Any New Rumors going around about a next gen Matrox Card?

[TdB]

TdB

well they have suprised me before, and perhaps they can suprise me again
I was rather suprised by the g400max, back then because all the hype was about 3dfx vs nvidea, and matrox just beat them both with ease

perhaps history will repeat itself

[GT98]

Wow that thread over on the Matrox Support Group very interesting ....I guess I'll stick it out for the time being with Kyro2 I got .

Scott

[[GDI]Raptor]

GO MATROX!!!!

For me, Haig's statement concluded everything! Now I'm even more convinced that Matrox will release a "killer" card before chrismas!

I hope MAtrox realy can say: nVidia SCUKS this time!

[Nappe1]

[GDI]Raptor: at the moment things look very good, but you have to remember that not only a Matrox is bringing new stuff out: nVidia, STM/PVR, ATI and even Bitboys & S3/Via are making new stuff...

[simonk]

I'm not hoping for an nVidia-killer card from Matrox -- I have no wish of seeing nVidia dead.

However, better 3D performance or more useful features would be nice. It would be great if Matrox moved to a 128-bit DDR memory interface instead of the 64-bit one they have now. I hope for something that is onto today's graphics cards what the G400MAX was in its day. EMBM was a very useful and impressive feature, and to someone who's into effects, demo routines and the like, more of that sort would be very interesting to play with (not that I'd ever RELY on a card-specific featuer, but anyway.....).

Instead, they give us HeadCasting. Whatever the Matrox R&D team was on when they thought THAT feature up, I'll take three grams of it please.

If they keep going on this course, I'll eventually move to another card. Probably a Radeon, or maybe one of the nVidias that aren't completely barfable in respect to image quality (VisionTek, Gainward and ELSA cards aren't as lame as the rest). I'd hate that, because image quality is very important to me. As a former Amiga owner, I automatically go into "wary mode" when I see vaporware, like the Big Bad Matrox NVidia-Buster +2 of Eternal Doom. I want a card, not hype.

...or some shit. Nice board you folks have going here, I should have registered a lot earlier. :.)

[superfly]

I for one have no problems believing that matrox will release a better performing card,since that's the natural evolution of things and quite frankly,they don't have any other choice,even if their focus is mostly OEM's right now...


Need i mention ATI'S radion 7500,which cost's less that 50$ over that of a G550 and seriously outperforms it,at least in 3d performance(think 2~3 times faster here) and there's no doubt in my mind that a lot of OEM's are going to use that card in their offerings...

Then there's the real possibility that nvidia will release a gf3 mx type card very shortly(according to rumors) and that yet again,a G550 is no match for it either,especially since a card like that isn't likely to cost much more than a G550 as well....


The real question in my mind is if matrox has the ability to catch up to both ATI and nvidia,since they've fallen so far behing when it comes to 3d performance and features and while i believe that their next card has to be much faster in 3d,i have my doubts if matrox actually deliver a card within the next few months that's just as fast/faster than a gf3/radion 8500.


So i don't believe that matrox can go from a roughly 10m transistor desing(G 400/G400 max) to something that's fully DX8 compliant and has 60 million transistors like the gf3/radion 8500 in one product cycle,because i believe that any new card is in part based on earlier products,from which chip makers have learned from and have improved the desing...

Ati had the rage128---->radion------->radion 7500/8500

Nvidia had the tnt2----> gf1----->gf2/gf2 ultra----->gf3

Matrox had the G400---------------------------->GF3/radion 8500 killer(don't think so)

[xortam]

Oh I don't know ... they must have been doing something all this time.

[superfly]

Of course they have been doing something........lots of research into new tech like displacement maps,but until that shows up in an a shipping product,it's all theory.....


It's one thing to have a new desing for a graphics chip on paper,it's quite another to see it in actual working silicon,and hitting the performance targets that matrox may have set for it.

Even in the case of nvidia with the gf3,where the chip needed several revisions until all it's feature set was working properly,again due to the fact that it's a very complex desing and they had the advantage of having previous chips that had some of the same features already built in and were fairly complex desings in their own right...


Same thing goes for ATI,since the the card that was previewed last month wasn't the final revision either....

And to think that we may very well see graphics chips with 100+ million transistors by the end of next year(at 0.10 micron desing rules) which TSMC has stated will be available,is simply unbelievable...

Btw,TSMC makes all of Nvidia's graphics chips........

[[GDI]Raptor]

Matrox must have been doing something over the last years" (G450 & G550 doesn't count....)

Because ATI have released a new value card now, the Radeon 7500, and nVidia will release a GeForce3 MX soon, and both will have "DualHead" capabilletys, I think Matrox is will release something. OEM or not...

I think well have an release from Matrox before chrismas, and this card will have preformance like an GF3 Ultra or an Radeon 8500, I hope......

[Joel]

and this card will have preformance like an GF3 Ultra or an Radeon 8500, I hope......

I personally hope it has better performance.

Joel

[superfly]

Honestly i wish matrox all the luck in the world.....

But i won't be holding my breath hoping for a gf3/radion 8500 killer by xmas either....

Making a card that's up to 8 times faster than a G550 and add all the dx8 features in one product cycle and to top it off release it by xmas and beat the competition as well,is too much to ask IMHO.....

I'm much more inclined to believe that whatever matrox does manage to release in the coming months(hopefully...)will probably have enough features and speed to compete with say a gf3 mx or at least a radion 7500,which would make the card at least 3~4 times faster than the G550,which is already a pretty big leap in itself....

[WayneHu]

Matrox's current policy to maintain only one simple chip and simple configuration for its main business has its advantage and disadvantage. If G550 is quite competitive on C/P, quality, and feature values, nothing needs to say. However, it seems other graphics chip vendors are learning those features that Matrox provides and they are becoming more and more mature. Instead, Matrox does not have a big jump.

The several ealier generation graphics chipsets often provide two memory configurations - 32 / 64 bits data bus. But it looks like current chipsets do not have the same behavior for 64 / 128 bits interface. It is probably the consideration of yield issue and cost. If Matrox can have this solution for its chipset, it probably can extend the life cycle of its product among the crowded competition. The interesting thing is that Matrox can convince some OEMs to use G450/550 as the low-end 3D workstation's video adapter. The main reason is probably the dual-head functionality issue, but not 3D speed one.

It seems the 3D core speed still relies the core speed, rendering pilpeline number, depth, and memory bandwidth no matter how the driver is optimized. Unless Matrox also redesign its core to push higher operation clock, it won't be easy for Matrox chip to compete with nVidia and ATi's current or next generation product in speed.

[TdB]

hey! aren´t we forgetting something?

the G800 was mentioned in the drivers, and you don´t make drivers for something that only exist on paper, so i believe there might have been several product-cycles since the g400.

just because they never released them, doesn´t mean they didn´t leaned alot by making them.

[GT98]

Originally posted by TDB
hey! aren´t we forgetting something?

the G800 was mentioned in the drivers, and you don´t make drivers for something that only exist on paper, so i believe there might have been several product-cycles since the g400.

I had a little birdy tell me that the G550 is just a cut down verison of what was to be the G800. I guess Matrox saw the 3d handwriting on the wall and started with a cleansheet of paper. we should hopefully see something before the end of the year new from them!

Scott

[Fat Tone]

well my little birdy said we'll hear of something this year...