It ain't looking goodat all (x2)

[GT98]

I think we might be all suprised in the next couple of months. From what I've been gathering I wouldn't be all that suprised that the G550 comes out before the end of the summer and a follow up "gamers/high performance Card" would be out before the spring of 2002, my question is this the card with all the gee-wiz stuff (EDRAM, etc) on it that we where calling the G800.

Scott


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Abit BH6 rev 1.0 Celeron 2-566@877mhz,256mb RAM,ATI Radeon AIW,SB Live! with Klipsch Promedia v2-400, Optiquest V95 19in montor, Asus 40x CD-ROM, Aopen 5x DVD-ROM,HP9110i 8x4x32 CD-RW,SupraMax 56k modem,WinME on Western Digital 30GB drive

[Liquid Snake]

Yep. Most likely either of these two things will happen:

1) Matrox disappoints (most of) us as usual, with a card that offers rather slow performance.

2) Matrox surprises the crap out of us (literally) with a card rivaling the Geforce3 in performance, but with the traditional Matrox quality.

[rylan]

Lets see.. wanna put some odds on those two situations?
I give it:

#1: 90%
#2: 10%

[CHHAS]

I think we'll see a card with low speed DDR ram (133-150 MHz) on a 128 bit bus, with a core running at about 200 MHz, 2 pipes with 2 or 3 textures per pipe.

This will give it a fillrate compareble to a Geforce2 MX / Radeon and a memory bandwidth higher than MX and Radeon SDR, while keeping the price down as 'slow' DDR ram isn't that expensive.

[PowerHungry]

What has NVidia been doing between each chip release? They have been pouring alot of time and money into releasing a newer chip with marginally or gimmicky features while focusing on pushing more pixels thru the card.

What has Matrox done? They have spent alot of time on something, maybe it wont be a pure pixel pusher, but maybe it will have a feature set that will make it a much more useful card (like FSAA on the last voodoo), or something that will be groundbreaking (like EMBM).

Just my thoughts.

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P=I^2*R

[rylan]

Matrox has also spent a lot of time on their lawsuits against *Vidia etc, after they lost a bunch of their design enginners, and thats what worries me. I have a feeling thats the main reason the "G800" went poof.

[slyfox]

It might be that Matrox dropped the G800 name because it gave the impression that it was two times faster than the G400.

The G550 may prove to be a good upgrade for some. Not all of us has the latest graphics cards in our machines nor do we have the money to spend $400.00 for a card who's only redeeming point is that it has high frame rates in first person shooters.

Plus if some of the rumors are correct this will not be the only offering from Matrox this year.

slyfox (still the proud owner of a G200 looking forward to the G550)

[DosFreak]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">What has NVidia been doing between each chip release? They have been pouring alot of time and money into releasing a newer chip with marginally or gimmicky features while focusing on pushing more pixels thru the card.</font>

Exsqueeze me? Let's not get into a feature war. We all know who would win.....

[rubank]

slyfox,

considering your hardware, you might want to change your alias to
slowfox

(sorry, couldn´t resist)

rubank

[Sisyfos]

Rather a Slowfox with Matrox than a Quickstep with nVidea.

Kim

[rubank]

Good one, Kim


[This message has been edited by rubank (edited 28 May 2001).]

[superfly]

Well whatever matrox releases after the G550(assuming that article is the real deal),will have no choice but to at least match what geforce3 can do in terms of 3d performance/features if it's released by the end of Q4/early Q1 2002.

That could still position the card as a decent 3d card relative to the competition that will be available by then,even if it isn't the fastest relative to them(GF3 ultra,radion 2,S3's columbia,kyro III).

If matrox intends to release the card much later than that timeframe,then it better have way more speed than the existing Gf3 since it could very well be competing against Nvidias NV30(With it's nearly 100 million transistors...yikes).

[Galvin]

and what games make use of all the speed of Gf3. I always keep seeing people here saying it has to be faster than a GF3, Nvidia is has gotten so fast that the games don't make use of the speed. Like quake3 once you go beyond 100fps it's just plain overkill.

Now i'll tell you what they need.
Matrox needs to prevent overdraw, plain and simple. Overdraw is the #1 slowdown to all videocards. Dx8 support benice but games haven't taken full use of DX8 yet. I have not seen one game that uses Dx8, so Dx8 features be nice for 2002, it's just too soon for it now.

[superfly]

Well i hate to greak this to you,but i'm playing the demo of an upcoming game(independence war 2)that not only uses DX8 but the game itself also uses some features of the Geforce3,and let me tell you it looks awsome... .

Then there the release of max payne sceduled also for the 27th of july,it uses the exact same engine as 3dmark 2001 as well as being fully DX8 optimized so it'll make full use of the Geforce 3 or any other full DX8 card.


Then there's balistics,a futuristic racing game that also uses DX8 features quite extensively and is due out well before the end of the year.

Aquanox will also be released shortly and if the game play's anywhere near as good as it looks,then we're in for a treat.

The there's the pc version of HALO as well.


Still think we'll have to wait for 2002 to see DX8 titles???.... .

[frankymail]

Man, it ain't looking good at all, really Is it just me or everyone everywhere is mentionning "64-bits DDR SDRAM" ??? this CANNOT be something good for M's latest product... BTW, if the G550 is supposed to be "a business solution", then why are they putting all those new -3D- features in it???

I'm tallin' ya ma, this ain't lakin' good at all

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