Some More G450 Rumors

[MXR4LIFE]

"Think outside of the box"

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"If all else fails, read the instructions"

[dneal]

Not to mention, the Rage MAXX has a huge memory bandwidth due to having basically two separate Rage Pro boards in tandem. The 32-MB each have a 128bit bus, resulting in what one could basically call a 256-bit memory bus.

Matrox could do this with DDR or something and you'd see an awesome amount of memory bandwidth. Serious performance at high rez, competes with 3dfx's solutions and NV15 assuming Matrox adds T&L.


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ABIT BH6 rev 1.0, Pentium III SL35D 450MHz -> 558MHz, 192MB SDRAM @ 124MHz CAS2, Toshiba 6X DVD,
Matrox Millenium G400 DH @ 160/200, Creative SBLive Value, 3Com Fast Etherlink XL PCI
Supermicro SC701A ATX 300watt TurboCool PC Power & Cooling PS, Panasonic Panasync S17

[paulcs]

OOOOOOOOOOOHHH MAMA! I hope this stuff is true!

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[gbm]

Oops!...

Actually I had no chance to see any of these multichip boards, I've just read the PCI and AGP specs very carefully some time ago.
Ant: how many VLSI chips are there on multimon boards? Is there an extra chip (bridge), or they are simply violating the specs?
The new multichip VooDoos are supposed to use the bridge chips.
AFAIK it's not possible to interface two chips to the AGP. And it's not nice but maybe not impossible to interface two chips on the same board to PCI bus. Well, maybe the newer PCI specs allow for this, the older (2.0) didn't.

[Ant]

I presume they are simply violating the specs. I'll see if I can dig out my info on those Matrox multi-chip boards.

As for G400 multi-chip boards I don't think we'll see any of those, the other Matrox multi-chip boards simply provide dual and quad outputs they certainly don't provide any type of SLI performance boost and as the G400s already have DualHead it would be pointless unless anyone wants a QuadHead board. The G450 will presumably be a souped up G400 with some form of hardware T&L assist. For the true multi-chip boards I'd think it would be something for the next generation Matrox chip.



[This message has been edited by Ant (edited 03 January 2000).]

[Maggi]

I'm not sure, but I guess it's like on the G400 ...

One chip feeding multiple VGA outputs and if you need more monitors than 4 (Quad-G100) you had to add another Quad-G100 (which would add the 2nd chip) into PCI.

I don't think this has anything to do with combining chips, but more like bundling/spreading the VGA output.


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Cheers,
Maggi
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Working Rig:
Asus P2B-DS @ 100MHz FSB
Double Pentium III-450
4 x 128MB CAS2 SDRAM
Matrox Millennium G400 32MB DualHead
Eye-Q 777 (22" with 127kHz) on primary VGA
Nokia 445Xi (21") on secondary VGA

Home Rig:
Asus P2B-S Bios 1010 @ 100MHz FSB
Celeron 333A @ 500MHz
2 x 128MB CAS2 SDRAM
Matrox Millennium G400 32MB DualHead @ 150/200MHz
CTX VL710T (17")
and a brand new Pioneer 303S SCSI-DVD

[Wombat]

gbm,
I don't know about AGP, but the way I've read the PCI specs, it's completely fair game to have multiple devices on the same board. They still negotiate unique device ID's when the system starts. I know for a fact that one of my professors has used such a board.

[Salmonius]

Let's add a few facts to this discussion.

The g100 and g200 MMS boards sport independent graphics chips. Matrox has some really good drivers which allow them to have multiple displays under NT. It's in theory impossible because NT can only handle a single display driver (whereas 98 can have multiple) so Matrox makes all the graphics chips/cards look like one display to NT.

The AGP bus requires to have only one adapter, but can be extended with a bridge. That is why the voodoo5 (multiple SLA-1000) pictures show an Intel chip. Note, that this implies that AGP specific operations may not be unavailable.

g100 MMS has a DEC 21152 PCI-PCI bridge which can link up to 4 devices to the bus.

Nick

[CrazyBee]

On dual celeron systems.. my friend has a dual celeron 500 system and he gained a whole 1 frame per second gain (TNT2 32MB). per usual your mileage will vary.

I for one would be stoked about a guad head g400 variety.. im itching for more desktop space, so, its either larger monitors or more monitors!!!!

I somewhat doubt a hardware add-on for the G400s to do T&L. It may have been in the works but it seems somewhat impracticle due to the current boards' setup. Now, having extra hardware already on the chip or adding a T&L accelerator to the board design for the G450 is something more than possible. I am forecasting that there will be another chip to aid in T&L or that the G450 chip is suped up beyond belief with 2ns SGRAM and the WARP does it.



Either way, unless Matrox already has been making these G450's (or whatever it may be) no one here will be getting one anytime soon. Unfortunately.

CB

[Genom]

Quadhead.... drooooool

That would kick ass. 4 monitors as a video screen of some sort on my desktop. Screenshots in 3200x2400....

But on the side, at least the quadmonitor G100's (well, the one I have) aparently is just screwing with the spec, cause it only has 1 bridge on it that I can see.

[gbm]

Wombat:
You may have as many logical devices in single chip as you wish, but you cannot connect more than one chip on the card to the PCI edge connector because of electrical constraints.

As Salmonius and Genom say there is a PCI-to-PCI bridge on multimon board, which is exactly what I expected. The bridge is connected to the main PC's PCI bus, and local onboards PCI bus connects the G100s and the other side of the bridge. That't exactly how it should be done.

So far there is no AGP bridge available, so if the new VooDoos use multichip design on AGP, the bridge used there is a PCI 66 MHz bridge. Thus no AGP transactions will ever be performed and AGP will be used by these boards as fast PCI clocked at 66 MHz. So forget about x2 and x4 modes, sideband addressing and fast texture fetches from the main RAM. It may be a very weak point of the new VooDoos.

[Salmonius]

It's not such a big deal for the voodoo5 not supporting the AGP extensions because there is plenty of RAM on the board. Regular PCI operations (AGP being just an extension to PCI) should be plenty good for transfering all the textures to the video memory of the voodoo5. My only complaint so far about the voodoo5 is the power requirement.

Also, it's my belief that the SLA-1000 is a mega voodoo2. I wonder however what takes care of 2D. It would be a waste if each SLA-1000 had the capability, although maybe it's less expensive to have 3 out of 4 chips not use their 2D part than two design to versions of the SLA-1000, one with 2D and one without.

So anyway, when does everybody think that Matrox will announce a new product? I read somewhere in this forum that it will probably be at some event this winter/spring. Does anybody know which and when?

[franksch3]

If I have read it correctly (and I have read enough on that stuff) the Voodoo4/5 also doesn't use any AGP specific features, just like the Voodoo3.