G450MAX

[GT98]

Ok now that I have all your attention, what would it take for a beefed up G450 to compete with say a Geforce 2 Ultra or the like? From the way rumors are going it seems like this is what we are gonna get at the end of the month. I would have to figure it will have full DX8 support, T&L and a higher Core and memory Speed then it currently has. Anyone else want to comment?

Also this brings up a interesting topic....its seems also that matrox is gonna do an nvidia and have another "new" product in the pipeline by the end of the year. I guess this will be the card that will have FCRAM and all the other neat stuff that we've been talking about, but its not econmical to put into the next card at this time. Coupled with real no killer apps for DX8 (unreal 2, doom3 etc) being out till later this year or next, your gonna run into the same problem with people that want to run out and pop $500 on a new Geforce3, your left with something that is already eclipced by a new product that is faster etc. In all likelyhood I'll get the next gen card just because I want a Matrox product in it and the G400MAX won't cut it in a 1.2GHZ machine. I hope that they keep the cost reasonable.

Scott


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Abit BH6 rev 1.0 Celeron 2-566@877mhz,256mb RAM,ATI Radeon AIW,SB Live! with Klipsch Promedia v2-400, Optiquest V95 19in montor, Asus 40x CD-ROM, Aopen 5x DVD-ROM,HP9110i 8x4x32 CD-RW,SupraMax 56k modem,WinME on Western Digital 30GB drive

[SCompRacer]

It wasn't but a couple of years ago folks paid $500 for dual Monster cards in SLI. Shortly after I got my first G400.

Maybe Ant could arrange a MURC prize for the one who guesses closest to the retail selling price of the hush card.

[Marshmallowman]

g450 chip can't compete in fps with a gefrog ultra. Best it could do with fast memory would be a gefalse or a gefault 2 MX.
100

[rylan]

In reponse to your question.. what would it take to beef up a G450 to compete with a GF2?

Well, pretty much a new gpu design :P
It would have to go to at least a 128bit wide memory bus instead of the wussy 64bit wide ddr memory bus on there.. faster DDR and a much faster core speed.

[Ali]

To be 100% DX8 compliant it has to have a programable t&L unit. Since this would take up about 2X the die space as a G450 chip, and isnt used in any programs today, do you realy want to pay for it?

All they need to do is raise the clock speed, and add faster RAM (or wider) and you would have at least MX speed I would say.

Carmack said a while ago that Matrox had solved the bandwidth problem, so they might stay with 64bit wide DDR and add some sort of HSR that is as good as the Kyros. That would give a very good speed increase, and hopefully not add too much to the die size, and therefore price.

Then again Im one of those idiots who had a Voodoo2SLI rig on the end of my Millenium2AGP, (total cost of about NZ$1800, about US$900 at the time) so Im going to buy whatever they make anyway.

Ali (PS, the SLIs are in my girlfriends computer still, and play UT very well).