What do you guys think about the G550 review at Ace's??

[Electric Amish]

The G550 getting beat by a TNT2??

Getting beat by a Geforce 2MX in 2D??

Can these scores be correct?

amish

[Stringy]

Ace's has been pretty thurough in the past...
These numbers atleast on the surface look like they agree

With such a low clockspeed of 125-133 it's really hampered, even in it's target market of 2D...
Hopefully the MURC will get a sample and see if there is anything to salvage from this release for normal home users...

Also some BB's could verify those scores, but they are prolly working with Beta drivers as well, so a different NDA applies never ending paper...



Craig

[Heiney]

Well.........being a loyal fan of Matrox since the G200.....I just have one comment in regards to Ace's G550 review.


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAAH!


I'll be keeping my $73 Radeon LE thank you.

Hell they coulda at least made the T&L usable for something instead of that REDICULOUS headcasting nonsense. Ace summed that whole feature up very nicely, it's a gadget and a pretty useless one at that.

It's a damn G400 with dualhead. The extra texture unit is nearly useless. Its memory interface must be barely enough to support headcasting!

Wow...........unless they get some OEM deals (OEMs would be pretty foolish to use this card when a Radeon VE is just as effective).........Matrox will be disappearing off the maps I think.

[Stringy]

Heiney Well the ATi does do 3D well, but their "DaulHead" feature isn't as complete as the Matrox, it runs pretty much in software with that "HydraVision" deal...
and.. As the Article shows, the VE is slower or as fast as the G550 in 2D, it's target...
The VE does well, and is a good alternative, but the key selling points, as I seem'em, of the G550 are the DualHead features, the crisp display, and the speed in 2D... not that pathetic HeadCasting or 3D gaming... not even casual use
These attributes will help it sell in the OEM market, in the Retail market I can't see these things selling all that fast...
Unless of course something was overlooked, or there are a plethora of tweaks.. ie Overclocking etc...



Craig

[DosFreak]

Here's the link: http://www.aceshardware.com/Spades/r...le_id=45000188

Pathetic.

[Maggi]

... just drop me a note as soon as official G550 drivers appear ...

[Liquid Snake]

Bah who cares about fps my G400 runs HL/TFC/CS fine!

[GehRehmee]

Hm. A 2 year old card running a 3 year old game well. Surprise surprise.

[Liquid Snake]

Heh well I rarely play games nowadays, and if I do it's either TFC or CS, so the G400 is fine for me.

[mute]

;(

well , it turns out to be ... a bad card for me
when you see cheaper cards that can perform better in most cases but don't have headcasting ( as ace stated , i don't think anyone will use this technology ) too bad matrox ..

i'll come back when you have something new ...

[Indiana]

Originally posted by Liquid Snake
Bah who cares about fps my G400 runs HL/TFC/CS fine!

Well this is the main problem I see for Matrox. Why should anyone of their often called "professional / 2D" targeted market need anything better than a G400?!?!

So why even bother to produce any new chips at all? Just equip the otherwise unchanged G400 with a second RamDAC that's equal to the first and add two DVI ports and you should have everything such a user could ever need.

No additional pipleines needed, no "failed attempt to create a DX8 T&L engine". Sorry but it looks to me like if M's engineers came to the boss and said: sorry the new T&L engine is faulty, only parts of the vertex-shaders are working. And the boss said: well then let's look for a use for the functional parts at least. We know where this fictional story ends....
At least I could understand such behaviour (it would be more honest than the S3 "T&L" in any case), but I absolutely cannot think about any reason for someone that's not totally insane to develop a fractional DX8 T&L engine just for Headcasting and doing this intentiononally.

[Heiney]

I'd like to retract every OEM buying practice comment I've ever made. Please.

When they'll throw TNT2 M64s into Pentium IV 1.5s there is no way to predict them................

[Ali]

The only good thing I saw was:

Drivers Videocards:
Matrox G450 & G550: 5.70 driver (Windows 2000) and 6.70 driver (Windows 98)


But thats not suprissing. I wonder if there is anything added to the G400 part of them.

Ali

[PeTe]

G450&550

Well lets face it, matrox has produced ANOTHER piece of crap graphics card that doesnt improve AT ALL from G400(MAX).

I still have MAX in my 1.333 Tb, but going to buy a new card in the next 2 months and i'm SURE that its not Matrox. G400 was a great card when released, but now Matrox is out of the performance/gaming scene for good.

I know that most guys here are hardcore matrox-fans, but nobody can really argue against the performance increase that you get from a NVidia or ATI cards. ( And please dont start with the picture quality-thingy... thats just a lame. )



PeTe

[Galvin]

I finally did the unthinkable, after being with matrox cards for 5 years or so I got my self an geforce3 card last week and this card's 2D is plenty good for me.

G400 just doesn't cut it anymore for modern games.
I'm happy with my decision.