'm still holding onto my theory that the G450 chip was designed to support multiple graphic chip configurations. If Matrox delivers an inexpensive single chip version for around $100 USD, they could capture a large amount of the budget hobbyist market and OEM customers. A dual G450 chip version would exceed Max performance and could be priced reasonably compared to the ATI, nVidia, and 3Dfx top performers. This dual configuration (Fusion) would be announced about the same time as the G800 family of cards (single and multi chip versions) which likely would offer one or more new features as well as increased performance (maybe even using perhaps on-chip memory). That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it until something concrete is leaked/announced out of Matrox.

[DentyCracker]

Totally from a curiosity standpoint I'd love to know how well these G450s overclock, and how much of a difference it makes. As for myself, I'm ordering a Dual Head Vanilla for myself tomorrow and moving this SH 16 MB to the other machine (actually this VA503+ in another case) when the Vanilla comes. Vanilla will be going in this case which should contain by tomorrow evening 700 MHz Duron and Abit KT7