G800: Will it be what we all have been waiting for?

[dZeus]

well... I myself also agree with himself!
-----------------------------------------
- hey, I am not schizophrenic!
- Who me?
- No, I was not talking about you!

[Blank-x]

Just a little thing people should know about the 3dfx specs

if I'm not wrong here , 1.4 Gpixel is the same thing as 1400 mpixel

I think some people got it wrong

[Himself]

Sisyfos was taken.

[Sisyfos]

I wasn't the first????
Thought I was a genious for a moment there.
Ah well.

Edit: That would be genius (nice paradox there).

[This message has been edited by Sisyfos (edited 08 July 2000).]

[GD]

News from the ATI side (found this at www.hardware.fr)

"Le Sidewinder, prévu pour la fin de l'année, serait fabriqué en 0.18 micron et fonctionnerait à 300 Mhz. Il offrirait une puissance brute de 1.8 GPixels /s et de 60 MTriangles /s. Côté fonctionnalité, il disposerait tout comme le NV20 d'une géométrie programmable, fonction qui sera gérée par DirectX 8.

Le Stinger, prévu pour le second trimestre 2001, sera pour sa part gravé en 0.15 Micron et fonctionnera à 400 Mhz. Peu d'information sur ce chip ont été publiées, si ce n'est qu'il disposera d'une architecture de rendu "améliorée" ... personnellement je pense qu'il s'agira d'une architecture dite "Tile", tout comme les chips PowerVR."

I'll try to translate:

"The Sidewinder chip, scheduled for release at the end of the year, will be manufactured using a 0.18 micron process and will be running at 300MHz. It will offer power of 1.8 Gpixels/sec and and Mtriangles /sec. It will also come with a programmable geometry unit, much like that of NV20 which will be fully supported by DirectX8.

The Stinger, sceduled for Q1 2001 will be running at 400MHz using a 0.15micron process! Little info on the chip has been published, however there are rumours that it will come with a new rendering engine. Personally I believe that it will be something like the Tile technique used by PowerVR".

PowerVR never managed to fully take advantage of that draw-only-what-you-can-see technique. Who knows what ATI will succeed with something similar...

Cya all
GD

[Werdna]

Maybe we should start a new thread but anyway, a really interesting question would be, what made you buy your first/current Matrox graphics card. I personally bought it because A: I wanted two monitor support and I loved it when I got it. (LOL sadly the second monitor blew up, and it wasn't even mine) B: A friend recommended it.

[orangejulius]

What made you buy your first/current Matrox graphics card.

Many years ago, I read the mainstream publications. (Computer Shopper, PC Mag, etc)

I looked at what they had in their test machines. Without fail, every single one was a Matrox Millennium.

Nearly every major OEM used a Matrox Millennium in their top workstation. If Dell, Compaq, and HP consider Matrox stable enough for their top machines, I think there's something good there.

Bottom line I want a card that has:
[*] #1 stable drivers[*] #2 superior image clarity

And Matrox delivers.

[GD]

Well I do not know I just wanted a Matrox card. Maybe it was His will... :-)))

Well I guess that it was mainly due to those old comparisons where the Matrox millenium and Mystique would always top the other cards of the test, with scores like 10/10 and 9/10 respectivly (the third card would be near 6/10 or something).

Even when faster cards came out Millennium II was the best of all when it came to 2D. When voodoo2 was released I wanted to buy a Mill2 and voodoo2 (I was young and stupid back then :-) ). When I saw the G200 announcement in the PC magazine and the editor's comment that its final version could be compared to a voodoo2 I was left with no doubt :-). Anyway I am never going to buy a non Matrox card, for a reason which I am unable to precise :-).

Anyway is there anyone to verify the translation? I was not sure about what that "cote functionalite" was about :-).

[dZeus]

when the Millenium came out, it was years ahead of it's competitors: it remained the fastest card you could get for a _VERY_ long time. That's when I started to respect Matrox a lot...

And when I decided that I needed a monitor upgrade, I opted for a Sony Trinitron 19". While I was awaiting a good offer for such a monitor, I also sold off my TNT2/Ultra, since I knew the 2D quality would suck at 1600x1200, and bought a G400 vanilla, since I also knew that the G400 was the undisputed leader of 2D quality. Since then, I've been a loyal Matrox supporter

------------------
- What do you get when you put N nVidia whores in a circle and each one pats the person on their right on the back and says "nVidia wins 3dfx and Michael Knight any day of the week!" ?

- You get N people with a boosted ego, and no-one loses anything; keep up the good work, boys!

[Nuno]

Well, I´m with dZeus here. I wanted the best, I bough the Millennium I (4 Mb WRAM on board, oh my god!).

Then I got a G200 8 Mb, then a G400 32 Mb.
(and erm... a Matrox m3D. But don´t tell anyone, ok )

And I just got this feeling I will end up with a G800 DH 64 Mb, but who knows?

[Jon P. Inghram]

My first Matrox card was a Millennium G200 AGP, and not too long after buying it the BIOS went bad. After several emails and a long wait, we finally got the thing RMA'ed. After the replacement came, I swore never to buy another PoS Matrox card in my life... and now I'm using a G400Max and will be happy to buy a G800 or whatever when it's released.

[Ant]

My Millennium I is still in daily use after 5 years! Now that was value for money

[Ali]

My first Vid card was a S3 something with 512K ram. That was crap.

I then bought a 1 meg Millenium I, then a 4 meg Millenium 1, then a Mystique 170 pci, then a 8 meg Millenium2 AGP (with 2 Voodoo2s hanging off it), then a Permidea2 (for about 3 weeks), then a 8meg Millenuim G200, then a G400 DH 32, then a Gforce SDR (for 10 days), then another G400 DH 32.

Im ready to buy another card, and you can bet its going to be a Matrox one!

Every time I read a review about a 'good' video card that is just as good as a Matrox I use to beleive it. Now I will never buy another card unless I have a take home test for a few days.

Ali

[dZeus]

"PowerVR never managed to fully take advantage of that draw-only-what-you-can-see technique. Who knows what ATI will succeed with something similar..."

I thought the most difficult part about the Tile-base rendering technology.... it took Videologic several years to muster that technique. And looking at ATI's history of drivers, you probably know enough ;-)



------------------
- What do you get when you put N nVidia whores in a circle and each one pats the person on their right on the back and says "nVidia wins 3dfx and Michael Knight any day of the week!" ?

- You get N people with a boosted ego, and no-one loses anything; keep up the good work, boys!

[Wombat]

I bought my G200 b/c of Matrox's great reputation, support for Linux developers, and I was sure that they'd get the whole 3D / ICD thing ironed out quickly. Well, they didn't, but they did a good job with the G400, so here I am.