Xbit's story on Next Matrox card

[otzenaj]

Hey,

Here's an excerpt from the latest news on X-bit's site. As with all things still under development, take with a grain of salt:

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Matrox Graphics Prepares PCI Express x16 Graphics Processor
New Chip from Matrox Graphics to Emerge

by Anton Shilov
01/15/2004 | 08:54 AM

While nearly all observers and analyst are looking for ATI and NVIDIA to release their next-generation graphics powerhouses, a company almost all have forgotten about, Matrox Graphics, is also getting ready to introduce something new this year. The graphics processor will presumably be intended for PCI Express x16 and will sport at least some Microsoft DirectX 9 caps.

Things have been quiet at Matrox Graphics for nearly two years now after the firm released its Parhelia visual processing unit. The part became a breakthrough neither in terms of features nor performance, though, was the first relatively affordable graphics card for PCs supporting up to three displays. In 2003 Matrox released more Parhelia technology-based offerings for 2D professional market, but these parts did not attract a lot of attention of the industry. Nevertheless, there are some more products being developed at Matrox Graphics.

Netsys Software, a solution provider for emerging standards, announced that Matrox Graphics has signed an agreement to license nSys PCI Express nVS verification tools for use in its chip design efforts. Matrox engineers are now using PCI Express nVS product to verify the correct operation of the PCI Express interface in its chip designs. The tool helps Matrox engineers catch potential bugs during pre-silicon verification.
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Here's the link:
X-Bitl

[borat]

good find, and good news, but is anyone really expecting anything more than parhelia with PCI express and maybe enough DX9 for longhorn?

[The PIT]

Probably it will be what the P should have been in the first place.

[GNEP]

Maybe the P but on a smaller die process?

If P650/750 were to the P what the G450 was to the G400, then we should expect a G550 equivalent... based on the P and using PCI Express...

Now what do you think they'll have instead of arse-casting this time?

[Novdid]

Originally posted by GNEP
If P650/750 were to the P what the G450 was to the G400, then we should expect a G550 equivalent... based on the P and using PCI Express

Yes, it will feature 8 TMU's/pipe. It won't make a difference though because they will also fit it with a 64bit membus without bandwidth saving tech!

[bsdgeek]

Honestly, who cares? After all the BS with their last one who would buy it?

[UtwigMU]

I'll repost in Crystal ball.

[Tomasz]

I'm hoping this will be a good card with the full set of DX9 features.

However, my cynical side tells me it will be a further crippled respin of the Parhelia core with PCI Express support.

[K6-III]

I'm very likely to buy it if it meets my requirements...

[schmosef]

I'm disappointed in Matrox. It's weird, but I feel let down in kind of a personal way.

I've owned or used every Matrox card since the original Millennium (with real-time Fong and Gouraud shading! How many people remember the nascar game they used to bundle? I played it for hours and hours.) I've even owned the M3D. I swear, I couldn't tell if it was working!

Matrox really built up the buzz before the P launch and then simply didn't deliver. I feel really bad for people like Haig, who have to put up a brave face when they know how much their bosses are screwing us end-users.

My next system is going to have an ATI part. I can upgrade the video card three times (over the life of my PC) for what Matrox charges for one of their sub-par products.

I'm tired of paying top dollar and not even getting midrange performance. Instead I get _explanations_:

"We don't support hardware fogging because we don't think we should be faking depth."

"We don't support bilinear filtering because it's ugly"

"We don't support (Someone help me here, I don't remember the feature in this case) because we have bumb mapping, which no one uses."

"We don't support hidden surface removal because we've got hardware displacment mapping, which no one uses."

There's more of these excuses than I can be bothered to remember and type. Everyone should feel free to chirp in with their personal favourites.

As a reseller, I know that Matrox has in the past severly pissed off the distribution industry. Back somewhere around the launch of the G200 or G400 they were delisted by the biggest distributor in Canada because they consistently failed to meet their shipping targets. My sales rep told me his product manager responsible for Matrox actually felt insulted because they never hit their ETAs and always had some BS song and dance for him.

That's my two cents. I wish I felt otherwise.

P.S. If Matrox was a publicly traded company, there would have been a shareholder revolt over the headcasting fiasco. Did the feature even sell one card?

P.P.S. For all its flaws, I still love my Parhelia. I have it hooked to one Sony F500R (21") and two Viewsonic P225f's (22"). The screens are uncomforably big for surround gaming but I make sure to show the reef demo to anyone who visits my office!

[magog]

Here is a german article about Matrox going the PCI-Express x16 way (seems to be translated from the Xbit site):

http://www.tweakpc.de/mehr_all.php?news_id=5079&s=0&s1=12

[Taylormade]

I have to agree with schmosef on this one. I do now own an ATI product, but for less than half the price and more performance, I don't miss my previous Matrox card.

There's always so much hype prior to the release of their products, and when they are finally released, they end up with something mediocre.

[borat]

ill be buying whatever is the best card out there when i next upgrade, its probably going to be in 2005 unless someone makes a decent DX9 triple head card before that, i like parhelia and 3 screens and if matrox released something akin to 9800 performance later this year id buy it, im realistic though, its not going to happen, we all know that, i wish they would release it because i mgoing to have to take a step back from 3 screens to 2 next year which is pretty poor really, but im not expecting a miracle from a company who doesnt give a dam about end consumers.

[schmosef]

You can still use 3 screens (kind of), even if you buy an ATI card.

I have a Parhelia in my AGP slot and a Radeon 7000 in a PCI slot.

I dual boot two versions of Windows XP; one for work, and one for gaming.

In my gaming OS, I have the Radeon disabled and use the Parhelia for SG gaming. I invariably turn off SG though because it gives me severe motion sickness (worse than when I first started playing descent!).

In my work OS, I have my PCI Radeon enabled and running at 1024x768 or 800x600 and my Parhelia in dual display mode each running at 1600x1200.

As a programmer, I like to keep one screen set to the way my end users are going to experience my software, and the other two I use for dev tools.

It works really well.

So although you can't do SG without Parhelia, you can certainly be very functional workwise without it because you can pair an ATI or nVidia AGP card with dual display and a regular PCI card.

[gorg]

There's more of these excuses than I can be bothered to remember and type. Everyone should feel free to chirp in with their personal favourites.

Who plays games anyway ? Well, I do, but not many of those are 3d. Not (only) because my G550 can't handle them but because 99% of them are crap. Even If I were in my teens and susceptible to advertisements and propaganda I would be smart to buy a PS2 instead. Maybe it's just me but I grew up with great games and find modern products rather boring and repetitive.

What I really want is a low profile (fanless), dual/triple head, moderetaly powerful gfx card with good support for Linux and MacOSX and great image clarity in CRT,TFT and TV.

P.S. If Matrox was a publicly traded company, there would have been a shareholder revolt over the headcasting fiasco. Did the feature even sell one card?

So you prefer ATI's and NVidia's meaningless heap of equivalent chipsets with weakly releases of new cards and drivers ?
Matrox as a company doesn't make money in the gaming sector and doesn't have to sell million of cards just to avoid going bust.