What Level of Performance Do You DEMAND?

[Kruzin]

The Beta testers don't have Parhelia cards yet.
We beta test software (drivers), and don't get the boards untill they are final. All hardware beta testing is done in house and with development partners.

Additionally, we cannot quote benchmarks or give personal reviews until after the card is in the hands of actual reviewers, and there are reviews and benchmarks already posted/published. And then, we can only give benchmarks on publicly released drivers, not the betas...

All part of the wonderful world of NDAs

[xortam]

Originally posted by Kruzin
The Beta testers don't have Parhelia cards yet....

I gathered that from Mike's earlier post. A bit dissapointing as I would have thought that the P was closer to shipment than that. No hurry though.

[Kruzin]

Originally posted by xortam
A bit dissapointing as I would have thought that the P was closer to shipment than that. No hurry though.

Let me put it this way...
I was sitting outside having a smoke 1/2 hour ago. The UPS truck drove by, and I started to get excited. Unfortuantly, he didn't stop here

Again, even when we do get the cards, we won't be able to say squat about them...so don't rely on us for any real info...

[xortam]

Kruzin ... can you answer how long the normal SW beta cycle is before new HW ships?

[Kruzin]

By the time we get them, they will likely already have their first set of release drivers ready. we'll run those for a couple weeks till they have a new set of betas ready for us. This is how it's always been in the past.

[Greebe]

So true Ken... it's sad that we can't say squat (NDA) , but the reasoning is this... it makes a bloody million reviewers panties get up in a bind if they know that we have product before them. To them they come first, with the excuse that their readers (Fanboys) come first. They don't care about driver quality or the like, unless of course they are a fan of or bought by anonther manufacture, then they'll pick it apart. They always do.

[xortam]

So you're saying that the BBs don't test the SW until Matrox builds the release candidate? I would assume the SW is beta'ed for some time before then. Are there other beta testers who bang on the SW before you guys get it?

[Greebe]

I've lost count of how many of us there are reciently, but nobody (BB) test prior... it's all internal (and vendors/developers).

[Kruzin]

I am just reffering to the initial release, when we first get the cards. After that, we usually get beta builds of drivers and indiviual ICDs as they are made, not just the RCs. (last week alone we had 3 different ICDs for G4/5xx)

[xortam]

Yes, I also am referring to the initial beta testing of new drivers for new HW. So apparently Matrox relies heavily on their alpha and system testing but uses vendors and developers for beta testing. It seems that the BBs are quite late in the beta testing cycle for the initial driver release. Perhaps some of this is differences in our use of the terminology.