Electic.com Matrox Interview next Tuesday

[bugblatt]

Wot no Holodeck?

[Pace]

Hey, that last question was damn sweet

Who the hell came up with that? What a great answer too! 2 points raised in there say bucketloads

P.

[Joel]

"So will we ever return to the hard-core gaming market...you'll have to wait and see."

Joel

[Liquid Snake]

Hehe! Damn you BBs!

[HollyBerri]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">[Electic.com] Matrox seems to have a rather large and loyal fan base on the Internet but the lack of a high performance, next generation chip since the G400, has scared many of those loyal users away towards your rivals. If Matrox could say one thing to these users, what would it be?

[Dan Wood] I think that our loyal fan base is due to the exceptionally high quality of our graphics cards.</font>

True.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">We know that there are a lot of sophisticated graphics users on the market who know more than to judge a graphics card simply by its Quake3 score.</font>

Also true--- somebody's been lurking around here...

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">The photo-editing professionals, the business desktop user, the financial professionals and those that care about cutting edge analog output quality know that we are the world leader in providing solutions. With our Marvel line of products we are appealing to a whole new gamut of PC user. We are helping to make the PC the multi-media hub for the home and office. Whether it is capturing and editing video to be broadcast on a website or watching TV on your PC and using our time shifting and picture-in-picture features, Matrox saw the convergence happening in the industry when we released our original Marvel line. We were innovators then and we will continue to innovate. As long as there is a PC, we will work with our partners to make products that provide a dynamic way of computing. Whether in the home or office, consumers can continue to look to Matrox for quality solutions that make sense today.(<u>emphasis mine</u>)</font>

All right, this seems pretty clear, as it is directed at us right here on this forum. Who else is the "loyal fan base", after all?

It's very true that many or most of us want/need our video cards to have the flexibility to edit video, watch TV and/or use Dual Head as well as working in MSOffice and P'shop at high quality, and that is why most of us would say we're Matrox users when asked. The answer seems pretty direct in saying that Matrox does not intend to change that direction.

But what the answer clearly avoids is the issue that when we are <u>not</u> editing video, or rendering 3D graphics in P'shop, <u>many of us enjoy playing games which are very demanding on the video card</u>. I see that there are a few (very) veiled hints that the upcoming card won't be a complete kludge in terms of gaming, but I think this mealy-mouthed evasion indicates that the upcoming card will be similar to the G400/MAX-- mostly adequate most of the time, but not even in the back end of "star quality".

I'm no fps-junkie, but I'm offended by this answer. Nearly 8000 of us here, and Matrox seems to be ignoring our needs. Isn't it clear that we play games in our "off-time" on our Matrox cards? I know we consumers aren't many compared to business clients, but we aren't nothing either. Even the "casual" gamer is going to be playing B&W, Rune, NASCAR4, or Fly!2 (not to mention Myst 3) than something easy on the vidcard, like, say...Windows Solitaire.

Matrox seems to recognize that "ordinary" people want and use the kind of abilities previously available only to professionals. But they don't seem to get (or be able to deal with) the fact that the even the "low-end" of casual game application use is no longer low-- and we are all now educated enough to notice!

I feel like if I buy a G550, I'll just be getting another G400MAX--not a truly 'new, improved' card, but pretty much the same card that simply supports things "out of range" for the MAX. I wouldn't mind, but that's how I felt upgrading the G200 with the MAX (which I didn't even want to do, but it was a gift). Twice in a row of "nothing much special" is one time too many, and "first half 2002" is a doggone long time away....

Grrrrr.....

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Holly

[This message has been edited by HollyBerri (edited 29 April 2001).]

[Topha]

Just a question: everyone always says that the g400max was never a star-performer, but the way i remember it it was the fastest card till the geforce appeared, thats why i bought it. back then the only problem were the opengl drivers, but here in germany all reviewers were confident that matrox would fix that.

[HollyBerri]

Well the G400 was faster than the TNT2, but that only lasted about 5 minutes, as I recall it-- didn't the TNT2 Ultra come out almost at the same time? And the G400 hadn't been out very long before the GeForce was released.... or should that be "The GeForce was released not very long after the G400 driver issues were worked out"?

Either way, I remember the MAX only being on the top of the speed heap for a very very short time, by no means long enough to call it a contender, since when it lost the top spot, it rolled right off the heap, not even to "near the top" or "the middle" .

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Holly

[sonia102]

Post your comments here, Matrox reps will read them. At least on Monday

Post: http://www.electic.com/iforum/topic....rum=5&topic=46

[Topha]

I think the g400 (max) was slightly faster than the tnt2 ultra, especially in 32bit

edit: and i bet there are more people around that are still using their g400 than there are people still using their tnt2

[This message has been edited by Topha (edited 29 April 2001).]

[Maggi]

In late 1999 the TNT2-U was faster, because back then is was not common knowledge that the NVidia chip faked trilinear filtering by using dithered bilinear filtering ...

it was most evident in all tests that used trilinear is their HQ settings, but if you had a look at the bilinear scores, the MAX was always a tad faster from 1024x768x32 upwards.

the MAX also was never a real high fps screamer, thus it scored comparable low in low res tests, which also lead to conclude it, would be slower. truth is that there are no extreme peaks on the MAX, neither in the low nor in the high fps area. NVidia's chips had stellar highest fps marks, but still there are some people complaining that even on a GF2 MX there are sometimes situations were it extremely chokes.

to cmoe back to the original statement that the MAX was the fastest card back then, I have to say that this is very true, if you don't compare apples with peaches, ie. benchmark identical configurations and you'll see that the MAX is faster than any TNT2-U and sometimes even faster than a GF1.

one thing I forgot is that the G400 series indeed requires a strong CPU and this is the only point where I fully agree that other gfx companies had better performing solutions.

Cheers,
Maggi

[This message has been edited by Maggi (edited 29 April 2001).]

[Indiana]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by rubank:

And when Matrox tries to tell us what we want and what we need it´s just ridiculous.
rubank</font>

Yes, that's the sadest part of it all. Just like 3Dfx trying to tell the people that they won't need 32Bit, large textures, anisotropic filtering,....

And I won't rely that much on display quality as the only selling point: DVI is coming and putting most of this burden on the monitor. So buy a very HQ monitor once and get one of those cheap Kyro/Ati/Nvidia cards (yes, even NVidia is WAY cheaper than Matrox here in Europe).
And DualHead - while surely nice to have - isn't really a must. Be honest, how many percent of G400DH users are really using it for more than TVout/DVDMax or even to an extend that wouldn't be possible with the solutions of ATI or NVidia?

Another word regarding drivers: After all this time Matrox' OGL drivers IMHO still suck.
I liked watching those stylish, sometimes crazy demos (coming from the Amiga), and did that also on the PC with my first two cards: a crappy SiS that I got for free and an Asus TNT1.
With the G400 most of these OGL demos showed garbage on the screen or even crashed the machine.
Now with the Radeon I've retested some of these and guess what: they're working as they should.

Why is it so hard for Matrox to create an OpenGL ICD that works with more than just the major game titles and perhaps two or three professional 3D apps?
Just try some demos from tranzmit, some OGL screensavers or MameGL on the G400.
Then try them on a NVidia/Radeon/Kyro - hell, even 3Dfx works....

[Joel]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Post your comments here, Matrox reps will read them. At least on Monday.
Post: http://www.electic.com/iforum/topic....rum=5&topic=46
</font>

Believe me they will see it either way. Whether it is posted here or over there. I have already pointed this thread out to the Tech Support Manager at Matrox and he will see to that the others who need to see this will.

Joel

[This message has been edited by Joel (edited 29 April 2001).]

[xortam]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by Indiana:
... And I won't rely that much on display quality as the only selling point: DVI is coming and putting most of this burden on the monitor. So buy a very HQ monitor once and get one of those cheap Kyro/Ati/Nvidia cards (yes, even NVidia is WAY cheaper than Matrox here in Europe). ...</font>

Very good point Indiana! The visual quality edge that Matrox enjoys will surely be blunted by digital displays. I do like that Matrox is interested in expanding its convergence solutions. I would like to see them step up to support HDTV and MPEG-2 HW CoDec (up to 1080i and 720p resolutions). I also would like to see iDCT and motion compensation technology to reduce CPU usage and smooth DTV playback. The card should also be able to bypass colorspace conversion and deliver YPbPr component output directly. These convergence features are much more interesting to me than getting 100+ FPS in some game.

[rylan]

Yes, I also agree with you Holly.. it starts to get me pissed off when a company tried to tell em what _I_ need in a card/drivers/features etc. Sorry, I think I know what I need a lot more than someone else.
And yes, I need a card that is quite a bit more powerful than the G400MAX, and also has _good_ OpenGL drivers. Because guess what, some of the high-res 2D board layout programs I use utilizes OpenGL calls to speedup screen redraw and model rotation. Without a good OGL driver, it sucks. And yes, in my free time, some of us do like to play some games, and we want sometihng that can handle it as Holly said.

Also, I think digital output is becoming quite important, and something that I want (and a lot of other 'buisness users'). I didn't really see anything mentioned about a DVI connector for the 2nd head, and I really don't want to have to buy a stupid 'add-on' DVI connector to slap onto the card and end up sucking up a PCI slot (like you have to do with the G400/G450).

[Joel]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Matrox has brought really cool technology to the gaming community many times over the years from the first Millennium, which accelerated Nascar Racing from Papyrus (by using a 2D blitter) to the G400 Max's list of over 30 titles that support Environment Mapped Bump Mapping. Today's 3D technology is so compelling and offers so many advantages over what we have seen in the past, that it would be foolish for a company not to embrace it. So will we ever return to the hard-core gaming market...you'll have to wait and see.</font>

Notice the use of the word you'll instead of we'll.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">The last thing I would say to our loyal fan base is that we are a quiet company but we have over 400 engineers devoted to cutting edge graphics research and we will continue to lead and bring innovative new products to market.</font>

Having been a Matrox card user for over 5 years now I can honestly say that this is a very true statement. But if all you focus on is how many fps you can get in Quake3, which sucks BTW, then you won't see this. I know it has been awhile but that is just the way Matrox is. They will not release anything until they truely feel it is ready for the intended market. That may not be what we want as consumers but we don't run the business. All I can say is if the Matrox cards don't meet your needs then look elsewhere and when Matrox does release a card that meets your needs then come back. It's only a video card after all.

Joel