Somebody Please Convince Me to Stay With Matrox

[DentyCracker]

Warranty, not all reg. G400 will oc that well, etc

[paulcs]

Ugh!

I respectfully take issue with with a number of remarks made in this thread.

"How can you make money with no product. Pretty simple if you ask me..."

The above statement assumes that Matrox has a single marketable product. This is not true of Matrox or even the G400 series.

"Well, I wonder alot.... since Matrox is such a high profit/successfull company, THEN WHY THE HELL did they do a thing like G200's win9x ICD, and still does this thing with winNT's ICD. And what's up with the win2k drivers?"

Companies far more successful than Matrox have had driver issues far more serious than Matrox's ICD debacle last year. I don't want to minimize how badly Matrox screwed this up, but for the vast majority of users, it was a non-issue. The G200, apparently, sold quite well and was an unqualified financial success.

I'd bet the farm, in the entire history of computing, not a single hardware manufacturer has *ever* run into trouble for not supporting an OS that has not been officially released. And, I'm willing to bet it will never happen. Ever.

Matrox's support of NT, an established OS, has been luke warm at best. While very frustrating to NT users, I doubt this really hurts Matrox. I'm not quite sure why Matrox leaves the high-end graphics professional market to companies like 3DLabs, but they do. Their focus, and they appear to do quite well with it, is to go after the business and home desktop markets--both *extremely* large and completely dominated by Windows 95/98.

"Matrox, does this kind of message please you? As someone who has always supported your products to all my friends, it troubles me to see this. Do you understand how much money you are losing because you cannot supply product?"

I imagine it does not. Matrox's problems with their vendor, NEC, have been well documented here. I'm just not sure what Matrox can do other than what they are doing. In an industry like publishing, were the manufacturing process is done by an outside company, a secondary vendor is used to keep the primary vendor honest. I'm not sure if Matrox had this option. I doubt they do now. Again, I'm just not sure what they can do now. I don't, however, think the poor availability of the Max, a board Matrox always intended to ship in limit supply, is in any way fatal.

Given the limited supply of the Max, can you imagine the outcry if Matrox opted to ship to retailers before they covered their Matrox Store orders? Would the Matrox Store be viable if Matrox did this?

It appears direct sales are becoming an important part of Matrox's business model. OEM sales, and I doubt the Max even comes into the picture here, are probably even more important. It also appears Matrox is willing to sacrifice some business from retailers to pursue these two markets, although, again, I think they'd prefer for everyone who wanted a Max to have one. I seriously doubt they will go out of business if this isn't the case.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Jihad]

Hello.

I dont think you need any convincing but if you do you can come over to my house and watch the techdemo first, then a little Drakan. But, hey as you said you could get a Viper770U but I have had a G400 since July and it is nice, but it is only a video card. So do what make you happy,but I have to say that the G400 looks and feels (no not physically) great even non-EBEM games are great. Q3 perfermonce with the new drivers is great for me 48.7 frames at what I consider good visual quality. Sorry for the long post guys.

[Brent]

You can't even buy from Matrox if you don't live in the USA, Canada or Europe anyway. For me the Max remains an illusion much like the G200 was for a long time. As I already have a V2 SLI rig, I fear that by the time I can get a Max, something else from Matrox or someone else that is the next generation will be about to be released. I do not mind buying the latest every six months provided I actually own and use the latest for the best part of six months. That's the point I would like to add to this.

[tish beta2]

This still don't answer my wondering... Why is the case with the drivers in such a mess? Either a) they can't find/hire any good OGL programmers, or b) their leaders don't wanto hire any more expensive programmers than they pay for.

Of course Matrox will do fine. As everyone feels nowadays; unless anyone else comes up with EMBM, go get/wait for a G400 Max.

Those shiny tanks in Expendable (gasp!), the awesome techdemos and Dungeon Keeper 2 (grafics rating; upped by 90%) will kick-butt any T&L engine. And I ain't talki'n 'bout any Dot-3 product here!

EMBM is king, and Matrox knows it! ¦ )

(I just hope and pray I soon can play Expendable in win2k, as I'm already able with my old TNT)


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If you're a cowboy, and you're dragging a guy behind your horse, I bet it would really make you mad if you looked back and the guy was reading a magazine.

[SteveC]

Maybe Matrox should go down 3dfx' path, and buy out/merge with another company. Matrox to the designs, the other company do the hardware. Or Nvidia's route, and Matrox do the designs again, but let any old tom, dick and harry build their cards. But, oh no, can't do that, as it wouldn't be of a high enough quality then, would it?
Maybe 3dfx' route is the best thing? Or just ramp up production capability.

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Cheers,
Steve

PS: Some or all of the above message may be wrong, or, just as likely, correct. Depends on what mood I'm in. And what you know. ;¬)

[Genom]

Welp, Here's the deal. Basically, retail is such a small percentage of Matrox total sales, especially on low end stuff such as the G400's, it is not gonna get that much company attention. You have to remember that Matrox has very big OEM deal's gringing in the money, AND they also sell a very large line of other products. Such as their Digisuite line of boards for editing video. So, counting how the G400 in the retail market is probably accounting for about 5% totall revenue, how urgent do you think they'll feel about it? They are MUCH more concerned about their new RT2000 or whatever it's name is, since this board will more than likely be adopted for lower end video editing suites, as the only comparable DV solutions out there are much more expensive.

It's all about money guys. If everybody had a g400, then things might be different. but as it stands? Things will most definitly not change.

[LAMFDTK]

Just for the fun....
Has anyone seen a G400 in an OEM Computer?
I have'nt...

[LAMFDTK]

I just saw HP workstations on their web-site with the G400....

[DaddyBay]

Axis Systems has G400 32MB dual-head systems

[tish beta2]

Well, if they could "just ramp up production capability", then I guess they also could just ramp up driver development.

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Instead of a trap door, what about a trap window? The guy looks out it, and if he leans too far, he falls out. Wait. I guess that's like a regular window.

[KvHagedorn]

Alright, to everyone (you know who you are) who's saying how meaningless we all are as a source of income to Matrox, because we buy our cards separate from our computers, perhaps you are right. Perhaps Matrox has decided to just not give a damn about its highest-profile presence in the marketplace and decided to brazenly and purposely piss everyone off except their oem partners. Suppose Sony or HP were to decide tomorrow that ATI offered them a better deal by 1/8 of a cent per card (which of course adds up to millions of dollars when you multiply it by the hundreds of millions of Kayak Dual Xeon Workstations that are sold daily at Wal-Marts nationwide). Where would they sell their boards then? Perhaps one of the big online retailers would like to purchase them? No, they are all now quite upset with Matrox for stringing them along and making all their customers call and regale them with all sorts of colorful language because their order, which was due 2 months ago, is still unavailable. Besides, they are doing so well with the Viper 770 Ultras that all those angry would-be Matrox buyers are getting instead, that they have now decided they don't need Matrox. Besides, those 17,000 V770Us TC and MicroExpress just stocked are such a paltry number compared to the untold billions of G400s that were shipping daily in all those Kayaks. Hey, there's always SGI!

By the way, I broke down this morning and ordered my MAX from the Matrox Store. This seems to be just about the only way anyone who isn't Sony or HP can buy the things. Whatever sins their marketing department has committed, they still make an awfully good product.

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Kind Regards,

KvH




[This message has been edited by KvHagedorn (edited 09-21-1999).]

[SCompRacer]

KvHagedorn, good choice. You won't regret it. I waited two months from PC Connection before snapping. What's $20 compared to instant gratification?

I got my MAX the day after I ordered it too. 28 hours for 3 day UPS. I work midnights so I was awakened by the dogs barking when the UPS guy rang the bell and DRAR'd it (driver released and ran) at 1 PM. Did I go back to sleep? Oh! No! I stayed up and replaced my little ol 16MB G400 and played.

Seems there is a warehouse here in Niles, IL, just 20 miles from me. Ain't life grand?