Wanna know what the Condor really is about ???

[Maggi]

Look here ...

[YoKoMo [1]]

Ok,
Cute and all, but this is not funny for those of us who waited for a competitor from Matrox, Look what we got, they went backwards????. Descision time as to whether or not get the V5500 and have FSAA or GForce2 and get T&L. Matrox blew it. The G400Max I just got will continue to operate in my server, but not as my primary gaming card anymore, I can't keep up with the competition.

[Dualbuzz]

You forgot ATI Radeon256, which is out June, 20, and can be very good.

[AJ]

ATI Radeon256 - I suppose they'll have wonderful drivers as usual - NOT!

-AJ

[dZeus]

Hi, I am a ATI driver team member, and have a comment about your insulting remarks:

We are currently changing the driver policy, because people who buy our product are increasingly whining about the state of what we think are good drivers. Our original policy was that we would write the drivers, with such quality that they would run a certain mount of test applications flawlessly. Those drivers would not be changed, unless we would get so many remarks about some issues, that it would generate negative publicity, and would endanger OEM deals. Our set of test-applications vary from tetris to atomic bomberman. We also considered to include glquake, but it turned out to be too big of an issue.

Since we did get a lot negative publicity for the last couple of months, the management now wants to change the policy. In the future, the customers who buy our boards have to write their own drivers. We will include a book "how to write your own crappy drivers", and a coupon a $10 reduction on the needed development software costing $1000.

So, THANKS TO YOU I WILL LOSE MY JOB!

MANY THANKS! *NOT*

[paulcs]

I really don't think Matrox considers gamers to be their primary market. Not by a longshot. They get judged here, by gamers, on nVidia and 3dfx standards, and I don't think it's applicable.

I'm not saying Matrox ignores gamers. Their business model just isn't set up to cater to them like nVidia and 3dfx do.

Consider 3dfx. They missed shipping the Voodoo5 last December, and it was practically fatal to them. They managed to sell more retail boards than anyone, and they still ended up deeply in the red, and had a big executive house cleaning.

Matrox, on the other hand, barely had the Max in stores by Xmas, and relied heavily on the Matrox Store to move them. And I'm sure they made a mint. We've seen no evidence that they are in financial trouble.

I don't think Matrox can rely on the gamers market either. It's a particularly volatile market, with extremely high marketing costs, and the potential for catastrophic losses if you make a misstep. And let's face it, Matrox has had a checkered past when it comes to the gaming market. The G200 OpenGL debacle hurt their reputation somewhat, and the old Mystique and that NEC 3D accelerator didn't do much to enhance it either.

As far as the consumer market goes, Matrox made their reputation with 2D boards like the Millennium and Millennium II, and their releasing a board aimed squarely at the workstation market shouldn't be a big surprise. It's what they do best.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[archangle]

Ha Ha Maggi, U changing your name on other boards?

Well I've seen it, two poeple with G400's breaking the 3500 barrier in 3DM3K...

------------------
Cheers,

archangle

[archangle]

Ha Ha Maggi, U changing your name on other boards?

Well I've seen it, two poeple with G400's breaking the 3500 barrier in 3DM2K...

------------------
Cheers,

archangle

[AJ]

Well from what I quoted here:
http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum5/HTML/008643.html

Matrox has said that they are interested in the gaming market. And they pushed the G400 pretty hard in that market when it came out. Things is, they can't just come up with a competitive solution once every 18-24 months when you're competitors are on a 6 to 12 month product cycle, people will get cynical or bored and stop associating Matrox with games.

I'll be buying a new card in the next 6 months. Since (a) competitors have improved their 2D quality and (b) I play games more that I used to, I won't be buying a G450.

The G450 has no T&L, no FSAA and its fill rate will likely be less than 250/500 MP/MT per second (and the bandwidth may be too low to realize anywhere near those numbers in 10x7x32).

Now if the G800 comes out within 6 months, with T&L, FSAA, 4x the fill rate of a G400 and at least 32MB of 200+Mhz FCRAM, Matrox would catch my attention!

Matrox has tons of potential, but they need to keep up performance and feature wise to realize that potential.

-AJ

[paulcs]

But they're so slooooooooooooow to get product to market. And they've been known to ship late too. This is nothing new. Can you imagine Matrox adopting nVidia's business model?

The gaming market is very sexy. (I know, but it is.) I'm not saying they intend to abandon the gaming market. I just don't think they prioritize it the way nVidia does.

I bet they sucked up most of the people who 3DLabs was counting on to buy the Perimedia 3 Create (or whatever it was called), and they know where their bread is buttered. The G450 looks like it's being marketed right at "Web" professionals.

That was a very "VH1" press release. Very "Adult Contemporary."

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[This message has been edited by paulcs (edited 16 June 2000).]