Matrox drops the ball (again) with QID :(

[jbrooks]

So ... we all know the ridiculous limitations that were arbitrarily imposed on the P750 .... you could do double monitors at 1600x1200, but (for no good reason at all) they downgraded to 1280x1024 when in triple mode. I was a huge fan of this, because, you know, I was looking to totally waste the investment I made in my high end flat panels.

So now the QID ... the next step ... their chance to redeem themselves for their lame, unnecessary restrictions they arbitrarily put on the p750 ... and as expected, they did it again.

The max resolution on the QID is 1600x1200 on any and all outputs. I guess they didn't get the memo that high end displays are all moving to 1920x1200 now. Perhaps they thought HDTV was just a flash in the pan thing.

Well, matrox, you got me to waste my money on the p750 (and waste the entire useful life cycle of my three 1600x1200 monitors), but I am not falling for it a second time. I don't know what solution I am going to use for my 1920x1200s, but it won't be you, because I am sick of not using my hardware to its potential because you somehow think you'll make an extra buck somewhere by purposely downgrading your hardware.

Good riddance.

[schmosef]

Hey man, do what I did. Run two of your monitors on the P750 and get a PCI card to run the third.

I use a dual boot for triple head gaming. In the other boot I have the PCI card disabled and run all three card via my parhelia. My monitors have dual auto sensing inputs so I don't have to do any other fiddling when I reboot into the other OS.

I found triple head gaming gave me motion sickness, like when I first played descent. But the feeling never went away. These days I just stick to my Xbox and my 57" projection HDTV.

BTW, I feel your pain and frustration.

[jbrooks]

That's an interesting strategy - and I thank you. However, I cannot create a stretched, single desktop from two cards. The stretch desktop has to remain on a single GPU.

As a single stretched desktop is my primary application for the multi-head setup, this doesn't help

[Ribbit]

Re: Matrox drops the ball (again) with QID

Originally posted by jbrooks
So ... we all know the ridiculous limitations that were arbitrarily imposed on the P750 .... you could do double monitors at 1600x1200, but (for no good reason at all) they downgraded to 1280x1024 when in triple mode.

Is this true for the Parhelia and P8X as well? For both DVI and analog outputs?

[schmosef]

Originally posted by jbrooks
That's an interesting strategy - and I thank you. However, I cannot create a stretched, single desktop from two cards. The stretch desktop has to remain on a single GPU.

As a single stretched desktop is my primary application for the multi-head setup, this doesn't help

That's too bad. The only apps I know of that need a single stretched desktop are triple head games, and I don't run them at high rez anyway. All the apps I use work just fine via independant mode.

[DGhost]

Re: Re: Matrox drops the ball (again) with QID

Originally posted by Ribbit
Is this true for the Parhelia and P8X as well? For both DVI and analog outputs?

yup. last i checked, it was a hardware limitation of the external DAC that Matrox had to add to power the 3rd display.

dunno about the QID though. not sure why it would only support 1600x1200, even on analog.

[rylan]

Cheaper dacs

[spadnos]

That sounds odd for the QID.

I thought one of the selling points was that it could drive the IBM T220, which is 3840x2400 (split into quadrants of 1920x1200).

- Steve

[jbrooks]

Originally posted by spadnos
That sounds odd for the QID.

I thought one of the selling points was that it could drive the IBM T220, which is 3840x2400 (split into quadrants of 1920x1200).

- Steve

No, you're thinking of this:

http://matrox.com/mga/products/p_hr256/home.cfm

The HR 256 Parhelia.

[Kurt]

That's the problem of using the same chip on the whole range...ppl think they're the same boards...whereas there might actually be differences on the boards that would justifiy the price difference, other than a software limitation.

[Mikko]

Originally posted by Kurt
That's the problem of using the same chip on the whole range...ppl think they're the same boards...whereas there might actually be differences on the boards that would justifiy the price difference, other than a software limitation.

This has always been some sort of problem, but not only with Matrox cards. For example, NVidia Geforce4 MX cards are usually slower than GeForce2 or GeForce3 cards. I would quess that there are a lot of disappointed people out there, that have found out their new "next-generation card" is actually slower than a card they already had! You can check out this comparison and look at the names on a list. You can't seem to trust anything...

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/over2003/index.html

[Maggi]

Re: Matrox drops the ball (again) with QID

Originally posted by jbrooks
... (for no good reason at all) they downgraded to 1280x1024 when in triple mode. I was a huge fan of this, because, you know, I was looking to totally waste the investment I made in my high end flat panels....

all gfx cards that I know of are limited to a max viewport size of 4096 pixels, so that "limitation" is not really surprising to me.

I guess, in theorie you could setup a custom resolution for triple head at 1344x1008, but I doubt that it'll be anywhere near to being optimized from a driver's point of view.