Next Gen chip to have T&L....

[Maniac]

I was out with an old school buddy of mine, when I learned one of his friends was a design engineer at Matrox! Well rest assured I did my solemn duty to extract as many juicy bits of info as possible. First off they have a fully developed software model of the chip that is going through testing. It will have T&L support on board as well as some other cool new features (ala bumpmapping/dual head)Also he told me it would be manufactured on the smaller .18 micron process, so I would speculate very high clock rates indeed...

[JamesA]

<font color="#FF0000">AAARRRGGGHHH!!!</font>

I want my MAX&sup2;™&copy;, like, <u>NOW</u>!!!

Seriously, that's like, soooooo <font color="#0000FF">COOL!!</font>

Thanks Maniac for the excellent scoop!




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JamesA who BOLDs a LOT
System Details

"To infinity and beyond!!" - Buzz Lightyear, Toy Story

[troop]

Not quite a scoop --see my post from a week ago here http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum5/HTML/004715.html

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In Harm's Way

[GD]

Oh, I love ya all!!

Hope it's faster than Glaze3D 2400!!

I want support for dual CPU systems nowwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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PC Power and Cooling Deluxe Chrome Tower case and 300W ATX Power Supply, Dual Slot1 440GX AMI MegaRUM II motherboard, 128MB of ECC 100 MHz SDRAM, PII 450 MHz, Matrox G400 MAX, Seagate Cheetah 9,1GB @ primary SCSI Ultra2 Wide controller, Hitachi 4x DVD-ROM, Panasonic (Matsushita) LS-120 Drive, Terratec EWS64XL sound card.

[red2]

Good maybe they are taking my AMD idea seriously. The one with AMD doing the fabbing on .18 micron copper interconnect

They should be able to keep up with demand.

[Maniac]

Wow impressive resume there James! Have you tried going for your Cisco certification yet??

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Celeron 300A@464 2.0V, Abit BH6 G400 16meg DH@150/200, Western Digital Expert 18gig, Ricoh mp7040A, Pioneer 6X DVD slot load, Motorola Cable Modem w/DEC ethernet card, Soundblaster 32PNP

[DirtFarmer]

Did anybody read the interview of Dan Wood (Director of Technical Marketing at Matrox) in latest issue of MAXIMUM PC mag??

MaximumPC: What's the baseline for a next-generation videocard?

Wood: The year 2000 videocard will have at least four times the fill of a cutting-edge videocard today. Fill rates these days are well above 300 megapixel, so it's got to be well above a gigapixel; it's got to have support for all the features of DirectX7;it's got to have some ability, of course, do things like bump-mapping and multi-head display; and framerates have to be extremely high, along with color quality. You must support higher resolution textures. And I think there's real interest in solving the anti-aliasing problem at the next step of the game.

My guess would be an announcement near the end of Q1 2000. They will miss several release dates and the actual hardware will be available at retailers (in limited quantities) by September 2000. And I bet it will be another quality product.

--
Al out

[DirtFarmer]

Ooops.
troop already posted that tidbit.
should have followed the link and read the entire thread before doing all that typing.

--
Al out

[KvHagedorn]

I, for one, hope the next gen card release will be handled a bit better than this one. That is the primary opportunity Matrox has for improvement. I would start looking for and reserving the memory now, since things look kinda scary in that area right now. I would also try to open another fab plant to cope with demand. With the competitive prices Matrox has maintained, the company should have been ready to cope with the demand when the rave reviews started pouring in. With an investment in production now, perhaps the year 2000 card will not suffer the suicidal delays the G400 was subject to.

Of course there is a game being played, which is to grab the hearts of customers (oems and retail) when the competition's cards are being released, but what we are finding now, is that the G400MAX still provides good competition for the 4th gen of cards, so firm is its foundation. I would still prefer it to GeForce or V4 from what I have heard of both cards.

Motub made a good point in another thread, that Matrox offers more value in their cards because they will have a longer useful life. It would be a mistake, I think, to play the "4th generation card" game with V4 and GeForce. They have been very quick in offering views to these next gen cards, and the effect will be threefold: 1)The cards will suffer delays (especially with the current memory situation and the Taiwan earthquake) which will alienate potential buyers. 2)When their customers receive their cards, they will find the purported advantages to be minimal. 3) By this time next year, they will be looking for a better card, which will be Matrox's if big M plays their cards right.

I think the card in development at Matrox will be skipping the 4th generation altogether, and will compete more directly with 5th generation (whatever that might be) nvidia and VooDoo. They will be using a .18 die, which will make it far faster than GeForce. They should have all the advantages of V4 and GeForce plus greater visual quality, EMBM, and dual heads. Four times the fill rate of a G400MAX? Wow. Take that, nvidia.

The only problem is handling the release and production. Good sense in the former and investment of capital in the latter should see vast numbers of users switching to Matrox this time next year. Leaving people hanging for 4 months before limited supplies are available is the wrong way to do things.. you alienate every customer you have that way, and throw away a golden opportunity to draw customers away from nvidia and VooDoo. Wait until the drivers are more mature and production is ready to go before releasing cards to reviewers, then when the great reviews come in, all those people who are now salivating for your product can easily find it available for purchase.

Sorry for going on about this, but Matrox has the best product for a reasonable price. The damn things just need to be available, and M can be the #1 card that dominates the industry. Not only do they need to be available on the shelves and online, but oems like Dell (which does $30,000,000 per day in business online) should feel comfortable offering them in their computers, knowing the demand is there, and Matrox can supply them without difficulty.

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Kind Regards,

KvH


[This message has been edited by KvHagedorn (edited 09-27-1999).]

[Buuri]

My guess would be an announcement near the end of Q1 2000. They will miss several release dates and the actual hardware will be available at retailers (in limited quantities) by September 2000.

_
B

[GD]

4xMAXfillrate = 366x4= 1464Mpixels/sec
Glaze3D fillrate: 2.4Gpixels/sec

:-(

(console me pls!)

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PC Power and Cooling Deluxe Chrome Tower case and 300W ATX Power Supply, Dual Slot1 440GX AMI MegaRUM II motherboard, 128MB of ECC 100 MHz SDRAM, PII 450 MHz, Matrox G400 MAX, Seagate Cheetah 9,1GB @ primary SCSI Ultra2 Wide controller, Hitachi 4x DVD-ROM, Panasonic (Matsushita) LS-120 Drive, Terratec EWS64XL sound card.

[Fafalada]

Glaze3D the first one fill rate is 1200MTex/600MPix/sec. (single texturing)
600MPix/sec. (dual texturing)

G400 Max Fill rate 166MPix/Sec. (dual texturing)
And for single texturing I am not sure but if it works like a TNT then it has 332MPix/Sec.
If it works like Voodoo's and Savages then it has 166MPix/Sec in single texturing just as well.

Also note that Glaze3D is likely fictional
Then again...

PSX2 Fillrate 1200MPix/Sec (Single texturing)
600MPix/Sec (Dual texturing).
And with some fancy tweaking it's possible to have two of them render in something similar to SLI.

[Buuri]

Glaze3D the first one fill rate is 1200MTex/600MPix/sec. (single texturing)
600MPix/sec. (dual texturing)

Why do you compare MAX to G3D 1200? MAX is hardly the cheapo model that 1200 is going to be. And while 1200 and 2400 are supposed to come out the same time I find it more propriate to compare MAX to 2400 which is double those numbers.

In case you haven't heard, Bitobys received a "large private donation" some time ago to finish their product. I have no doubt that it's coming.. not sure about the Q tho..

_
B

[Buuri]

Good point. It's the eDRAM that does it.

_
B