Matrox Card this year?

[Tempest]

Don't you see, it's like the summer, the card will be (or maybe just run) HOT HOT HOT

Nah, what names are there for astronomical (especially sun-related) things during the summer? Or maybe he is referring to something else that will occur or become available during the summer? PCI Express?

[UtwigMU]

Matrox had first PCI graphic card (MGA ultima) and early jumped on AGP bus (G100).

I expect them to have PCI Express as soon as the boards come out.

[SpiralDragon]

summer is also HOT ...... does that mean the next M card will burn a whole thru our Mb or our pocket.. or both ....

[Peter Aragon]

Certainly hope we don't get burnt
But Haig sounds enthusiastic, I'm gonna take his word for it that it can be worth the wait...

[piaxVirus]

Since the Parhelia came close to maxing out the AGP bus for power draw, and in the past Matrox has prefered to remain spec compliant (not attaching a power plug). I see the next card having to be released for PCI-Express only with slower versions being released for AGP, PCI, and PCI-Express. If they have to add an external power source, I hope it is supplied from outside of the computer case.

Matrox history has proven that any new card will just be a Parhelia refresh, I can't see there being too many changes from the P. I sure hope that they can change the pipeline arrangement to 8x1 w/loopback, instead of trying to improve apon the 4x4 setup the P has.

[bsdgeek]

What would be neat (and potentially feasible) is 2 or 3 Parhelia+ (Gotta bolt on a few things like PS 2.0 and better AF) GPUs linked together on one die. 8x4, around 160 (probably a little bit more if Parhelia is to be feature enriched) million transistors would be in line with R420 and NV40 and doable.

[UtwigMU]

Based on this chart on Techreport, GPU makers generally didn't radically change texture units per pipe between their generations, except for original Radeon, which was 2x3 design.

Depends wether next gen card will be just a refresh or a radical change from Parhelia.

Going to more or less (as was shown by Millennium P-Series, various Radeons 9XXX and rumours about R420) pipelines is not that hard to achieve.

On the other hand PS2.0, loopback, better occlusion culling might represent more of a problem (bolting them on existing core).

Also considering that Ati's and nVidia's next gen are rumoured to be 12 or 16 pipelines chip...


On the other hand - considering there will be no molex or other power connector, 8-pipes card from Ati require one and 8-pipe Matrox GPU clocked normally for today's standards would either be AGP pro or borderline stable in AGP.

[Haig]

But Haig sounds enthusiastic, I'm gonna take his word for it that it can be worth the wait...

Don't do that, this isn't a next gen chip, it's a next product.

[UtwigMU]

You mean as the G450 and G550 weren't next gen chips compared to G400 or as Parhelia HR256 is a next product?

[Haig]

Yep.

[Kusa]

Originally posted by tjalfe
Codename Summer?

I just imagined the fan which Alpha Parhelia has...

[KvHagedorn]

Hmm.. looks like a debugged Parhelia fabbed on a smaller process.. perhaps that will lower power requirements and improve speed a bit.

[gt40]

repeat after me:
Vague.....Haig.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

@ gt40 LOL!!!!

so who's gonna photoshop the P into summer?

i.e. PCI-E and some flame sticker on the fan...

[UtwigMU]

Also, considering that R420 and nV40 are launching in mid April and hardware sites will be all over it for at least a week (the leaked performance numbers and specs are already flying arround 'net and they look impressive), Matrox might want to offset their launch a bit to catch some press.