What will we do if Parhelia doesn't make the shelves?

[bsdgeek]

I would still like to see eDRAM on a video card.

[frankymail]

Hey Greebe,

I'm sorry, as I'm short on time right now, but here's a rough estimate of the production costs:

1 Parhelia chip: about $75 (the price nVidia sell their med- end GeForce 4 4400 chip) which looks like a nice price, considering a G4 TI cost $55 to manufacture (and they get special pricing because of the sheer number of schips ordered from the fabs), and a P4 Northwood $85. Don'T forget that it will be a big die, espacially if you had on-die memory, or just a big expensive chip if there's embedded memory

128 MB (8 x 16 MB chips) 128 bits DDR +-2.8 ns BGA chips (Samsung): $150 (I think it will have Samsung Modules because almost every retail Matrox Cards since the Millennium II had Samsung RAM) but Hynix or Infineon is about the same.

PCB+on-board components: $40 per PCB (including PCB, connectors, components, HSF unit and more.

Add to that the cables and adapter (about $10 )

You get a mid-high-end model that costs about $250 to MANUFACTURE... this doesn'T include R&D, PR, Admin and other charges... I say that one should expect to pay about the same as he would pay for a G4 Ti 4600 no to get the semi-high-end Parhelia...

I'm sorry I didn't take the time to look at exact pricesm but I was rushed; however, if any of you want to get more detailed cost, just ask me, and i'll try to squeeze it in somewhere tomorrow.

[Sasq]

FM, at lot of your prices there still seem to be for small quantities... ie Cables $10. yes we go to a pc store and buy a printer cable for $15 but the pc store usually buys them for about $2.50.

As for the ram, cost of the board etc. I'd like a quote on these parts if ordered in the 500k+ area

Dan

[superfly]

Idon't think it would be a whole lot less even if the parts are ordered in large quantities and considering that unless you're a company like dell,compaq,hp,etc...you usually don't place a 500 k orders of pretty much anything,unless you're reasonably sure that you'll sell the finished product pretty fast....



I'm sure that any current video card company,even a company as big as asus,will go about ordering 500 thousand Geforce 4 chips in a single order and considering that each chip uses 8 memory modules....well,you do the math....

[Rags]

Originally posted by frankymail
Hey Greebe,

I'm sorry, as I'm short on time right now, but here's a rough estimate of the production costs:

1 Parhelia chip: about $75 (the price nVidia sell their med- end GeForce 4 4400 chip) which looks like a nice price, considering a G4 TI cost $55 to manufacture (and they get special pricing because of the sheer number of schips ordered from the fabs), and a P4 Northwood $85. Don'T forget that it will be a big die, espacially if you had on-die memory, or just a big expensive memory if there's embedded momery

128 MB (8 x 16 MB chips) 128 bits DDR +-2.8 ns BGA chips (Samsung): $150 (I think it will have Samsung Modules because almost every retail Matrox Cards since the Millennium II had Samsung RAM) but Hynix or Infineon is about the same.

PCB+on-board components: $40 per PCB (including PCB, connectors, components, HSF unit and more.

Add to that the cables and adapter (about $10 )

You get a mid-high-end model that costs about $250 to MANUFACTURE... this doesn'T include R&D, PR, Admin and other charges... I say that one should expect to pay about the same as he would pay for a G4 Ti 4600 no to get the semi-high-end Parhelia...

I'm sorry I didn't take the time to look at exact pricesm but I was rushed; however, if any of you want to get more detailed cost, just ask me, and i'll try to squeeze it in somewhere tomorrow.

you just clinched it for me. You are uninformed. your prices are way over the top. 150 bucks for the memory? What dope are you partaking? 40 bucks for a PCB? Get real. 10 bucks for a cable?

Rags

[KvHagedorn]

Looks like this place is going to get entertaining and fun again.

I would definitely NOT give a lung or a kidney for a Parhelia, nor would I kill for one, nor would I sell my grandmother into slavery or lick the greasy spot in the driveway for one. In fact, I'm not even really ready for the card yet. Late this year when it is readily available, I'll be getting one to put into my new dual hammer system.. getting ready for some serious debt now.. and some serious performance.

[Nappe1]

Originally posted by frankymail
Nappe1,
I very sorry to tell you, but you're so wrong here, and the way you try to explain things just prove you have no idea what you are really talking about. So, I'll make it simple and give you a small example: take a Radeon 32 MB and a Radeon 64 MB. The 32 MB version has 4 memory chips and the 64 MB version has eight. The memory chips used on both cards are the same. Using you're conception of how memory works (which is wrong), the radeon 32 mb would have a 128 bits memory bus, and the 64 MB version a 256 bits bus; however, everyone know that it has a 128 bits memory bus. Memory modules are used in serie, not in parallel. Maybe you're talking about memory bank arrangement, but then again, things doesn't fit.

well, because I have a life and I don't use my weekends on the net, I'll keep it short.

Show me the High end Gmers card that uses 128Bit memory chips.

Afaik 64MB Radeon 8500 uses 4 16MB memorychips arranged to two memory channels (two chips on each.) and those are 32Bit Chips. As you said, that doesn't make sence on 128MB version, well it actually does.

Either they have larger (32MB) chips or then they have two chips on serial per 32Bit part of Interface.

and besides show me the manufacturer that makes chips with wider interface than 32Bit with a price that could be put on card.

Franky, again no offense, but do you have any idea how Memory busses generally works?

do you know why you had to add 4 30-pin SIMMs at time to 486?
do you know why you had to add 2 72-pin SIMMs at time to Pentium?
Do you know why you can add one DIMM at time to your P3/Athlon? (SDR-MEMORY.)

Gfx cards don't make any expception. their memory bus basically works just same way like all the others.

ahh... gotta go Life calls...

[frankymail]

Well, you're the lucky owner of ATI's Only-ever-made Radeon 8500 with 4 memory chips... because All Radeons 8500 (64 MB, 128 MB and 128 MB LE) use 8 memory chips... All the 64 & 128 MB cards I have seen (no matter the chipset) use 8 memory chips. They use 4x32 bits banks and use CS traces to select which of the two chips pinned together is to be accessed.

Anyway, Matrox' new card will be great, and I'll show it off proudly at every lan party I attend saying: "Haha! You all thought I was crazy, you all did, but here is the proof of my mental sanity!!! An actual High-Speed graphic card from Matrox " My actual question is: when will it be annouced? On a Monday? a Tuesday? A Friday? in April? May? November? (nooooooooo )

[superfly]

Originally posted by Rags

you just clinched it for me. You are uninformed. your prices are way over the top. 150 bucks for the memory? What dope are you partaking? 40 bucks for a PCB? Get real. 10 bucks for a cable?

Rags

Rags,the memory price figure may be not to far off,because i remember when the first GF2 ultra cards were released they used 3.8 n.s DDR sdram which cost at the time roughly 15.00~20.00$ per module,since initial yeilds weren't great to begin with...


The cables themselves are most likely cheaper than that if you're buying in large quantities,but the pcb+ components that go with it could cost 40$(or more),even more so if the card does indeed use a 256 bit memory bus,which will force matrox to use a larger pcb or add more layers to have enough room for all the extra traces,in either case,adding cost compared to existing memory bus desings....


Adding a 256 bit bus is a logical step forward and i'm sure pretty companies like Nvidia and ATI have/are thinking about it if you don't consider the cost issue involved,so should matrox go ahead with it,be prepared to pay $$$.....

[superfly]

Originally posted by frankymail
Well, you're the lucky owner of ATI's Only-ever-made Radeon 8500 with 4 memory chips... because All Radeons 8500 (64 MB, 128 MB and 128 MB LE) use 8 memory chips... All the 64 & 128 MB cards I have seen (no matter the chipset) use 8 memory chips

Actually,my GF3 card uses only 4 memory chips,so not all video cards use 8 memory chips,though you might be right about the 8500's with 128 megs on board,since memory densities aren't high enough yet to allow 128 meg video card with only 4 memory chips..

[frankymail]

Rags: my price are quite right... although I used prices for 1k quantities , my prices aren't that far off reality, because even if you order 100k units, you won't get a %15 discount on such high-end components... Even if you say "pretty please!!!" Also, you have to had "human" production cost: the peoples work. Beside, Greebe just wanted to "test" me (I think ), which is fine by me. If my figures were to be wrong, be sure he would have said something.


Sasq: $10 buck for cables and adapters is about the minimum I could resort to; take the example of nVidia's highest-end product, the GeForce 4 Ti 4600: It comes with 2 DVI-I -> Sub-15 adapters and custom video cable, which has 2 RCA jacks (V-in & V-out) and two s-video connectors (in & out). My $10 was a very reasonable figure.


Superfly: Thanks for the backup; I knew I should have posted the manufacturers PDF with my post But I'd like to know what brand+model of GeForce 3 do you have? Have you looked at the back of your card? because the only manufacturers I know of who don't utilize nVidia's neference design for the GeForce 3 are Canopus, Asus and Suma, and nVidia's reference design calls for 8 8MB memory chips... (besides, the Asus, Canopus and Suma boards I saw also use 8 chips). It'S understandable, because the cost of two 8 MB chips and 2 added traces is still inferior to that of a single 16 MB chip (high-speed modules are very expensive. If they weren't, we would have seen 256 boards (8 x 16 MB) by now . . . Though I would not mind having one But I think that for high-end computers, you have to keep a 1/8 ratio between graphic memory and Main system ram... The only time this wasn'T true in my case was when I bought a matrox Ultima Plus 4 MB and I only had 16 MB of ram...

Anyway, the ones who could tell you the exact production cost of a Parhelia Board are Matrox' Strekeepers and (Dual)Head staff...:P



Anyways, I just hope that a mortage on my house will allow me to buy two boards

[superfly]

Well,i have the orginal GF3 which is a visiontek btw,and took a second look inside to make sure and there's only 4 memory chips located on the same side as the graphics processor itself....


And to have a 256 meg video card with today's available memory densities will require 16 memory modules...meaning it'll be very expensive,even more so if matrox decides to use a 256 bit bus between the graphics processor and memory...


Time to put a second morgage on the house...,if users really wnat the absolute highest end version of parhelia....


This actually brings up an interesting question though,will the midrange versions also feature a 256 bit bus,even though they'll likely use 128 megs and be able to sell them at the 350~400$ price point,while still making any sort of profit of the cards themselves???...

It'll be an interesting challenge for sure.....

[Greebe]

Well I did add up the costs on your card and it came to $275 not $250 as you had stated... yes that is way high... expect prices to drop a bit more than 15% in quanities of say 100k

Comparing what nV sells retail vs wholesale cost in large lots, there's no comparasion... I'd bet a DVI to rgb adapter is like a buck or less and the BOC is more like $3 max.

even then, so what if the card did cost an arm & a leg, if it can support the retail price tag it makes no difference.

[frankymail]

Superfly: have you looked at the BACK of your Geforce 3 card? Anyway, all the G3 visiontek cards I have seen (one G3 and 2 G3 Ti500) use 8 memory chips, but it's possible that you have a low production version with 16 MB chips, I don't know, as I'm not really in Visiontek's "In-Crowd"

Greebe: Remember when the GeForce 3 was just fresh out of the oven? High-speed DDR (well, relative to time of course) was very rare, scarse and expensive. To allow manufacturers (Asus and Visiotek were two of those) to produce a competitive product, they (nVidia) used to sell a bundle package to them, which lasted a few months: a GeForce 3 GPU and 64 MB of DDR for $210 . . . and that was less than a year ago (you can always check out TheReg or TheInq on that one if you don'T believe me). Also, I know that ATI pays $2 for each DVI-I -> Sub-15

Anyway, we all agree that the card WILL be expensive in it's med-end and High-end form. So better start returning those empty beer bottles laying around in the kitchen guys BTW, any of you interrested to buy my soul in exchange for a Parhelia Board? I forgot that I ALreADY HAVE a mortage on my house

[superfly]

Yep...I checked the card out very carefully...No memory chips are located on the the other side of the card,they're all on the GPU side...


I guess changes are possible within the desing depending on memory availability,having reference desings for both 4 and 8 memory chip configurations and can use either at any given time...Just a guess though..