G400 MAX EU - it's here

[Pelle]

Hey boys, hey girls,

Just 20 minutes ago DHL dropped of my 2 G400-Max, which I will install just after finishing this post.

My ordernumber was EU-8, there are no taxes stated on the "Waybill / Customs Invoice", but it reads "Made in Ireland"

Oh, the ordernumber is called "MAT8-4" on the sheet. The interesting part for all of you waiting is perhaps the phone and fax of Matrox' shippingcenter in Ireland, in case you want to pester them on both sides of the atlantic:

fon: (IRELAND) (0) 21-325600
fax: (IRELAND) (0) 21-325601

I'll keep you posted when the thing runs, and I wish you all the best with your hardware. Matrox should pray that that stuff was worth the wait

See you on the other side,
Pelle

[Steve C]

Superstar DJ...

Anyway, 'Made In Ireland' huh? That means that the last shipment of G400MAXes were just the chips, and the cards are then assembled in Ireland. That's why the cards takes a week or so to get out of ireland.

Cheers,

Steve

------------------
Yeah, you know the score...
(ICQ: 29468849)


[This message has been edited by Steve C (edited 07-22-99).]

[Brama]

I don' think the cards are manufactured in Ireland.

Probably they are packaged there and "europeanized" (made in Ireland label).

This is only my feeling.

Unfortunately my order EU-2x is still sleeping in matroxstore's computers.

Doing some easy calculation, if it is true that next week a big shipment of MAX is expected and my chip/card is in this bunch, it will arrive in Ireland 1st week of August, one week to be manufactured/packaged, middle August holidays, 3-4 days DHL transit and "voilà" I would have my MAX the 16-20th August...really a nerve-racking wait.

You are now a lucky man Pelle !

[Jorden]

Congrats Pelle,

But maybe a stupid question: What do you need 2 MAX's for ?? You finally got a double AGP slot in your PC??

Jorden.

[Scytale]

Hey congrats Pelle. Let me guess, you ordered two to get stereo, right?

And now let me check my Matrox pocket calculator: if EU-8 takes 50 days to deliver then EU-28 takes... oh bummer... 175 days!!!

[TheMorg]

Here we go!...

So the ball is rolling and Matrox have at least 8 European orders out of the door. Well, I hear they were having yield problems with those 380GHz "Made in Ireland" stickers. Hehehe

Scytale: try calculating EU-166... it comes out at 2 years, 10 months and 3 days. Still, I'm sure that I'll be able to run Windows 2002 Solitaire at a respectable 640x480 with my MAX by then.

Happy playing, Pelle!

Thought for the day:
Perhaps a "large batch" in Matrox terms constitutes a foam-packed parcel that won't fit through the Ireland office's letterbox?

[This message has been edited by TheMorg (edited 07-22-99).]

[Scytale]

Well it may not be so bad after all. I just got my shipment confirmed for next week. I guess this should lift your spirit as well, MorgMan... not to mention Brama.

Darned Matrox pocket calculators.

[Pelle]

Hi,

I ordered the 2nd board for a friend

Oh, and I don't know yet if I'm really a lucky guy - I believe I've got a little cooling problem in my system - the thing keeps crashing every 2 or 3 minutes when "under load" - which means even opening Netscape.

Now that the system was down the whole day it appears to run stable, which is a bit of a let-down - I had hoped that it's just a driver-problem - but apparently 4 hdd, one cd writer, one dvd and one cdr are just causing too much heat. I'll try leaving the case open , and perhaps getting one big hdd so i can kick out the 4 others. My beast already sounds like a jumbo-jet, I don't want to add another cooler.

On a brigther note, the Criterion's Collection Edition of "Brazil" on DVD today arrived as well, so I could leave and finally return home for the summer break.

I'll try to compare my Hollywood Plus vs. the G400 DVD, since this is the thing that interests me most.

Oh, and the manual messed up the 2 videooutputs which made me connect my monitor to the second "head" that is dark by default ... I thought the bloody thing had finaly bitten the bullet and switched just out of curiosity.

One other funny thing - I ran "Final Reality", and my old G200 was better in EVERY disciplin besides fill rate (on a P2-350)- something is still severly wrong here, but we can fix that, can't we?

But the best thing is: I got an email from Matrox, stating the boards are on the way, 8 hours after they had arrived. Now, read the thing carefully:

Dear Matrox Online Store customer,

This notice is to confirm that the package on order # EU-8 is in transit to you.
The package was sent on 1999/07/21. The TNT Express Tracking number is 4889441745.


The package can be tracked at the following URL:
http://www.tnt.com/fr_webtrack1.html

We have just attempted to track this order with TNT myself, and your tracking number has not be registered on their system as of this morning.

We will do another tracing again this afternoon. Some companies do require 1 day for their system to be updated with the tracking numbers.

Please be assured, however, that your order did get shipped with the above tracking number.

Thank you for shopping at the Matrox Online Store!

Ok. TNT, hu? They were shipped via DHL (www.dhl.com), and the tracking there just works perfect, try it, and you'll see everything up to the arrival at my place (the town is wrong, but hey ...)

Now try the TNT-link they supplied and ... big surprise ... nothing found.

Ok, let's wait and see how long this stays stable ...

[Pelle]

I AM a lucky man. The pass-through to the Hollywood Plus caused the crashes. I got a bit suspicous when the thing crashed every time I adjusted my screen-timings, and the crashes always looked kind of famliliar - like the usual H+ f*ck-up when no TV-Out is connected. So I connected directly to the G400, and the TechDemo runs stable and pretty impressive in every resolutuon I tried it - 640x480x32z32 up to 1024x768x32z32, all with bump-mapping enabled.

Oh, and for DVD: I have no TV here to compare the output-quality, but it looks pretty good on the monitor, prettier than the H+ on the monitor without a doubt.

I tested it with the Opening-"Blood Bath" of Blade, which is encoded at nearly 10 MBit and therefore pretty close to the upper limit of the DVD-specifictaion, and it just runs perfect on my P2-350.

Hey Steve - "Here we go" Oh, just saw TheMorg already got that one. Sigh

And Brama: as you see when tracking my parcel at DHL, the thing was shipped in Ireland on Wednesday, 17:18 and arrived on Thursday, 12:27 - these are about 19 hours, and not 3-4 days - I mean, it's called "Wordwide Express" and not snail-mail or something. I wait four days for a parcel from the US that is sent by standard post (if it doesn't get stuck in customs of course), so I would have had expected a next-day-delivery.

I even think they guarantee 24 hours world-wide: if yours is late, try getting your money back