'Fusion' cards

[AlgoRhythm]

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Some sort of mobo chipset with integrated video? Hmmmm.... Anything is possible. But, that doesn't seem really innovative or different from the rest of the market.

AlgoRhythm

[Liquid Snake]

Hmm, this is quite amusing. Heh. Anyway, here's something I saw in the Sept. 2000 issue of Maximum PC. MaxPC interviewed Alain Thiffault of Matrox about developing OpenGL drivers. This caught my eye:

MPC: For your next graphics processor, which will include hardware T&L, do you need to completely reconstruct the OpenGL ICD?

Heh. Don't know if they're reffering to the G450 or G800 (they didn't mention the name). Not sure if this is even true.

[This message has been edited by Liquid Snake (edited 09 August 2000).]

[Mark F]

Hey don't they already have a crippled board that will only run on one botherboard, because the video card's BIOS is on the MB?
Forgot the name of who they did that with, ayone?

I think we might get more posts here than the attempt at 6000 in the othe area

Mark F.

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a DVD...
and burped out a movie

[dZeus]

that's Gigabyte G400 cards

Luiquid Snake:
what was the answer to that question???

[Liquid Snake]

Well, they were talking about OpenGL ICDs, not their graphics chips, so Thiffault didn't say anything about the T&L, except how to implement it in an ICD. But how did MaxPC get this info...?

[dZeus]

that info is 'general knowledge' by know, and we are talking about their G800, since the G450 already ahs been announced, and is not a 'next produtuct' any more in several ways of speaking.

you didn't answer my question. What was the answer that Matrox person gave?

[Liquid Snake]

Oh well, I guess I didn't know that. The G450 has T&L? Or are you talking about the G800? Sorry, I'm very confused right now.

The full response?

We don't have to rebuild the ICD from the ground up, since we can base it on the G400's ICD. If you picture the ICD as a container, at the top of the container is T&L and at the bottom is your register configuration, where you need to convert the data to the chip's hardware registers. With hardware T&L support, the point at which you send data to the chip moves up closer to the application.
Ideally, if the hardware can handle all the transform and lighting functions, you can take the data straight from the app and shoot it through the hardware. Then you have to see if your hardware supports 100 percent of the features exposed by the OpenGL specification-which is pretty hard to acheive. Most of the time, there's work that needs to be done in software before the data is sent to hardware.

[Pace]

Oh dear, a test post - thought I was past this!

Paul.

[Pace]

Well it seems to be working now...just give me patience if you see double (or triple Jord! ) posts. Thanks!

Paul.

[Snake-Eyes]

He meant we've already seen the specs on the G450, and since it's basically a die-shrunk G400 chip, with a few minor tweaks and things, it doesn't have hardware T&L. That leaves the G800 as the target hardware referenced in your comment! I never doubted that feature at all on the G800 series- ever since an earlier interview on some site where Matrox's employee mentions the features he thinks all next generation cards will have. I just used that list as a starting point for the G800 feature set. If I could find you the reference now, I surely would.. Anyhow, it's safe to say he leaves the impression that the next card will have at a minimum everything the G400 series had, T&L (and I think he said it as TNL, but since I haven't found it ), as well as a much higher triangle rate, etc., etc...

That leaves the NEW features- Matrox has shown a trend to be the first affordable cards to support some goody the others have missed in each generation. So I gotta wonder what it is (though I refuse to guess in here, since there's just SO MUCH it could be, hehe. Beside, you guys have done a good job already. )

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Ace

[dZeus]

that's a VERY interesting response you posted there Liquid!

It means the G800 will still be based on the G200 core if I am not mistaken! (If I am right when I think you can use the same ICQ as a base for a completely new core)

So the G800 will not use tiled rendering or anything, since that need a comepletely new core design... too bad for that rumor...

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update:

hehe, Ace is also damned fast!

[This message has been edited by dZeus (edited 10 August 2000).]

[Joel]

Our NDAs expire 5 years from the date of issue and they are related to the drivers we test. So therefore Matrox doesn't tell us anything about new hardware until they are ready for us to test it, by then everyone knows what is going on. Sorry about this guys but we have been speculating right along with y'all and as Maggie said 'adding fuel to the fire'. Hasn't this been fun?

Joel

[Greebe]

Dz is that version 99b or 2000a? LOL

ICQ as a base for a completely new core

[Kruzin]

Just to back up Joel...

The BB team that hangs here at MURC are DRIVERS beta boys. We don't get unreleased hardware, and next to no info on it. I learned more from the G450 press release than I did from the beta program. That's not to say we don't know anything at all...just that much of our vision of what's to come is based neaarly as much on speculation as the rest of you. We did not get our G400s from Matrox until they where "officially released" (granted, ours came from batch #1, well before Joe Public could get them).

The G450 series has been announced. Specific G450 (Millennium, Marvel, M3D2, whatever)cards have not. And we have not recieved any G450 cards, and we won't until they are in actual production. That said, anything beyond G450 is nothing more than a pipe dream at this point. Hell, we don't even know for sure that G800 will ever actually exist, much less what it will do/cost/release....

[DuRaNgO]

I'm crushed