So long R0M and Surround Gaming...

[magog]

Originally posted by Zao
If one looks at his profile on their forum, it lists him as being in Developer Relations.
If it's true, we might get answers when mailing devrel

LOL and ROTFL
Good point!

Originally posted by SitFlyer
Does this mean, I should hold off on upgading my triple head displays?

Maybe better, but maybe you can also use them for your work.

[Rags]

Originally posted by thop
No, i think Rags understood it.

I was pretty sure I did, but you are convultuted with english at times.

Now that I know what you meant, you are full of it. The beta testers have had the harshest criticism towards Matrox of all users and it's always been that way.

Rags

[Admiral]

The beta testers have had the harshest criticism towards Matrox of all users and it's always been that way.

Maybe you did, but that was in your dealings inside the beta testing program. When it came to this forum I remember people being slamed for the slightest critique made to Matrox. Now after the program got canned some of you turned into the most passionate open critics of M.

[Rags]

Originally posted by Admiral
Maybe you did, but that was in your dealings inside the beta testing program. When it came to this forum I remember people being slamed for the slightest critique made to Matrox. Now after the program got canned some of you turned into the most passionate open critics of M.

Show me the slams. The only time I saw anything heated is when a critique that was made without full knowledge of what they were saying. It changes one's perspective once they know the full story.

Again, the testers have ALWAYS been open with criticism to Matrox.

Rags

[djroberts]

Whut in tarnation is a BB??? Huh?

[Belwarrior]

BetaBoys?

actually Beta Testers for matrox products.. essentially guys who get to play with Matrox stuff to their hearts content and get to keep them in return for finding out bugs.. while the people like me have to fork out our life savings to buy a Matrox product

[IM_Riktar]

Ok I realize that this thread is pretty old but I have just gotten around to reading it. My visits to this forum have been reduced greatly since I only have one Matrox card in my systems.

While I can understand the move done on Matrox based on Market studies of gaming there is one point you folks at M may want to consider:

2D quality. It has been your greatest strength for some time now. While everybody else has been going for 3D FPS and eye candy you have remained the kings of 2D and Multi-displays.

It has been awhile since I have looked at the latest offerings from ATI but from past experience I have seen the gap closing to your level of 2D. My Parhelia still beats the ATI cards but not by as much the G200/4xx/550 days when ATI and Nvidia's offering at the time gave me headaches. I will predict that the gap between 2D quality and multihead will continue to shrink in the future. And we are talking about CRT analog displays. I am curious how much better your 2D is on a digital LCD panel. Maybe I will have to check that out.

So let's assume that I am correct about the 2D advantage being reduced. At what point are folks going to say: Matrox is better, but I can get nearly the same or equal quality 2D for less money with better 3D performance?

While gamers now represent a minimal percentage of buyers, the amount of people who buy just home computers as well as (I think) business users are going to eventually recognize that the one area (2D/multihead) they looked at can be served by other companies for less money with better performance.

Or at the very least they will concede the minimal 2D performance differences for the dollar savings. And these folks do play games from time to time. Maybe not enough to sway their buying decisions now, but with the primary concerns of everyday (2D/multihead) performance being nearly equal with less $$$ going out and the ability for the card to have better 3D performance guess who is going to get the sale.

I don't have access to market studies to back this up. It's just my thoughts. Maybe I am wrong. I don't have a background in retail sales/marketing. I am just the average joe who helps fill you bottom line. I wonder how many other folks will take my stance in the near future.

Do you really think you can save money in the long run by cutting costs in the present manner you are employing?

Time will tell.

Riktar

PS: Thanks for the cards of the past that I bought from your company. They served me well.

[WaltC]

Originally posted by Chrono_Wanderer
[B]Hey Matrox

Way to anger your customers and scare your clients away with that poor post-purchase supports of yours, and not to buy your future products.

Look at ATI / nVIDIA... dispute the fact that they cheat in drivers, they do add more functions to the graphics cards... their support is why I buy their cards after the G550.

ATi, believe it or not, in the last 18 months has gone out of its way not to cheat. But let's define "cheating":

Cheating: Optimizing for 3d benchmarks of various descriptions in order to produce frame-rate scores incongruent with the product's actual performance when running real 3d games.

By that definition, the only company "cheating" these days, and boasting about it, is nVidia. Trust me: I dumped nVidia over 18 months ago for a 9700P, then last May I was so pleased with that I bought a 9800P which I still have. Dumping nVidia was the best thing I've done in years...

I'm very pleased with ATi's driver support and 3d image quality. Right now ATi's 3d IQ is second to none, and that includes Matrox, IMO. I'll grab up the next high-end ATi 3d card in a skinny, without a moment's hesitation.

Boy, I am never getting anymore Matrox products again, until you guys get things right (something you guys lacked for ~5 whole years). And even if you guys do, I am going to have doubts buying your products, seeing the amount of crap you guys made

Let's face it, it took ATI literally years to have better repetitions in their drivers. VIA... don't bother... their repetitions suck so much that I am going going to have REAL doubts to even CONSIDER buying mobos based on their chipsets.

The real story with ATi a couple of years ago was its $400M acquisition of ArtX--not only the technologies, but mainly its people. ATi had the guts to look inside itself and see that something was rotten in Denmark, but far more importantly, the company had the audacity to actually do something about it. The result is that for the past 18 months the list of things ATi's done right is miles long and what they've done wrong is microscopic by comparison.

That takes a lot of courage and not every company can do that. Most cannot, actually. 3dfx could not do it. Matrox hasn't been able to do it, and nVidia does not seem to have learned much of anything in the last year of getting its brains bashed in by ATi in the 3d-chip market sectors (losing the xBox2 graphics contract to ATi, and many other things too numerous to mention.)

ATi's success story of the last couple of years is unfortunately the exception rather than the rule.

Geez, get something right damn it! (and why do I even care anymore)

P.S.

HAIG for prez.
Soupy for vice-prez.
ROM for Matrox Police and cheif RSN engineer

Best advice: never be loyal to a company. Be loyal to products, instead. Consumers always come out better that way. If you do it that way then the company getting and retaining your loyalty must earn it through its products, and that's best for everyone in the end.

[G400SG16mb]

Matrox... what are you doing... why would anyone buy one of your cards if they can't do 3D... If it's pure professional 2D you're concentrating on, you can never compete with 3DLabs... What happened to the days of the Matrox G400, everything has been downhill since then. The Parhelia has been out for almost 2 years with the same speed and same incredable pricetag.