ant says no G800 announcement soon

[Rags]

Jorden,

Use your head. There is a difference between an employee who is unhappy with where he/she is working, and seeks out other avenues and when a company ACTIVELY goes to competitors employees and makes them offers of employment. Does this happen everyday? You bet. Is it right? Hell no. Do most get caught? Probably not. Did nVidia get caught? Looks like they did to me. Should those that get caught pay? Hell yes.

You don't need to give me any lessons on being in the "real world". I am quite aware of what goes on. But I don't think nvidia can come along and tell the court that presides over the case and say "We just wanted Matrox to be welcomed to the 'Real World'!", and expect to get off. It isn't gonna happen. They got caught, and should be punished. We shouldn't excuse this type of behavior. Industrial spying is what crushes innovation.

Rags



[This message has been edited by Rags (edited 17 September 2000).]

[superfly]

Rags,it isn't so much of a question of innovation anymore,since all these companies know what's possible to add to video card and this happens for at least 1 reason.

It's called direct x8,and all of the possible features that makers will add are alredy built in,which is,as you know,a standard that involves microsoft,game developers and video card makers.

And if matrox does go to the trouble of adding a little extra,they may have the same uphill battle they had with convincing developers to use environment bump mapping.

I'd perfectly settle for a card that could go toe to toe with anyone else's card by the time it's released.

[Brian R.]

I can't speak for the Matrox employees who left, but IMO, there is significantly more to chosing an employer than money and stock options. They way I'm treated at work and the work environment is as important as pay, or more so in fact.

[Greebe]

Sf, so what you're saying is that you don't care about features the others don't have (altho you may want) and instead take fps as your first priority everytime? How pathetic
It's not called DX8 and everyone (cept you) realise that. M$ doesn't say this is what you'll make and this is how we're going to do it. Nada, no chance, no way! Oh and don't forget that even tho Matrox may have had an uphill battle with EMBM, damn they're doing a lot better than Nvidiots pushing T&L in games!

To whomever,
Companies like Matrox (and a meriad of others) constantly push the threshold to innovate, do what ever they can to stand out in the crowd of the same old bs products. If it wasn't for this, then the market would become stagnant with copies upon copies of everything that's made. If industrial espionage were legalized, then nobody would try todo anything new, why would they, when it's OK for the competition to copy it and save 90% of developement cost? They'd lose their azz's. Profit from anothers blood, sweat, and tears is fine and dandy? Anyone whom makes comments like this are either ignorant, illiterate, or just simply a fool!

[Jorden]

True Matt, on two accounts: I wonder where my head is lately and "The real world" thingy, shouldn't have said it to you...

What I meant you worded perfectly, and Brian, you're right as well, no money in the world should be enough if you don't like what's happening around you and to you. I know that for I have seen it in my last job. Sometimes it was perfect, sometimes it was not.

Back to topic: Matrox's quality in making video-cards is unprecedented, if I may say so. People flocked to buying Matrox cards because of their outstanding 2D quality a couple of years ago. Today it's because of innovations they utilize in their cards, and the knowledge that with these innovations they lose raw speed, yet they bring these cards to the market. Do we need T&L in a next Matrox vidcard? I think not. It's old. Too many other cards in the world that have it, so if you want T&L, buy the other...

The new features in Dx8 will be utilized by a myriad of cards, one doing this, the other doing that, you name them. I don't really care what the next Matrox card will be doing, because I know it'll be good, and the demo will be astonishing eye-ball-dropping

Ofcourse, the first 3 months at minimum there will be no games on the market that utilize any new features of any new videocard coming out this Xmas, the drivers will be lacking "FPS fps-junky speeds" and the fori will be overwhelmed with people asking for help on their new videocard because it doesn't do what it says on the box...

Then after about 6 months, all exclaims cease, for then the rumors about the G1200 or G1600 start showing up on the fori, and the whole circus starts again

In the mean time, people will change jobs, everywhere in the world, including me I hope , and in the mean time, all I hope for is that I'll find the spell-checker Greebe is using when he writes his comments on the fori here (New age American language, Mike? )

Jord.

[Storm]

That's all true. Innovation is definitely more important than speed. One leads to another actually. (eg bumpmapping is a lot faster than simulating bumps with polygons) Apparently Matrox likes introducing various new featured into their products. That gives them the ability to beat the cards that get released after theirs. Yes Geforce2 is fast, but does it have the ever-so-useful DualHead? Nope. If it wasn't for the good features, Matrox would be out of business. Imagine the G400 without all of those.. it's a slow, outdated card.

T&L should be standard however. It's NOT hard to integrate it, so you might as well do it to save some CPU time. It's NOT a mind-blowing feature however, though NVidia tried proving otherwise.

For one thing, I'd like to see some HEAVY video support in the G800. HDTV decoding & full DVD hardware acceleration would be very nice. ATI has been the only one to concentrate on that aspect of videocards. Software codecs are worthless, no matter HOW you put it. Don't argue. You won't win. ^_^

-Storm-

[Greebe]

Storm, problem with hardware codecs is that they take forever to code and extremely expensive. With a typical update taking ~a month, just to find it messed something else up and then you'll have to start all over from scratch is just another reason they're on the way out.

The biggest reason to have them in the past was due to the low proformance of cpu's, which isn't true today. Software codecs will be the wave of the future, hasn't MadOnion proved that already?! (and it pains me to say that)

[Storm]

Too hard to code?? That's not a very good excuse. Using that logic Matrox will end up in the dust very quickly. Pricing -- well, you get what you pay for.

Have you ever tried playing an HD stream on your system under good MPEG-2 compression? No. The bitrate isn't something your HD can't handle, but the data itself will KILL your cpu. With nVidia and ATI having HDTV support, you'll probably want to start recording/playing that, unless you prefer crippled resolution. At 1920x1080 software won't even play that, recording is out of the question. Hardware video decoding is created precisely to save your CPU time and to balance out the systems so that you don't need to have a P4-2k to play a decent video stream. My point is that video is constantly developed as well, and as soon as a new standart appears, it won't be easy on your CPU, just like DVD when it appeared. MPEG is constantly developed. There is always a better mathematical way to handle video functions that will produce clearer sharper results, they aren't used because when applied to the video, your CPU won't be able to do it in realtime. Hardware compensates for that. It's as simple as that. More relevant to the topic, I don't expect Matrox to have full support for hardware video, but it would simply be another feature to add to the list, and given that all of the other manufacturers have those, it won't be a bad thing.

-Storm-

[Greebe]

Now who said it was too hard to do? It wasn't me!
Matrox isn't the only company going software, all Gcard manufactures are. The economics of it isn't feasable in todays market of cut throat pricing. Well unless you feel like dropping $350-400 for a new card every 6 months to maintain that 25% (just a guess) boost in OGL that all the fps counters out there are looking for. I'm so sure those will be a big seller (get real)! I especially don't think that'll be the case so the average user can play Q3 or Half-Life faster.

One must ask this, whom has the best 2D, Matrox, Whom has the best DVD and video output, Matrox. Whom has good D3D with more eye candy than anyother, Matrox. Whom has the most compatable and stable drivers, Matrox.

So what's the problem? (impatient youngin's!)

[dZeus]

Whom has the best DVD and video output, Matrox

G400 had no DVD support at all.. I hope the G800 has the same DVD support as the ATI Radeon (hw motion compensation and iDTC something )

[superfly]

I 'm not saying that i don't want OR care about new features,Greebe.

The point is that any new features that may show up in the G800 are alredy known to other card makers,because the dx standard.

The feature list of direct x8 has been pretty much decided on for quite some time.

Nnvidia's cards alredy supports features that will only get used with directx8,like vertex and pixel shaders and extra texture unit's.

And this is from a card that was alredy released in APRIL of this year.

That kind of proves my point,doesn't it?.

The same can be said then they were the first to have T.L,which was in developement well before the directx7 spec was finalised.

I wish it were matrox doing this,but it's not happening,now is it.

And if you read my previous post carefully,you'd see that i mentioned that the standard is between game developers,video card makers AND microsoft.

And your point about ebm being used more now that T.l is just plain wrong,i alredy have over 10 games that use t.l in varying degrees.

On one hand everybody is on Nvidias case(to put it politely)because they were the first to offer it,even if it still isn't as widely used as it could be.

On the other a lot of people want a special feature that only the G800 could possibly have over the others in order to distinguish itself from the competition.

[sarcastic mode]
So that the card would become obsolete before that new feature would be widely used in games???
[/sarcastic mode]

Like i said before,make a card that can go up against the competition and i'll a happy camper.

current cards(Gf2,radion)have alredy plenty of features,let's see if we see game developers make use of them fully before adding even more,shall we.

[Greebe]

DZ, Oh pardon WAH! Geesh, I'm talking image quality here. picky picky (shanking my head wondering why I even bother beta testing for Matrox when we have to deal with... (fill in the blank). Have you even seen DVD on all these cards and compared the image qualtiy?
BTW, Matrox has a warehouse full of DVD modules for the G200 that have never been sold. So why should they if all people do is complain they don't have it and then don't buy when they do! Makes perfect business sense to me, lets poop out another 10,000 units that'll goto waste. :\

SF, Do you remember me mentioning anything about loss of EE's to NV? Theft of patented info and the like? Did you know that Matrox is sueing NV over this? Nope, didn't think so. Additionally since Matrox isn't publically traded (thus funded) they do not have the virtually limitless capital to just throw at any 'Ol thing they please. They must carefully planned out and test every aspect of any new product beforehand privately. By doing it this way will insure anything "NEW" will be only be seen by the outside world thus minimizing copying of intellectual property by ones competition. I'm sure Matrox would love to talk more openly, but then we get right back to what I've already said.

Oh lest not forget features that won't be of ANY use well before anyone can actually use them. Yah, I'll pay for that! :\
BTW it's NOT EBM, it's EMBM and there are a butt ton more games supporting that!

You know it pains me to even bother telling any of you info we BB's do know. Guess I should just shut up and leave ya'll to whine since you already "know it all".

[Joel]

I agree. Why do we even tell them the little bit that we can, when we have to put up with this kind of s***? You guys should just be thankful for what little we can give you instead of always ridiculing us for not giving you more. I mean if Matrox's PR had their way about it then we wouldn't even be able to post here at all.

Joel

[This message has been edited by Joel (edited 17 September 2000).]

[Storm]

Greebe, who in their right mind is going to buy an addon for a card if the card Itself costs a fortune?? G400MAX was The most expensive videocard on the market when it came out. A DVD module would be considered a rip off. If Matrox wants to do motion compensation and iDCT along with hardware mpeg-2, they'll have to figure out a way to do it cheaper.

As for image quality, can imagine the kind you'd get if Matrox were to do it??

I agree on EMBM though, Matrox definitely proved their point there. HOWEVER, there is a very significant frame rate loss when it's enabled. Any new feature a manufacturer impliments has to be executed without killing the card! AA is excepted since it's only useful at low resolutions.

You guys should relax a little, this is a forum, hence there are arguments.. which may or may not be very good, but nevertheless. We all value the bits of info you provide every once in a while.

-Storm-

[Rags]

Guys, there is nothing that is going to change these people's minds. If a video card gets 165 fps and the other gets 135 fps, the one that gets 165 surely has to be better, right? That's what this 6 month product cycle is all about. It's not about releasing any market shaking features. It's about pleasing the little geek behind the keyboard who feels so insecure about himself that he needs to justify himself by getting a faster card than his buddy.

I don't care what you all think, but I believe that nvidia has yet to release any real new features/advancements as of yet in their whole GeSpot line. T&L that is debatable whether it has any benefit other than in synthetic benchmarks is not an advancement. And per pixel shading? Don't even get me started. They can do this with their original GeSpot. Nothing new here. TwinView?---the reviews speak for themselves.

I am still waiting to see the world to change, as they claimed it would from their "T&L". I still think there are better things to come in the T&L dep't around the corner than what nVidia has right now. And I think that eventually nVidia will get what's coming around the corner after they steal some more of Matrox's employees, or other mfrs employees.

I don't know about the G800, but I am sure anxious to see where big M is headed with their future parts.


Rags