What exactly is Matrox up to .... get the <facts>

[Hati]

From rivastation:

Allerdings deutet sich auch von anderen Herstellern etwas an. Ein Matrox Projekt namens Parhelia - mit jeweils 4 Vertex und Pixel Shader Pipes und 19,2GB/s Speicherbandbreite mit 256Bit DDR Speicher (wenn´s denn stimmt...).

But, the headline was 'Gerüchteküche' (rumor mill)

Hati

[KngtRider]

hi alll

sorry to disapoint but the ATI 8500 is the reference platform and target platform for dx9

https://www.reactorcritical.com

my opinion

looks like either
a) ms didnt like the new mga chip/or crippled
b) timeframe wouldnt meet development for dx9

those rivastation specs LOL

256bit ddr wooo

19.2gbs means 300MHZ 256 BIT DDR, i calced it just now

[Jorden]

Good chance Matrox is trying to get into this list with their new upcoming card.

Then again, it would mean we all have to buy this monitor... now who has US$6000 for me to spare?

Jord.

[Hati]

I wonder if Matrox will have some kind of 'XBA' design. Some comment from Nappe1 back in October said:

What I heard about Matrox chip, it seems that it cannot be accomplished without eDRAM or VERY efficient tiler.

Hope it's not just rumors that ends up in M announcing a g575



Hati

[[GDI]Raptor]

This looks very good, if this is true, Matrox might have a good card to release, but the question is when. Sometime in 2002 like Haig says is a very "wide" release date.......

We have seen roumors from the G800 some years ago, then they talked about FCDDR RAM, what spessifications does that momory type have? 256Bit DDR, to have 19,2Gb/s, you would need 300Mhz memory clock i belive....

I think the chip name Matrox Parhelia sounds bood though..

[atko]

Originally posted by KngtRider
sorry to disapoint but the ATI 8500 is the reference platform and target platform for dx9

looks like either
a) ms didnt like the new mga chip/or crippled
b) timeframe wouldnt meet development for dx9

It is very interesting, because Radeon 8500 is a DirectX 8.1 card. I don't know what "reference platform" really means, but I think it isn't that card which will be the first DX9 compliant card.

[rev]

Originally posted by atko

It is very interesting, because Radeon 8500 is a DirectX 8.1 card. I don't know what "reference platform" really means, but I think it isn't that card which will be the first DX9 compliant card.

Hi, my fellow friend, let me help ya out with some facts about DX9.

Some days ago I checked out the meltdown2001 powerpoint presentations about future dx9 features. First, I saw dates like 2002 july for release DX9, but that seems so far too me, I wouldn't agree with it. Okay, let's see what've got.

We've got a full bunch of VS,PS enchancement like flow control, integrated VS and PS (like DX Graphics in DX8 D3D+DDraw) with same instruction set. More matrox specific is the Displacement mapping which will be support 100% by DX9 and it's a feature not announced by any other companies. I think it can be substituted with VS code, but supporting it with a seperate part of the hardware with a HUGE memory bandwith (and its supporting architecture) AND giving us developers and integrated VSPS2.0 (3.0? whatever) with 256 or more instructions, flow control, etc. would be heaven of heavens

(Just got to MS sites here's a link for Meltdown PPS files

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/corpevents/meltdown2001/presentations.asp

What I am talking about is:
DirectX® Graphics Future -- DXG9.ppt (439KB)
Speaker:Brian Marshall - Microsoft Corporation

Of course you should check this out too:
Displacement Maps As A New Geometric Primitive -- Matrox_Displacement.ppt (1130KB)
Speaker: Juan Guardado - Matrox Corporation
(It might already mentioned in a previous post, sorry then)

Okay, DX9 has HOS as main feature (High-ordered surface), but half of the presentation is about DM. I think it's quite informative what microsoft thinks about future 3D technology, matrox's presentation's title says:

DMs as a new geometric primitive

quit interesting, huh? Checked out too matrox presentations, here are my comments on that:

Juan's presentation has a Slide containing 3 maps, and a plane with 8 faces. And then, a picture of the result, which looks like 50000+ faces, has bump mapping, etc. "ngredients": Height data, Normal Map, base mesh (really loooow poly) and some tesselation info. It says this feature needs really high bandwith, which is quite logical if you think about generating most of the vertices OTF, not just transferring from some kind of buffer from AGP. It has some distance-based LOD too, quite interesting too, and has N Patch interpolation which is like ATI's TRUFORM for me, correct me if I'm not right. (that's for rounded objects, linear is for terrains, etc. as Juan stated). LOD works on N patches too, everything is dynamic, you can control tesselation level with the base mesh (always plane or what?) by putting more vertices at parts of the mesh (plane?), VS gets DM info, says something about high compression rate, 44:1 (unsure about that), and showed up a demo about it, and they might have a MAX 4 plugin to preview all this stuff, it would mean for me that they might have an engineer board already...

okay, that's all for today, have nice time replying to me

[rev]

some corrections

integrated VS and PS will be around DX10, sorry for that, but DM is really close to reveal!

[mdhome]

Hello Rev
Firstly, Welcome to the site.
Secondly, thanks for the info. Unfortunately it might take some time sinking into my head.

This is the sort of detail I go to Beyond3d for. I dont promise to understand it but I am glad that someone else does

Regards MD

ps dont suppose you know any good simple 3d guides on the internet.

[atko]

Welcome to the forums of MURC, rev!

I've already read those presentations you're talking about, and I've discussed it with my friends (who know much more about 3d programming than me) here in the university, and I know that displacement mapping is a must to have feature in the next generation 3d accelerators, and I hope that Matrox will be the first video chip manufacturer who will support this feature, but unfortunately Matrox nowdays is not that kind...
Displacement mapping has got huge advatages but we need a very powerful chip to tesselate ten thousands of verticies, and this chip needs integrated memory (edram?) to store the vertices after the transformation... It would be very nice to see, that Matrox has got such a hardware, but be realistic...

[rev]

Originally posted by atko
Welcome to the forums of MURC, rev!

I've already read those presentations you're talking about, and I've discussed it with my friends (who know much more about 3d programming than me) here in the university, and I know that displacement mapping is a must to have feature in the next generation 3d accelerators, and I hope that Matrox will be the first video chip manufacturer who will support this feature, but unfortunately Matrox nowdays is not that kind...
Displacement mapping has got huge advatages but we need a very powerful chip to tesselate ten thousands of verticies, and this chip needs integrated memory (edram?) to store the vertices after the transformation... It would be very nice to see, that Matrox has got such a hardware, but be realistic...

Okay, let's see, matrox talking about DM... Why don't you think this 4 years of silence was long enough to develop something that kicks ass? Matrox always had the money for RD from the OEM section and they might had to slow down because of the not so big success of G550, or whatever reasons they had, but they must be on the right way to get back in to the competition along the release of DX9... There's too much fuss going around big M, and they are too silent... Soon, everything is going to be about DM, DX9 and DM+DX9 we'll be equal with Matrox Technology. Hopefully.

anyway, I think too that DM rocks and it has to bee somehow next gen cards feature. I think it could be implemented somehow with VS, but that's gonna be too slow for a while...

[mute]

well i think all that time spent was to increase the bandwith available , in the presentation they state that it takes a lot of bandwith .. with recent rumors stating the new card will have 19,3 gb/s it may very well be true ..

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

4 Years is a all or nothing number in the gaming/hardware industry.

Mechwarrior2, Falcon4 and Max Payne turned out,

3dfx Rampage, Bitboys didn't.


Oops, I'm comparing games to hardware..rant on.

[[GDI]Raptor]

If the roumors about 19,2Gb/s memory is true, then Matrox would probably have hardware that needs this momory speed. I am prety shure Matrox will release a new chip in 2002, but the question is still: when?

I have herd on MSDN that DirectX 9 will be released this spring, si if Matrox have a DirectX 9 card, spring will be a good time to start shiping it. Wasn't it "spring 2002" the "drunken" Matrox rep at the AMD conferance said that Matrox would be "king of 3D"..?

[KngtRider]

Hi all

Read the wording of Haig's post very carefully

http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/Forum8/HTML/000703.html

Also he is reading this thread ;