No G800 Till Next Summer.....

[Himself]

Originally posted by paulcs:
I suggest Ant rename the Matrox Gaming Forum to something like the "Matrox Content Creation Forum" or the "Matrox Word Processing Forum."

LOL!

Hiding in a hole is how you get to be the next Amiga Inc, I hope for Matrox's sake that's not the case. I don't think anybody wants Matrox to turn into some Mom and Pop operation running out of a garage in Quebec.

[Joel]

I guess you have to ask yourself, what is fast enough? 60, 90, 120fps or do you just need to be able to say, hey my dick is bigger than yours. IMO, with the next generation of cards, speed, that is fps in a given app or game, will become a moot point because once you get to a certain fps anything above that does not make a difference anyway. Once again quality and features will be the main points and that is where Matrox has and always will be the leader.

Joel

[Himself]

Joel,

That is irrelevant to Matrox making money, if they stick with a niche market they will not have any marketshare increases and other companies like NVIDIA are interested in all market's even niche ones. What kind of advantage is cheap dual head if 2 other companies are also entering that market?

What your personal upgrading schedule is compared to others is beside the point, I don't upgrade a lot either. Frankly, I never saw many 60fps benchmarks on a G400 when I had one, but I'll take your word for it, I've upgraded cpus since.

You'll notice the only 100fps+ scores being reported are in Q3A at 640x480 with all features turned off using a FAST cpu, even on a GTS Ultra. Higher resolutions, MDK2, UT, even old games like expendable are nowhere near the same. If a simple video card upgrade can double the framerates you get now, I wouldn't consider it a competing with the Jones thing to do so, it's just common sense and worth the money as an upgrade. Your argument might apply to a 10fps difference, but not the huge 40-60fps gap there is now. I agree that TCL isn't worth it yet, but the fillrate of these newer cards is. I'd upgrade, but I don't play many games so it's not worth it.
Software first is my rule of thumb.

[Vic20]

Icestorm's post does make a lot of sense. Matrox are probably far better off concentrating on the business and quality end of the graphics card business rather than always playing catch-up in the gaming speed stakes. Let's be honest, we don't all want to have the fastest system on the block, but for what we do to be 'fast enough'.

My opening statement in this thread was rather tongue in cheek, I'm hoping the G800 comes out soon so I can more cheaply upgrade my G200 to a 400 !!

Vic