next Matrox card?

[UtwigMU]

So do you think Matrox will stay in card business (although reduced special markets), and wait till bubble bursts?

IMO that's reasoning is not so bad, look at sound card market, most people are happy with onboard or 20$ addon C-media soundcard.

Only people needing mutiple outputs and musicians spend more.

Considering Matrox' focus on CAD market which is way more serious than that of G400 (certified drivers for manny applications, OpenGL Arb board membership), I'd consider they're not going to relinquish their investment by pulling out and that they'll continue to making pro cards.

[sparky001]

UTwig. I dont really see the point. By your reasoning (if I read correctly) Matrox will continue to evolve the P and P-series. but completly opt out of the home market. I see a whole here.

Neither ATI or Nvidia have any problem with making one GPU for multiple markets. ie GeForce/Quadro and Radeon/FireGL. I would think that a great idea would be to give us a next gen P with say a clock of 400mhz (just for example) throw ing lots of memory (256 and 512). The P's that cant run at 400 can be clocked at 350 given 128mb of fast memory and have a few Pro specific features disabled. Then they can be branded as Mystique and sold to gamers.

There is little reason as to why they can not design a chip for both and there is no reason as to why some can not become home/gamer cards.

I also think your point about onboard audio is a little off. The only reason that a lot of people are happy with onboard audio is because they have Soundstorm and paid the extra on a mobo to get sound storm. A lot of other users that do not have the nforce APU are unhappy with onboard sound.

Always wanted another Mystique

[Che Guevara]

@rugger


You will never get Matrox longlivity by Ati or nVidia!
My first Matrox card was a Mystique, I would be able to download xp-drivers from the matrox-site for this old piece of hardware.
nVidia actual only supports TnT2-chips and newer, and mother****ing ati never released win2k or xp drivers for my (very expensive) Rage Fury Maxx for example.
(Further, Matrox cards are just high quality hardware and Matrox also has a good warranty)


@FormerEx-SalesSoup

I don't know if this question was a serious one, but:
I would feel VERY uncomfortable if Matrox would starting selling their chips to other board manufacturers or starting using other manufacturers' chips for their boards. Further, this makes no sense because old Matrox qualities (image-quality for example) would end at this point...
In this case, Matrox would be just another Gigabyte, Powercolour, Abit, Hercules, whatever ...
Matrox chips mean Matrox features and Matrox quality.

[sparky001]

Che Guevara: There would surly be some way that Matrox could police asus/gigabyte so that the image quality stayed. Even encourage them to go higher than one an other. If matrox was to say to asus/gigabyte that they could only use referance quality boards or better. Then perhaps one of them would be temped to produce a 'Super Ultra Pro Mega Pixel Definition' version of their cards. Something with a image quality that even Matrox would not be game to try because of cost reasons.

[Kurt]

I don't think they'll produce any Matrox based boards now. Gigabyte gave it a try when the G400 stood a chance againt its competitors but Matrox had put some serious reigns on what Gigabyte could do with the boards and even limited the boards they could run on on certain Gigabyte mobos with dedicated Matrox BIOS code in the mobo's BIOS so that the cards could not function elsewhere. I don't think Matrox and Gigabyte will have BBQ parties for some time. They completely blew it there...

Asus OTOH is interested in the high volume mainstream and low end market. They still do ODM so maybe Matrox could have its boards produced there under license - but I doubt Asus would do much to promote them.

[Sasq]

Che Guevara:
A lot of Matrox's quality comes in the output stages/filters which can be improved on the pcb (as long as your original signal is good)
Personally I would love to see maybe an ATI chip on a Matrox PCB (maybe matrox would even get the dual head working properly ?)

[sparky001]

Kurt: I was using Asus/Gigabyte as only an example. Anyone could make them. Well lets hop sapphire don't.

Sasq: That was what I was thinking. I am unsure of what it is and the like but apparently Matrox use 5 stages, the other big two are based on 3 stages. So perhaps Asus/gigabyte would be willing to make 'Super Ultra Pro Mega Pixel Definition' version using 7 stages.

I dont know.

I would not mind seeing Matrox become ATI hot it up boys. Instead of buying the 9800 gpu. Matrox could sit down and alter the GPU. Give it a Matrox twist.

Matrox take a 9800xt put Glyth-AA, FAA and triple-head in and build their own drivers for it based on powerdesk. We would end up with a 9800MGA.

I know ATI are not likly to let matrox do this, but it would be nice. Matrox would be to ATI what AMG are to Mercedes.

[Kurt]

The whole redesign thingy will take a lot of time too, so they might be a generation late every time! Might as well say ATi buys Matrox and puts them to work on high-end 2D chips...

[Mikko]

Parhelia-type video card that would allow using TripleHead and TV-Out at the same time would be a card of a decade!

[High_Jumbllama]

So you want a quad-head card?

[Nicram]

There us Quad head Parhelia chip card i think. But i don't no about TV Out support...

[leech]

I'm just happy I get triple-head independant under linux

Leech

[FormerEx-SalesSoup]

Originally posted by Nicram
There us Quad head Parhelia chip card i think. But i don't no about TV Out support...

http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/qid/home.cfm

[Chrono_Wanderer]

hmm... true about 1 generation late.

Maybe big-M should compete ATI/nV in the PDA market instead

triple palm-head

[Nicram]

Or maybe MS should make XboX 3 with support of 3 displays based on some new Matrox graphic chip ;D