G800???

[ALBPM]

[Jammrock]

I'll go to Dr. Fluke Hawkins and get the worlds smallest nuclear bomb. I'll travel to Matrox in Canukia and have a talk with their R&D people.

Jammrock

------------------
Athlon 650
256 MB PC133 CAS3 from Crucial
40 GB storage from WD
Matrox G400 (it's not dead yet!)
SB Live! the original full retail, still going strong
Klipsch ProMedia v.2-400, the PC speakers that goes BOOM!
Hope Matrox releases the G800 before rebuild time, becuase the end is near!

[Electric Amish]

Yeah, what Kruz said.

This place could get pretty vacant if Matrox decided not to produce the "Phantom" G800. We'll have people throwing themselves off buildings.

amish

[dZeus]

Fullon3d had an article with a Q&A with several graphics chip companies, the Matrox rep kept saying that DDR was a great place to start (in solving the bandwidth problem). FCRAM is a DDR variant AFAIK. I noticed that FMI is sampling the 16Mb chips, but I haven't seen anything on the 64Mb chips (which is what Matrox would need). Maybe someone with more semicon parts info can update this.

You're absolutely right. I tried to find information about FC-RAM (which is not a DDR variant, but a whole new type of RAM) earlier today, and Fujitsu will produce about 2 types of chips very soon... both are only 16 bit however, and a higher latency than what is needed on a video card?.... absolutely not what Matrox is looking for (at least, my conclusion). So no FC-RAM on videocards the next 6 months is my guess... DDR SDRAM instead (as the quoted Matrox source you tell about already says)

[AJ]

Isn't FC-DRAM running at 2x the input clock? I know that the DDR and FC-DRAM interfaces aren't very different, as FMI notes that the same controller can be used for both types a DRAM since only a couple of parameters (I supposed a different RAS to CAS value or the like) need to be changed. Guess I need to do somemore reading

Anyway, too bad it's running late, the supposed 30% increase in effective bandwidth would have been very useful in graphics chips.

As far as the G800 coming out or not, Aceshardware was told by Matrox that they will announce a gaming card soon. So they're up to something. I just hope its not a dual G450 (wouldn't have enough horsepower to compete).


-AJ

From Aces:

Matrox representatives have assured us once again that Matrox will offer a real gamers card ("G800") in Q1 of 2001. While there are many indications that Matrox might not be able to offer a faster card than the NV20, we hope for a card with a good price/performance ratio as we do not really need more 500$ videocards on the market...

[Unam]

Ant the "new" Millennium has been here for over a year now! So has the G400, go figure. Kruzin, while it is true that M has not announced a G800, they had better get busy and announce something soon. They have already missed one product cycle and they can't afford to lose another. Those wonderful OEM deals will eventually start to dry up. I couldn't bear to see Matrox bought out by the likes of nVidia.
------------------
Primary system, Asus P3B-F1, PIII 550E o'cd to 733, 128Mb PC133 RAM, 18.2Gb KA drive, HP CDRW & Travan drive, SBLive, 3Com 905C NIC, G400 and a Sceptre 17" monitor.

Secondary system, ASUS P3B-F1, PIII 450, 128Mb PC100 RAM, 10.2Gb DMPlus, 5x CL DVD Kit, ZIP Drive, AWE64, Intel EPro+ PnP NIC, CL TNT(1) and a Sceptre 17" monitor.

[This message has been edited by Unam (edited 04 January 2001).]

[Greebe]

Unam, Ant was joking.

The REAL Millennium just happened for those whom weren't sucked into the media hype last year.

nVidia can't afford Matrox, nor could they buy them out(privately owned). The reason for the delay is because of those repugnant unethical a**holes.

[Dogbert]

Why should nVIDIA buy Matrox when they can buy their engineers ?

------------------
I like to con people, but I also like to insult them. What if I could combine the two, I would call it - Consult !

[Jammrock]

I don't care what Matrox calls their new card. They call it Isane Canuck 3D for all care. I just use G800 as a generic term for their unannounced, but everybody knows their working on it, next video card.

I plan on upgrading soon and if those bumm lookers don't have their 'G800' equivelant card out by then, Matrox will lose a customer. Unless their card is just gawd aweful fast...but we all know that ain't happening.

Jammrock

[Rags]

"...but we all know that ain't happening."

Hehehe, how do "we all know" that?

Rags

[Pace]

I don't know anything about the specifics of FCRAM but DDR technology can apply to any time of RAM (or indeed, any data interface).

In a PC, we've all got a little chip which sends out the clock pulse, the computer responds to the pulses and does it's (funky) stuff

_|¯|_|¯|_|¯|_|¯|

Take that as the pulse - then, in an SDR system, data will be transferred only on the rising edge of a pulse, or the falling edge. DDR does it on both. You see that we can use SDRAM, FCRAM or RDRAM for this - RDRAM (Rambus) already uses DDR transfers, and as you know SDRAM is getting it soon.

Regards,

Trainee Digital Engineer, Paul.

[rylan]

Dogbert: So true.. but sad

Yeah, just stop all the speculation on the "G800" phantom card. Its past annoying now, since nobody has a clue what it is or when it will be released, or even if it exists.

Kruzin: I do think that we are all holding onto this hope about the G800 (or whatever it is) existing, since we all want desperately to stick to Matrox for our new gaming cards, since the MAX is definately showing its age. To answer you question.. if it doesn't exist and there is no next-gen type card, I'm afraid these threads will gradually become a virtual ghost-town, as we'll have to look for a card from another source... eep!

[rylan]

Dogbert: So true.. but sad

Yeah, just stop all the speculation on the "G800" phantom card. Its past annoying now, since nobody has a clue what it is or when it will be released, or even if it exists.

Kruzin: I do think that we are all holding onto this hope about the G800 (or whatever it is) existing, since we all want desperately to stick to Matrox for our new gaming cards, since the MAX is definately showing its age. To answer you question.. if it doesn't exist and there is no next-gen type card, I'm afraid these threads will gradually become a virtual ghost-town, as we'll have to look for a card from another source... eep!

[rylan]

Dogbert: So true.. but sad

Yeah, just stop all the speculation on the "G800" phantom card. Its past annoying now, since nobody has a clue what it is or when it will be released, or even if it exists.

Kruzin: I do think that we are all holding onto this hope about the G800 (or whatever it is) existing, since we all want desperately to stick to Matrox for our new gaming cards, since the MAX is definately showing its age. To answer you question.. if it doesn't exist and there is no next-gen type card, I'm afraid these threads will gradually become a virtual ghost-town, as we'll have to look for a card from another source... eep!

[AJ]

Yes, I am among the "some of us" waiting for the G800 (or whatever it's called, who cares). If it has at least GF2 Ultra performance and Matrox quality, I'd be happy. Plus, Matrox always manages to throw in a few cool new features.

I'm not a total speed freak, my G400 still looks better than the GF2 in D3D. I was hoping that the G450 was going to add another pixel pipe w/2 TMUs an clock at 200 Mhz - if that were the case, I would have bought one and would have been been happy (400MP/s and 800MT/s would have been enough for the games I run now).

I recieved an Elsa GF2 for Christmas, it has so-so 2D, as long as you run 10x7 , but good gaming performance. I also have a Radeon 32MB DDR coming in today. My hope is that one of these will tide me over till Matrox comes out with something new (though I'll wait for a couple of driver revs b/4 buying). I'll stick up a brief review of each under general hardware in a couple of weeks, in case any Murcers need to upgrade their gaming rig.


-AJ