G550: fast enough?

[az]

Hi fellow MURCers!

How fast do you think the G550 will be, compared to other cards, if you take the rumored specs? Do you think the specs are correct?

More importantly, will it be fast enough for you and what would you be willing to pay for it?

Thanks

AZ

[SteveC]

dunno

------------------
Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[Stringy]

when it gets to paper, that'll be the time to predict performance levels...
but it has yet to get that far.. don't know what it is, or if it is, or even when...

wait and be merry

------------------
P3-700e cB0 @980Mhz - Watercooled, DangerDen waterblock, Enhiem 1046 pump, 8x6x2 HeaterCore Radiator - Asus P2b Rev. 1.10 /w MSI slocket - 128Mb PC100 - G400 DH 32b SGR - IBM 20Gb 75GXP HDD - InWin A500

[az]

OK, I'm no expert, so I have to guess about it's performance (or take someone else's guess as a fact), and I think it will be almost quite as fast as a GF2 (plain), which is fast enough for me. I'd be willing to spend $200-250 on it (Don't know what GF2's cost though ).

AZ

[Paddy]

My lips are sealed...

[CHHAS]

The specs, as I've heard the rumours, are:

2 Pipelines with 2 TMUs each
128 Bit DDR Ram
4 Matrix Skinning
Ram and core running at 166 MHz

This would give us a card with the fillrate of a Geforce2 MX and the memory bandwidth of a Geforce 2 GTS (the GTS has 4 pipelines). In fact the bandwidth/fillrate will be the same as a Radeon DDR, with the difference being that the Radeon has 3 TMUs per pipeline and full DX7 T&L instead of the Matrix Skinning.

So considering this I would expect the G550 be in the league as a Radeon DDR, but if games starts to utilize the 3rd TMU in the Radeon (Serious Sam already does) and the full DX7 T&L, the G550 will be slower.

Of course many other factors are significant in the overall speed of the card, ATI has their Hyper-Z technology which helps to improve their bandwidth even further, for one.

I just hope that the G550 will be competitive with the Radeon DDR and hopefully Geforce2 GTS, while retaining the well known Matrox quality (this goes without saying), but if this is the case I fear for the price ...

[mdhome]

For this card to be worth buying for the average consumer it must be priced about the same as a high end MX card. Any more and it could well be left sitting on resellers shelves. It might some get large oem deals but the market is becoming saturated with good quality *business* cards, many of which will certainly be cheaper.
As an aside I have a couple of questions.
How many pipelines/TMU does the G400 have? If the number was to be increased from its current to the level of the GTS2 what sort of speed would we be looking at.
Finally is the G400 fillrate or memory limited?


regards Michael

[Tom]

What's a G550?

------------------
MatroxG400MAX..and some other stuff

[CHHAS]

The G400 has 2 pipes with 2 TMUs per pipe, AFAIK.
I think it's pretty well balanced fillrate/bandwidth-wise with the core running at 3/4 mem speed, I do get a small performance increase if I increse the core without incresing mem speed, but not very much, so I guess it is a bit fillrate limited.

If the number of pipelines are doubled to 4 (as the GTS) we should see performance in the GTS area, which would be cool

[IceStorm]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">For this card to be worth buying for the average consumer it must be priced about the same as a high end MX card.</font>

It doesn't seem like Matrox cares if the "average consumer" buys their product. OEM design wins are where it's at.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Any more and it could well be left sitting on resellers shelves.</font>

Which reseller? Do you not remember the G400's entry into the market? If you wanted one, the only reliable place to find one was the Matrox online store.

Based on the information coming out of Matrox, they could care less about retail sales to end users. They seem to be going after lucrative OEM contracts.

[Illusion[Spirit]]

errrr, have I missed something, or does this card actually exist somewhere other then in the figment of someone's imagination?

Also, assuming it does exist, those specs seem OKish now, but it had better reach the market place soon, cos the GTS is already starting to seem old.

------------------
Illusion[Spirit]
www.spiritclan.co.uk

[Muted]

AFAIK

no real specs have been shown , yet ..

[Ali]

This is where it all started:

http://www.tech-report.com/news_reply.x/2329/

It has the answers to most of your questions, but I dont think its very reliable myself.

Ali

[mdhome]

Thanks CHHAS
From the sound of it the G550 has the same number of pipelines/TMU's etc as the G400. The only difference would be erm...ddr ram and some T&L thingy which I guess it probably doesnt have the raw power to run fast enough anyhow .

Surely, doubling the number of pipelines etc in the G400 core wouldnt be a major undertaking.


regards MD

[rylan]

Its all pure speculation still. I don't care what 'info' has been leaked, until its posted on Matrox's website as an official product, those 'specs' are meaningless.

However, my gut feeling is that its going to be another lackluster card, targeted at the buisness customer. Not quite as pathetic of a showing as the G450, but I doubt it'll be able to compete even with what is considered 'low-end 3D' by the time it is released and _available_ to the end user.