What Would You Like To See The Parhelia Called?

[RainMaker]

BTW, Parhelia is a cool name, and it's even easily pronounced by swedes..

[RainMaker]

And easier to spell than say Millennium and Mystique, which probably makes a vendor or two draw a sigh of relief.

[RainMaker]

One last post, just to draw up my post-count a bit, to say Woohoo! Finally soon is upon us!

[ravalox]

Originally posted by labrador
Take a sober look at the big picture. Assume everything is headcasting and wait for it to be proven otherwise.

Well, I've always bought Matrox for:[list=1][*]Visual quality[*]Superior 2D performance[*]Driver support[/list=1]

I bought my G550 strictly for DVI support (the difference between my G200 is astounding). So to come to my point, Headcasting?? Who the helll really bought a Matrox card for Headcasting??

Now I have the chance to have all this AND superior 3D. I'm buying it (real SOON^TM)!!

[labrador]

Boring facts? I guess you must enjoy being deluded?

If I needed more FPS, I would upgrade to the next Geforce MX or something similar in a budget 3D card. The next gen product from Matrox will be at least twice this much $$. I have 2 machines used for web design work that house G400s and they do a fabulous job with 2D requirements. No need to upgrade them. For my gaming machine I currently have a Geforce 2 MX 400 based card, and when paired with a P3 800E and 512 MB of Ram, I have all the horsepower I need for the likes of Quake 3 or FS2002 doing 1024x768.

For video editing, I have a firewire card, no need for video in. For my monitor, I have standard VGA connectors - no need for others.

If you enjoy throwing money away, please ignore my cautions which are based on the track record of every emerging 3D technology. Like a theif who breaks into a car containing only a box of thesis papers, you are drunk on the idea that there is something of mystery in there and you want to get it just in case it is a treasure.

[labrador]

Just to be clear, I do like Matrox cards over the competition generally, if all things are the same. However I would not pay more for it when it comes to 3D gaming.

I may adopt it a year from now if the price is right. In general I would never buy a just released card from anyone (ATI, Creative, nVidia) due to the insane price for what you get. The same reasoning applies to question of upgrading to the fastest CPU available - it is over priced and doesn't provide a significant or required boost over another upgrade that is two notchs down and half the price. Watching some numbers go up in an artificial benchmark doesn't count as significant benefit in my book.

[Parhelia Pro256]

and what about <i>Doom III</i>

[ravalox]

The original M was still >$300 MSRP a year after its release (I know, I picked up my 2MB card in a "bargain bin" for $260). Even after 3 years, the price of the WRAM upgrades was still the same. Needless to say, I never upgraded.

If the new card is indeed something special, why miss out on a year's worth of kickass graphics??

[edit] I do agree with the CPU analogy, but that's really a different method of ecomonics.

[Parhelia Pro256]

the funny part will be watching the competition try to figure out how to steal, err "borrow" the technology

[labrador]

I have not played Doom III. I don't think anyone has.

As I said, if I did encounter something that forced me to consider an upgrade, I would not choose the latest over priced over hyped graphics card. I would likely look at the Geforce 2 pure or the Geforce 4 MX, depending on the expected performance.

It is no different than buying anything else in a sober way. I don't buy an overpriced overpowered sports car to get to work, I don't by an 18 wheeler rig to go camping, and I don't look for an 21 room house to live in. I spend the money on what is required to fit the actual needs, not some idle suggestion that there is extra capacity built into the product that you can use immediately.

[Parhelia Pro256]

The gF4 Mx is total crxp, come on, you can do better than that, can't you?

[labrador]

The G200 and G400 did come down in price later. All nVidia products slide down in price in a way I can handle.

I don't know what is up with the Matrox prices on old upgrades and refurbished ancient cards on their shopping web site. Perhaps there are only a few of these things in stock, and like the guy from Compaq who could sell me 8MB memory for a 386 for $240 (in 1998), they are waiting for someone to come along who absolutely requires that upgrade for some obscure reason and will pay any price for the hard to find hardware.

[labrador]

I have not researched what a good upgrade would be today because I don't have a need yet.

I don't feel like rewarding Matrox for developing headcasting by buying the G550. I don't feel like rewarding ATI for tweaking the driver to behave differently when the application's name is Quake. So my gut level direction today is to check out nVidia. Perhaps in a year from now it will be Matrox or 3DLabs. I'm not going to spend a bundle on gaming solution. It is insane that graphics companies expect people to spend 1/2 the cost of a PC on the graphics card alone.

[RainMaker]

I don't really care about your upgrade path, I care about you badmouthing people just because they are excited. Let them be whatever they want, that's all I ask. You can go buy yourself a GF4, me think they will be very "affordable" soon, for all I care.

[labrador]

I'm just reflecting back on my sorry purchase of products like M3D when it was new ($170 Cdn), and thinking of my brother-in-law who spent prime dollars on the GeForce when it first appeared - these are lessons learned, and better if they are shared with others.

If there are people here who are used to spending more money to get the quality they want, or perhaps are younger and looking at buying their first or second video card, this is useful advice: Take a step back from the hype and look at your real needs - upgrade to what you can really afford, because you can likely wait a year and find the same product or a comparible one at half the original price, whether Matrox or something else.

Just think of a car you'd really like to own new. Would you buy it today if you knew that it would certainly be 1/2 the price new next year and also have all of the bugs worked out of it?

As far as brand loyalty goes (something RainMaker hints at) this is also something people should reconsider. I liked Matrox for many reasons years ago, but since then I have witnessed several oddities - the M3D, headcasting, and the exit from the 3D gaming market. These business decisions tell me I cannot trust them to the same degree I would trust, say Toyota for automobilies or Canon for cameras. At this point my brand loyalty in video card marker is completely gone - perhaps if Matrox ran for 3 years straight without doing something completely wacko I would get warm to them again.

If you are a millionaire or your livelihood requires knowing about the latest hardware first hand, then I my cautions can be ignored.