Next generation wish list.

[Pauly]

What does everyone want to see on the next generation of Matrox card?

Lets hear it;

<paul braces himself>

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Paul Groves.
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http://home.clara.net/paulyg

OpenGL for Beginners

[Echo|Fox]

The G800, or whatever it ends up being called, should have:
1. Hardware DVD decoding. Since Matrox has proved they can put out a solid card, this is my number one wish.
2. A full, rock solid, OpenGL ICD. With TurboGL and such, its finally matured to the point where its great for gaming, but for professional level stuff, this is vital.
3. T&L ... well i'm still unconvinced on its usefulness. Since there won't be any games using it for 3 or 4 months, and they won't be in abundance for almost a year, it seems like a silly feature to have on the GeForce et all. However, if Matrox's next gen is out next June or so, it'd be worth having.
4. Dualhead. I will be most displeased if its not included again =)
5. More addon board options. A new variant of the Rainbow Runner G would be nice.

That's about all I can think of. I have no complains about the G400, so as long as Matrox stays with the technology trends, and can continue to stick in stuff no one else does, I'll happily shell out another 300$ for one next year =)

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P3-450@558mhz@2.1v, ABit BE6, 128megs 7.3125ns PC133 SDRAM, SB Live! Value, G400 32meg Dualhead (@120%), Acer ALN-201 PCI 10bT NIC, 6.5gig Seagate Medalist Pro 7200rpm, 13gig Quantum Fireball CR, Yamaha 4416e Burner, Pioneer 10x DVD-ROM, Panasonic e70 17" Monitor, Antec KS-188 24" Tower, 6 year old Honeywell-SUH 101key Keyboard, Logitech Trackman Marble+

[Pauly]

Does everyone think that DVD decoding is a priority? Obviously they will have to include it because every other manufacturer is doing. I can't think of a time when I'd ever consider watching a DVD on a computer when I could be sitting on a comfy chair in the lounge with a beer.

The OpenGL ICD will be good - they'd never make THAT mistake again
Some vendor should really make a nice 'bones' extension (something a little more useful than NVidia's weighted_vertex extension)


I too think T&L is a little dodgy. But again, to 'keep up' it'll be in there.

Dual head and add-on boards don't really bother me. I suppose they'd be useful for video editing types....

I just wonder what kind of fillrate we can expect from all the next gen cards. I mean, memory bandwidth is reaching a limit now. Also the cost of adding multiple texture pipelines for multitexturing is going to drive the cost of cards through the roof in the future.

Think about it, a nice lightmapped-bumpmapped-texture mapped room needs three passes. Thats a whole lot 'o fill.

Environment bump mapping seems a weird choice too. Its harder to figure out than other types of bumpmapping...

Texture compression would be in there for me. Keep paletted textures too - I like those

It will be interesting to see how things develop from here for all the 3D card OEMs. The memory bandwidth and multitexture problems won't go away - if anything they'll get worse as we demand more from our games.

If they sort themselves out, I can see a big future for VideoLogic and the PowerVR.

There are ways for tile-based renderers to avoid duplicating all the texture pipeline. That'd keep costs down. And and alot more memory bandwidth would be free for textures, seeing as they don't have a depth buffer.


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Paul Groves.
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http://home.clara.net/paulyg

OpenGL for Beginners

[This message has been edited by Pauly (edited 11 November 1999).]

[Kruzin]

"Does everyone think that DVD decoding is a priority? Obviously they will have to include it because every other manufacturer is doing. I can't think of a time when I'd ever consider watching a DVD on a computer when I could be sitting on a comfy chair in the lounge with a beer."

I too like to sit on the couch to watch my DVDs...and with DualHead, I can do that, without having to buy another expensive peice of electronics

"Dual head and add-on boards don't really bother me. I suppose they'd be useful for video editing types....

DualHead is good for so much more. It's great for working in my ACAD with two monitors. Awesome for watching DVDs. Eventually I'd like a RR-G (or some video capture board) to burn home movied onto a video CD (so much better than stacks of VHS tapes). And there are games available, and coming out that will use DualHead...

"Environment bump mapping seems a weird choice too. Its harder to figure out than other types of bumpmapping..."

Yea, it may be tougher than some other types....but it also does more, and looks better

As for the wish list...I go along with what others have said as far as features...but my real wish is that they dump NEC as their chip fabbers, and find a better company to deal with, who is not more concerned with their own products

[SPSUguy]

Hey,

Number 1: Texture Compression! S3TC and DXTC. Although I think they are the same. I've seen these shots of how good TC looks and I demand it. I hear that Unreal Tournament includes a few hundred meg of extra textures for cards that support TC. Sounds sweet. And not much of a performance hit either.

Number 2: I concurr on the DVD thing. I love watching DVDs. And I've got the dual head going to my TV and it is sweet. Mostly what I'd like to do is be able to watch DVD on the tv, minimize the program on my computer and then do mail, web surf, ect. When i minimize the program now, the vid on the tv just stops.

Number 3: I agree about the OpenGL. It seems pretty good to me now. But better is always... better.

Number 4: Definitly jack up the fill rate. I read in an interview with some Matrox guy that he thought all next gen cards would have to have dual head and a giga pixel (or texel?) fill rate. So yeah... 1,000+ fill rate.

Well, that's good for starters. If I think of anything else, I'll get back to you.

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Abit BH6, Celeron 450, Matrox G400 32mb "MAX", 256mb ram, IBM 10GB, DVD 5x, MX300



[This message has been edited by SPSUguy (edited 11 November 1999).]

[RAB]

1280x720x32 at 120fps for HDTV and the next generation of dvd's that support HDTV.
1920x1080x32 at ?fps would also be nice since that's also suppose to be an HDTV standard.

Digital out as a standard feature might also be necessary since LCD panels will be more available by then and HDTV might also need or accept it - I'm not sure.

Then, I'll get a wireless keyboard, mouse and joystick and the new (I hope) HDTV big screen will really be worth it.

Couch potatoes of the world - Unite!

RAB

[paulcs]

I'd like it to be faster. And I bet it will be.

Hardware DVD encoding would be nice as well.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Maggi]

<FONT SIZE=4> I want 3D shutter glasses !!!<FONT SIZE=2>

Sorry guys, I had to bold it, so that Big M won't mis it ...

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Cheers,
Maggi
________________________

Working Rig:
Asus P2B-DS @ 103MHz FSB
Double Pentium III-450 @ 464 MHz
4 x 128MB CAS2 SDRAM
Matrox Millennium G400 32MB DualHead
Nokia 445Xi (21")
Nokia 447Xpro (17")

Home Rig:
Asus P2B-S Bios 1010 @ 100MHz FSB
Celeron 333A @ 500MHz
2 x 128MB CAS2 SDRAM
Matrox Millennium G400 32MB DualHead @ 150/200MHz
CTX VL710T (17")

[Ghydda]

IMHO it would a complete loss if the next gen from big M wasn't compatible with the current series of RR G-series. Most people who play games and do a bit of video editting is not interested in replacing the vidcap card as often as thier gamecard, because the evolution speed for the two worlds is not the same.

It would also be nice with an update on the RR G-series so that MPEG2 editing could be done in hardware realtime (with both I-frames only and IBP-frames compression as an option when capturing)

But still not limiting the compatibility between different G-series of cards and RR's.

And of course, DH should stay for good!

Ghydda

[franksch3]

OK, my wishlist, which I am sure some will not be in 3D cards for a few years:

- T&L with automatic tesselation of curves. That drasticly will diminish memory usage for environments with curves.

- Full hardware DVD encoding. Although I'm very happy with software decoding, hardware would be much nicer.

- Per pixel lighting, instead of per polygon lighting (as with the Savage 2000 and the GeForce). That will also drasticly lower memory usage for environments. And it looks much more realistic then per polygon lighting and lightmaps. But probably the fillrate will be much lower if they implemented it now. :-(

- Accumulation buffer, for advanced effects like anti-aliasing, soft shadows, motion blur, soft reflections, etc.

- Tile based rendering for much more effecient memory bandwidth usage. And ofcourse the ditching of the Z-buffer.

- Embedded memory with at least a 512-bit interface.

- Support for 3D textures, for much realler looking effects.

Thats enough for now.

[Buuri]

franksch3,

You got my list!
Anyway, missed one thing:

- Particle effects

_
B

[alessandro]

GIVE ME 25MILLION POLYGONS/SEC PLEAAASSSSEEEEEEEE

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Pentium II -450Mhz@504,Asus P2B rev.1010,17" Sony Multiscan 200PST,128MB PC100 ram,Matrox Millenium G400 MAX 32MB 5ns SGRAM,Quantum Firebal EL 10.2Gb,Epson Stylus Color 740,Sound blaster Live!,Cambridge Soundworks 5.1,Creative PC-DVD 5X,Ricoh MP7040S,Adaptec SCSI 2920C,Diamond SupraExpress 56e PRO.

[franksch3]

Hey Pauly,

I agree that per pixel lighting won't be around yet. But we're making a wishlist as you asked for. ;-)

What could be done is that the tesselation of a wall could be done in hardware and that the normal T&L method is used. That way you don't need to use much bandwidth for pumping your scene from memory to the internals of the 3D chip. The application it self then thinks it uses per pixel lighting. OpenGL has already support for per pixel lighting.

Accumulation buffer can be done by tile based hardware. A accumulation buffer is nothing more than a buffer in which you combine several fully rendered framebuffers. So this is possible for both types of architecture.

[moreau]

Dual head must stay. I'm using a g200 still, but when I upgrade, I'd like the dual head to still be an option.

There are many instances where it is just plain better to have two mons.

1. web browsing - Often there will be many things I want to link to from a single page, so keep that page open on one mon, and link into the other.

2. Programming - it is nice in progs like visual c++ to keep an editor in one mon, and compile and run in another.

3. Learning new software - If you have ever flipped back and forth between an instruction manual on, say, acrobat reader and the app, you know how nice it is.

After all, not all of us can afford that $1000 iiyama 21" monitor, so two $300 17"s is a good comprimise.

(Who am I kidding, if I had a 21, I'd still buy a g400 and hook up a second monitor)

[rubank]

Yes, embedded mem. is the way to go, but tile rendering - nah, I don´t beleive in it and with embedded mem. you don´t need it.

But something up the clever ATI line could be interesting.

rubank