I only wan to know this. . .

[BCompDude]

If I buy a P are they going to keep making drivers for it for several years to come? I AM going to get one if the answer is yes. I have seen the image quality and quite frankly it is above and beyond anything I've ever seen before, Geforce 4 included. However, if I'm dropping 400 dollars on a vid card I want it to be supported for a while. Thanks for the info. I'm REALLY excited about the purchase. . .even though I'm going into *more* debt.

[Neomagic_Twist]

Well, they are still supporting their g200 range of cards, and those go back quite a few years, mine's still purring away happily with the newest drivers so I don't think there is any reason to worry.

[xortam]

There's no guarantee that drivers will be written to support new OSes. I don't know of anybody that does offer that guarantee.

[TikiGod]

It will likely be based on popularity.

The G200 and G400 were widely accepted in the corporate workspace, and are natively supported by Windows XP. They will probably be supported natively in XP2 as well. You can bet as soon as I get into the test for that, I'll be checking my G200 and G400 for support.

If the Parhelia runs amok, and especially if it gains support in the OEM market, you can bet your Parhelia will be supported in the next several major OS releases.

And somebody will make it work in Linux forever. :-)

[Jon P. Inghram]

Originally posted by TikiGod
... They will probably be supported natively in XP2 as well. ...

Well, don't forget the rumors that MS is planning on moving away from the x86 platform entirely, so the next major OS from them might not support virtually ANY existing hardware.

[Wombat]

Where exactly did those rumors come from?

[TikiGod]

Jon,

I'd love to see a site about what you're referring to.

I've seen plenty of Intel roadmaps at work, and it's not going anywhere fast.

All they have to do is ramp up for IA64 on the desktop someday.

And with AMD's Opteron on the way, it's x86 based as well if I'm not mistaken.

One last thing. Where I work we still get calls from people running Win95 on their Pentium 75 systems. We're 7 years past the release of that OS. I can't see the x86 platform drying up for at least another 3 years. There may not be new developments, but there would have to be legacy support. Look how hard it has been to get rid of the FDD, serial ports, PS/2 ports, etc.

Later,

TikiGod

[Jon P. Inghram]

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34008&highlight=Palladium

http://www.asusboards.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=19673

http://www.asusboards.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=21209

Palladium, it's what's for dinner (I hope you brought some Rolaids with ya.)

[DGhost]

except for the fact that 1) if that were to happen, it would be at *least* two releases of windows down the road. not longhorn. probably more like 2006ish for the release of the OS. 2) it won't happen. 3) if it were to happen, any hardware or software that gets WHQL qualified would be a "valid" app or hardware. 4) all of those links are to doomsday views on it. there are many, many other ways it could be implemented.

[TikiGod]

Ah, Palladium. I'm not too worried that it's going to hit.

And, something to keep in mind, nobody can force you to buy it.

I work with some fairly big (ok, really freakin' big) companies. They're dragging their feet in an upgrade from NT4 to W2K.

They are forcing (ok, paying) us to support hardware that the original manufacturer won't even support.

They're not going to go for something like Palladium. It will be at least a year after it is out before the big customers buy it, and if it doesn't support the hardware they already own, it's not happening.

Imagine a grocery store. With bar code readers. That have been working with their internal propietary software since they had 486s. The companies that buy 100,000 licenses of an O/S at a time will be the ones that win this argument, not you or I. :-)


Matrox has released a 64 bit driver for the G450. I'm sure we'll see one for the Parhelia.

IA64 has a long life ahead of it. And the Parhelia will be long obsolete by the time we have to worry about it.

[Wombat]

I disagree with DGhost on 1 point: It WILL happen. IA-64 supports an IA-32 execution mode. It's entirely possible to have an IA-64-only OS run IA-32 code just for 1 app.

[leech]

I believe in another thread that I was talking about 64-bit and the drop of the x86 architecture and yet no one listened

Leech

[Novdid]

As Wombat said, it's bound to happen sooner or later.

[hans2]

I've had my G400 for...what's it been, like 4 years now? I don't remember when they came out. Anyway, Matrox has been supporting it the whole time. They just released a new driver beta last month. I consider that quite good.

[Wombat]

I believe in another thread that I was talking about 64-bit and the drop of the x86 architecture and yet no one listened

I'm not talking about a complete drop of x86. We're talking about OSes here. The OS switches to the new architecture for efficiency, but the apps can stay x86 just fine. Just like I said.