Matrox will never become big if they don't lighten up

[UtwigMU]

I think Matrox should lighten up and they are lightening up (Parhelia - good potential, core revisions with already solid drivers and based on Parhelia experience have even bigger potential IMO) to raise their marketshare which is more like 5% of entire Graphic market (ranging 845G to Radeon9700 - they don't play in the el cheapo segment where MXes nForces Rages and LEs dominate).

However I cannot see how leaking drivers would have any positive or negative impact on their marketshare. Geeks and enthusiasts who like to play with latest toys represent negligible percentage of entire market.

[Marshmallowman]

leaked drivers and "l33te" driver hacking is not what matrox is about...they make professional gear medical imaging/ corporate multi moniter stuff and even there consumer video cards are more business orientated than other manufactueres.

Stable and reliable hardware/driver support is what matrox is about (except marvel/rr)

But I know it can be a bit hard waiting for matrox drivers to get to a fully up to speed, because they are a bit conservative and always go for stability first. But they will never release "quack" drivers and they will not compromise quality for speed(no pixel popping and badly joined ploys..etc) and that is matrox's niche.

[thop]

hmm seems i missed all the fun

i think intentionally leaked drivers, like ATI and nVidia have been doing it for ages, can be a good thing, because hundreds of MURCers can/will find more bugs than a handful of BBz. Ok there are probably more BBz than that, incl. professional users who report back to matrox etc. - but still. but i also understand the problem here with matrox tech support being overrun by clueless users.
so i say leak the drivers but put a BIG RED WARNING on them stating that if anything goes wrong, even if you computer blows up, it is your fault and don't come to us whining about it. that will scare computer illiterate users away.

this situation kinda reminds me of the whole K7S5A situation. when ECS released the board you could not o/c a single Mhz out of it. ECS biggest customers are OEMs and they did not want any o/c features in the BIOS. so ECS didn't put them in. but after a while they silently leaked an o/c BIOS to the public. the guy from ocworkbench.com got it, and the guys in his forum started playing around with it. everyone was happy (me included)
i like happy ends

[Wombat]

so i say leak the drivers but put a BIG RED WARNING on them stating that if anything goes wrong, even if you computer blows up, it is your fault and don't come to us whining about it. that will scare computer illiterate users away.

Not in this dimension it won't.

[Fluff]

Nvidia have a big trouble holding back leaks of their drivers because they are probably shipp ing beta drivers to all the card maufacturers for testing. Etc.

. Even if a user is computer illiterate. They can still be curious... then the trouble starts.

[UberLord]

Originally posted by Fluff
Nvidia have a big trouble holding back leaks of their drivers because they are probably shipp ing beta drivers to all the card maufacturers for testing. Etc.

Not only that, but most IHV's also ship their latest and greatest drivers to game dev's for testing.

[donny]

I think if you big enough to install beta drivers, then live with the consequences. In some ways release drivers are just drivers with less problems until the next release. Plus, all firstline CSR tech support will tell you is to uninstall the beta drivers and install the certified ones. or reinstall operating system and certified drivers. Also, you don't want to be the phone too long unless, its a toll free number.

[T'kul Bastile]

Can someone please explain to me how nVidia got so big because they leak their drivers? I do not see how these leaks could possibly make people buy their products.

Now on the other hand I can see how they got so big. Like letting other companies build their own cards. ATi is now doing the same thing.

And personally I would rather wait for a few weeks and get stable drivers that actually correct problems. Then get drivers every few days that may correct things, and may make things worse.

One last thing. Who has been around longer. Matrox, nVidia or Ati?

[mhm]

One last thing. Who has been around longer. Matrox, nVidia or Ati?

Matrox 1976
ATi 1985
nVidia 1993


Max

[leech]

Originally posted by T'kul Bastile
Can someone please explain to me how nVidia got so big because they leak their drivers? I do not see how these leaks could possibly make people buy their products.

Now on the other hand I can see how they got so big. Like letting other companies build their own cards. ATi is now doing the same thing.

And personally I would rather wait for a few weeks and get stable drivers that actually correct problems. Then get drivers every few days that may correct things, and may make things worse.

One last thing. Who has been around longer. Matrox, nVidia or Ati?

Oh come on, you don't want drivers that'll from one build to the next do incredibly messed up things to your computer? (like make it so NWN will play fine as long as you don't play it for more than 45 min, then after that if you happen to quit the game it reboots your computer? (ATI) I love Matrox because they always release stable drivers. Even the ones that they call Beta/unofficial are better than most of ATI's 'Official' drivers. And Matrox has one kick ass Tech support team! Hurray for Matrox TS. I don't mind too much trying leaked drivers, but then again I'm used to linux where I'm always trying out beta stuff, and trying to get the newest thing to work. It's a challenge and kind of like a sick game I like to play. "Let's see if I can get this to work right without totally screwing up my system" It's what I think makes computers fun. If someone inside matrox decided to be bastards and leak something, why not leak the linux drivers?

All kidding aside, I really wish the linux drivers for the Parhelia would come out soon. I think I'm going nuts not being able to use my linux install in crisp, clean 1600x1200x32 bit (I've seen info on running XFree86 with 10-bit (gigacolor) as well).

Leech

[Ryu Connor]

There has been more than one instances over the last four or five years where leaked NVIDIA drivers have been my only recourse to fix crippling errors.

The most recent one was the period between the release of the 12.41 and the 23.11 drivers. 12.90 was the only driver I could reliably use without suffering a BSOD in Windows 2000. It was the beta release of the 27.xx drivers that finally saved my bacon. It was many months after that before the 28.32 were officially released.

As with everything in life there are pros and cons, beta drivers rate amongst those. Right now I'd certainly risk some instability to get NWN from crashing to the desktop every fifteen minutes, to be rid of graphical errors caused by 16x FAA in SOFII, and with some texture loading enhancements. The current drivers load up a Q3A engine based game rather slowly.

[Marshmallowman]

you can't use the comparision

That shoddy driver's by manufatcturer A can only be fixed by leaked drivers

That the same will happen with manufacturer M who releases thoroughly tested drivers(by people) will require a leaked driver to fix things.

[Ryu Connor]

you can't use the comparision

That shoddy driver's by manufatcturer A can only be fixed by leaked drivers

That the same will happen with manufacturer M who releases thoroughly tested drivers(by people) will require a leaked driver to fix things.

This is software we're talking about here. It's paramount to Murphy's law. If it can happen, it will. The comparison could fit and that's enough.

[DGhost]

what problems did you have that you *needed* to switch from the 12.41 drivers to the 12.90 drivers?

the the product cycle of the Elsa Erazor X (GeForce256), the only Windows 2000/XP drivers i *ever* saw them ship for it were the 5.36 driver set (good compatability and shitty performance), the 7.58 (? - maybe it was the 7.28 series) and then the 12.41 drivers. after that they might have shipped one of the 23.xx series of drivers for it, but i honestly don't recall.

Elsa, being the last company that really did any sort of major testing on its products, made sure the driver sets it released were relatively bug free. those driver sets acctually worked inside Win2k. the whole 6.x series had *major* problems under Win2k, ranging from stability problems to somehow managing to **** up 640x480x60hz. yet the driver sets that Elsa released (which were only rebranded to have the Elsa logo) worked wonderfully.

[Ryu Connor]

what problems did you have that you *needed* to switch from the 12.41 drivers to the 12.90 drivers?

Running video on the secondary monitor caused a BSOD. The 12.90 removed that issue.