G450 IS A JOKE!

[Oboy]

I was just looking at the photos of the G450 at Anand's. What is that orange or brown wire
attached to the heatsink for?????

Oboy

[Joel]

The G450 only seems to be a joke because of what the marketing bafoons at Matrox have done.

Sitting at my PC last night watching James Bond 007's 'Tomorrow never Dies' on the TV while browsing the internet on my primary monitor did not make me think of it as a joke.

Joel

[good health to all]

"But Matrox doesn't really care what indivudals (i.e you!) think. "

This attitude does spell bankruptcy for any company.

Its amazing how much us matrox fans will take from them. The crappy G200 icd drivers. The G400 being out for a year with no replacment. While in the mean time Nividia released Geforce 256, Geforce 2, Geforce MX. Alot of products, but it gives consumers a choice to buy a new and improved card, if they want too. The G800 is coming out when? I don't know because they won't say. They won't even comfirm that it exists. Here I am wanting to but a new matrox card but can't.
Some say that G400 performance is enough for them. So I guess when the G800 comes out you won't be buying it because the G400 is all you need, Yeah right! I notice that people who argue that G400 does have good enough performance that they own a 700+ processor. I guess if you have a fastest processor you can own the G400 does perform well.

When your a die hard fan of something its amazing of much you will put up with and the excuses you will come up with.

How much longer will the ants follow their Queen.

I want my G800!!!

[Joel]

Well I can tell you one thing. The 6000 or so members of this forum only represents a very, very small percentage of Matrox's total business so I don't see them going bankrupt anytime soon.

And as far as the G400 goes, it is still doing quite well on my K6-2/500.

Joel

[Ali]

Oboy, that orange wire is an earth. When I first saw it I thought it must have been a temp probe, then I thought it just might be a peltier.

I dont know what it is for, but I would guess its either to stop static buildup from air passing throught the fins on the heat-sink, or maybee the G450 chip uses the heatsink as an earth to save on pins (not very likely).

Anybody else have any ideas?

Ali

[Himself]

I don't mind the grounded heat sink, it's a pretty normal thing to avoid problems in general to do with noise. Since the G450 has an internal ramdac I suspect it's just about ensuring the best possible signal from the chip.

[Admiral]

I'm still waiting for someone to overclock it before I pass judgment

[djroberts]

Ya, I wonder what Matrox PR has to say about the CHEEZY wire!!!!

LOL They better read the last 2 posts here take notes and come up with something quick.

dj

[DuRaNgO]

ripped from gamers depot:

With the G450, Matrox hopes to fend off the threat of the GeForce2 MX and nVIDIA’s card-producing minions. One of the things that Matrox wanted to get through to us when they shoveled over the marketing docs that came with our sample was that TwinView is a poor substitute for DualHead.

The implementation of TwinView is certainly not as feature-rich as DualHead; plus, Matrox only uses one chip to do everything. By turning to a .18 micron process, Matrox was able to shrink the main core of the G400 chip enough so that they could squash a TMDS transmitter for digital flat panels, a TV encoder, and the primary and secondary RAMDACs for the separate video outs all on one piece of silicon. This new design is now the G450. The closest in functionality to the G450 that has been announced using the GeForce2 MX is the Hercules 3D Prophet II MX Dual-Display, but it uses three chips to get almost the same the job done, and has an MSRP of $199.

The one thing that sets DualHead apart from TwinView is its ability to handle each video out in an almost independent manner. The nVIDIA TwinView outs are more dependent on each other’s setup, and one port can be limited in function if the other is set up a certain way. For example, on a GeForce2 MX card that has a VGA out and a TV out, the VGA port is limited to 800x600 if the TV port is in use. The G450 card maintains high resolutions on the port using the VGA monitor, even if TV-out is used on the second port. For the home user, Matrox is touting the ability to play a DVD movie full-screen on one monitor while being able to run applications and do work on the other display. This would be useful if you want to ICQ or chat while watching the movie, but is probably more useful in keeping the kids happy and quiet so you can keep an eye on them while you work.

[This message has been edited by DuRaNgO (edited 06 September 2000).]

[good health to all]

"Well I can tell you one thing. The 6000 or so members of this forum only represents a very, very small percentage of Matrox's total business so I don't see them going bankrupt anytime soon."

Don't under estimate the power of word of mouth. Say only 1000 of those people are really disatisfied with Matrox. Then those 1000 people go and tell other people what they think of Matrox. Soon those 1000 disgrunted customers can become 2000 people who will not buy a Matrox card. That 2000 can become 4000 because of bad word of mouth. 4000 to 8000, 8000 to 16000, etc.

How many times have a friend asked you how is your G400? Do you like it? Should I buy one? If you no, then Matrox lost a customer. Then if your friend is asked by his other friend Matrox too would lose another customer.

With the invent of the internet and newsgroups bad word of mouth is too powerful for a company to ignore.

There was another thread saying he wanted to buy a ATI Radeon card. All of a sudden he is bombarded with post of how ATI has a history of bad drivers and so the Radeon will also. Don't buy a Radeon because I "heard" it has bad drivers or because the previous products had bad drivers. After that thread the guy is now going to wait and hear what people have to say on newsgroups and such before buying.

This is what Matrox does not want.

How many times on newsgroups and BBS's have you heard good news from people. Not many.

[DosFreak]

Also the individuals who cruise these threads work at large companies to ya know. In fact I have a rather large say in what cards we can get in our puters.

[Joel]

Depending on the persons circumstances I would recommend the G450 to anyone who's primary concern is not frames per second. As for a large company I know when I make a recommendation to purchase a particular piece hardware I have to justify why I feel that why. And based on the type of business we do I think saying that it is the fastest card for Q2 or Q3 is just not going to fly to well with the big wigs. They are looking for low cost with high functionality and that is what the G450 will give them. We have alot of 21" monitors needing good, clean, clear, high resolutions.

Joel

[dZeus]

....and what about good cross-platform support?

[Pace]

Damn!

[djroberts]

Hey I finally figured out what the wire is for. It's to hang the card up with when you finally upgrade to a faster one.

dj