Can the "true story" be told?

[mabraham]

I have not been to MURC and my beloved Crystal Ball för several years but I stumbled across the forum again just now. One thing I have always wanted to know is the "true story" about what happened at Matrox; why did they fail to stay in the performance-niche? how far did they get with pitou? did pitou really tape out? and other questions.

Can someone in the know tell the story or has it already been told?

[Nicram]

The story is simple.
Marketoids want release new chips so fast, that they were not so good as they should, then Matrox sucks. End of story.

[mabraham]

Hardly a simple story...nothing is simple.

I want to know what features were planned and implemented for pitou, were there any truth to the rumours about a BitBoys cooperation, ..., and a lot more.

Read the old VigilAnt posts and there are a lot of hints about things we never were told. I think Nappe1 also has some interesting things to tell us.

[az]

Why do you insist on beating a dead horse?

[Mehen]

"beating" is the wrong word. Poking with a stick is better. And more fun.

[Fat Tone]

"beating" is the wrong word. Poking with a stick is better. And more fun.

Are you assuming the personality of your Avatar?

[mabraham]

Why do you insist on beating a dead horse?

It is not like I expect Matrox to start competing with Nvidia... The thing is that I am very curious about the "behind the scenes" stuff that occured. Am I the only one that have a hunger for a little bit of information? It is not like I expect something to come from Matrox, it is just that I once had hopes about a glorious new card from the canadians...that hope is long gone and only replaced with a "WTF really happened that only some people know about".

[Technoid]

They got Wood and ended up screwed

Basically every one that knows either got NDA's (from Matrox) or ISSSB's (From Murc)

[Mehen]

Are you assuming the personality of your Avatar?

lol

[Kruzin]

There are many smaller truths involved that all added up to the withdrawl of Matrox from the general consumer market. The biggest is that nVidia came around, stole most of Matrox's best designers, engineers, programmers, technologies etc. I believe some of the lawsuits over this stuff are still ongoing, though nobody will comment on that.
With that done, Matrox was not able to make Parhelia what it was meant to be, few bought it, they couldn't afford to continue pursuing the fickle, frame counting consumer market, and they crawled into the hole they're in now.

There is much more to it all than this, but IMO, this was the biggest nail in their coffin. Had they been able to make Parhelia what it was supposed to be, they would have sold tons of them, made a pile of money, and stuck with it.
To this day, and forever more, I refuse to buy any nVidia product because of the way they push, pull, steal and buy smaller companies out of buiz like this.

[Mikko]

I think that Matrox will make good amount of money with their TripleHead2Go products. However, I'm sure that NVIDIA and AMD/ATI will eventually start to make their own triplehead graphics cards for Surround Gaming, when it gets just bit more popular than it's now.

[mabraham]

There are many smaller truths involved that all added up to the withdrawl of Matrox from the general consumer market. The biggest is that nVidia came around, stole most of Matrox's best designers, engineers, programmers, technologies etc. I believe some of the lawsuits over this stuff are still ongoing, though nobody will comment on that.
With that done, Matrox was not able to make Parhelia what it was meant to be, few bought it, they couldn't afford to continue pursuing the fickle, frame counting consumer market, and they crawled into the hole they're in now.

There is much more to it all than this, but IMO, this was the biggest nail in their coffin. Had they been able to make Parhelia what it was supposed to be, they would have sold tons of them, made a pile of money, and stuck with it.
To this day, and forever more, I refuse to buy any nVidia product because of the way they push, pull, steal and buy smaller companies out of buiz like this.

So I guess the NDA's are still in effect? I would like to hear about the "much more to it all" and "make Parhelia what it was meant to be" but I guess I have to wait until the NDA's expire...or just forget about it. Curiosity killed the cat...

[mabraham]

They got Wood and ended up screwed

Basically every one that knows either got NDA's (from Matrox) or ISSSB's (From Murc)

I have not been visiting Murc for several years so...what is ISSSB (with the risk of asking a very stupid question...)?

Heck, when do those NDA's expire...

[Technoid]

I have not been visiting Murc for several years so...what is ISSSB (with the risk of asking a very stupid question...)?

Heck, when do those NDA's expire...

ISSSB, forget it, this acronym sounded less lame and much more fun when I invented it last night

NDA = No Damn Answers, they newer expires