'Fusion' cards

[xortam]

No Jorden ... RAM, not EEPROM. A coprocessor would need RAM as it would need to write into its data structures.

AFA the Xbox, it can support HDTV (1920x1080) see links in the Xbox debuts thread.

DGhost ... maybe the current driver interface is as far up the architecture as makes sense to capture all of the graphics APIs. I don't know the architecture so I can't determine that. I'm trying to stimulate some discussion (which has succeeded) as to what is possible and explore an innovative approach that a vendor might take.

[Greebe]

especially if your nic is Himself

[Jorden]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by xortam:
No Jorden ... RAM, not EEPROM. A coprocessor would need RAM as it would need to write into its data structures.</font>

Something I said wrong, Xort? As far as I know, you flash an EEPROM, like the BIOS on your mobo/videocard/soundcard. I didn't say downloading the stuff to RAM. Didn't even mean that

Correct me if I'm wrong. For then I've been flashing my RAM all the time to new BIOS updates... No wonder some of them didn't work after I rebooted

Jord.

[superfly]

Well IF the comments made by matrox employees are true we should see at least an announcement made at GDC,right Greebe???...

[Greebe]

If you only knew... D'oh you don't!

[dZeus]

Put it this way, Matrox has given no indication whatsoever that they are planning a sequel to the G400 in the gaming market.

Should they? As long as you can't buy it, promoting is not much of use, other than make people mad that they've just bought a very fast videocard, and they hear the successor to it is already on it's way. This is exactly what one of the players in the market is doing....

They HAVE said that 40fps is all you need in one interview and all the blah blah blah from the inner devotees here parrot that in one form or another.

Where? If so, are you absolutely sure you interpreted in the right way? I doubt it.

The very next card that they hype is a cheaper G400, definitely targetted towards oems, but distributed like it was a gaming card. So they are obviously out of touch with what the gaming market is about or how to sell to it. That's all anybody has to go on.

Never seen a G450 promoted as a gaming card. If they 've done that nevertheless, I agree completely it's a bit silly, as for the so called 'gamers' group don't really care about visual quality and dualhead, but only for benchmark numbers.

The beta boys as represented by the few regular posters here are no paragons of reliability to me, if they have any information at all, they are so in love with Matrox they couldn't be objective about it. Which could be a sign of how good the product is, or more likely, that people who get worked up over a video card would get worked up over something else just as easily.
(Frankly, the beta boys here have indicated a lack of interest in games, you'd figure a company interested in the gaming market would have beta testers that did like games. That and a willingness to be objective would seem to be a requirement for doing beta testing for the gaming market. Of course if they just want cheerleaders then they are already set.

pffff.....

[This message has been edited by dZeus (edited 04 February 2001).]

[superfly]

What i was talking about was the comments made by matrox employees,in wich they stated they will have a new card out that would be better suited towards gaming and that the anouncement will be made at this year's GDC(mid march).

It's time to put an end to the rumors and excuses....

[Casey Jones]

dZeus,

I wouldn't put too much faith in Byron's words.


By the way, Byron, are you still unemployed?

Casey Jones

------------------------------------
A heaping helping serving hospitality

[This message has been edited by Casey Jones (edited 04 February 2001).]

[xortam]

Jorden ... again, I'm talking about a coprocessor solution vs. the traditional graphics chip/ROM solution. Perhaps you don't know what a coprocessor board is. I'm proposing that a board be developed that augments the current graphics chip/EEPROM implementation with a CPU/GPU and RAM. The addition of this processor will allow some of the existing PC graphics functionality to be migrated onto the graphics board, thus offloading the PC CPU and reducing memory transfers to/from the graphics card. The graphics board CPU would have its micro OS kernel and application code downloaded into its local RAM from the PC upon bootup. It can still leverage the optimizations of current graphics chip architectures but augment their capability by this design. Its still an open question if its feasible to migrate some of the PC functionality onto this coprocessor board.

Himself ... I don't know if you believe everything you say in your tainted view of Matrox or you're just playing the devil's advocate, but I'll respond anyway ... for now. You must understand by now that Matrox isn't targeting the game market ... their after the business market, which is much more profitable for them. If they can develop a card that adresses both markets, all the better. If you understand Matrox'es priorities, you'll better appreciate their products and approach.

All be told, I don't think we have much longer to wait for some good news from Matrox. There's an undercurrent of excitement that's starting to surface.

[Digital Viper-X-]

Ok Ok, i work for matrox! here is how it is! we cant keep you waiting any longer! we have 10 enginiers and 10 "hardcore gamers" they all have great ideas! but none of them can get along so (dont tell anyone we can get in crap for this one) we developed a method of fusing all their brains together! thats why its called Fusion!

[Digital Viper-X-]

Ok, i just got one question for the Beta Testing pplz, im sure this wont get u in troublez! Will the G800 be better then hmm NV20? or Radeon II?? or whatever??

[Maggi]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by Digital Viper-X-:
Ok, i just got one question for the Beta Testing pplz, im sure this wont get u in troublez! Will the G800 be better then hmm NV20? or Radeon II?? or whatever??</font>

Sorry, Digital Viper-X- ... no details.

[Maggi]

Btw, did anybody notice that this thread[*] is exactly half a year of age (plus 11h 35m)[*] is spawned over 10 pages[*] contains probably the most and wildest speculations forever



What might happen when we start talking about the Millennium G² MMS ...

oops - there you go, now it slipped.

[Rob M.]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by xortam:
Jorden ... again, I'm talking about a coprocessor solution vs. the traditional graphics chip/ROM solution. Perhaps you don't know what a coprocessor board is. I'm proposing that a board be developed that augments the current graphics chip/EEPROM implementation with a CPU/GPU and RAM. The addition of this processor will allow some of the existing PC graphics functionality to be migrated onto the graphics board, thus offloading the PC CPU and reducing memory transfers to/from the graphics card. The graphics board CPU would have its micro OS kernel and application code downloaded into its local RAM from the PC upon bootup. It can still leverage the optimizations of current graphics chip architectures but augment their capability by this design. Its still an open question if its feasible to migrate some of the PC functionality onto this coprocessor board.
</font>

The limitation in current video cards is not with the cpu, or agp, or the core of the video chip. The limitation is the onboard video RAM. There's only 2 ways to get around the problem. Either faster RAM or redesigning software/hardware so there isn't as much bandwidth required.

Most likely that means you should expect HSR and/or some new type of RAM (E-DRAM being my personal favourite)

As far as the G800 goes I assume that it's so far behind schedule now it'll be released only as a mid-range gaming card. I hope they've got most of their resources working on the generation after g800 now..

[superfly]

Rob...while i agree that more video card memory bandwith or optimizing through HSR is usefull IF what you want to acheive is either higher resolution gaming/color depth or have much higher depth complexity level in games.

But if we ever want to see way higher poly counts in games,in such a way as to aproach the quality we see in movies you have to increase bus speeds and overall system bandwith in order for the video card to do it's thing.

You can have the most powerful video card there is,with the most advanced T.l engine around,if the raw data can't get to the video card fast enough in the first place then what's the point???

Ask any developer out there and they'll unanimously say "system bus speeds aren't fast enough".

I remember an amusing quote made by Nvidia's CEO when they first anounced the Geforce card and how,in his own words, "it enables toy story quality graphics on your pc".

Only a few days after that quote was made,one of the movie's developers,completely slammed that argument as a complete nonesense,and do you want to know why???.

He explained that,with the amount of polys they were using in the movie,at roughly 80 million per frame and using a lighting method know as ray tracing(very mathematicaly intensive for cpu's),assuming you wanted 60 fps,you would need roughly 96 gigs/sec of sustained bus bandwith between the cpu and video card to make it happen.

Uhh...how fast is agp4x???.....rrrrrrrright... .