Parhelia Drivers?

[leech]

Originally posted by Byock
Well said. Could not have said it better myself. I would not hold my breath waiting for a faster card from M anytime soon.

That's because you haven't been a USER for a long time, you BYOTCH!

Leech

[Kurt]

Originally posted by UtwigMU
The problem is they spent 2 years developing G450 and G550 whoose only benefits over G400 are better 2nd RAMDAC, low profile and Headcasting.

During that time they have likely wasted plenty resources, time and also delayed Parhelia's launch.

If the G550 would have been the G800 (GeForce 2 - GeForce 3 or GeForce 4MX class), they would sell manny more of those at current price.

Same problem can happen with Parhelia. It doesn't hurt you as much if you don't have a performance leader, but if your card is 1 generation behind at launch and when current leader trickles into mainstream this leaves your mainstream card 2 generations behind.

For instance manny OEM PCs offer GF 4MX over G550 or G450. And average users choose G450 or G550 only when building strictly 2D machine and/or when they plan on using 2 monitors.


I hope Matrox doesn't repeat the same mistake again:

Waste 1 year developing Parhelia 1.5 (Sundog) and introduce it to the market when R400 and nV35 are performance leaders and R9600 and value nVidia DX9 Ti 4 class cards are mainstream priced at 100. You have to know, that those cards all have two monitors features (worse than Matrox, but still)

And delay developement and launch of Parhelia 2 (Pitou) untill it's too far behind to compell good margins or move in big volumes.

Developing a new core and preparing manufacturing of it (litography masks, refining process) takes money and although they could save some money if the new value core would be more integrated and cheaper to make, they would loose those gains in R&D.

Instead they should:
- respin current Parhelia core (Manufacturing is cheap compared to developement of a new core.) as value card, (like Radeon -> Radeon 7500, Radeon 8500 -> 9100, Geforce 2 -> GeForce 4MX) and disable some features in the boards and/or drivers

This card should fullfill the current G550's spot.

- develop and release Parhelia 2 (Pitou) in Q3 this year

Amen. The only ones seemingly not realizing this is M themselves (or they are very good at not showing it...).

[Byock]

IIRC didn't Haig say Pitou was scrapped?

[UtwigMU]

No the censored dude did. Haig only said next card is P "450"

[Marshmallowman]

makes Sense

Well it seems to me matrox is really only interested/able to sell workstation type cards, where workstation functionality is the only critical item.

They are not/can't chase the gaming crown, they will probably persist with their "adequate" 3d and tweak the P for quality & stabilty and reduced manufactureing costs any major increase in speed would just be a byproduct.

P does do some things very well, most people who use it for video editing, photoshop seem very happy with it...

I think they will just keep evolving it to compliment their video and medical imaging groups aswell

So a tweaked P with similar perfomance but cheaper would be my best guess, I don't think Matrox graphics is going to be splurging anymore money on a pissing match with NV or ATI.

[Pace]

P '64' might be more appropriate...

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Marshmallowman
makes Sense

Well it seems to me matrox is really only interested/able to sell workstation type cards, where workstation functionality is the only critical item.

They are not/can't chase the gaming crown, they will probably persist with their "adequate" 3d and tweak the P for quality & stabilty and reduced manufactureing costs any major increase in speed would just be a byproduct.

P does do some things very well, most people who use it for video editing, photoshop seem very happy with it...

I think they will just keep evolving it to compliment their video and medical imaging groups aswell

So a tweaked P with similar perfomance but cheaper would be my best guess, I don't think Matrox graphics is going to be splurging anymore money on a pissing match with NV or ATI.

What they don't sem to understand is that it's not so much being at the top once that's important but it's to keep a constant effort in trying to be the best in everything. The champ in the category is Nvidia with their not so great debut, but look where they arrived. They're an R&D house and they keep pushing the envelope.

M has good and bad products -usually the bad ones are derived from the good one. What Matrox are doing is what Nvidia is doing: have one chip and productize it into various boards. The difference is that Nvidia makes a whole lineup at launch whereas M does one card. The next product is based on the chip's next revision. So it takes them about 2 years to have a 3 cards lineup...Even if the next revision sells well (à la G450/G550) they should aim to sell the first one as well, with various configurations. But you CAN'T make a full lineup with an underperforming part. Hence the NEED for them to come up on top regularly.

They don't need to sell millions of chips to be profitable, but they can't keep on overhyping their next chip. Every failure to deliver brings discredit to the company. Delivery is where the others excel and it pays off handsomely.

If they want continued success, they need to have an adequate part that does what it claims and that's delivered when it's said to come out.

As has been M's habit in the last (and the ones before) years they failed in at least one or two of these 3 points on all their products.

[Fluff]

What was the g450 to the g400. A cost cutting design integrating more stuff into the core (ramdacs)?. So i expect the P'450' to have more integration of components at a similar speed, to reduce costs for them. Probably DDR II, and maybe a smaller width memory bus.

[Sasq]

the g450 was slower then the g400.....