G800 vs NV15

[SPSUguy]

Hey... AGN just posted what the specs for the Nvidia NV15 are going to be. (Remember, take this with a grain of salt cause this is Nvidia we're talking about here.)

NV15 Specs:
1000+ Mtexels Fill Rate
20+ Mtriangles/sec through T&L and setup
5GB+/sec Memory Bandwidth
Maximum 3D/2D resolution of 2048 x 1536 @ 75Hz
Complete DirectX 7, DirectX 6 and DirectX 5 support
NVIDIA Unified Driver Architecture T M
Industry's First fully 1.2 compliant professional OpenGL support for Linux.
Integrated 720p, 1080i HDTV Playback
WHQL-certified Windows 2000, Windows NT4, Windows 3.5, Windows 98 and Windows 95
8 Texels Per Clock with Hypertexel TM
2nd-generation T&L Engines
256-bit graphics architecture
Double Data Rate (DDR) Memory
AGP 4X with Fast Writes
32-bit color
32-bit Z/Stencil
Cube Environment Mapping
DirectX Texture Compression
Order Independent Full Scene Multisample Antialiasing

Ok, granted G800 will have T&L and GigaTexel fill rate, but here are the parts that get me:

-Industry's First fully 1.2 compliant professional OpenGL support for Linux.

-WHQL-certified Windows 2000, Windows NT4, Windows 3.5, Windows 98 and Windows 95

These are the two points that worry me about Matrox. Nvidia seems to be really stepping it up on OS support. Now this could be Nvidia hype, but if they do ship the card with Linux driver support and "WHQL-certified" drivers for ALL Windows OSs... THAT would really be something.

But I'm still wait and see on this issue.

[zippy]

The G800 is going to be pitted against NV20 according to rumors and simple chronology. NV15 will be released in May aparently+6 months=~October should be their next card release...the nv20! The G800 will be released late august/september. I think more along the lines of september though. Just my $0.02.

[Wombat]

And knowing nVidia, maybe the nv20 will fulfill all of these specs for the nv15, because the nv15 probably won't.

[CannyOne]

Exactly! NVidia are "infamous" for Hype that doesn't quite materialize! And they just came out with the OpenGL stuff for Linux because 3dfx made waves by Open Sourcing Glide.

Matrox on the other hand seems to have been "burned". They're so secretive you'd think they're next series of products were going to affect "Global Security"!!!

[dZeus]

I won't even bother with nVidia until they fix their 2D.... 2D on all nVidia chips sucks. 2D on 3Dfx however is very good (compared to nVidia). G400 is the best :-)

[red2]

And Nvidia will be the only company to be Opengl certified on Linux. One needs SGI to certify your compliance with Opengl. All the other companies like Matrox and ATI, etc have Mesa Opengl which is the same thing but without SGI's official approval. It's just hype. Matrox's Linux driver is FAR superior to Nvidia's right now and probably will remain so.

WHQL certification is worthless too. It's just M$ way of making sure they have some control over the drivers so things are done the way they want them to be. There are several serious bugs that can be in the drivers and they can still be WHQL certified.
It's all BS.

[jackzod]

Havw you ever seen Nvidia meet their hype...
That should said enough.

[GD]

Hi there!

About that NV20-G800 thing.
That G800 in august and nv20 in september really makes me think of the g400 and tnt2 case. The g400 was the fastest when it hit the market but soon after that, the TNT2 shipped which was faster in some benchmarks (not all of them of course).
I wish this is not the case with the G800. I hope matrox will release a worthy chip with a long life, beyond most of its competitors.

cya!

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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.

[alessandro]

Can anyone tell me why I’ve god this bad feeling that the only "competitive" Matrox card in the market in the following months will be only the G800 dual chip (with probably a very expensive price)???????

I hope I’m wrong about his!!!!!!!!!

[alessandro]

Can anyone tell me why I’ve god this bad feeling that the only "competitive" Matrox card in the market in the following months will be only the G800 dual chip (with probably a very expensive price)???????

I hope I’m wrong about this!!!!!!!!!

[PeTe]

Hey people WAKE UP.

Why worry about future cards.. just focus on the hardware that you can get from the shops NOW / currently OWN. All speculations on G450/G800/NV15/Voodoo5 are just bullshit.

Its really easy to promise specs and REALLY HARD to make a videocard that is as good that the specs promise. So just relax and wait for it... =)

Pe-Te