'Fusion' cards

[Marshmallowman]

hmm... the g450 has ddr and a most compenentry has be intergrated on the same chip(except ram).
Could it be possible that matrox are going to continue along that path and do something like a dual chip in a single package(fusion).
Or possible the fusion of two chips into one. Meaning thaey perhaps may have a scaleable GPU, eg it can readily implemented on a single peice of silicon, so the chip package remains pin compatible but you can have 1,2x,4x,8x times the GPU's as fabrication technolgy evolves.
Such a technology would necessarily have intgrated memory as the multiple gpu's compete for memory bandwidth would be a killer.
Such a technology would be great for tile based rendering, since each gpu only needs asmall amount of integrated memory, but can ouput its completed "tile" to the external frame buffer

Scaleable on a single package is important as 3dfx found out..multiple chips increase the board and interconnect complexity exponetially(also cost and power rquirements).

And FCRAM obviously stand for Fuking CRAM Nvidia up your arse, I am going home!.

[PeTe]

Lets face the facts,
NVIDIA has produced 4 faster graphics cards after G400MAX, Geforce 1 and 2, MX and ultra. Matrox has got out G450, -5% performance compared to G400MAX.

So atleast I will get a NV20 soon as it comes out. Matrox havent got a gamer-graphics card market solution now and my guess is that they never will have one again. If matrox is going to stay in business they have to put ALL efforts to the professional mid-range OEM cards and leave the highly competitive and money consuming gaming-industry to NVIDIA and ATI.

Pe-Te

[dZeus]

3Dfx was helped a LOT with their dual chip boards (the single chip ones couldn't compete much with nVidia's offerings). It was the quad-chip versions that gave 3Dfx the headache.

[Novdid]

300!!!!

[Ant]

If my aging memory serves me correct the only roughly one year product cycle Matrox have had was between the G200 and G400 was it not?

[Topha]

isnt the tweak utility like a sign from matrox?? "hang on guys, overclock your cards to the max and wait for a little time more, then you get your next generation matrox card??"
one can only hope so

[Jorden]

Say Himself,

What if Matrox did find a solution to the multiple GPU problem? They found out how to implement 2 video-outs on one card already, which the rest now eagerly tries to follow. So I wouldn't be surprised if they let the others go first with multiple GPU's on one card, only to figure out how it could be done in a do-able way

When 3dfx and ATi tested their boards with multiple GPU's, maybe the technology wasn't that far yet. Maybe it is now?

Let's just hope so

Jord.

[superfly]

But you have to realise one thing,the current agp protocol only supports one processor on the agp bus.

In the case of the voodoo 5 and even more so the voodoo 6,the problem was centered in the bridge chip they had to use to not only make the chips work but also in such a way as that the motherboard chipset only saw one of them.

Sort of a master~slave arangement....

There was also an interview with Gary tarolli in which the cards also required some driver "tricks" to make it work well.

Even in ATI's case,they also wanted to have a dual radion card out by now,but it looks like they're only going to do it once the radion 2 is released,again mostly due to complications with the bridge chip they're using.

Ultimately multiple processor video cards will be the only solution,since you can only shrink the processors so much,which is the only way to keep their cost in check while adding new features every time.

Not to mention adressing bandwith issues as well.

Imagine a G800 dual processor,fully DX8 compliant video card with each chip having it's own dedicated 128bit memory bus running with 250mhz DDR sdram and pushing 16 gigs of bandwith total....

Quake3 suddenly goes ballistic at 120 fps at 1600*1200 32bit

OH dear....

[dZeus]

as others have pointed out, a good gaming card improves the image of the brand, increasing OEM sales... and with higher performance in 3d games, you often also get higher performance in professional 3d programs... so I don't think Matrox will give up that easily...

[Falken]

>If matrox is going to stay in business they have to put ALL efforts to the professional mid-range OEM cards and leave the highly competitive and money consuming gaming-industry to NVIDIA and ATI.


Just a quick question here. Do any of you who keep saying that if Matrox doesn't come out with some kick butt gamer card they are going out of business have clue what you are talking about?

Take a look at the Matrox site . I mean <A HREF="http://www.matrox.com" TARGET="_blank">this one</A> .
How many of you knew that Matrox has an <a href="http://www.matrox.com/videoweb/news/press/pr/pr_emmy.htm">Emmy</a> for "Outstanding Achievement in Technological Advancement." ?
They make and sell hubs and NICs and medical imaging hardware that cost more then my car. (if I had a car that is )


They have been in business for 25 years. thats double the age some of you sound like I know it's a year longer then I've been around.

Anyway the point I'm trying to make is that they are not going to go out of business if they don't keep up with Nvidia's (founded 1993 BTW) release schedule.



[This message has been edited by Falken (edited 25 January 2001).]

[Kruzin]

Falken makes an excellent point.

People think Matrox will die off if they don't compete in the PC gaming market.
They are so wrong.
Most folks don't realize what Matrox's main buisinesses are. They are in areas Nvidia and ATI don't even go near. Graphics cards are important to them (especially the large number of OEM's they supply), but they are not thier bread and butter. The small segment of fps hungry gamers are certainly not going to make or break Matrox.

Forget about Matrox Networking. That is even smaller than the MGA (PC graphics) division.

Matrox's big bucks are in imaging (medical and other), and video production equipment.
Many labs and hospitals have Matrox based imaging devices that may have been used on any one of you, without you ever knowing it.
Many things we see on TV have been through a Matrox DigiSuite at one or another time during production.

Put bluntly, IMO, PC gamers and their opinions are not of great concequence to Matrox, nor will they be any time soon.

That said...I would not expect this "Fusion" to be some NV-20 killing beast. I would not even expect anything called "Fusion" to be released, since there has never been an official peep from Matrox about it (or anything called "G800" for that matter).

If I where to speculate, I would guess that Matrox will keep on their traditional path of releasing products when they are darn good and ready, and for those products to live up to their predecessors in features and visual quality. If they come out with some killer gaming card some time in the future, more power to 'em. But I ain't holdin' my breath.

[superfly]

So if understand you here,you're saying is that a lot of people here hoping for the anouncement of a matrox card with better 3d performance in the next few months are waiting for nothing???

[Kruzin]

I didn't say that.
(It wouldn't take much to release a faster card than the G450, would it )
I said I ain't holding my breath for an NV20 killer.

[superfly]

I'm just hoping to see some sort of official anouncement at GDC.

[Joel]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">I said I ain't holding my breath for an NV20 killer.</font>

Not right yet anyway.

Joel

[This message has been edited by Joel (edited 25 January 2001).]