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**Rags** · 20 April 2001, 20:03

**rylan** · 21 April 2001, 12:19

RAB, I have to agree with ya.

**Rags** · 21 April 2001, 12:40

Okay, let's address this piss-out piece by piece.

Matrox lost all its good hardware and software developers to NVIDIA last year, so now they are trying to pretend they never intended to be in the gamers market.

Hmmm, if I remember correctly, what I read was that Matrox lost some engineers that were responsible for designing Dual Head implementations, and a few doing EMBM work. Well, it looks like the engineers they did manage to steal are the ones who were responsible for the GeSpot Mx twinview. Looks like nVidia was more interested in the non gaming features Matrox had, rather than the gaming features. So, therefore, I think your statement is false.

"we screwed up big time this year by losing all our talent to NVIDIA, so give us a year or two to recover and maybe then we will be back in the gamers market - if we can find some talent somewhere."

That is complete FUD.

Matrox is trying its best to make a lie presentable.

Where did they lie? Looks like they outlined pretty well what keeps their company afloat. Just because you don't like doesn't mean jack.

They had every intension of keeping up with NVIDIA.

How do you come to this conclusion?

They need to keep up with NVIDIA because we all know that innovation doesn't come from the business market - it only comes from the gaming and animation markets.

I don't think that Matrox has ever had a real problem with innovation, and they seem to have never really catered to the gaming market, even with the G400, they weren't aiming at the gamers for the most part.

Saying that the money is in business and OEM deals makes as much long term profit sense as Henry Ford's famous saying "You can have any color Ford you want - so long as is black."

Saying that the money is in the OEM and business sector is being truthful. Matrox will find a way to keep those markets. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean a thing. I am sure the owners of Matrox aren't really interested in losing money, so rest assured they will do whatever it takes to remain profitable. Remember they have been doing this much longer than any other gfx card company out there.

My guess is that my Radeon is already faster than the G550 and almost as pretty. I guess it might be time to look elsewhere. And as a Mystique, G200 and G400 owner and a "faithful" MURCER since 1998 that's an awful hard thing to say.

Well you are rather messed up with your reasoning. You already purchased a Radeon, so what's your whole point? Is it for the heart string effect?

I truly wish Matrox had not been so cheap as to lose its good designers to the competition, but that was a poor management decision we will all have to live with.

You don't even know how they lost their employees, so don't go making stupid statements. What if the fact was that nVidia had been seeking employees actively from within Matrox? And offering insane amounts of money to get them to move over there? Do you think that Matrox would have known about this until it was too late? Do you really believe that Matrox had a chance to counter nVidiot's offers? Do you think it's a kosher thing to be doing? Do you think it's legal? Maybe the answer to all these questions is a resounding NO!, it makes your statement very flimsy.

Rags

**Jorden** · 21 April 2001, 12:45

Matt

**Joel** · 21 April 2001, 13:26

Without inovation, a tech company's long term outlook is questionable. Saying that the money is in business and OEM deals makes as much long term profit sense as Henry Ford's famous saying "You can have any color Ford you want - so long as is black."

I guess being in business for 25 years and profitable all those years doesn't mean anything does it?

Also considering that the hardcore gaming market only accounts for 2.72% of the current PC market, I think staying with the "business and OEM deals" is good business sense. Plus the fact that they have been in business for 25 years shows they are doing something right. I don't think Matrox will be going anywhere soon. BTW have you ever thought that maybe that they are just trying to catch nVidia off guard.

Oh ye of little faith.

Joel

**Gurm** · 21 April 2001, 14:20

It's not like other companies haven't done this. ATI had decidedly middle of the road cards for years and years, and finally has a winner with the Radeon.

They too were focused almost exclusively on their business and OEM solutions.

Then they finally saw a chance to jump ahead and did so.

But for years they made a niche by having very solid cards that had better video playback than anyone else. Then the Rage128 came out and while it wasn't fast by any stretch of the imagination, it had features (less terrible 32-bit with nice colors) that no other card had.

Is this sounding familiar?

They then foundered with several useless revisions of the Rage128 (Rage128 Pro, MAXX, Rage128 LE, etc.) until finally, a couple years later, we get the Radeon.

Sounds a lot like Matrox.

I wish everyone would keep their shirts on. I can say with a fair degree of certainty (wink) that this whole rant is based on BS. No offense, RAB.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

**HollyBerri** · 21 April 2001, 14:56

Saying that the money is in business and OEM deals makes as much long term profit sense as Henry Ford's famous saying "You can have any color Ford you want - so long as is black."

So why do you think ATI is still in the market, exactly? Did I somehow miss the Rage 128/Rage Pro/Rage Fury/Xpert cards being such hot gaming/2D cards that end-users were snapping them up faster than Voodoo 2s?

I don't think so.

They had (and I guess still have) huge OEM deals, imo at least as big if not bigger than the ones S3/Virge used to have before ATI proved itself to be a more satisfactory option (compared to an S3/Virge chip, anyway).

I agree that the news of the G550 is pretty disappointing. I agree that something must not have worked out as planned, since the G550 doesn't much sound like a worthwhile upgrade to the MAX, and the (hopefully) worthwhile upgrade is not projected until next year-- which will make it over a year and a half late on the upgrade curve for me. I do agree that's pretty far behind for the consumer market, even if you aren't an fps junkie.

However, there isn't all that much room on the top of the consumer heap (since mostly only gamers go out and buy a video card upgrade), and most all that space is taken up by the nVIDIA/ATI/(3dfx) warzone. The average-Joe consumer is probably buying a branded PC, and there's a lot more money in getting your video chip in every Compaq or HP or Dell PC than there is in waiting for us gamers to scrape up some $200-$400 USD just to play Black & White. Heck, if I could feel that a Compaq or HP PC would actually have quality parts like a Matrox chip (and a real modem and sound card, not to mention a decent mobo), I'd buy one too, and stop driving myself crazy building my own.

I've always said that we gamers are far from Matrox's core market-- those who are doing CAD and professional video work are a lot closer-- and even they are not closer because they're consumers. They're closer because the companies they do that work for are closer to the core market, and those companies buy in large quantities. It's just that some of those employees recognize and appreciate the video cards and get them on their own.

I'm not offended that I/we as a very select group of consumers get what are essentially the crumbs off of the Matrox table. For crumbs, they're awful tasty, and I'm glad they even share them with me/us. It does change my upgrade strategy radically though-- I figure I'll let Jord get himself a G550 and I'll just upgrade my CPU to something on the distant edge of acceptable, and hope that'll hold me until the so-called "G1000".

Jumping ship is still a possibility, naturally (it's a long time, after all), but I really like Matrox cards, and I don't much want to get a new brand that I might be disappointed in until I at least see what's coming along from them in the future.

-----------------------------
Holly

[This message has been edited by HollyBerri (edited 21 April 2001).]

**cbman** · 21 April 2001, 16:33

Hey Holly

Good plan... you sound like my fiancee when she is talking to her mom..

"Oh no mom.. don't give me the money for it... I will just make Charles Buy it and if I don't like it I can just say -Hey you bought it-...

(BTW.. its a joke... not real)

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Canadian... Hell Ya!!!

[This message has been edited by cbman (edited 22 April 2001).]

**Admiral** · 21 April 2001, 17:26

As much as I don't like Matrox's thinking (playing too much games to like it), if I were in their place I'd do the same.
Though nobody asked them to stick to a 6 month cycle for the gaming market. Try 12 months, even 18 but stick to it. My card is 18 months old now (the G400 technology is what ? 24 months old ?) and can still perform decent in most games.
Every 18 months release a card that's the fastest on the market to insure that after the next 18 it can still perform and all's fine.

There's another part that I didn't like. Why they didn't release a G450 with an 128 bit memory bus to fill the gaming gap a bit. Clock the core to something between 160 and 180 and the memory between 170 and 200 and give the GTS a bit of competition.
Wait a sec, maybe that's what they'll do with the G550 and also add some T&L capability and other stuff, though it's a bit late, don't you think ?
It could mean a further delay of the G800 to have time to make a profit out of the G550 ? Or pricing the G550 lower (a low end or medium end market sollution) to keep on schedule with the G800 (high end)?

**Jorden** · 21 April 2001, 17:45

Andrei, with the G800 now (un)officially dead, we're going onto the next plane. Be it the G600 or G1100, or the Rising Eagle, it should be a cracker

Although I doubt the "being king's of 3D again" statement, for I wonder when Matrox ever was king of 3D? Not the m3d disaster, I hope? It was my m3d that got me searching on the internet, and I stranded onto MURC, and look what it brought me

Jord.

**RAB** · 21 April 2001, 18:30

Guys and Gals,
Please don't take my comments too hard. I'm still very much a Matrox fan, just a disappointed one at this time. And I was doubly disappointed when it looked to me like Matrox was covering up that fact that they were way behind the curve and not expecting to catch up anytime soon.

I hope they do catch up because I'm in no way in love with the Radeon. Their drivers still cause more trouble than anything Matrox ever made. But it just doesn't make sense right now to pair a new 1.3 gig Athlon with what I expect the G550 will be. I hope I'm wrong.

I'll continue to post in these fori because they are the most intelligent hardware/video discussions I can find. And I hope I'll keep my G400 in use for several more years. Its a very good card.

RAB

**Gurm** · 21 April 2001, 21:40

Why not pair a new Athlon with what the G550 will be?

*** NOTE TO ZEALOUS MATROX-TYPES... THE FOLLOWING IS MY OWN CONJECTURE AND IN NO WAY VIOLATES ANYTHING ***

It'll be substantially faster than the G400. That's good, right? Cuz I haven't got any games that aren't fast enough on the G400. Oh, sure. There are a few that are pushing it. Black and White is kinda chunky at high resolutions...

But 90+% of games run fine on a G400. Give me a little speed kick and I'll be fine.

T&L? Who gives a flying f**k? It useless, unused, and shows no sign of being used any time soon (and note that of nShitia's cards, only the GeFart 3 - at a price tag of $500+ - supports DX8 T&L, which is the only T&L anyone will use)...

Oh, wait. I get it... you're an FPS kiddie, aren't you?

Everyone bailing on the G400 really boils down to one group - FPS kiddiez.

I know, I have in the past THREATENED to bail. Of course, I'm a loudmouth... so I actually got a response out of Matrox, and a bunch of OpenGL bugs got fixed. Now, with the ICD pretty complete and the drivers solid and stable, why would I switch?

No other card gives me flawless Win2k SMP support.

No other card has a working stable ICD (nShitia doesn't count, they break theirs on a semi-weekly basis).

No other card gives me top-notch display quality, sparing my overworked and underpaid eyes.

So why exactly would a card with a couple new features and a hefty speed boost over the G400 _not_ be a good thing?

Just because it's not a Gee-F**k3 killer doesn't mean that it's not a good card.

Heavens.

- Gurm

P.S. Yeah, I'm also trying out a Kyro2 in a couple weeks. *shrug* I'll probably switch back to the G400. I usually do. Something about SMP, Win2k, and Photoshop...

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

**rylan** · 22 April 2001, 00:13

I don't think there are very many 'FPS kiddies' here, since they would've switched over to differant cards quite a while ago. We're not looking for a "Gee-F**k3 killer", but we don't want a card thats going to be at the low-end of the current performance scale when it finalyl shows up.

I think its kinda funny how a lot of people keep said that M has been profitable since they were formed. In reality, that doesn't mean anything for the future. The graphics card market has changed _considerably_ in the past few years. There used to be a very broad range of card developers/manufacturers.. now its just down to a few. Yes, we know Matrox isn't going for the tiny hardcore gamers market, and I don't have anything wrong with that. However, it seems to me that something just isn't right over at Matrox.. its been a long time (what, around 2 years now? ) since the G400 was released.. so about 2 years without a next-gen core (No, the G450 isn't a next gen core.. its pretty much a die shrink on the G400 that performs slower). More news/rumors abot the 'G800' biting the dust, and the 'G550' probably entering at the low-end of the performance scale. They've been using their old technology to try to beef up their multi monitor product line (G200MMS).

Yes, lots of money is in the OEM/buisness sector. However, those OEM contracts don't renew themselves, and without new substantially new technology, I can't see Matrox sustaining their OEM buisness. As mentioned, most of the PCs you see on the market now don't have a Matrox card/chip in them, whereas a couple years quite a few did (G400s, integrated G200s etc).
You see, even the big OEMs like to bundle cards that are 'up to date' with power and features, and with a reasonable price.

**Gurm** · 22 April 2001, 06:21

At this point I can only speculate on what the future holds, Holly. But from what I've seen posted here and elsewhere, I'd say that the G550 is _looking_ like an entirely new core, albeit the business model of said core. But if the business model of said core has half again the speed of a G400... that's enough for me. Even if it were only... say... 33% faster... I'd still get it.

In terms of new functionality, that's been hashed over. Anything beyond what's been discussed here is, of course, off-limits for me to talk about.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

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The two Matrox "interviews"

The two Matrox "interviews"

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