hard ocp reporting Parhelia design team fired

[funky-d-munky]

Hard ocp has a link up to Beyond3d forums babble about P team being fired, and P2 being canned.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3780

Those bastards just love to kick the P don't they. It all stems from them not being given a pre-review copy. The other day they reported on a site that gave UT2003 worst game of the year, and as a comment the hardocp said they "must have played it on a Parhelia."
Hell surround gamming would be the only way that game would be any good.
Dorks like that doing so well, makes me embarassed I don't have my own review site ;>)

[Guru]

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38953

[[GDI]Raptor]

hardocp sux....

[K6-III]

Indeed, HardOCP does indeed such donkey nuts....

[GT98]

day late and a dollar short over there...

[APEXNETHOR]

I read that article and went to check up on the post from Beyond3d.com. But to be honest who knows for shure if this is true as I don't take most gossip as entirely the whole truth at best. But if rumor is true man that's not a terribly good move on Matrox's part as I would figure that they would create a Parhelia 2 with much more refined tech and performance.

Only time will tell for shure I suppose.

[Maniac]

Yes they would create the P2, but in classic Matrox fashion it will take another 3 years and be DOA as well

[funky-d-munky]

Maniac thats not fair. In all reality I think Matrox did very well considering.
The size and resources of Matrox compared to ATI, NVIDIA, it is bloody amazing they even came close to keeping up. I mean who has pushed the graphics card industry? Did Nvidia or Ati invent dual head? Hmm. How about triple head? Quality tv-out? Overlay on the second head? Hell, who even made it a priority to even make lowly 2D high quality? Hmmm.
The only thing Matrox can be guilty of is maybe over extending themselves on the P. It's a do or die business and maybe they pushed the PR and technology a bit to far. They tried for a little to much.
I mean seriously who else is even in the ball-park for video cards? SiS is just finally getting something worth while out and it's no P. Power VR, Intel, S3, Trident, STB. Where are they. As far as performance is concerned Matrox is third. THIRD with a budget of 1/100th of the second fastest.
But we gladly kick some dirt on their coffin for not being first.
I'm not saying rush out and buy one, but I am saying have a little perspective.
I believe taking pot shots a-la Hardocp, at the third fastest and most inovative graphics card company in the WORLD is "Little Mans Syndrome" in its most classic case. Personified by the dickless twirps Kyle & Stan. Or is it Curly and Moe?
funky

[Wombat]

If you follow the TCB rumors around here (most reliable Matrox news on the 'net), P2 was canned a while ago.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

forget about P2 i will say. It will take them forever to sell all the buggy-Ps they have in stock. And don't forget there's a P 8X.

I am expect to see one 3 yrs later, if they are still in the game.

@Frank: Matrox didn't do pretty well with their managements if you as me, if you knew what happened to G800 (i.e. refuse to invest on special machinarys (what was it called again?) that let you clcok chips higher or something like that)

[GT98]

Well if you where around in late November/Early December you saw what happened at M...lots of layoffs and what not since the Parhelia wasn't a sales success. The tech behind the parhelia is Fine and if it was clocked higher and some bandwidth saving engineered into it would be just as fast as the R9700, just that where myriad problems with the way the chip was engineered, and the problems where well documented here if you want to look for them.

Its a shame

[Chrono_Wanderer]

I think they really should have implanted full DX9 support... make it as late as GFFX and they will still do a lot better.

[borat]

dx9 was not supported by anything and maybe not even finalised when p came out, only now, 6 months late are nvidia shipping products with support.

[funky-d-munky]

I agree. They did the best the could given its design frame. They definately would have made it fully DX9 if they were able to. I get the sense that the product was ready to go some time befor it was released in a lesser form. Then it was held back to be updated to incorporate what DX9 spec they could manage into the design.
I would like to remind people that this will help garner it a better performance advantage over DX8 class cards once DX9 titles start to ship.
Eg. A geforce2 pro 64mb vs. geforce 3 200. Both will play DX7 titles at about the same fps. But pop in a DX8 game and the geforce2 will drop to half the fps if its lucky.
funky

[R.Carter]

Well, the issue with full DirectX9 support is one of, I think, die size and power / heat.

Ideally, when there is software that actually requires DirectX9 then most likely Matrox could have had a DirectX9 part ready.

Myself, I'm waiting for OpenGL 2.0 support.