What affect does the new ATI card have on Parhelia?

[Wombat]

That's your problem comprehending things then Afronaut. Look at that, only $2 billion in computer game sales. That really isn't all that great of a market.
Also, if you actually <I>read</I> about Castronova's study of Norrath, you'll see it was simply an academic exercise, and the fictional GNP has absolutely nothing to do with the real world. It was cute and nifty, but those dollar signs had absolutely zero translation to Earth.

[Fernobulax]

No really, Norrath is actually going to join the UN. Viva la Everquest!

I'm beginning to see what Matrox was thinking. "Hmm, if we raise the bar too high and give these guys frame rates higher than those of nVidia, our forums are going to be filled with pre-pubescent FPS-kiddies who can't afford the product anyway. Bill, you better lower that clock speed!"

[mhm]

ELSPA Sales chart 13th July

PC
TW LW Title (No Weeks)
1 1 Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos (2)
2 2 Neverwinter Nights (3)
3 3 The Sims: On Holiday (15)
4 4 Grand Theft Auto 3 (8)
5 6 Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (22)
6 5 Soldier of Fortune 2: Double Helix (7)
7 9 Norton Antivirus 2002 (45)
8 10 The Sims (127)
9 8 Grand Prix 4 (4)
10 11 The Sims: Hot Date (34)

The Sims is demolishing all other games in popularity.

[Afronaut]

1.75 BILLION in sales is what?

Nvidia had 1.7 in sales in the last 12 months. while ATI had 1 billion

Here is another:

Electronic Arts posted revenues of more than $1.7 billion for fiscal 2002. Theres a half a billion in PC games right there. THe market is massive.

Lots of 1.7 billions flyin around...

Matrox just could not pull it off after three years. Unless you are of the belief that they did not want to release a gaming card with performance.

[mhm]

EA is publishing The Sims, most of their revenue is coming from that game and all those expansion packs. Rest is EA Sports...

Anyone have some The Sims benchmarks?

[Sinistral]

Nvidia had 1.7 in sales in the last 12 months. while ATI had 1 billion

And i doubt those revenues come their High-End gaming solution. Dell, Gateway, etc... who get OEM Geforce 2/4Mx cards. Are probably 70% of that.

What are we talking about again? . -

[xortam]

Didn't Intel change their marketing strategy after they discovered a significant number of Pentium sales were attributed to home users buying those processors for gaming?! Gaming isn't anything to sneeze at but Matrox has chosen not to try and compete with ATI and NVIDIA solely in that market. For one, Matrox has other lucrative divisions besides the graphics group that is responsible for the Parhelia and the G series. The graphics division tries to build products that address a number of needs including gaming but gaming has never been paramount. This fits my needs as I only play games on occasion and my Max is fine for me right now (maybe another three to six months). I look more for IQ, multi-monitor/TV support, DVD playback, stable drivers, and good support. Looking forward I'm concerned about HDTV support as well as the ability to play Doom 3 and perhaps UT 2003 next year. The ATI products are quite competitive in most of these areas and I'll be scrutinizing the progress of the Parhelia and 9700 during that time.

[crow8k3a]

why?

why does everyone have to rag on this card. If it is not for you, do not buy it. I personally think even with the r300 appearance that i still would rather have the matrox P. I would say i'm a gamer and a CG artist. I absolutely love gaming, but i spent about 10% of my computer time doing that. I want to be able to play all the new games and have them look great. The matrox P does that. I also need a workstation type card for CG and video editing. The parhelia has the 2d features that i need, and the quality 2d display i want if i'm gonna be staring at my monitors for endless hours. The dvdmax feature alone is worth atleast 100 bucks to me as well as the quality of tvout for post production. Thats not counting the loads of other features. Sure the new cards are faster in gaming. For some, they buy or build their computer to suit their needs. The P fits my needs, and is my video card of choice, over and above the r300 and most likely the soon to be arrived NV30. So buy what u want, but don't tell me what is best for my needs.

[Cobos]

Afronaut (which BTW: is a really "interesting" name in Norwegian what you apperently don't understand is how to actually interpret statistics.... Of course selling games is a big business. But as was said earlier lots of that is in the console market not on the PC. And more importantly the point people have been trying to get through is that top-of-the line graphic cards is mostly a PR stunt, or rather cheap PR. Which again drives the sales of the important sellers, the MX series.... Why exactly do you think NVidea called their cheap castrated cards GF4MX, when a more truthful name would have been GF2 Super Ultra or something
And now to the other point look at that chart which was shown a few posts up and tell me which game there Parhelia doesn't run perfectly ? Even with the first set of drivers.... (and as a last note we haven't actually seen any REAL reviews of R300 just what ATI wanted us to see... )

Cobos

[ravalox]

Originally posted by TDB
why does everybody assume that matrox is going for 0.13µ for their refresh?

the rumor is that the fab they are using is jumping straight to 0.09µ.

Impossible to search for "R0M 09 umc", so I'm going from memory.

R0M posted in response to a similar comment that the fab, UMC I believe, only assembles the boards. They do not provide the silicon.

Who knows what size shrink we'll see.

[Afronaut]

"Afronaut (which BTW: is a really "interesting" name in Norwegian"

I am Norwegian, Half...

I presented stats. I presented stats that included Console and PC I understand exactly what I presented. No Problem.

[GinoCyber]

Taken from Wired Life: Video game consoles becoming way to go
By David Hoye, Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Thursday, May 23, 2002

"Organizers of the popular trade show, known simply as E3, just released results of a survey of the 400 exhibitors expected to attend this week's event and unveil more than 1,000 new electronic games and game-related products.

The survey found that nearly half of the new products being shown at E3 are for video game consoles. About 39 percent of the new titles are for computers, 17.5 percent are for handheld game devices, 7.8 percent are for Internet-based games and 3.4 percent are for PDAs and wireless telephones.

The survey results are in line with 2001 computer and video game sales statistics reported earlier this year by IDSA. The stats show that video game sales are increasing, mostly because of video game consoles. Video game sales were up 8.3 percent in terms of units sold. Computer game sales were down 1.5 percent."

[APEXNETHOR]

If PC gaming is the main focus of your PC set up than I would have to say yes thr ATI R300 will have a definite impact upon Parhelia sales. I would say that ATI's new Radeon 9700 is going to put a nasty dent into Pahelia's market share when it comes to PC gamers looking for a new G-card this 4th quarter.

This is just my personal view of course.

[Cheesekeeper]

The R300 is likely to cause the Parhelia more than a bit of grief. Not becuase of benchmarks, but because it is already encroaching on several of the areas that were supposed to be (temporarily) unique to the Parhelia.

Let's look at some of the things that were supposed to give the Parhelia an edge over the competition:

256 bit DDR Memory - the R300 has it too, and seems to be making better use of it than the Parhelia has.

30 bit colour - it's a safe bet that the Parhelia still has better image quality, but it is now not the only 30-bit colour consumer card around. (Plus the P10 should be showing up soon).

Displacement Mapping - again, the Parhelia has not remained the only card to support this for long.

DX9 feature support - Parhelia supports most of them, the R300 has them all.

Don't get me wrong, I still love Matrox cards, but the R300 gives us something to think about. The R300 is offering the majority of the new features we saw in the Parhelia, along with the performance levels most of us were expecting/hoping for. If ATi still can't write a stable driver, that would be a downside - we'll have to wait and see.

I still see triple-head and surround gaming as a great feature, but not useful enough in itself to gain a significant market share on those features alone. R300 does support dual monitors (though most likely not as well as Matrox). If surround gaming isn't of major interest, than there isn't much of a problem dropping an extra video card in your PC, and having true 3-monitor support (instead of stretched-desktop only). The 16X FAA is still a big advantage, the question will be how the R300 at 4X FSAA compares. It certainly looks like speed won't be a problem, so it will again come down to quality. Since the R300 is supposed to handle high-qualily Anisotropic at decent speeds as well, it may even have a quality edge over the Parhelia in that area.

The fight isn't over by a long shot, but I'm finding it hard justifying the price of a Parhelia, now that we have a taste for what we'll be up against. Suddenly the only major thing the Parhelia has going for it is that's made by Matrox. That's certainly worth a few points, but not enough to seal the deal - even for a long-term Matrox advocate like myself.........

[Ryu Connor]

(Plus the P10 should be showing up soon).

It's already here and it's not for gaming.

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/...624/index.html - Overview no benchmarks.
http://www.amazoninternational.com/h.../wildcatVP.asp - Overview and benchmarks.