are matrox short of engineers?

[Salmonius]

I agree with WayneHu and Ali that it's very much possible that Matrox is selling g450 because that's what their clients want. Lets remember that Matrox has 7% of the market and that is mostly g400 and some g200 of course. I am sure that Matrox is swimming in cash and they are just happy the way things are.

The problem is that nvidia keeps getting better at the things Matrox are good at, like 2D quality and dualhead. When the competition on their turf starts to get hot, then they will release some new stuff. I just wish that Matrox was the hunter and not the hunted.

[Himself]

Durango,

I don't think being privately owned will save them. All that changes is the means, not the end.

[Rob M.]

Originally posted by Ali:
I have faith that Matrox has the G800 ready, or very close to ready, because the technology demo for it is finished (I read that in these forums somewhere, but Im too lazy to go looking for it). Its probably just so fast that Matrox thinks it will compete well with the NV20 and Radeon2, so is sticking to the G450 untill those cards are released.

I'm sorry, but if you have a product ready for the Christmas season, you're not going to sit on it because it's too good. Maybe you could cripple it, but in reality you'd put it out there with the other $500 cards and rake in the cash.

I think the G800 will be slower than Radeon2 and the NV20. If Matrox releases a dual-chip implementation, it may be faster than the others, but expect a huge price premium. I would be surprised to see a dual-chip board on the market from them though.

As for HSR, I wouldn't be overly surprised if none of the three companies released cards using this rendering method. If nVidia's card is HSR, I may hold off buying it for a little while to make sure the drivers are capable. If Matrox or ATI's cards implement HSR, then I'd be very weary.

Of course, I'm always hoping to be pleasantly surprised. I rarely am though

[dZeus]

it's been rumoured that the new detonator drivers enable HSR for OpenGL as well (as well as 3Dfx did for OpenGL). The rumour was that they used their registers that are meant for shaders or registry combiners or something (not too familiar with nVidia cards), and that you couldn't use HSR and shaders/registry combiners at the same time (at least, not until the NV20)

[Bixler]

Great thread guys!!!

Full of good speculation and a little real information as well.

If history is any indicator, however, there will be one final incarnation of the g400 core prior to release of anything REALLY new from Matrox.

Argue with me here about the wisdom of this...but....

Won't the next card be the g400 core "tweak" that will include optimizations for DX8, and NOT the true NEW core?

Methinks we are one step ahead of the chip designers. If you want a truly NEW chip, then the next card(GX...whatever) will not be it.

It may indeed be worth owning, but I think there is one more tweaks' worth in the g400 core before we see revolutionary NEW silicon.

(may we pray that it comes soon!!)

What say you?

[dZeus]

depends on how you define 'new' for a core.

You can call a G450 a tweaked G200 core, a GeForce2 a tweaked TNT core, a Voodoo 5 a tweaked voodoo-1 core, etc.

however, I don't think Matrox will release another core like the G450, which is very similar to the G400. I think their next card will have the core which we call G800

[AJ]

If Matrox was just tweaking out (die shrinking) the g400 core the the next gen part, they'd be done by now. I think the delay has to do with priorities, internal resource allocation limitations and the fact they they have built a new core from the ground up.

Time will tell, hopefully after the next gen card, Matrox will be able to keep the ball rolling, but keeping talent maybe a problem. Is all their design staff in Canada? I would think it would help if they opened a design center in the valley, TX, or the Boston area. It would be great if they could keep two design teams working at all times, one on OEM products, the other on retail products. But, they know what they need better than I!

-AJ

[AJ]

Originally posted by Rob M.:

I think the G800 will be slower than Radeon2 and the NV20. If Matrox releases a dual-chip implementation, it may be faster than the others, but expect a huge price premium. I would be surprised to see a dual-chip board on the market from them though.

As for HSR, I wouldn't be overly surprised if none of the three companies released cards using this rendering method. If nVidia's card is HSR, I may hold off buying it for a little while to make sure the drivers are capable. If Matrox or ATI's cards implement HSR, then I'd be very weary.

Of course, I'm always hoping to be pleasantly surprised. I rarely am though

I think every company _will_ be employing some sort of bandwidth saving system. ATI already does.

Although the rumored specs of the G800 are lower than those of the R200 and NV20, if Matrox has indeed solved the bandwidth problem, their effective fillrate could equal that of their competitors, even if the (bogus) Marketing numbers are lower (1.6 GT/s for the GF2, huh, right).

-AJ



[This message has been edited by AJ (edited 22 December 2000).]

[Ali]

Quote:
I'm sorry, but if you have a product ready for the Christmas season, you're not going to sit on it because it's too good. Maybe you could cripple it, but in reality you'd put it out there with the other $500 cards and rake in the cash.


The problem with that is how many cards would they sell at $500, when they are selling lots and lots of cards at $120.

The G450 is cheap and easy for them to produce, they probably have a easy supply of RAM for them, they can produce the cards with high yeilds due to the simplicity, and Im guessing the yields on the G450 chip itself is up near 100% at the clockspeed they are using.

When they release the G800, the chips will have a lower yeild, thus they are throwing $$ away there, they have to get their hands on expensive, hard to get RAM (assuming theya re going to use high Mhz DDR RAM), and the cards the chip go on will probably be more complicated, and therefore have lower yeilds (more $$ down the drain).

Selling more G450s at a lower price, but with less wastage will probably make the big M more money than selling MUCH fewer G800s, that will have a higher production cost.

Also remember that Matrox produces their own cards, so they will have a maximum number of cards they can pump out per month. If they start building G800s, then their G450 production goes down. If they are having trouble supplying enough G450s, they arnt going to make the G800.

Of course there could be other reasons. Maybe the G800 needs a .13 micron process, maybee they are stock-piling them because of the stick they got over the G400 MAX shortages.

Thats about all from me.

Ali

[Ali]

Hey, how come I couldnt 'reply with quote'?

I was getting a 'you are not authorise to do this' message.

Ali

[ALBPM]

You guys crack me up with all this speculation. Matrox doesn't just make gaming or graphics cards. They haven't cornered themselves into a narrow niche like 3dfx or other companies that got sat on by nVidia.



Paul

[AJ]

LOL! Where on earth did you get that picture?

-AJ

[Homercles]

Just a note on the possible amount of money M has lying around:

Matrox December Feature: http://www.matrox.com/mga/archive_st..._financial.cfm

In the recent 'feature' on the Matrox site, they mentioned "With over six million units shipped, the Matrox G200 MMS is a flexible, reliable, and proven technology." These cards cost at least $500 US (at least thats what the web site states). Unless I read something wrong somewhere, that translates into at least over $3,000,000,000 in sales. Thats a pretty significant sized wad of cash, especially for a privately owned firm. Please note that this does not take into consideration sales of regular G200 or G4x0 based products. These numbers, though, do seem really high for a company like Matrox, but thats what the web site says.

[paulcs]

Wouldn't it be poetic justice if she had just eaten at Taco Bell?

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[This message has been edited by paulcs (edited 22 December 2000).]

[Wombat]

Ooooh, man, I love rampant speculation. This thread is great reading! Keep up the good work guys!

The real question is what "cutting edge" web site will use this thread as their "authoritive sources on Matrox's plans for 2001".