Thumbs up for Matrox!

[TdB]

I actually don´t think matrox cheats in benchmarks.
why? because matrox doesn´t taget the gamer market agressively enough to bother about benchmarks. besides, I don´t think they have the resources to cheat properly.

I got the impression that they try to market the parhelia/px50 to workstation users, and that their main selling point is their productivity increasing multi monitor support. they don´t really mention the word "performance" that much on their site,(compared to the competition).

take a look for your self:
matrox´s high-end card: http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/parhelia/128mb.cfm

nvidia´s high-end card: http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=fx_5900

it is clear to me, which company emphazises performance most.

[bsdgeek]

I heard it cost NV big $$$ (WTF?) to make these cheats. Why not just pour that into their card so they don't need to cheat?

[TdB]

I think nvidia took some unfortunate decisions, early in the nv30 development, and that it is to late for them to improve the core, perhaps the nv40 won´t need the cheats, but right now they have to pay for their design mistakes.

I think they designed the chip for "cinematic" rendering, and that their marketing department doesn´t "get it", so they cheat because they think speed sells.
IMO they should have marketed their cards with their high image quality, drop the ridicules cooling solution, and admit that their card was designed for image quality and not speed. it isn´t like their cards are unplayable slow, they just aren´t the fastest.

to be honest, when they began to hype "better pixels instead of faster pixels", I actually thought that their next card could be a nice replacement for my parhelia.

but I don´t really trust them enough to actually buy one of their cards right now.

[GNEP]

But how could they ever market their chip for image quality when their board partners are just going to cut corners with the PCB to give lousy signals out?

Also I think nV were caught a little off-guard by the ATi R300.

[TdB]

didn´t nvidia announce once that they were going to produce their own high-end cards, themself?

I think everybody was surpriced by the R300, (maybe even ATI themself )

[bsdgeek]

I think it was that NV would make the dustbuster cards because it was too complex and easy to mess up for their board partners.

With NV30 they gambled and lost. (DDR2, .13u/low-k). But they could have fixed more with NV35. Supposedly they've rearranged the amount/function of their FP units. And we know there is a 256bit memory interface.

But I think they should have used a different FSAA technique and gotten rid of all those seemingly useless and old methods.

[Paddy the wak]

And a big thumbs up for the PARHELIA ... don't forget ....it can do the 3 Monitor thing ... how many other cards can do that ?

[Chrono_Wanderer]

Originally posted by Paddy the wak
And a big thumbs up for the PARHELIA ... don't forget ....it can do the 3 Monitor thing ... how many other cards can do that ?

almost any

get urself a dual head card and one PCI card.

hahaha just kidding