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Matrox G550 Killer Video Conferencing Featureset?
Chick writes "Chick's Hardware have posted their thoughts and analysis of the specifications of Matrox's upcoming G550 chipset, just what Matrox are and have been up to?" Basically the article proposes that the features "GoIP" and "Headcasting" combine to be a technique for high speed transmission of wireframe heads for teleconferencing. It all seems reasonable, but it is all speculative. And even if that is the actual idea, would it look good?
There's more realistic-sounding information available on this site:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/#990980645
Aw hell, I'll just post it here:
Although Matrox does its best to keep all the details about the upcoming G550 top secret and doesn't provide any info even under NDAs, they still can't withstand very unpleasant leaks. Our reliable sources close to Matrox told us some credible details about G550, which will be officially announced on June 19, as we have told you before.
Judging by the set of features the upcoming G550 will have, we can conclude that this solution will not be targeted for gamers. Matrox will pay special attention to DualHead technology and 2D graphics, while 3D performance will remain mediocre. So, G550 seems to be just an enhanced version of the G450.
As for 2D, just as in the previous solution, G550 core will have 2 RAMDACs. Primary RAMDAC will work at 360MHz, while the secondary RAMDAC will work at 230MHz. So, the highest resolution on the primary monitor will make 2048x1536 and on the secondary monitor - 1600x1200, at 32bit color mode.
As for DualHead technology, it will work in the following modes: multi-display, DVDMax, zoom, clone, TV-Out, Snapshot, and will feature eDualHead browser enhancements. Also G550 will support dual-DVI.
Speaking about 3D, G550 architecture will undergo some slight changes. G550 will have 2 pixel pipelines with 2 texturing unit each. However, the performance will be greatly limited by 64bit DDR SDRAM, which Matrox considered to be the best choice for its G550 for some reason. So, 3D performance of G550 will be comparable with GeForce2 MX 200 or RADEON VE or even lower.
But G550 3D core will also have some nice things. It will be DirectX 8 compliant due to Matrox's brand HeadCasting engine. This engine is none other but a T&L unit supporting extended Vertex Shaders and matrix palette skinning. G550 will also support EMBM.
G550 will be made with 0.18micron technology and have dual integrated CRTCs, RAMDACs, TMDS and one integrated TV encoder. The cards based on G550 will be equipped with 16MB or 32MB DDR SDRAM with 64bit interface. G550 based cards with 32MB memory are expected to cost around $140.
Also our sources told us that 3D gamers shouldn't forget about Matrox, because the company also keeps working on a new gaming solution.
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When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
The entire article is (very self-admittedly) made up of grapevine and pure flights of fancy. This is web-journalism at its very worst, showing just *why* you can't trust things off the web without looking at their source: He admits he made all this up!!!
Even assuming the two buzzwords "GoIP" and "HeadCasting" are real, I'll buy the "Graphics over IP" concept (he dosen't even seem to know what the -oIP suffix stands for, just "it's some internet thing"), which leads to the next obvious idea, which is that HeadCasting is sending the graphics from one or more "Heads", i.e. displays, to a remote computer. Possibly involving hardware, possibly not.
But then, that's completely *my* extrapolation, and no better (okay, a little better) than his.
Besides... I can do that with my G400 right now. It's called X... or VNC, or any of a dozen different protocols. Maybe Matrox has a new Good Idea on the subject, though... assuming it has *anything* to do with remote graphics at all.
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Evan "Happy Matrox user, not a gamer, YMMV"
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
That hardly seems reasonable to me. In fact, it's just about the stupidest idea I've ever heard. What in the bloody hell would be the point in accellerating wireframe heads for videoconferencing? Matrox ain't dumb ... hence the reason they've stayed out of the R&D expensive power gamer market and instead concentrated on the much more lucrative business market. I'd be highly surprised if "Headcasting" had anything to do with videoconferencing wireframe heads.
What is it, then? One must look no farther than another one of Matrox's buzzwords: Dualhead, i.e. two displays off of one video card. When combined with GoIP, if it is indeed Graphics over IP, it seems much more "reasonable" that this instead means that you can broadcast one of your "heads" (read: displays) to another computer (or computers).
Certainly nothing we haven't seen before in standalone applications (i.e. VNC and whatnot) but if this was tightly integrated into the Matrox drivers and very intuitive it would be pretty cool. Think about it, your primary monitor is showing your desktop with whatever you're working on. Your secondary monitor is using Headcasting to broadcast someone else's, while yours is broadcast to their second monitor. Quick and easy collaboration through the magic of the Internet.
I can forsee all kinds of uses for such a thing, even just within an office, let alone worldwide.