How long can M last with just 2d?

[rugger]

The G550 is NOT a great card

The G450 and the G550 are NOT great cards, sheeze. They are virtually no more advanced in any way than a G400 dual-head. I am sick of hearing brainwashed people defending matrox over G400 re-re-re-releases.

The G550 may be a meaningful upgrade for a G200 user (I am not sure why though, the G200 is fine for most 2d work), but it aint making me run for the shops.

[Rags]

Re: The G550 is NOT a great card

The G450 and the G550 are NOT great cards, sheeze. They are virtually no more advanced in any way than a G400 dual-head.

Maybe for what you are looking for, but for a lot of people, the G450 was a good move. More dualhead features, much cheaper price, best drivers overall, and better resolution support. Not a gamers card at all when compared to the new cards, but most people don't need the 3D power, especially at that price point, and with the features they were focusing on. It's all about the OEMs.

I am sick of hearing brainwashed people defending matrox over G400 re-re-re-releases.

You mean you really can't debate their points. No one said "oh yeah, that G550 is sooo awesome, you need to upgrade your G400 with one". It's not about that at all.

The G550 may be a meaningful upgrade for a G200 user (I am not sure why though, the G200 is fine for most 2d work), but it aint making me run for the shops.

Sure. Unless you need dualhead, better 3D support, DVI support, etc. Waitaminute. I don't see your point.

Rags

[rugger]

Rags:

It took matrox a whole year to intergrate the second RAMDAC (and give it a small upgrade) and release the G450. It might have been a good move, but it certainly doesn't make the G450 a great card. And don't the new dual-head features also work on the G400? Even the matrox driver people are doing better than the hardware people. (Getting true duel-head in Win2000 was a great peice of art, outdoing any hardware they have released in the last 2 years)

[Helevitia]

rugger has a point. I agree with him that we've heard "matrox is coming out with something real soon" and we were lead to believe it would some sort of great gaming card. On the other hand, Matrox never said the G550 would be a great gaming card. That being said, it is very disappointing to wait more than 2 years and find out that your hopes have come to a G550. You could argue that "matrox is a private company" and "they can do as they damn well please" because they are a private company, but the truth is, they have lost a lot of retail customers because of the time in between.
The last thing I'll say(and I think this is true for all people that come to murc), we all hope that they will come out with some miracle card in the future because, like it or not, we all love the visiual quality we've come to expect, the drivers that, to me, have out done the Radeon(only card I can compare to), and maybe not so noticable to some, but I really notice that 3D games are much more smoother than on the Radeon. Even newer games. I have sensitive eyes and I can notice anythign such as refresh rate(god, this is the worst), smoothness, visual quality, driver quality, etc...
So i think the bottom line is, Matrox have disappointed a lot of people by waiting so long and the longer that time goes by, the more people they will lose. Funny part is, I know when and if they come out with some new gaming card, a shitload of people will jump back on the Matrxo bandwagon I know I will

Dave

[GT98]

I agree 100% with rugger's comments...Matrox has spent the past two years upgrading the G4XX core, and the only real people who have benifited have been Matrox, because the only thing they did was make the card cheaper to make while not offering all that much in Major inprovements to customer. If you look at OEM sales(I envision OEM sales as computers sitting at sectaries desks etc, not in a CAD envoriment etc)...well they dont really need Dualhead (though this is a neat feature) or even 3D acceleration. I know that Matrox's 2d quaitly is second to none (which I have missed since taking my G400MAX out), but to tell you the true a shitty old ATI rage card would work fine in this situtation, and would probaly alot cheaper. I wouldn't be bitching as much if Matrox came out with a new core every two years with a major improvement in that core every year to hold you over till the new one came out....

I've been really happy with my G200 Marvel and my G400 MAX I had in my computer, but I'm pissed that they dont offer anything now that fits my needs , and releasing something like the G550 adds insult to injury after waiting so long for something to come that can compete with ATI and Nvidia for my needs.

Scott

[Joel]

Matrox has spent the past two years upgrading the G4XX core,

Who says that is all Matrox has been doing for the past 2 years???

Joel

[Rags]

Pissed? Insult to injury?

Get a grip guys. It is just a video card.

Sheesh, you would think it was your brother's bride or something by the way some of you are talking.

Rags

[GT98]

I'm not taking anything personally with Matrox...just that I'm bored at work and need to blow off some steam

Scott

[KvHagedorn]

Look at it this way, everyone.. of course they are going to come out with something new and great. It's just a matter of time. Unfortunately, I think the whole episode where nVidia enticed a bunch of engineers away from Matrox hurt their timeline a bit. But if a company is going to maintain any kind of leadership status in this industry, they aren't going to rest on their laurels. It just stands to reason. Eventually they will have something awesome again. When whatever it is comes out, it will probably be way better than anything else at the time, which is a good thing, because unfortunately it seems to take them much longer to go from generation to generation than other companies.

[Jammrock]

How long can Matrox survive in the 2D arena alone...uh...a long @$$ time. Ever heard of a company called ATi? They're consumer\performance 3D sales have sucked until the Readon cards hit. They did okay, but nothing spectacular. But who cares about ATi you say? ATi is actually the #1 video card seller in the world and has been for the past 3-4 years.

How might you ask? OEM business sales...that, my fine feathered friends, is were ALL the big money in computers is. Retail and consumer sales are chump change compared sales made to Tier 1 OEM's. The G450/550 are top notch BUSINESS cards. For gaming, it depends on your preferences.

If you like your games to run at 192 fps and don't really care how pretty it looks, get a GeForce 3 or Raedon 8500. If want a good mix of video quality and performance, I'd go with a Kyro II card (like I did with my Hercules Prophet 4500). And if you want hands down the best 2D/3D image possible and don't really care about fps (as long as it runs at a decent speed), you get a Matrox card. Plain and simple.

So how long can M survive without having a serious entry in the performance 3D arena? For as long as they can sell G450/550's to tier 1 OEM's. And since they have dozens of OEM contracts, including several tier 1's, pretty much as long as they want.

Jammrock

[omegaRED]

Do i need to do this again? IT IS ALLRIGHT TO BUY ANOTHER CARD!!! If your G4XX doesnt lift your skirt anymore, go buy a Radeon/KyroII/GeForce2/3 ...

Matrox doesnt have to satisfy everybody`s needs ... if it doesnt do that for you, find a card that will. That simple.

As Rags said, its just a video card ...

Why does the bitching still go on ...

[Gurm]

To (sort of) answer Rugger's original question:

If there are some people who know some things, they can't say those things.

This has been explained before, but I guess you missed it.

My personal guess is that the "great stuff" that all the BB's predicted got pushed back when the nVidia fiasco went down (as someone else in here said a few posts back). It's still in the pipeline (and quite obviously ISN'T the G550), but the release date is unclear (like everything else from Matrox).

And if there are people (ahem) who know what is coming and what it will do and when it will arrive (and there may or may not be, I can't really say), they can't talk about it. Capece?

- Gurm

[Guru]

I don't understand what all this wining is about if your only play games on your computer don't buy a Matrox card it's as simple as that! Bether yet sell the damn computer and get a ps2!

Most (ok propably 90%) people don't care about how many Nvidiot marks card XXX gets!!!

Most people use their computers for work ms office, graphics work, accounting software etc. and they could not care less about how many damn nVidiot marks a GayFart 5 gets! The thing these people want is a good cheap card that will not make their eyes hurt after writing a 20 page document in word (nVidiot) or crash twice a day becouse of badly writen drivers(Ati)! They want crisp image quality at all resolutions they want an easy to use and set up card wit easy driver updates available trough windowsupdate (not that its nessesary most of the time)!

Then we have the proffesional users that may need to use 2 monitors at the same time no other card then the Matrox G4/5xx series offers the same flexibility and ease of use as the Matrox cards!

Now lets not eaven start to talk about the dvi output quality on the different cards!

No you may say "but the Gayfarce is much faster in cad the the Matrox card"!!! So fvcking what! The gayfart cost how much more??? And at what resolution are you going to use that 1024*768 16bit 75Hz? I dont think so! If you are looking for speed in cad aplications etc. you will not buy an Nvidiot (unless you are one yourself!) No you'll get a real cad card!

No you may wonder how much expiriense I have with for example Nvidiot, Ati, s3 etc. cards! The answer is a lot i have set up almost every type of graphics card that has been on the market for the last 7 or 8 years (exept the Kyro I or II )and I have yet to find one that equals the Matrox cards both in quality and ease to set up and use!

Oh and how long is the warenty time on most OEM GayFarts!

There I have said it!

[Indiana]

Originally posted by Guru
I don't understand what all this wining is about if your only play games on your computer don't buy a Matrox card it's as simple as that! Bether yet sell the damn computer and get a ps2!
Most (ok propably 90%) people don't care about how many Nvidiot marks card XXX gets!!!

Most people use their computers for work ms office, graphics work, accounting software etc. and they could not care less about how many damn nVidiot marks a GayFart 5 gets! The thing these people want is a good cheap card that will not make their eyes hurt after writing a 20 page document in word (nVidiot) or crash twice a day becouse of badly writen drivers(Ati)! They want crisp image quality at all resolutions they want an easy to use and set up card wit easy driver updates available trough windowsupdate (not that its nessesary most of the time)!

The point is, the current line of Matrox cards is not enough even for casual gaming anymore. There are people here claiming they're happy with Q-III in 1024x768x32, but this is not true for the average user - G400Max (seems to still be Matrox fastest card) manages an "incredible" ~33fps AVERAGE and this in a demo with only few action going on. For real fluid game-play you should at least have 20fps, better 30 fps MINIMUM. If the card manages that, I think you're right, it doesn't matter at all how many average or maximum fps it's scoring. So it's not "if you only play games on your computer, don't buy Matrox" but more "if you'd like to play games on the computer AT ALL" (at least in a halfway decent quality). It would've been a VERY smart move from Matrox to do something to improve the 16Bit rendering: if the G550 had 16Bit quality like the Kyro cards you could live without 32Bit - and while the bandwidth hindered G550 really suffers in 32Bit, it's much better in 16Bit. And could probably actually use those doubled pipelines...

The " 90%) people don't care about how many Nvidiot marks card XXX gets!!!" -quote sure is correct, but 80% of THESE people don't care (or even notice!) the difference between different gfx-cards as long as the d*mn thing is working (the "anykey"-people). I guess I don't have to tell you what el-cheapo POS monitors most of the "bussiness computers" are equipped with? Hell, you could even use a TNT2 card on these and not notice a big difference.

So this leaves the professional users - they'll be satisfied with the G450/G550 of course since they don't need gaming at all - but then even some of them could need really professional OGL (and maybe some of them would like to play a game every now and then as well without having to exchange the gfx-card...)
Of course the OEMs will be happy with the G450/550, but if you're honest they DON'T CARE AT ALL about the display-quality, not even really about stability, they're just using what's cheap (ATI, VIA, Celeron, NVidia VANTA....).

[Guru]

And of course the OEMs will be happy with the G450/550, but if you're honest they DON'T CARE AT ALL about the display-quality, not even really about stability, they're just using what's cheap (ATI, VIA, Celeron, NVidia VANTA....).

True if you take for example the compaq presario line but take a look at the deskpro and prosigma line of computers!