G400 vs G550? Whats the difference

[James Loudon]

I have just replaced my G550 with a P650 - now I have to decide whether to flog the 550 on eBay or to put it into my other PC which is currently sporting a G400. Is there really any difference between the two, apart from the fact that the G550 has a digital output on one port?
There does not seem to be a comparison chart at Matrox.
Opinions please!

[Tjalfe]

the G550 has headcasting and not as good TV out as the G400

[schmosef]

Oh man, Headcasting!

Wouldn't want to give that up.

Seriously, I've asked this many times. Has anyone ever used Headcasting? Once?

[Nowhere]

The best thing is that I had read somewhere (/. perhaps?) early rumors about G550 and Headcasting...with the comments that people at Matrox must be laughing their heads off while reading such rumors

But the general idea isn't bad...it's just poorly implemented...

[schmosef]

I have no idea how it was "implemented". And that's saying something.

As a chronic procrastinator, I'm always looking for new ways to kill time before I have to buckle down with work.

And yet I've never been able to justify spending time on headcasting.

I have a new theory:

Since I've asked many times whether anyone has ever used it. And since no one has ever responded in the affirmative. I now believe that it never worked. It was vapourware!

I think that it was something that the Matrox marketing team made up because they needed to advertise some "new" feature in their otherwise less performant flagship card. But that the feature needed to be so obscure and ridiculous that no one would use it. Or even try to use it.

We just assumed it was there because Matrox said it was there. But those of us who've been around the block with Matrox before know that not everything they promise is true.

So why should we assume that this worked? We shouldn't!

I hereby declare that the Headcasting feature NEVER existed on anything but paper!

Prove me wrong...

[Mehen]

yeah, can someone with a G550 actually TRY headcasting, and post some screens of it in action

[Nowhere]

Uhmm...but what if it turns out to be GREAT?! And here were we, bashing Matrox for all those years...



(schmosef, and by idea I mean more broad thing: transmitting not the face but its low bandwith equivalent; but Matrox did it poorly, aproximating all animations from voice only - what's the gain? No additional info transimtted after all... Now if somebody would scan faces with a webcam and transmit coordinates of few crucial points...)

[schmosef]

Somehow, I doubt that there's any risk of that!

[Kruzin]

To actually answer the original question...
G400 is in most (analog) cases better than G550.
G400 is faster in 3D, and has an external Maven chip that gives it far superior TV-Out.
The only thing G550 does better over G400 is DVI and a higher max res/refresh on the secondary head.

BTW, headcasting does (did) work. Back in the BB days, we got to send in our pictures, have them scanned and set up for free, and tested headcasting. Boy, did we have fun with that one

[James Loudon]

Thanks for the info Kruzin. I decided to keep the G400 - that machine is only running single head anyway, and this is a CRT only zone.

Apart from my Powerbook.

[Maggi]

Also the memory bus from the G550 got cut in half to 64bit, while the G400 had 128bits width ... not to mentioned the severly broken EMBM on the G550 !!!

[Nowhere]

Which was slower anyway...

[SteveC]

BTW, headcasting does (did) work. Back in the BB days, we got to send in our pictures, have them scanned and set up for free, and tested headcasting. Boy, did we have fun with that one

Did we? yeah we had fun laughing at it, not sure actually using it But I confirm - headcasting did (does) work. Would have been great if the internet was still accessed on 14.4k modems or something, but considering video conf over a 56k modem's still better than headcasting.

Or you can use it to make your friend's head say something stupid (but not really get away with it!)

[Nowhere]

Oh I don't know, the general idea might be fun/usefull...

Imagine:
Let us add a webcam to the equation that scans your face, analyzises it and trasmits coordinates of few crucial points.

Why this would be better sometimes than transmitting of video?
- because people often don't want to be seen. But if their facial expressions (and therefore emotions) were displayed by some cartoonish character (I'd like to be portrayed as Bruce from Finding Nemo ), video conferencing would see much bigger usage, and at the same time wouldn't be that much centered about transimitting of video, so perhaps people would use it when doing something else...
- and also bandwith. Some people use GPRS. Some have slow connections, still. Some want to do other things with their connection while conferencing.
- other than conferencing usage. For example, in IM, when you hit enter, you faced is scanned, analised and displayed similarly as above, by some character. Why not simply taking photo at this moment? As I've said, many people wouldn't like it.