***Matrox Parhelia....It's Coming......

[Electric Amish]

<< OEM means "no packaging & extras" NOT "cheaper stuff passed off as more expensive stuff." >>



Not all the time. ATI has done the same thing. Passed lower spec'd cards to the OEM's to be done with as the OEM's saw fit.

amish

 

[GrumpyMan]

Well now we have Nvidia, ATI, Matrox and let's not forget Creative is going to get in the fray too. It should be a very interesting next couple of two years in the video market.

 

[Degenerate]

eeeK!@!! Hope its true!

 

[grant2]

1 month update: still no announcement from Matrox, but Johan @ aceshardware has been hinting that something big is around the corner...

Just who WILL be proven right?? the suspense builds!!

 

[Nemesis77]

Well, if the specs I have heard are true, it should wipe the floor with GF4 . Just be patient, good things are coming our way.

 

[ElFenix]

wiping the floor with a gf4 would be nice.

<--- thinking about a new vid card.

 

[Czar]

http://www.techimo.com/articles/i8.html

 

[GoodRevrnd]

<<OEM means "no packaging & extras" NOT "cheaper stuff passed off as more expensive stuff.">>

Ha. Tell that to ATI--and while you're lobbying stop by nVidia and smack them really hard for their naming conventions and pricing scheme.

 

[ElFenix]

thats an interesting article. 19GBps of bandwidth is incredible. you'd have to have dual channels of DDR for that. which could happen. not gonna be a 4 layer board if thats the case then, i suspect. ah well, the extra layers don't add that much to the price. or it could be an "effective" bandwidth number. this sentence was nice:

<< Accordingly, it appears marketing stragesty will the definitive issue when evaluating the potential success Matrox's next generation chipset. >>

 

[vash]

Here's what I'm thinking with the next Matrox cards.

They'll essentially pull an Nvidia on us and release a "family of cards". They'll have one basic chipset with varying speeds, so they can target the $200-$500 market. At the $200 level, you get the"value" card, with probably 32 megs of DDR ram, at slower speeds, but its good enough for DVD playpack (probably hardware accelerated), 2D and gaming.

The further you progress up the scale of the cards, you double the RAM, speed up the base clock and memory, without really adding anything more than a better yielded card and chip. At the top end, I wouldn't be totally surprised to see a 128 meg, DDR card, that fits into an AGP Pro slot (thats right, I said Pro).

If Matrox is smart, they'd copy what Nvidia is doing (family of cards), but just make better cards and keep up with the killer driver support. If Matrox can penetrate all levels of the video market, they could beat out ATI easily. However, if Matrox doesn't come to market with a card that is defiintely faster than the latest out there, they'll be pulling third behind ATI.

May the force be with them.

vash

 

[Mengis]

Hmm, Matrox releasing a competitive gaming solution? I remember many moons ago building my brother a BP6 dual celeroned workstation with the brand spanking new G400 that unfortunately wasn't a MAX because you couldn't get hold of them for love nor money because everyone wanted them. Awesome is not the word for it back then but i do remember he had some initial problems getting a proper ICD for it that pissed him off something chronic due to his main need for 3DSmax but he's still using it and it's still a beautiful machine that is incredible in Photoshop and also kicks Half-life on at a decent rate.

Anyway... enough of the random murmurs... I don't doubt Matrox R&D could wallop out a card if they needed to but the question is do they want to? Well that all depends on what happens next i suppose. ST sellingup, Elsa have gone into administration, Ati selling on alla N'vidia. Trying to keep up with N'vidia's ever more aggressive product lives has been a nightmare for the competition but do they reached a point where they have to slow down a little? Is now a good time to jump in and try and woo the games market? Afterall GPU's are accounting for an ever increasing percentage of the overall cost of a PC.

 

[Nemesis77]

<< *cough cough* bitboyz Glaze3D *cough cough* >>



Just saw this, so my reply is late... Oh, if only you knew ... To you in the outside, Bitboys might seem like kings of vapourware. But if you knew a bit more, you wouldn't think so. The reason why we haven't seen any of their chips yet have been because of bad luck. Pyramid3D sinked with TriTech who went bankrupt thanks to completely unrelated lawsuit. Avalanche3D (the successor ot Glaze3D) got the axe "thanks" to Infineons decision to kill their eDRAM-business just when BB were preparing to release the chip (they still might, but only in limited numbers. Stay tuned). Glaze3D was discontinued by BB before it was released. Reason being that it wasn't future-proof enough (lack of T&L among other things). They did (to my knowledge) have working chips ready & running.

 

[Agent004]

You know what, if matrox managed to get a card that is the same performance as the GF4, I would buy it without hesitation

 

[Nemesis77]

<< You know what, if matrox managed to get a card that is the same performance as the GF4, I would buy it without hesitation >>



Sorry to disappoint you, but it wont be of same performance. It will be better . Alot better. At least that's what the specs tell.

 

[acejj26]

u and me both agent004

 

[Agent004]

<<

<< You know what, if matrox managed to get a card that is the same performance as the GF4, I would buy it without hesitation >>



Sorry to disappoint you, but it wont be of same performance. It will be better . Alot better. At least that's what the specs tell. >>



Hey, at least those kind of performance is 'acceptable' and 'realistic', otherwise people will keep on thinking it's vapourware

EdIT: I will be well disapointed if that happened

 

[Nemesis77]

<<

<<

<< You know what, if matrox managed to get a card that is the same performance as the GF4, I would buy it without hesitation >>



Sorry to disappoint you, but it wont be of same performance. It will be better . Alot better. At least that's what the specs tell. >>



Hey, at least those kind of performance is 'acceptable' and 'realistic', otherwise people will keep on thinking it's vapourware

EdIT: I will be well disapointed if that happened >>



Like I said, I have heard the specs of Parhelia. And if those specs are real, it will be order of magnitude faster than GF4! But, we will know for real soon enough .

 

[Nemesis77]

<< Here's what I'm thinking with the next Matrox cards.

They'll essentially pull an Nvidia on us and release a "family of cards". They'll have one basic chipset with varying speeds, so they can target the $200-$500 market. At the $200 level, you get the"value" card, with probably 32 megs of DDR ram, at slower speeds, but its good enough for DVD playpack (probably hardware accelerated), 2D and gaming. >>



To my knowledge, low-end Parhelia will cost about 300 dollars. Ultra hi-end will cost over 1000 dollars. The ultra hi-end model is supposed to compete with Quadro and others.

 

[NFS4]

I'll believe it when I see it. We've been fooled before by other companies, it can happen again.

And you guys keep comparing it to the GF4. By the time this Matrox thing gets here (**IF** it gets here), we'll beyond GF4 level. We'll have the GF4 Plutonium (hehe) and R300 from ATi. NVIDIA is already toying with .13 micron GF4's, so you can expect a 350 - 400MHz fall refresh soon. Matrox has an uphill battle and if you think that they are just going to stomp NVIDIA and ATi in performance (and at a competive price), then you are extremely naive or simply gullible...take your pick

 

[Nemesis77]

<< I'll believe it when I see it. We've been fooled before by other companies, it can happen again.

And you guys keep comparing it to the GF4. By the time this Matrox thing gets here (**IF** it gets here), we'll beyond GF4 level. We'll have the GF4 Plutonium (hehe) and R300 from ATi. NVIDIA is already toying with .13 micron GF4's, so you can expect a 350 - 400MHz fall refresh soon. Matrox has an uphill battle and if you think that they are just going to stomp NVIDIA and ATi in performance (and at a competive price), then you are extremely naive or simply gullible...take your pick

>>



Let's see.... GF4 was just released. Parhelia will be introduced soon. and you say it doesn't matter because "NVIDIA has fall refresh in the pipeline already". By that logic no company could be competetive no matter how insanely powerful GPU's they release becuse "Next NVIDIA chip is only 6 months away". It doesn't quite work that way. Parhelia has more than enough power to stomp GF4 (assuming the specs I heard are correct) and more than enough power to compete with NVIDIA's next chip (assuming NVIDIA follow their typical routine).

Feel free to be sceptical. You will be proven wrong soon enough

 

[NFS4]

<< Let's see.... GF4 was just released. Parhelia will be introduced soon. and you say it doesn't matter because "NVIDIA has fall refresh in the pipeline already". By that logic no company could be competetive no matter how insanely powerful GPU's they release becuse "Next NVIDIA chip is only 6 months away". It doesn't quite work that way. Parhelia has more than enough power to stomp GF4 (assuming the specs I heard are correct) and more than enough power to compete with NVIDIA's next chip (assuming NVIDIA follow their typical routine).

Feel free to be sceptical. You will be proven wrong soon enough >>


The problem is you're basing vapour next to a proven product line and product schedule. Matrox has nothing to show for for the past 2 and 1/2 years in the high performance arena. ATi and NVIDIA do on the other hand.

 

[EdipisReks]

<< Like I said, I have heard the specs of Parhelia. And if those specs are real, it will be order of magnitude faster than GF4! But, we will know for real soon enough . >>



so, the parhelia is going to be 10 times faster than the geforce4?

i'm just going to assume that you don't know what "order of magnitude" means.

--jacob

 

[Nemesis77]

<<

<< Like I said, I have heard the specs of Parhelia. And if those specs are real, it will be order of magnitude faster than GF4! But, we will know for real soon enough . >>



so, the parhelia is going to be 10 times faster than the geforce4?

i'm just going to assume that you don't know what "order of magnitude" means.

--jacob >>



Splitting hairs I see . To me "order of magnitude" means that it will be significantly faster than GF4 is. I'm not a native speaker of english, so you must excuse me if I don't know the true official meaning of all phrases of the english language.

 

[Nemesis77]

Double post

 

[EdipisReks]

"order of magnitude" is a scientific term that means the same thing in all languages. for instance, in german it is "die Gr&ouml;&szlig;enordnung".

--jacob