Matrox's New Three-Head Video Card

This Anonymous Coward was one of many readers to point to sites with information on Matrox's upcoming Parhelia-512 graphics card: "It appears that some foreign hardware sites have violated NDA and posted some very juicy details on Matrox's next generation hardware. iXBT's review can be found here(1), and a MURC posting with some other pics from China can be found here (2). It looks like the real deal. Will Matrox wake up from their long slumber in the 3D gaming market, or will this card be another stopgap like the G550 was?" Update: 05/12 14:07 GMT by T : Alexander Medvedev of ixbt.com points to the English version now online as well, and notes : "Please note, we can't violate NDA becouse we _do _not _sign _anything with Matrox Graphics. And never receive any info from Matrox."

Comments

Major problems with Matrox drivers

[Futurepower(R)]

I've had major problems with Matrox drivers under Windows XP.

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers

[Toraz Chryx]

And lots of people have major problems with Nvidia drivers under Windows XP.

Your point?

As long as we have hardware we can chop and change there will be conflicts and glitches, that is almost totally unavoidable (unless you buy a Mac :)

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers

[56ker]

Who *hasn't* had problems with drivers under Windows XP?

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers

[DanThe1Man]

As long as we have hardware we can chop and change there will be conflicts and glitches, that is almost totally unavoidable (unless you buy a Mac :)

In which case it would just be totally unavoidable. I have a friend who still has to use BETA drivers for his video card. A lot of hardware devolpers don't always develop for the Mac, or if they do they certainly don't do as good as job as they do for windows.

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers

[Toraz Chryx]

Is he using the card that came with his mac, running the OS that was preinstalled on it?

no?, so he chopped and changed and got driver problems :)

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be proud "I haven't installed it yet, and I probably never will, heck I never even used anything newer than 98, and frankly I don't care about the evil empire" good old "I'm not being zaelous, I just have little use for it except for games, and my job requires me to use linux exclusively" lovable "And I'll be damned if I get dragged into yet another bloated operating system" me.

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers

[smaug195]

So... that's like buying an OEM machine and not changing it, off course all the drivers will work. That doesn't make a Mac inherently better, just another OEM.

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers

[packeteer]

*I* havent... i dont even use XP the onyl place i have ever used it is in my computer class in school... and i only used it to see the specs real quick before i formated and put mandrake 8.2 on

Gossip

[dirvish]

"some very juicy details"??? Did the video card sleep with its cousin or something?

Re:Gossip

[Toraz Chryx]

No, it locked a Geforce 4 Ti4600's in a box and fed them only the bare minimum to keep them alive.

for sport.

whilst rendering Jedi Knight II at 3840x1024 / 32bit at 100FPS.

Mmmmm....

[DanThe1Man]

Surround video Pr0n...

Re:Mmmmm....

[jaavaaguru]

Sorry, but please tell my exactly why this was off-topic. "Surround video pr0n" is perfectly on-topic - it's definitely a possibility with this new video card. JoeAverage with his BestBuy PC with 1 AGP port and 1 PCI port would never have been able to watch surround video pr0n on 3 screens before. This post was as on-topic as someone pointing out that the latest version of Open Office can edit word-art created in Word XP (not that I'm saying it can).

Re:Mmmmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

You're supposed to say:

"My METAMOD will 0wn j00!!!"

and then the moderators get scared and change it.

LCD

[doubtless]

If LCD price continues to drop, this would be really a serious contender. I can't envision hooking up 3 CRTs, but using 3 17" LCDs side by side would definately kick some serious asses.

Just hoping they will have drivers for my favorite OS though. ;)

Re:LCD

[WasterDave]

I can't envision hooking up 3 CRTs

I can, it's about to be winter down here.

Dave

Re:LCD

[Anonymous Coward]

Winter? It's nearly June. What planet do you live on? :-)

(yes, yes, I know, the southern hemisphere).

Re:LCD

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Neighbor: "Hey WasterDave, we just got our new gas furnace installed, which is good because it's nearly winter!"

WasterDave: "Yeh, they say it will be a cold one too.."

Neighbor: "Yeh, my wife and I were wondering, how do you and the Mrs. WasterDave heat your home? Gas, electric?"

WasterDave: "Um, no."

Neighbor: *confused look* "You burn wood?"

WasterDave: "Um, no."

Neighbor: *really confused look* "You burn coal?"

WasterDave: "Um, no."

Neighbor: *annoyed* "How then?"

WasterDave: "Computers. Lots of computers."

Parhelia 512

[sxpert]

It seems this thing will kick major (major) major ass...
The thing works with 10 bit resolution
has 5 outputs, and 2 display controllers (dunno how they will have 3 monitors attached)
There is a glyph antialiasing unit (ahem...)
DVD/HDTV decoder (10 bits) and also a 10 bit video digital interface.

more info at
http://ixbt.com/video2/parhelia512/chip_diagr.jpg

Re:Parhelia 512

[56ker]

All right, all right - calm down it's only a video card!

Re:Parhelia 512

[Anonymous Coward]

*looks down at spooge in hand*

You're right, maybe I overreacted.

Re:Parhelia 512

[Snowfox]

The thing works with 10 bit resolution has 5 outputs, and 2 display controllers (dunno how they will have 3 monitors attached)

Matrox have typically driven two displays with each display controller. Even the single head MGA400s had the logic for a 2nd display, if memory serves.

Re:Parhelia 512

[Anonymous Coward]

you can get a extra attachment to add the third monitor, it's not built on to the card anymore

Re:Why publish this ?

[citizenc]

If its subject to NDA, you are at the very least MORALLY obliged to keep quiet about it.

Until I read your comment, that idea had never occured to me. You do, however, raise an interesting point. Well put, you anonymous coward you!

Looks nice

[RatBastard]

Fram what I could gather, and I do not understand Russian, this card looks very cool indeed.

Re:Looks nice

[Toraz Chryx]

Babelfish has a Russian English translator

Re:Looks nice

[vipw]

it only translates a little bit of the page.

# Two digital TDMS of interface for the digital outputs/yields or external RAMDACH.Is supported permission/resolution up to y920khy200khe2bpp
# Two*** TRANSLATION ENDS HERE ***&#109 0; & #1080; CRTC

i guess you could chunk the page up into several smaller ones and then have the fish read them for you. i think the diagrams convey a wealth of information. Besides, the babelfish translations are so bad that waiting until tuesday to read it on tom's and anand's doesn't seem like a bad compromise. :)

Re:Looks nice

[linzeal]

Try the digit life article rewritten by the original author in english.

Re:Looks nice

[Anonymous Coward]

check linzeal's comment in this thread

Re:Looks nice

[jo42]

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/matroxparhelia5 12/index.html

HTTP 404 - File not found

Re:Looks nice

[linzeal]

It was there earlier, I can't find any mention of it currently.

Re:Why publish this ?

[sanermind]

The party who signed the NDA is required not to release information. Slashdot didn't sign a NDA, and can refer to what is now public information with impugnity.

Since its in russian

[MrBandersnatch]

The only things that I can make out are :-

1) It has some VERY fancy graphics tricks up its sleave.
2) 16xFSAA
3) 3 Head support for "surround gaming" which appears to be supported by the driver rather than requiring the developers to support it.
4) Support for 256mb of DDR ram.

The rumours I've head about this card are that its also FAST enough to give nvida some competition. Hopefully tom will have some benchmarks soon :)

Re:Since its in russian

[Toraz Chryx]

It doesn't have 16x Full Scene AntiAliasing, it has 16x FAA (Fragment AntiAliasing)

From what I can gather it only AA's parts of the image that actually NEED it, the fillrate savings must be enormous :)

Re:Since its in russian

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not 16xFSAA, that's 16xFAA, wich I guess stands for Fragment AntiAliasing, in that it only antialiases jagged fragments, thus doesn't have to rerender the whole image, wich Full Scene AntiAliasing does, this saves alot of bandwidth, wich it already will have plenty of.
256bit DDR sdram, delivering up to 20GB/s memory bandwidth, up to 256mb of it.
The displacement mapping techniques looks promising too.
All of this combined with Matrox tradition of offering specs, and open source GNU/Linux drivers (although with a weird, but not really restrictive license, maybe they can be convinced to change the license to GPL?) will be, simply put, KICKASS!
This will not only be fast enough to give nvidia some competition, it will CRUSH nvidia (at least the present lineup of chipsets).
Holy ...! :)

Re:Since its in russian

[Anonymous Coward]

You matrox engineers should staying up all night on meth trolling slashdot, go back to canada and eat your psuedo-bacon.

Also here

[The_Shadows]

Link

If the details are accurate, this could beat out the GeForce4 and bring Matrox back into the gaming market. Unlike the 550. Decent card, but 0 gaming potential.

The_Shadows, out.

Re:Also here

[donglekey]

I think they must have realized that for a video card to be useful now, powerful 3D is the foundation. More and more applications are using 3D API's and with Longhorn, and of course 3D animation, modeling, design, and architecture programs not to mention GAMES a video card is just no good unless it has some serious 3D muscle. Bring programability in the 3D chips into play and the trend continues. Unless someone is doing straight photoshop or video editing, I don't know who would use a triple head card without 3D in it.

I think Matrox realizes this and can't imagine that they would continue to compete in video cards without some big ol' 3D firepower.

Re:Also here

[linzeal]

It has 10 bit ramdacs, nothing close to that has come to the consumer market. The 2D has been raised a notch or two and NVIDA and ATI both have no real way of countering the 2D performance at this stage. The 3D is going to be good perhaps better than ATI and Nvidia but Matrox has like 2-3 year product cycles, they can't can't compete forever on 3D performance unless they restructure their company and change their engineering philsophy.

Re:Also here

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd have to agree with that - I do a lot of video editing, and find the G550 wonderful for that, but I've also got a GeForce 2 (okay, not top of the range, but does most stuff at the moment) which I swap in whenever I need to do games stuff.

That said, are there any plans (or is it even possible) for motherboards with 2 AGP slots? It would be really nice to be able to have both cards installed at one point...

Re:Also here

[linzeal]

Um it would be cheaper to just buy a card that does good 2d and 3d. I mean you can go spend 70 bucks on an mx440 right now and get decent 2d and 3d, all 2D today looks about as good as matrox did 2-3 years ago. This 10 bit 400mhz ramdac is taking it to all new heights though.

Re:Also here

[jawtheshark]

You have never worked, do you? Many corporations actually love Matrox cards. In the corporate world only 2D matters, the only 3D you see are the OpenGL screensavers :-)
Graphic cards that I have seen at the places where I have worked are usually Matrox cards, or low-end ATI's. And if I can chose, I take a Matrox anyday.

Re:Also here

[donglekey]

I don't see what your past experiences has to do with my future predictions, but hey, this is Slashdot, so happy trolling. Longhorn will require 3D, and my guess is that many who needs 3 monitors will too.

Re:Also here

[Chad Page]

If you're gonna go nvidia, might as well get a ti200 or ti4400, tho, slightly more expensive but much better values... I think higher-end gf4ti's have better 2d circuits than previous nvidia products, too. It's something one needs to do homework on.

Re:Also here

[jawtheshark]

I am not trolling... You do realise that many big corporations still are on Windows NT4 and coudn't care less about 2000 or XP or your all-hailed Longhorn (what a stupid name by the way).
So if your predictions were about things that will happen in 10 years, you might be right, but short-term future: forget it.

Re:Also here

[linzeal]

I still prefer ATI over nvidia for 2D for the most part. Why pay almost 200 dollars for 300fps when you can get imgo better 2D and save 100 bucks getting an OEM 8500?

Re:Also here

[Anonymous Coward]

The statement that "Matrox focuses on the Corporate Market" is completely bullshit, because 99% of the time corporations deploy whatever's integrated into their OEM's mainboards.

I haven't seen a OEM machine with a Matrox chip in over 2 years. Even yer standard Dells are now coming with NVidea chips.

I figure Matrox is pretty much getting slaughtered in the "professional 2D" market, and is trying to move way upscale fast.

Re:Also here

[donglekey]

your all-hailed Longhorn (what a stupid name by the way).

Jesus its not like I created it, I am just stating what I have read. Matrox cards are there for the long hall anyway.

This begs the question, if 3D isn't important to the people who will buy this card, then why is there such powerful 3D in this card?
I am not exactly sure why it is you take it so personally that Matrox is supposedly coming out with a card with powerful 3D.

Re:Also here

[jo42]

Longhorn produce Bullshit - and lots of it.

Re:Also here

[Com2Kid]

This begs the question, if 3D isn't important to the people who will buy this card, then why is there such powerful 3D in this card?

Matrox has stated on numerious occasions that for them 3D is just an interesting side market that they do not really need to enter but that it is something that they would 'like to' do. Keeps the engineers on their toes or some such like that. ^_^

Notice how many 2d improvements this card incorporates as well? Sure it may sell to the 3d crowd for awhile, but remember, as others have stated Matrox has traditionaly had a 2-3 year production pipeline.

Their G450 is STILL selling. Why? Well it is a few bucks cheaper then the G550 (heh) and it is a kick ass solution for 2d users.

Offtopic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another case of a moderator on crack. The story is about a video card that lets you have three monitors, like in this picture. You could have 'Surround video Porn' with this product, and I think the poster above was making a joke about that. I thought it was funny.

Re:Offtopic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderator on Crack (TM).

Be sure to capitalize it, and include the trademark symbol, otherwise I'll have to sue you for dilution.

Re:Offtopic?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no "lame and predictable joke written purely in hope of whoring some karma"-moderation option, you gotta make due with what you have

Re:Offtopic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck dude. Lame and predictable jokes are still funny, and he was the first to post it. If he wasn't the first poster, mod it redundant. If he was, and it's simply not that funny, mark it over-rated. Off topic is just that, off topic. On topic things are most definitely "on topic".

Does any of this make sense?

Re:Offtopic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lame and predictable jokes are still funny

And this, folks, is the attitude that makes /. suck more and more each pageload.

important

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf?

let's talk about the important questions, like how it performs against the gf4.

Re:important

[kawaichan]

According to nvnews.net it will be around 20-30% faster than GF4 Ti4600.

But that's rumor + prereleased drivers.

so probably ending up with 50%+ performance, proabably not enough to murder the next cards from NVIDIA and ATi

Re:important

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still using girlfriend 3 and so far is more than enough for me.

VERY low FPS

[GutBomb]

Look closely at the lower right corner of this screenshot. This is the one without the 16xFAA too. Pretty disappointing really.

Here is the screenshot from 3DMark 2001.

For those too lazy to look it shows a paltry 3 FPS.

Re:VERY low FPS

[GutBomb]

I suppose I could have posted the larger screenshot instead. Here.

Re:VERY low FPS

[Toraz Chryx]

It should be noted that the very act of taking a screenshot can stall the system.

try taking a screenshot of 3dmark using a utility that writes it to disk immediately, most likely the system will stutter, and it's DURING that stutter that the image is actually captured (hence the low fps readout)

the phenomenon occurs with Quake engined games as well. probably others...

Re:VERY low FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look REALLY closely (say, magnify the screenshot by 16,000 times in Gimp and apply the Despeckle and Deinterlace filters and then invert the colors while warping it in the Z dimension by 185%), you'll see a little 'M' next to the 3.

Yes! 3 MILLION FPS!

-- A passing Matrox sales creature
NOTE: This mesage contain forward-looking statements, and thus is most likely a pile of crap that I just pulled out of my ass.

Re:VERY low FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

no. you're wrong. The reason it's 3 fps is because it's easy to take a snapshot at low framerates at the same exact spot. That's a feature of 3dMark 2001SE Pro. So, take your FUD and shove it! :-P

Re:VERY low FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

They were probably emulating the hardware. There was likely no silicon to be had when they did this, can anyone point out some fcpga "simulators"?

Re:VERY low FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not sure what the exact definition of phenomenon is, but I doubt that the computer slowing down to write a huge chunck of memory and then write that chunk to disk is a phenomenon

Re:VERY low FPS

[Toraz Chryx]

okay then, do you have a better word for it...

maybe just leave the word phenomenon out and have "This happens with pretty much any software" ? :)

Re:VERY low FPS

[Arandir]

By damn, this is not an nVidia chip! We must do what it takes to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt upon Matrox. Followers of the Sacred GeForce must rally together, lest the heathen Open Source community realize that our Beloved Chipset is more closed than the typical Microsoft file format.

Strict adherence to the herd mentality gives rise to freedom. Choice is the enemy of Liberty.

Re:VERY low FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not sure what the exact definition of phenomenon is, but I doubt that the computer slowing down to write a huge chunck of memory and then write that chunk to disk is a phenomenon

1 plural phenomena: an observable fact or event

Try m-w.com. It works great, and you'll avoid making a fool of yourself on public forums.

Specs

[joe_fish]

The links are /.ed and in .ru so not much help. Before /. posted I noticed the following rumored specs:

512bit GPU

tripple head

20GB/s memory bandwidth

256bit DDR(?) memory

bump mapped surfaces

Re:Specs

[Cloud 9]

bump mapped surfaces

As far as bump-mapping goes, Matrox was the first. It's nothing new to them.

Re:Specs

[Toraz Chryx]

Environmental Bump Mapping isn't news, DISPLACEMENT MAPPING OTOH, is very much news.

Re:Specs

[Anonymous Coward]

That's DISPLACEMENT mapping, hardware enviromental bump mapping has existed in the Matrox world since G400, wich I belive was the first to offer that of all the mainstream graphics chip manufacturers.
Displacement mapping displaces the geometry, so a single polygon could, when subdivided, represent a whole landscape of hills and valleys.

Re:Specs

[Namarrgon]

Bump-mapping has been around a lot longer than Matrox. Jim Blinn introduced it at SIGGRAPH '78.

Environment-mapped bump-mapping, which Matrox first brought to consumer hardware with the G400, was actually invented by none other than BitBoys Oy.

More details at El Reg

[joe_fish]

The register has more details (and isn't dead):
Go http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/25238.html

Confirmation from Matrox

[joe_fish]

Matrox have confirmed that there is something in the pipeline to be released in 3 days time. But all they are officially giving us is a flash screen here that shows that something is going on.

Translated from Russian... I want one

[SHiFTY1000]

Specification:

80 million transistors
Technological standard 0.15 gm
Graphic nucleus/kernel and memory work with the clock frequency up to 350 MHz
Valuable is 256 bits (!) OF DDR the busbar/tire of the memory
The capacity of local memory on the order of 20 GB/sek
Capacity of local storage 64/128/256 MB.
AGP of 2kh/yakh/8kh including regimes/conditions SBA and FastShrites
4 piksel'nykh conveyors
4 textural blocks on each conveyor (!)
To fillrate:up to 1.4 gigas-peaktorrent and up to 5.6 gigas-flowtorrent
Apical sheydery of version 2.0 (Vertekh Syuader 2.0), four parallel fulfilling blocks
Piksel'nye sheydery of the version of 1.3 (Pikhel Of syuader 1.3), 4 textural + 5 combination stages on each piksel'nom conveyor, with the possibility of the association/unification of conveyors in pairs (we obtain 2 conveyors on 10 combination stages)
YEMBM and DOTE the imposition of the relief
Fixed/recorded T & L DKH8 (including the extended possibilities of matrix blendinga and skininga).Is actually special apical sheyder
Construction, storage in the local memory and conclusion/derivation to the monitor of image with the accuracy of 10 bits to the component of color (!). the technology of the 10- bits Of gigaCholor
Two built in the chip, 400 MHz, 10 bits to the channel RAMDACH, which use technology Of ultraSyuarp
Valuable of 10 bits.> 10 bits are tables for the arbitrary Gamma-korrekqii the concluded image
DVD and YUDTV of video decoder with the accuracy (at the output/yield) of 10 bits
Is supported the conclusion of image in the permissions/resolutions up to 20ya8khyshche'khe2bpp8shch Hz
Built-in the chip interface of TV -Out with 10 bit accuracy signal shaping
Two digital TDMS of interface for the digital outputs/yields or external RAMDACH.Is supported permission/resolution up to y920khy200khe2bpp
Two*** TRANSLATION ENDS HERE ***

There was also a mention of glyph antialiasing... And 64 / 128 bit per pixel colour...

Re:Translated from Russian... I want one

[0x20]

I'm not sure how parent got (+4, Informative) instead of (+5, Funny). Unless it's informing me that there actually exist numbers like "20ya8khyshche'khe2bpp8shch."

busbar/tire? FastShrites? RAMDACH? Pikhel of syuader?

I came away from that translation more confused than enlightened, but maybe my dictionary is just too old.

Imagine....

[DanThe1Man]

Imagine a Beowolf custer of theses...

It would involve a shit load of monitors.

I wonder how this card will perform in games.

[antdude]

I used to have a G400 and still use it. It used to be for my desktop and games, but I moved it to my Linux server. Still an awesome card.

Re:I wonder how this card will perform in games.

[Anonymous Coward]

I use it right now!

P2-300 and G400-16

Kicks ass!

I can play rtcw, MoH, Q3A, etc. at up to 800x600-32 with 15-25 fps. Fine with me.

Re:I wonder how this card will perform in games.

[antdude]

Yeah, but I want to play it at 1280x1024 with everything ON :). Of course, with decent FPS (higher than 25). My old machine is a P2 300 with G400 32 MB :). The gaming machine is a P3 600.

Release

[Anonymous Coward]

On matrox.com it says that the card is comming on May 14th :-)

This looks very promising.

Is it just me, or does Parhelia sound a lot like Paella ?

Re:Release

[Toraz Chryx]

Not really

mirror

[flex941]

.ru link mirror at http://www.city.ee/~lenar/matrox/

Re:mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Estonians were getting pretty anti
.ru these days..

Re:mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Estonians are probably the most tolerant to Russians among 3 baltic states, and yes Russian says so.

Major problems with Matrox drivers: Explanation.

[Futurepower(R)]

L33t haxx0r: Notice the on-topic first post above.

Matrox Driver Problems: We are experiencing major driver difficulties with Matrox products under Windows XP. All of these are with the most recent Intel motherboards and Matrox G400, G450, and G550 adapters. We are using the latest Matrox drivers from the Matrox website. We have also tried the Microsoft certified drivers, which are much worse. We have tested with clean installations of Windows XP, as well as upgrades from Windows SE.

Our Win XP clean install test machine takes 18 seconds to display 97 items when doing a DIR directory listing. This appears to be caused by bad interactions between the Matrox drivers (with a new Matrox G550 adapter) and Windows XP. We are testing with a 2 GHz Pentium 4 and a new Intel motherboard.

We often see artifacts in DOS windows. Little colored vertical bars are left on the screen after some operations.

When we reported these things by telephone, the technical support representative, Bob Alionis, was very reluctant to deal with any matter that could not be solved quickly. He told us to try a video adapter from another manufacturer. This was difficult for us, since we have been building computers only with Matrox cards. Also, if an adapter from another manufacturer worked well, why would we go back to Matrox?

We tried an ATI Radeon card, and it worked better. We would be reluctant to switch to selling ATI cards because of our perception that ATI often has driver problems.

We haven't tried nVidia yet. Do nVidia chipset cards display business applications crisply? None of our customers run games, so sharpness at 1600 x 1200 resolution on 19" monitors is the most important criteria.

There is apparently no e-mail address for Matrox technical support. Matrox did not respond to e-mail sent to sales. Matrox did not respond to e-mail about technical problems sent to the RMA department.

Things have changed at Matrox. They are apparently trying to keep the number of tech support calls down by making it complicated to report a problem. The paragraph below is an exact quote from a message sent by a Matrox RMA department representative. The phone number mentioned is in Canada. Apparently Matrox does not have a U.S. number.

Jump through hoops RMA procedure:

"You can obtain an RMA for your board through Tech Support. Just make sure that you have registered your Matrox board on our web site http://www.matrox.com/mga/registration/home.cfm and have selected the option 'Obtain your tech support client id number...' at the Registration Menu. Once you obtain the client id number, just call 514-685-0270, then select option 1, followed by option 4, and then finally option 1 to reach the Tech Support queue to speak to a technician. For additional information on the RMA procedure, e-mail rma@matrox.com or call 514-822-6000 and ask for the RMA Department."

We wonder if Matrox is unable to fix its driver problems, and they are trying to avoid taking calls about them.

Re:Specs (mirror)

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a mirror of the pics, and a translation of the article into english (in case the site is still slasdotted.

mirror

[flex941]

.ru link mirror here.

Free Software Driver ?

[Lejade]

What I really would like to know is if Matrox is going to release a Free Software driver for this thing. If I remember correctly, they used to have a pretty friendly attitude towards GNU/Linux and Free Software. I really hope this hasn't changed as I'm sick and tired of Nvidia's proprietary crap and it would be nice to finally have good hardware acceleration on a Free Software system.

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[linzeal]

According to haig from the matrox tech support forums they will at least be doing 2D, hopefully when it ships. 3D is up in the air, but a lot of the code should be portable from their openGL implementation in windows if they code it clean enough.

I'm really waiting for the p10 from 3dlabs though, we are talking about the chipset opengl 2.0 has pretty much been exclusively designed around, drool.

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[Adnans]

I'll take unified (preferably open source) drivers over Free Software drivers this time. My G400 was already obsolete for a good year or two when semi usable free software drivers for it emerged. The reality is that people capable of writing good free drivers are in short supply.

I'd rather have all Matrox driver engineers slave away at good drivers for my Linux box than one or two (unpaid?) engineers volunteering their spare time. Anything else would basically mean wasting good money on hardware that I can't really use.

-adnans (not an NVidia pimp :)

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[sxpert]

They have very good support for Linux (I have my G550 working better than under windows (no crashes ;-))
the dual screen also works like a champ.

Kudos, Matrox

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[Anonymous Coward]

" My G400 was already obsolete for a good year or two when semi usable free software drivers for it emerged."

That was true for the normal Win2000 drivers as well :)

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[Heretik]

Yes, unified free software drivers would be nice (however unlikely, due to the "Nvidia excuse" of third party proprietary technology...), but I'd rather have crappy free software drivers than no drivers at all (I don't use proprietary drivers).

Also, I got my G400 relatively early in the cards lifespan and there was functionality for it, both 2d and 3d (from the Utah GLX project) IIRC. The speed of Utah GLX was comparable to the windows drivers too (at least for me it was). "A good year or two when semi usable free software drivers...."?

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[mcelrath]

Matrox has been traditionally very friendly to linux. They produce Their own set of drivers (with source!) as well as a tool called "powerdesk" which lets you switch X resolutions on the fly. In addition, they are very friendly to developers.

All of my video card money goes to Matrox. End of story. I won't waste my time with these half-assed, hostile companies like ATI and Nvidia. (Yeah, so I'm a little behind the curve on this whole "3D game" thing...;) I'm extremely happy that Matrox will produce a good 3D card! I have owned the Millenium II, Marvel G200, and G450 dualhead and been extremely happy with them all. Now I'm just waiting for the Marvel G1000!

--Bob

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[ShawnD]

Matrox has been traditionally very friendly to linux.

Until you ask them if they ever plan to support TV out on anything other than the G400. They never answer. Us G450 and G550 users feel ripped off

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[justsomebody]

(preferably open source)??????

Matrox drivers on official drivers site were always open source. Go and try downloading whatsoever. Under section Binary downloads, there always download source.

So I don't get it, where is the problem

Out of linux box, always was pretty good support for linux drivers, except of my own gaming machine I never used drivers other than XFree original. But self compiling original Matrox and replacing them is just as simple. Installing "sh install.sh". Matrox covered drivers for every card except video features in Marvel. But there is enough info to get that running on www.matroxusers.com, I know I have. They even bothered to bring opensource Powerdesk to community. That's a lot more than nVidia. (closed source and no specialized configurator)

So where is your open source problem?
Bitchin' at the wrong company, Matrox is one of the biggest Linux supporters from the start, it was probably one of the first graphics company's to release linux native drivers. This kind of politics just made me Matrox lover, and now "all of my cards, all Matrox" :-)

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[zifnab]

> Matrox has been traditionally very friendly to linux.

Uh, not really. At the beginning of the "Matrox Millenium" era, there were no drivers for Matrox products (that would lead us to mid-1997). But apparently, they didn't want to see what a boycott by linux users would have given.

> They produce Their own set of drivers (with source!)

With source ? Only with the same kind of sources than nVidia ... some wrapper code, and a big chunk of pre-compiled library (binary only!) ...

seb.

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[RestiffBard]

Nvidia good drivers? MY geforce2 crashes on just about every driver that Nvidia puts out. I for one don't feel their efforts to provide drivers are anywhere near being good. fair maybe but not good. good would mean my shit doesn't crash while browsing slashdot.

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[Arandir]

That "big chunk of pre-compiled libary" is the HAL library. It is not necessary for the normal operation of the card. Try to get the Sacred nVidia operational without any binary-only code and you fail.

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[mcelrath]

The reason is that the G450 and G550 implement Macrovision. I could rant for hours about this stupidity, but there is presumably some kind of secret agreement between the Macrovision Nazis and Matrox. Macrovision doesn't want their secrets out, becaus then *horrors* people could watch their movies in ways not authorized!

It's going to have to be reverse-engineered on these cards.

-- Bob

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[BrookHarty]

Thats not a nvidia driver problem.

The linux 2880 and win2832 drivers are rock solid. The only blue screens Ive had (and rare) are memory, dma or a panic. X has crashed more due to KDE apps than nivida drivers.

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[RestiffBard]

well. I've gotten the same crashes using all manner of software (gnome/kde/X) in all manner of window managers. I still have to reboot to retain control of my system and return to the X drivers

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[xercist]

Bullshit. nvidia's drivers have caused crashes on my machine, and machines of everyone else I know who uses nvidia cards with linux. Just because it may be stable for *you* doesn't mean it is for everyone. For *me*, it crashes, occasionally locking up the entire system, and leaks memory constantly.

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I really would like to know is if Matrox is going to release a Free Software driver for this thing. If I remember correctly, they used to have a pretty friendly attitude towards GNU/Linux and Free Software. I really hope this hasn't changed as I'm sick and tired of Nvidia's proprietary crap and it would be nice to finally have good hardware acceleration on a Free Software system.

And use it for what? Lord knows there's no real gaming on the linux platform (like, who bothers developing games that would require suck a high framerate)...To some high end graphics people, yeah, cards like this and others may be worthwhile for the *nix base, but for the 99.9% of us who don't do that sort of work, who cares?

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[ShawnD]

Macrovision doesn't want their secrets out, becaus then *horrors* people could watch their movies in ways not authorized!

It may also be the other way around. I remember hearing that DVDs with Macrovision have to pay a small royalty to MacroVision Inc. If the player turned on Macrovision when the DVD didn't ask for it then MacroVision Inc. would probably get annoyed.

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[Dwonis]

With source ? Only with the same kind of sources than nVidia ... some wrapper code, and a big chunk of pre-compiled library (binary only!) ...

I don't use the HAL, and dual-head and DRI-3D still work fine. In fact, I don't remember what the HAL does that everything else doesn't.

Re:Free Software Driver ?

[Dwonis]

X apps should never crash X. If they do, it's either an X problem or a driver problem.

Triple head on the cheap?

[eclectro]

I have thought about using the G450 agp dual head with another PCI video card for a triple head with windows NT. Has anyone tried this, and how well does it work?

Re:Triple head on the cheap?

[YtsaeB]

Yep, I have a g450 16mb card, and a sis 4mb pci card. I've had tri-head going for over a year now, and its great. Works well on 98 and in 2000 (haven't tried XP, don't really like it). And works in linux too.

It'd be nice to get an actual tri-head card, then I would be able to have a matrix setup perhaps :)

Re:Triple head on the cheap?

[blankmange]

Check out Maximum PC's May issue: this freak has 4 LCD screens (1 AGP & 3 PCI cards) running from one PC -- looks like somethng out of The Matrix..... He had to do some custom fabrication on the screens, but pretty cool..

Re:Triple head on the cheap?

[bigbango]

It probalby works, in windows NT you are not allowed to use your own head!

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers: Explanation

[Cloud 9]

"You can obtain an RMA for your board through Tech Support. Just make sure that you have registered your Matrox board on our web site http://www.matrox.com/mga/registration/home.cfm and have selected the option 'Obtain your tech support client id number...' [snip]

That's the way Matrox's tech support procedures have been since the days of the g200. After you go through their faq, you'll find a tech support e-mail address, where you can ask for support. After it's been determined that the problem is not a result of user error, the techie(who responds from his/her own address within Matrox) can then give you a RMA number.

They're not trying to make anybody jump through hoops, they're ensuring that the user has done everything they can to get the card working before tying up their resources by processing an unnecessary RMA.

Problems on NT too

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had problems with Matrox drivers going back 5-6 years. Have they ever made a product that doesn't have problems?

Matrox sucks.

Re:Problems on NT too

[korgull]

I guess you never really tried their products.
What makes you think the problems are caused by Matrox. Could it be caused by your OS ?

I'm using Matrox cards (Mil I,II,G400,G550) for over 5 years with Linux now and I'm very happy with the result and stability of the drivers.

Re:More details at El Reg (WHICH SAYS ITS A HOAX)

[jaseuk]

Checkout the register link, they have alot of evidence that suggests the whole thing is a hoax.

Jason.

Re:More details at El Reg (WHICH SAYS ITS A HOAX)

[Toraz Chryx]

Read it again, they are saying that Hoaxy stuff has been circulating, that's entirely different from the entire thing being vapourware.

What _should_ have tipped you off is that the 'hoax' material doesn't match the current leaks..

hell, one of them was claiming it supported 128bit colour.. uh.. NO.....

This will be...

[Anonymous Coward]

my next graphics card, no doubt.
Matrox has always been very friendly when it comes to specs, and also has some pretty good official open source graphics drivers, (although with their own license).
They will most likely offer open drivers for this one, if people don't like the license, GPL licensed drivers could be easily crafted. Although from what I've seen, the license, apart from not being GPL, is not restrictive, maybe they can be conviced to GPL them?
Well anyways, this will be a kickass product (and cheap too!).

The new tribal fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gather around the CRTs and get warm?

Three-headed?

[Rolo Tomasi]

Look behind you! A three-headed monkey!

Alright, now something on-topic: do any games support more than one monitor? I remember F/A-18 for the Mac could make use of three monitors, one for the front view and one for the left and right views each. This greatly increased the feeling of realism, and was especially useful during dogfights.

I suppose flight simulations and racing games would profit most from this.

Re:Three-headed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any Quake-engine based game can do this by changing the resolution from x*y to 3x*y and tripling the field of view. A friend of mine once had 5 monitors (with 5 separate video cards) going simultaneously. Of course, this was a few years ago, and the game was barely more than a slideshow.

Re:Three-headed?

[Per Wigren]

LOL! I completed both MI1 and MI2 yesterday, using ScummVM.. :) Ahh, some nostalgica... =)

Re:Three-headed?

[JamesHenstridge]

Doom had tripple head support, IIRC. You set up three computers, and ran a network game, telling the other machines to display left and right views for the player.

Re:Three-headed?

[Retron]

Yes, Doom supported 2 or 3 screens initially. They removed that feature as of version 1.2, when the networking code was rewritten so as not to use broadcast packets. Shame in a way, as it was ahead of its time...

NVdia? Sometimes, depends on brand

[Anonymous Coward]

None of our customers run games, so
sharpness at 1600 x 1200 resolution on 19" monitors is the most important criteria.

Depends on the brand. I've had mostly great luck at these resolutions with Pine cards. Some other brands completely screw up the power management, making the computer unusable. Things such as going on standby randomly and then requiring a power cycle to come back.

You'll have to do extensive testing with any NVidia card. The driver software is uneven. Power Mgt on any WinOS sucks, but you already knew that.

Re: NVdia? Sometimes, depends on brand

[Futurepower(R)]

Thanks for the help.

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers: Explanation

[sxpert]

Then Quit using windows (any version)
Matrox cards work much better under GNU/Linux and the X-window system...

What long slumber?

[allanj]

To have taken a long slumber from the 3D graphics scene is not possible for someone who was never there. Matrox always made killer 2D cards, but their 3D performance has *always* been - well - lacking (I would have written ridiculous, but I'm such a nice guy :-). Of late, even their 2D cards were overtaken by the recent batch of 3D cards due to the huge advances in memory bandwidth seen in the 3D cards.
I've used several of their cards for office/development stuff, and they're good at that. G100, G200 and G450 cards come to mind, the latter being quite good at rendering video with mplayer on one head while I'm using the other for work.

Re:What long slumber?

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone who states matrox was not involved at all with 3d so therefore could have not "gone to sleep"...

don't know shit.

while they lagged in FPS during the early NVIDIA/3DFX battle for king of 3d, you could certain play 3d games on those cards back then.

and while i never owned a matrox G series card, I DID OWN a matrox impression plus with 4 megs of ram.

Ever heard of Sento, Spectre-MGA or IceHawk?

I was playing these FULLY 3d accelerated games in 1994 on my Matrox Impression+

Matrox had 3d before NVIDIA was even a company, and Voodoo I was a gleam in some engineers eye.

so your whole post seems pretty rediculous to me.

Re:What long slumber?

[allanj]

If you re-read my posting, you'll (hopefully) discover that I said nothing about them not *supporting* 3D games. But for the time that 3D gaming has reigned supreme (mid 90's and on), they have not been contenders for the throne in 3D gaming. Period. I will not claim that certain old cards like your Impression+ couldn't support some old games (that I admittedly never heard of), but that doesn't detract from what I meant (and hoped I wrote) - when the 3D card war began for real, they didn't fight. I've played my share of 3D games on Matrox hardware, sure - but the important FPS/$ ratio was not very good.

Re:What long slumber?

[SykeOpath]

I think you are way out of line here. As the guy said, they where in the 3D market, but only as a third grade contender. If you really want to get to it and compare that nice Matrox Card with 4 megs you spoke of, I'd like to tell you that even then it didn't even come close to the S3-Virge 3D 4meg that came out around the same time. Just because you can play some 3D games on a card, doesn't make it a good card. The fact that you happened to think that it was "good enough", shows the general quality of gaming you appear to appreciate.. Makes me wonder if you play UT or Q3 with a Viper V550, after all you can play these games with this card.. just plays like crap.. SykeOpath

Re:What long slumber?

[Anonymous Coward]

True, with the possible exception of right when the G400Max was released (very competitive with the TNT2).

Re:What long slumber?

[epine]

I ran a G450 side by side against a Radeon 8500 DDR playing Quake III. The G450 was in a dual P3/750 system with 384MB, the Radeon 8500 DDR was in an Athlon/900 system with 768MB.

You'd think the Radeon would seriously win that competition. It didn't.

First of all, the G450 with 16 bit colour produced an image quality just as good as the Radeon in 32 bit colour. Maybe a bit better.

On the G450 you had to tune the texture detail down a couple of notches, whereas the Radeon could run at full texture detail. Playing these two cards I barely noticed the difference in texture detail.

The Radeon with 32 bit colour and full textures was still faster than the G450 most of the time. Unless the scene became complicated. Then the Radeon would fall to half the regular frame rate, whereas the Matrox would continue to pump along at 45fps all the time.

A lot of people who looked at the terrible benchmarks of the G450 in 32 bit colour with full textures enabled don't realize how playable this card really was. I actually like the G450 slightly better than the Radeon because the colours were somewhat more intense and the frame rate was more consistent. It terms of my game play success, it was a complete toss up.

I always thought it pretty unfair that the G450 was so heavily critized for not doing 180fps on some silly game loop as if that were a sensible thing for Matrox to accomplish.

The same is true with cars. Some cars with less raw horsepower perform a lot better on the road than you would think looking at the spec. sheet.

Adding in the superior image quality of the G450 the other 90% of the time (when I wasn't playing games) it was a no brainer.

I would say that Matrox was competing well enough at what they set out to accomplish if you bothered to look. Unfortunately, you get no respect in this market unless you run up the numbers on your spec. sheet.

Re:What long slumber?

[Anonymous Coward]

You claim you don't notice a difference when turning down texture quality (lies, or retardation) and go on to mention the superior image quality?
So funny.

Everything about the Radeon's architecture is superior to the G450. Even a normal Radeon DDR is much better than a G450. In quality and performance. That's just the way it is. You don't get anywhere in the 3D gaming industry by producing an inferior product; that's life.

Matrox still has their die-hard fans that feel their 2D is superior. They do fine in that niche. However they do not, and never have had a competitive 3D accelerator.

Re:What long slumber?

[Anonymous Coward]

what is it about the original article you don't understand?

>>Will Matrox wake up from their long slumber in the 3D gaming market, or will this card be another stopgap like the G550 was?

i and others interpret that sentence as: a company that was once involved in the 3d gaming market, bowed out, went to sleep, cried uncle WHATEVER!, AND now they are stepping back into it.

You on the other hand somehow read the original post differently.

somehow you took it to mean that "Matrox was a badass in 3d and for some unknown reason went to sleep"

so you whip out your keyboard and post "they couldn't go to sleep, because they were never awake"

i'm thinking to myself, well that's a pretty dumb response.

I personally saw Matrox as involved in the 3d market. and I backed up that observation with the name of a video card from 1994, and some games.

I also saw some decent hardware from them early on in the gXXX days...though i never owned those cards (i liked the tnt's from the beginning), i remember reviews on anandtech/toms, while never proclaiming them the 3d king, were always remarking that the cards had good visual quality, and could play the games.

so in conclussion, i completely agree with the original posting that Matrox went to sleep.

THEY DID GO TO SLEEP.

and now they are getting involved again. best of luck to them i say. (i'll stay with my nvidia/3dlabs cards for the moment)

it's your posting that seems out of place.

Re:What long slumber?

[Anonymous Coward]

one last time: no one here thinks matrox was in first place or second place when it came to 3d gaming. we all know who the winners were/are.

the original article stated they "went to sleep"...it never said they were number one, or the best out there, or 3d kings whatever.

no one claimed that, no one read it that way (except you)

to say they could not have gone to sleep because they were never awake, that they were never competitors, that they never were in the game is pure ignorance.

at times, matrox was a distant third, at other times they were a very close third. but they were involved, they were in the market and they did go to sleep.

from anandtech:

>>In Direct3D the G200 is starting to give the Voodoo2 and the Riva TNT a run for the money, especially considering the $130 - $150 price range of the 8MB G200 and the superb image quality.>Shogo Performance Conclusions

The G400 once again shows its incredible CPU dependency (and thus incredible CPU scalability) in Shogo. A surprising lead is the G400MAX at the top of the 1600 x 1200 render scene with the Pentium III 500, even topping the "faster" Voodoo3 3000 and the TNT2. >As already said, unfortunately there isn't an OpenGL driver ready for the G200 yet. However, from what I saw in all the games I've tested, G200 beats every 3D chip currently available and this includes Voodoo2. The 32 bit rendering capabilities of the G200 as well as the abilities of full scene anti-aliasing, which is not supported by any game I know yet, easily beat the hell out of the 3D abilities of any actual 3D accelerator. The RIVA still doesn't look too great, the ATI is pretty much the same but slower, the Permedia 2's 3D performance is that low that nobody even cares about its 3D quality and even the i740 doesn't live up to the standards of the G200. Voodoo2 is fast, but the lack of several 3D features can be noticed and it's only a question of weeks to months until it won't be the quality leader in Quake II as well anymore.

Now if only...

[Anonymous Coward]

...we could have monitors with smaller bezels...

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers: Explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

Our Win XP clean install test machine takes 18 seconds to display 97 items when doing a DIR directory listing.

Hey ding-dong, have you checked interrupt sharing?

Your network and video cards may be sharing an int. Isn't PCI steering fun? Gawd, Windows is so bad.

Only 2 Heads on Diagram

[Anonymous Coward]

The diagram of the card clearly shows only 2 heads. What is driving the third monitor?

Much needed info...

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this card need noisy annoying little fans ? I hate it when a computer sounds like a vacuum cleaner... And what about the power consumption ?

I'm looking into getting myself a new computer. What choices at a video card do I have, if I want something that's not a big fucking nuclear reactor, and yet runs all the newest games for at least 2 years ?

Re:Much needed info...

[SykeOpath]

A GeForce3 is a good idea. I don't really think most games will require much more power than that for a little while. Even the daunting DOOM3 or RtCW get handled quite well by a G3.

Will it last you a year or two? Who the hell can say! As of right now I would say it would be fine, but things change quick. Depends on what game makers do..

SykeOpath

Re:Much needed info...

[EllF]

Even the daunting DOOM3 or RtCW get handled quite well by a G3.

I'd be very interested in how you determined that Doom3 runs well on a Geforce3, as the game is still in development. Carmack, in one of his .plan updates, noted that was planning for the superior cards that would be available (not the GF3's, even) when Doom3 came out. A G3 will run it, but it won't neccesarily be the best card for the job.

A Geforce3 will run your games, and will give you a hedge, but gaming is an expensive hobby. If you can't or won't upgrade, expect things to be kludgy until you do. Other important considerations, such as RAM architechture, CPU speed, motherboard, and bus width all come into play - nothing taxes the entirety of your system like a new 3D engine. The best rule of thumb is to buy the most expensive hardware you can afford when you upgrade - cutting corners now will simply make the period before you need to upgrade again shorter.

Re:Much needed info...

[Dwonis]

Have a look at QuietPC. I bought a PSU and an Athlon CPU fan from them, and *what a difference*. During the day, you can't even tell if the computer is on, since everything else in the house is louder.

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers: Explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not trying to make anybody jump through hoops, they're ensuring that the user has done everything they can to get the card working before tying up their resources by processing an unnecessary RMA.

Yeah, that's a great way to run user support. Of COURSE the company's justified in saving its resources by wasting its users' time.

Re:Why publish this ?

[sxpert]

impugnity

Heh, that made me laugh my a** off...
you are muxed up with "pugnace", it should really be impuNity

Depth Adaptive Tesselation

[sniggly]

The article may be in russian but the pictures arent, take a look at this:

depth adaptive tesselation apparently by not rendering triangles at a distance (that wont be 'seen' at that distance) the card only displays 17,794 triangles instead of 165,150 it has to render without 'depth adaptive tesselation'.

There's not a lot of info on google about "depth adaptive".

It looks like the technology will allow for much higher framerates than so far possible..

Just look at the pictures :)

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers: Explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

or you can say it's justified for businesses to pass along their inflated cost to their customers because the customers always blame the vendors first (before more often than not would they realize they are the ones who are actually responsible for the matter)

Parhelia at Beyond3D

[Dave Baumann]

Theres already a fairly indepth technical discussion about this over at Beyond3D, with many translations from the Russian text.

Anyone remember Monkey Island?

[ericvids]

Guybrush Threepwood: Look, a three-headed video card!

Oh, and he looks absolutely sucky in 3D.

Re:Anyone remember Monkey Island?

[elzahir]

I thought he looked great... just gotta crank the FSAA.

Everyone knows that a mighty pirate has to be 3D.
2D = !Mighty

Re:More details at El Reg (WHICH SAYS ITS A HOAX)

[Grayraven]

The bit about 128bit color is probably true, 32 bits per channel can be really useful when using various blending modes and pixel shaders.
It also says you can choose what depth your framebuffers are, 8, 16 or 32 bits per channel.
The output precision is supposed to be 10 bits per channel.

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers: Explanation

[PoiBoy]

Do nVidia chipset cards display business applications crisply? None of our customers run games, so sharpness at 1600 x 1200 resolution on 19" monitors is the most important criteria.

I've been using an Nvidia Riva TNT2 with 32 megs of RAM for the last two years. It runs at 1600x1200x32bpp on a 19" Trinitron monitor, and everything looks great.

Good to see that Linux support is a given

[Kiwi]

It is good to see that, when a major new video card comes out, Linux support for the card is a given. Just four years ago, the prominent manufactor of video chips for Laptops, Neomagic, had a very hostile policy towards Linux users, which results in problems to this day.

Neomagic, however, eventually learned the folly of having an anti-Linux policy, and were forced to leave the Laptop chipset market altogether; I am sure that the various laptop makers did not appreciate all of the returns from people who wanted to use Linux. In fact, NeoMagic's support web page srill prominently discusses Linux drivers.

- Sam

Re:Good to see that Linux support is a given

[tzanger]

Neomagic, however, eventually learned the folly of having an anti-Linux policy, and were forced to leave the Laptop chipset market altogether; I am sure that the various laptop makers did not appreciate all of the returns from people who wanted to use Linux.

You want to back that up even just a little bit? I love Linux and I'm running it on this Compaq EVO N160 but to think that a video *chipset* manufacturer even sees laptop returns due to Linux is absurd. In fact if you look at the page you provided, the drivers are done by Precision Insight; Someone over there probably talked them down into allowing source release, not hordes of Linux users who demanded their money back from the laptop vendors, who got so upset that they called Neomagic.

"follow of having an anti-Linux policy" -- geez do you believe the crap you write? Yes Linux is great in servers and it's making headway (very great headway) in the desktop market but it hasn't got clout like you try to attribute to it.

Re:Good to see that Linux support is a given

[Anonymous Coward]

What about support for XFree86? Or Power PC's? Or BSD?

Just having Linux support is nearly useless. Having drivers that are OPEN SOURCE means if the card can fit in a machine, the card will work.

You can ask for support that helps everyone who uses open source software, or just your little Linux world. You call if you want to be inclusive or exclusive.

Re:Good to see that Linux support is a given

[zmooc]

Matrox' Linux support has been almost meaningless since the g450 because tv-out is not fully supported so you cannot watch accelerated movies on your tv. Basicly it sucks. I had to trade in my g450 for a g400 to get tv-out working and won't buy anything from them until things work like they should.

Re:Good to see that Linux support is a given

[sirinek]

Your "support page" says that Neomagic donated the code for the drivers to the XFree86 project.... next time read your links before using them to back up a fallacious post.

siri

Re:Good to see that Linux support is a given

[Kiwi]

I love Linux

But not on the desktop; you have a consistant pattern of posting articles complaining about things you do not like about the current state of affairs on the Linux desktop.

As for your previous complaints: If you don't like a desktop with both KDE and GNOME applications, start coding applications in KDE which GNOME has and KDE doesn't, or vice versa. Oh, I forgot, this io Slashdot, home to people who love to whine and are too pathetic to actually do anything to help things.

to think that a video *chipset* manufacturer even sees laptop returns due to Linux is absurd

You're speculating. I'm speculating. The fact of the matter is this: At one point, NeoMagic was the be all and end all of laptop video chipsets; within two years, NeoMagic completely left the Laptop chipset marketplace. I am sure a number of factors contributed to this; I am also sure that the lack of Linux support (until it was too late) was one of them.

it hasn't got clout like you try to attribute to it

It has enough clout that all major video chipsets have Linux support; either through having open specs so that libre software developers can develop drivers for them; or through binary-only drivers developed by the chipset maker for Linux.

- Sam

Re:Good to see that Linux support is a given

[Kiwi]

In principle, I agree with you. As a practical matter, I understand why companies are loath to do that; binary Linux drivers is only the first small step in the right direction.

World domination happens one step at a time.

- Sam

Re:Good to see that Linux support is a given

[sheldon]

"Neomagic, however, eventually learned the folly of having an anti-Linux policy, and were forced to leave the Laptop chipset market altogether; I am sure that the various laptop makers did not appreciate all of the returns from people who wanted to use Linux. "

No. It was ATI and nVidia making mobile editions of their chipsets that pushed NeoMagic out the door.

Linux is far less relevant than you desire it to be.

Re:Good to see that Linux support is a given

[Kiwi]

Linux is far less relevant than you desire it to be.

I think Linux is far more relevent than you desire it to be.

Obviously, this is a discussion of how you feel about Linux compared to how I feel. I agree: Linux is not perfect (my current Linux annoyance: poor Unicode support).

Since you are who has use Unix nonstop for four years, I am at a loss to understand why you feel doing things on Unix is "the hard way" compared to doing things on Windows. Certain specialized tasks, such as doing taxes (which is best done with proprietary software), yes, Windows is easier. However, while the Unix way is hard to learn, it is extremely powerful and flexible once learned. I personally think you spent too much time playing Netrek and not enough time learning sh/awk/perl/etc. In which case, yeah, Windows would be easier.

Now, Steve, I would be the first person to tell you that the Slashdot Linux "advocates" are little more than pathetic whiners; I do not think that they contribute anything productive to Linux. It would be good for the Linux community if those users became Amish and never popped up on the internet again.

You are obviously a talented programmer, and could make great contributions to libre software. Since you enjoy porting software from *nix to Windows, you may enjoy making a Windows port of Gnumeric. The people who have done the Win32 port of the GIMP (and GTK) have already done a lot of the hard work. Another way you could help is by helping the AbiWord devlopers make Win32 builds of AbiWord; they do not always have someone who can do it right away after a new AbiWord source tarball is released; and there are issues the Win32 version of AbiWord has which the Linux version doesn't have

I think these would do a lot more to help free software than sitting around on Slashdot trying to convince a bunch of lusers who think they are elite because they can install Linux the folly of their ways. They won't be convinced anyway, they are just itching to get in a flame war.

- Sam

Re:Good to see that Linux support is a given

[HeUnique]

Poor Unicode???

QT-3.0 got full Unicode support, as well as GTK 2.0..

Of course - there are some other toolkits around which didn't hear about Unicode support (motif, tcl/tk, fltk, etc...) - but since most Linux applications are written either with GTK or QT (GNOME or KDE) - I hardly see your point...

I'm using KDE 3.0 right now and I can type hebrew text under ANY KDE application, and I assume that once GNOME 2.0 will be out you will be able to do the same..

So whats your point again? :)

Re:Good to see that Linux support is a given

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that nVidia started producing a much better overall product for laptops had more to do with it than some fringe OS used by smelly fat people with severe mental handicaps. (You, btw)

Re:Good to see that Linux support is a given

[tzanger]

But not on the desktop; you have a consistant pattern of posting articles complaining about things you do not like about the current state of affairs on the Linux desktop.

I use Linux on the desktop. Several, in fact. While I'm actually honoured that you took enough time to wade through my /. postings to get an idea of what kind of Linux user I am, I do believe that your conclusions are a little .. uh.. incorrect.

Yes, I do tend to post messages with specific complaints about the state of Linux on the desktop. However I don't recall posting a comment to the effect of it'll never happen or that it's totally unusable (especially in the last year or so) -- I do say that it's not for Joe Sixpack at this point in time and I still stand behind that. However to say that I don't like it on the desktop is a stretch, to say the least.

If you don't like a desktop with both KDE and GNOME applications, start coding applications in KDE which GNOME has and KDE doesn't, or vice versa.

I try. I'm by no means a decent applications programmer (embedded systems is where I make my money) but I am kinda/sorta active on #kde and I do submit decent bug reports and feature requests. I direct my energy to where it will have the least impedance mismatch, so to speak.

Oh, I forgot, this io Slashdot, home to people who love to whine and are too pathetic to actually do anything to help things.

Also home to many smart people and a place where the demographic is hard to run across elsewhere, which is why you'll also find me posting "asides" or off-topically; sometimes the right person will be reading and I find an answer far faster than I could have otherwise. You can paint me with any brush you like, it doesn't change who I am.

You're speculating. I'm speculating.

True. However there are degrees of logic and/or reality which can be used to direct or modify the speculation. If you see a dead cat at the side of the road do you think that someone killed their pet and then dumped it there, or do you think that perhaps it was hit by a vehicle as it tried to cross? You don't know, but logic and rationalization come into play and you tend to think the latter.

We both speculated, but I honestly believe that my version is perhaps a little more grounded than yours. I would love to believe that Linux has enough clout that (most) hardware vendors don't think of it as a last-minute touch-up. I'd love to believe that Linux has the software business support to bring it programs like Dreamweaver, Nero, Photoshop, AutoDesk and whoever makes AccPAC. I'd love to believe these things but I know they're not true. And yes I know of Quanta, KreateCD, GIMP, and AppGen, but most of those just are not good enough (yet). Getting there, though.

It has enough clout that all major video chipsets have Linux support; either through having open specs so that libre software developers can develop drivers for them; or through binary-only drivers developed by the chipset maker for Linux.

Again, true. It's taken some time and likely a lot of people writing email to these companies (I am among them), but that isn't the kind of clout I was speaking about.

Re:Good to see that Linux support is a given

[Kiwi]

Thanks for the reply; the reason why I go to the trouble of looking people up (looking at their web page, etc.) when a see a flame war starting is because it is important for me to remember that I am engaging in a flame war with a person. While it is not the same of having a discussion with someone face to face, making the effort to know the person makes the discussion in question a lot more real.

I was under the impression that you were a winvocate [1]; possibly a Sun employee who still feels that Windows is what belongs on the desktop. Glad to see that I was wrong.

- Sam

[1] A "winvocate" is a Windows user who tries out Linux, decides it is too hard to learn how to use, and then goes to Linux discussion boards to flame Linux.

Re:Good to see that Linux support is a given

[tzanger]

I was under the impression that you were a winvocate [1]; possibly a Sun employee who still feels that Windows is what belongs on the desktop. Glad to see that I was wrong.

Wow I hope I don't come across like that to everyone!

I personally feel that Windows' days are numbered. Unfortunately the actual count is still very high. :-(

Re:Good to see that Linux support is a given

[Anonymous Coward]

At this point I'd be happy to see an imperfect driver that lacks 'our secret acceleration sauce'.

Me, I'm looking for dual (or more) headdness for running X. It doesn't need 3d polygons.

The big question

[Snowfox]

This is all exceptionally cool. If it's not a hoax, the specs are nothing short of amazing. I've been a big Matrox fan from day one, and it's hurt to see them relegated to a tiny side booth on the floor at GDC and Siggraph.

I hope they're getting ready to make an explosion at Siggraph this year. :)

But the big question is - where the hell did all this come from? Did they hire a few people away from nvidia? Did they run across some brand new wunderkind? Or is this what happens when you shelve new product development for a few years and focus on delivering a new product three years, not six months from now?

Is the architecture modular and well-designed enough that Matrox can continue to compete when the other guys catch up?

And is Matrox (I hope) back?

Re:The big question

[zulux]

Did they hire a few people away from nvidia? Did they run across some brand new winderkind?

They musta' bought out BitBoys - with their Exciting!, New!, Glaze3D technology. Or perhaps they found the secert fountain of Amiga technology. Or something.

Three heads

[Snowfox]

Matrox have been trying to push the three head idea for a while now. A few games even support using two and three heads, putting extra stats and controls on a side screen, or even extending the game enough to give you a view in your peripheral vision.

They have a few screenshots of different games which they've tricked into supporting it at the first link above. And I have to admit - it makes me a little drooly. :)

It's also a brilliant move for Matrox: If they keep throwing out 3 head cards at a premium price - after buying one Matrox 3-headed card, who's not going to keep purchasing Matrox cards? If you got this set-up, would you disable one or two of your gaming monitors just to get the new nvidia whizbang that might be 10-20% faster?

Re:Three heads

[archen]

Although the card looks cool, I'll wait for a little while. If ATI has shown me one thing, it's that it doesn't matter how good the card is if the drivers totally suck. At the place I work we have a few old Matrox cards, and I have yet to have any of the drivers provided by Matrox actually install. But that might be because they're older cards *shug*.

Actually I have a friend who will drool over this card. He already has dual monitors, and has been itching for a third for a while now. It actually works rather slick with Photoshop. One screen for image editing, the other screen for pallets and such.

Re:Three heads

[Anonymous Coward]

I use multiple heads, currently with multiple nvidia-based PCI cards on my Windows machine. Sadly, nvidia's drivers don't work properly for multiple heads under Linux.

I actually have four monitors on one system, two above the first two. I'm a game developer, and being able to run the game on one display while running the debugger in another, mail and assorted office apps on a third, and time-wasting chat stuff in a fourth is just schweet.

If you're working with XP, I hear people are indeed having driver troubles. Prior to that though, Matrox has had the most flawless drivers of any vendor I've dealt with, especially when dealing with unusual configurations.

Re:Three Heads

[Anonymous Coward]

Doubtful, since ATI used this name for their multiheaded system, Hydravision IIRC

Re:Three heads

[LoudMusic]

That's surprising to me - I've not had any trouble with Matrox cards ever. I'm currently running a G450 with two CRTs and it's amazing. Matrox also has some really nice software for making dual head easier. They have browser plugins that allow you to open and control multiple browser windows loading the same webpage. And really slick software that possitions windows based on the user's options. I have mine set to open windows in on the monitor that the cursor is in, center in the screen.

The only problem I'm having with my G450 is the two inch plastic boarder in the center of my vision. I will definitely be considering this card when it comes out.

~LoudMusic

Re:Three Heads

[Soko]

Nope. Besides ATI using HydraVision (as the AC points out), a better name for this beast would be Cerberus, the Three Headed Hound from Hell. That sounds cool, too.

Wait... Does that make me a marketer? Ewwww, I feel slimey now. Time to take a shower...

Soko

Re:Three heads

[qazxsw]

I bet you have a via chipset? If so then you need to disable some stuff in your bios while it's installed. Search google to see exactly what. I had the same problem.

Re:Three heads

[netsharc]

It's also a brilliant move for Matrox: If they keep throwing out 3 head cards at a premium price - after buying one Matrox 3-headed card, who's not going to keep purchasing Matrox cards? If you got this set-up, would you disable one or two of your gaming monitors just to get the new nvidia whizbang that might be 10-20% faster?
Very insightful, but that's only going to hold true until Nvidia makes a card that can also do 3-head. (It also has to be faster than Matrox's to get people to buy it, of course.). But for now, it's a nice feat of engineering by Matrox.

Re:Three heads

[Namarrgon]

Actually, forget the three-headed card - gimme the four-assed Mephisto Special card instead :-)

Re:Three heads

[tempest303]

gah... more proof that VIA is the fucking devil incarnate. If only Intel would make Athlon chipsets... ;)

Re:Three heads

[Toraz Chryx]

Nvidia, SiS and AMD make AMD chipsets that tend to work without being anything like as insanely twitchy as VIA hardware.

(I'm using an SiS chipset here btw)

Re:Three heads

[tempest303]

Me too, actually. I LOVE my SiS735-based board (the ECS one) but SiS is apparently getting back out of the Athlon biz for now - they're focusing on the P4, as their P4 chipsets are apparently incredibly popular. Oh well... maybe they'll make more of a splash in the AMD market when ClawHammer comes out.

Re:Three Heads

[Tekgno]

The Hydra that Hercules killed had nine heads.

Re:Three Heads

[Dwonis]

Not when Hercules was 2/3 done with it!

Re:Three heads

[Yottabyte84]

Got any photos? I'd like to see how you have the upper ones mounted.

Ok, so it's 3 headed...

[austus]

But is it possible to have two keyboards attached via USB and play multi-player games against the girlfriend?

Re:Ok, so it's 3 headed...

[linzeal]

Try finding a game that allows you to run multiple instances of itself and you could at least do it windowed in multiple monitors (just expand them as much as you can), I've done that with continuum.

Go Amiga!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a troll!

It's just funny that Matrox has always been the choice for the new Amiga systems.

Those guys may not be so crazy as you thought. ;)

Re:Why publish this ?

[Anonymous Coward]

what's wrong with being an AC, even if the point is not valid ?

NDA has nothing to do with moral, it's only a legal commitment with the contractors. You can make moral or immoral deals through NDA : suppose that one accept to learn AIDS healing technics but sign an NDA, will he have morally to keep quiet because of the NDA ?

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers: Explanation

[SykeOpath]

bah.. what an assinine reply.

Try Windows 2000, I have no problem with Gaming, business graphics, or even minor grpahical design on an Asus GF2 V7700 at 1600x1200.

Quite using Linux - Any version.. those cards run well under Be/OS too..

idiot..

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers: Explanation

[SykeOpath]

Do yourself a favor.. drop XP and go back to Win2K. I have no idea what game MS was playing when it decided to throw XP at the public - well I do, and it's silly, but thats another thread...

Now, if you can't go back to W2K, give me some information about the system running this.. what MB, Memory, CPU etc are you using.. most of the problems you are experiencing come from not having something installed or set up correctly. Not to say you don;t know what you are doing.. I just have no idea about your ammount of experience with building systems yourself..

SykeOpath

Try ATI Radeon 8500LE

[bayankaran]

After much debates and stupid research I went for an ATI Radeon 8500LE OEM card for the Athlon machine I assembled.

I have a 19inch CRT and the display is good and it supports refresh rates of upto 120 in some display modes. It is win2K.

The card costs only $150 from newegg.

Re:Try ATI Radeon 8500LE

[terracon]

This card has no 3d support in Linux which may make them very useless for some people.

FAA16X: Display Bug

[BESTouff]

Noticed how the "Sound OFF" thingy in the upper-right corner of the "unenhanced" picture is clearer than in the FAA16X antialiased one ?

Re:FAA16X: Display Bug

[GigsVT]

It's not a bug.

Antialiasing just means "blurring". It's utter bullshit. I can get antialiasing by adjusting the focus network on my monitor's flyback.

It's like in the original Star Trek when they showed the "beautiful woman" that kirk was going to pimp on, and they "antialiased" her close up so you couldn't see her wrinkles.

Re:FAA16X: Display Bug

[donglekey]

I think you really need to have a good read about anti-aliasing, why it is not 'blurring', why it is not bullshit, its roots in signal theory and how they apply to sound, images, and anything else that can be represented by a signal.

Re:FAA16X: Display Bug

[GigsVT]

I was being facetious man. :)

Matrix has 3 headed VidCard's ?

[CTalkobt]

Heh? Are VidCards some new type of monster?

I didn't think the Matrix Reloaded would be that strange.

*rubs eyes*

Oh! - Okay. It makes sense now.

*wants one for his environment at work*

If any of you bought the G200...

[coldmist]

and waited YEARS for an OpenGL driver, you'll understand my reservations about Matrox.

They promised an OpenGL driver before the card launched, but it was something like 2 years later before they finally got a crippled one out.

By that time, they had the G400 out, and it could do it (with somewhat reasonable framerates), so to me it looked like they fixed a few hardware issues.

For that reason alone, I won't go with Matrox anymore.

Re:If any of you bought the G200...

[JKR]

...or the M3D add-one for the Millenium series before it, which only ever got as far as a miniGL driver for Quake 2 written for it, before being consigned to the bin marked "Technically Superior, Shame About Support".

I feel your pain.

Sure these are real?

[JFMulder]

I mean, if you look at the performance charts at end, you'll notice that they are cheap Excel graphs. Personally, if I were as big a company as Matrox I'd use something better than Excel to make graphs. Or at least, they wouldn't be that crappy.

Re:Sure these are real?

[billcopc]

Excel is good enough for everyone else.. every single review site out there uses Excel or any other charting software.

Re:Sure these are real?

[JFMulder]

But don't you agree with me at least that these graphs don't look very good? This is the most basic graph in Excel, and it looks bad. They could have used at least curved lines. Or removed the dots on the curves. It seems very amateurish to me. I'm starting to wonder if these are real...

Re:Sure these are real?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. I was thinking about getting one of these but those graphs are just pissing me off. I'll stick with nVidia. They're graphs are much better.

Re:Sure these are real?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Well, given that this is supposibly leeked info. I don't think they would have bothered too much about making it look nice.

Anyway. The fact that it looks like crap says it could be real to me. I'm still suppised sometimes when I visit a big brand site, and find that it looks like it's been done by the back-end guys. You can't go by design professionalism when it comes to big companies and electronic info.

2nd clue is that it's Excel. What else would your average big coporate use? ;)

Re:Sure these are real?

[billcopc]

That's a good thing. If the graphs were fan-fucking-tastic looking, then I'd be led to suppose that the person spent hours making it look good because they didn't spend hours actually testing the hardware : it don't exist!

Full iXBT article translated to english

[Anonymous Coward]

First Parhelia-512 review!!!!
Digit-Life.com - official english mirror of iXBT.com

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/matroxparheli a5 12/index.html

Ouch.

[be-fan]

Perhelia? Sounds painful...

Most people don't need 3D

[Seska]

Spoken like a person who has no idea how computers are used in the real world. Yes, there are programs that use 3D, including modelling and games. They continue to form a very small part of the market.

In evidence I present the Matrox G200 MMS; a four-head video card based on the marginally 3D-capable G200 chip. Matrox sells these by the bucketload into businesses like finance, who give some value to a card that can present four screens of 2D information. I also present the 10 Top Selling Games of 2001. There's exactly zero games in there that can't be played on a G400, and one that would like a more powerful card (Black and White).

Yes, Matrox realizes that they cannot compete in the high-end 3D gaming market with the G550. What you need to realize is that most of the computer users in the world don't need any3D, let alone more than what a G400 can deliver.

Re:Most people don't need 3D

[linzeal]

You are smoking crack if you think Black & White will run at all well on a G400, playing a game @ 800x600@stuttering speed or crappy graphics does not count. All the other games I agree with.

Re:Most people don't need 3D

[donglekey]

Most computer users don't need 3D, most computer users don't need 3 fuckin' monitors eighther. Of the people who are using three monitors to do their work, I am betting a good lot of them are doing something with 3D some of the time.

A 10 bit DAC isn't that big of a deal. It is cool, but 3D labs' card will have one and I am sure ATI and Nvidia will step up to the plate too.

Re:Most people don't need 3D

[Tet]

Most computer users don't need 3D, most computer users don't need 3 fuckin' monitors eighther. Of the people who are using three monitors to do their work, I am betting a good lot of them are doing something with 3D some of the time.

Speaking from personal experience, I can assure you that you're completely wrong. I've seen countless multi-headed setups in a number of companies I've worked for (and indeed, I have a dual headed setup myself in my current job). Not one of those was ever used for 3D. They're used exclusively for 2D, for displaying more information than fits on one screen. Mine shows the status of all the production machines for which I'm responsible, for example, while still leaving enough real estate for me to get my work done. In the banking world, they're used to display market prices, etc.

Re:Most people don't need 3D

[jawtheshark]

Yup this guy clearly never set foot in the trading room of any big bank. All traders have at least 2 screens mostly 17" or 19" TFT's. (And not to mention the bucketload of phones... alway wonder how they manage *that*)
Ah, let him live in his 3D gaming world... He doesn't want to listen to reason anyway...

Re:Most people don't need 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

RTCW MultiPlayer was the straw that broke my G400Max's back. (Single player was OK.)

Re:Most people don't need 3D

[Cynikal]

then it could be argued that most people dont *need* a videocard at all, or even a computer. but economics aren't based on what we need, but rather a percieved need, hence those who need a top of the line system, like my grandmother who needs P4 2.2 to check her hotmail twice a week.

yes, most people might not need 3d, but 90% of the people who dont, end up buying a decent new computer that contains a very good video card in it... why? because the stores know that people "need" fast 3d, and rather than try to sell "good enough" computers, they aproach it by the question of what the "average" user thinks they need, because you never know who is going to walk through the door: someone who wants to play quake on it, or someone who wants to check his email once a month...

Re:Most people don't need 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

It does run very well on a G450 (Which isn't that different) however. I guess you've never even SEEN a workin' G200/4xx/5xx..

Re:Most people don't need 3D

[Com2Kid]

You are smoking crack if you think Black & White will run at all well on a G400, playing a game @ 800x600@stuttering speed or crappy graphics does not count. All the other games I agree with.

I will object;

Matrox G400 Dual Head MAX;

B&W run just fine Thank You Oh So Very Much.

And so does Max Paine and other such games.

(of course my gaming monitor tops out of 800x600@60hz so. . . . ^_^ )

Still though, I didn't buy a Matrox for the 3d gaming aspects of it, hell;

I bought a Matrox to MAKE 3d.

Huh?

Proffesional 3d apps up to a point don't give a f*ck about your video card. Either you have a REALLY expensive ass one (high end proffesional 3d card, in the thousands) or you mine as well just not bother and go for the best damn 2d you can get cuz the program isn't going to use it.

So I went with the best damn 2d card I could get at the itme. :)

(and I am quite happy with it! :) )

Works like a charm, and I have done some REALLY funky things with this card that would give any of those 'other' multi-out cards HORRIBLE headaches. (I know, I have tried some of the same things with those 'other' cards, they tend to do everything from locking up hard to futzing the video signal up to hell.)

Of course I abuse the living shit out of all of my hardware and I perfer to buy my products appropriatly. :)

(needless to say, I don't own any plastic PC cases. :) )

Re:Most people don't need 3D

[Com2Kid]

RTCW MultiPlayer was the straw that broke my G400Max's back. (Single player was OK.)

Mine does that as well.

:)

Did not see much of a problem with it, ran at around 40FPS (guesstimating here).

Of course I just got used to 3D gaming above 320x240 in around 1998 or 1999 (headshots are SOOO easy at that res, but Valve took out support for those insanly low resolution in Half-Life quite some time ago, heh. When it first came out though ya pretty much had to run it at a resolution that low. ^_^ )

Re:Most people don't need 3D

[Kushana]

Wow, that was effective. You tried to make a point, namely that everyone needs 3D. Seska shoots you down like a French fighter jet. Your comback is to set up a straw man (everyone needs 3 monitors) and then shoot it down yourself?

Re:Most people don't need 3D

[donglekey]

Maybe you should read a little closer.

You tried to make a point, namely that everyone needs 3D

From my post: Most computer users don't need 3D

Your comback is to set up a straw man (everyone needs 3 monitors)

From my post again: most computer users don't need 3 fuckin' monitors eighther

I know its fun to jump in with others and bash someone, but I was actually trying to start an exchange of ideas not a fight with poeple who can't make their point without insult.

Re:Most people don't need 3D

[Kushana]

Oh, no; I read your post. Allow me to quote:

a video card is just no good unless it has some serious 3D muscle. (...) I don't know who would use a triple head card without 3D in it.

That sounds very much like the writings of someone who thinks that "powerful 3D is the foundation."

If you don't really think those things, then maybe you. should read your posts. Before you post them.

Re:where's

[Anonymous Coward]

that's not very amazing. they're only possesions are probably a bowl and 10-20 kids.

Re:Two words AND on topic...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Just how is it trolling to describe the rumored Matrox card as "kick ass". I'm trying to imagine a way in which this could be construed as crapflooding, insulting (which would technically be flamebait), or insincere.

I suppose I'm glad, in a way, that the crackmoderators chose to -2 me, since I can shrug that off easily... they could just as easily modded down a relevant AC, or a particularly insightful newbie. No rhyme nor reason. Upon consideration, yes, strangely, I'm honored to be the lightning rod that protects the innocents from the never-ending threat of crackmoderation. Still, like that lightning rod out on top of the barn that keeps it from burning down... after the thunderstorm "OUCH!".

Again, let me say it. Even if the new card is only so-so 3d performance-wise, triple monitor built into a single card is undebatably KICKASS. What more needs to be said?

Well, I can think of one thing, maybe. For instance, maybe Taco needs to consider some minor changes to the moderation system. Nothing major, but it would be nice if maybe moderators were forced to leave a small message(70 chars, maybe even less) in addition to the moderation label. Nothing canned either, make them type something out. Hell, it doesn't even have to be publically visible, only allow the comment owner to see it, and the meta-moderators. Give me some damn feedback just how they think I should be posting. For all I know, I just had the bad luck to be slammed by the only two people in the world that have kickassaphobia.

Why would Taco want to do this? Well, for one, it would allow me the sincere, mostly non-trolling poster to know what it is that the moderators are actually thinking, so that I can alter my behavior and place less of a burden on them, so they can mod down all the crapflooders. And it would weed abusive moderators out alot quicker, if the m2ers can see that they were just saying "fuck off, I don't like you". They'd either be forced to think up something semi-plausible (not so easy), give away their true sentiments (just modbombing), or move on to something else (not worth the trouble). This is win/win.

Final note: triple port video cards kick ass. They put nice big dark blue bruise on those butt cheeks. They lift you off the ground, with each and every well placed foot. Single port video cards cry for mercy. THAT KIND OF ASSKICKING.

Don't expect it to be released.

[3seas]

There seems to be a growing trend to test market and trawl for ideas by supposedly leaking information.

I'm sure many /.'er could make up better kick ass specs. And hey, with CPUs being made with FPGAs (see recent /. article) certainly we are getting closer top homebrew graphic chips, too.

Three Heads

[downundarob]

I wonder if will be called the Hydra?

stolen dreams

[ironfroggy]

Yeah, I came up with that whole displacement mapping thing last year when I was working on a little engine and started messing around with curve rendering formulas.

Re:stolen dreams

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad matrox has had this feature for more than a year. The g400 has it.

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers: Explanation

[m0i]

The phone number mentioned is in Canada. Apparently Matrox does not have a U.S. number.

What's the big deal here? The only difference is the billing, it's not more complicated to dial this number than any other LD call inside the U.S..
And by the way, how many U.S companies doesn't have a Canadian number? Or a 1-800?
I don't think it's an issue worth mentionning (and I don't say this because 514 is my local area :) )

A thought I like to ponder these days...

[Qbertino]

Just imagine PC games in 5 years from now.
Gasp.
I dig 3D grafics and stuff, and as someone doing that semi-professional I must say that that HW accelarated Displacement Mapping really got me curious. If this isn't just a hoax it could really put Matrox foot on serious 3D ground again. Even though Matrox kinda messed up for good with me as they just couldn't get OpenGL to work properly for 3 GFXCard generations in a row. (not to speak of their non-existant Linux support)

Oh man....

[Anonymous Coward]

could you imagine a beowul......nevermind
You know what Im thinking ;-)

3 heads not only for gaming

[Sarin]

I've been using matrox dualhead videocards for quite some time now on my studio machines. It's really handy for extending the cubase desktop on various screens, because there's too much information for one screen.
It's very important that the computer runs rocksolid for high end audio-applications, even the chip-set on the motherboard can be the cause of a lot of problems, that won't show up during non-audio applications. Luckely the matrox drivers a really solid, compared to other brands.
I was just ready to order a non-agp dualhead card in order to attach more screens to this machine, but now this card shows up and I will deffinately buy it as soon as it comes out.

Re:3 heads not only for gaming

[Pegasus]

I was just ready to order a non-agp dualhead card in order to attach more screens to this machine, but now this card shows up and I will deffinately buy it as soon as it comes out.

WHICH ONE?!

I'm looking for such thing for a while now ... would like to get a pile of them, too :)

Re:3 heads not only for gaming

[gear6468]

What about G200MMS(quadhead) or G450MMS ?

Re:3 heads not only for gaming

[HeUnique]

This will cost you an arm & leg (trust me - I checked those prices). Nvidia released a new Geforce-4 based graphics card with up to 4 monitors supported at a very competitive price compared to Matrox's G200MMS/G450MMS..

Just don't try any good 3D games on it - on both (Matrox and Nvidia) the 3D on those cards is simply not exists..

Mod parent down, and the post right above mine up!

[Spazntwich]

This is such an obvious troll, but it seems like the moderators are too stupid to figure this out.

For an explanation of the low framerate, just look at the reply to the parent, right above my post. This guy know's whats going on.

WRITING TO DISK DURING A BENCHMARK MAKES THE SYSTEM STUTTER! Mod the parent down!

Alternate English translation

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an alternate (machine translated) English version of the article at http://jc.planetpei.com/parhelia/ . It is still up atm so you may want to go there instead :)

Re:More details at El Reg (WHICH SAYS ITS A HOAX)

[RedGuard]

DX9 multichannel surfaces can have a different
format for channel including 32-bit floats.
So a surface using 128bits is possible.

The Hell that this came from is Quebec :-)

[Seska]

First of all, they weren't relegated to anything at GDC. They did not have any new product to show to developers at GDC, and thus did not need a huge spiffy booth to sell nothing. They did, however, blab long and hard about hardware displacement mapping, so only a fool would have failed to see the connection between that and their unannounced next product.

Second, everyone acts like it's a race between Matrox, nVidia, and ATI to make the fastest chip. It's not. They're in separate races to earn money. And sometimes the success of one impedes the other. nVidia makes faster 3D chips, and that gives them the edge in 3D gaming markets. Matrox has the edge in 2D speed and quality and that gives them the edge in other markets. In some cases they don't compete. nVidia has the nForce chip; Matrox has nothing. No-one wails, "Oh my God, Matrox has no motherboard chipset, they're so dead."

And third, making a chip go faster is not rocket science; it's economics. It's not like, "Up until now we were too dumb to make fast chips, but now we have new California smart guys." It's a matter of predicting two years ahead how many transistors you'll be able to pack onto a chip and still be able to sell it to people and make a profit. nVidia takes baby steps every six months. Matrox takes bigger steps over longer periods. They're merely different business plans.

The FSAA technique is amazing

[ergo98]

This chipset looks great if only from a technological perspective (i.e. even if they don't sell many retail, it does remind people that Matrox still exists), however the FSAA technique is amazing and will actually be used. For those who didn't read the English translated: Instead of rendering the entire screen at 4x X 4x the resolution (which is unbelievably demanding on the memory pipeline, and every part in between), instead it only oversamples polygon edges where the AA actually matters (the article mentions that this means that only 3-5% of the pixels of an average image are oversampled, dramatically reducing the demands on the system). I have a GF3 and I've never used AA because of the damands it puts on the card, but the way Matrox has done it might make it usable. We'll see I suppose.

FreeBSD drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this come with FreeBSD drivers?

XP problems

[Taco Cowboy]

XP's problems seems to have no ends.

First it was VIA, then graphic sub-systems, then this, then that ...

I keep chasing after drivers, downloading newer ones all the time, hoping that miracles will happen.

Well ... it hasn't ... YET !

If it comes with passive cooling...

[pointwood]

I'll be buying one instantly! Otherwise I think I'll buy G450 instead.

I'll not buy a card that needs active cooling - my PC is noisy enough already, even though it is pretty quiet - I want my PC to be totally quiet!

Re:If it comes with passive cooling...

[Namarrgon]

80 million transistors - 350 MHz - 0.15 micron. Passively cooled? No chance. Think "dual-head air-conditioning" instead.

Re:If it comes with passive cooling...

[pointwood]

Yearh, I know :(

A G450 will be fine for my needs - I seldom play games that needs great 3D performance.

The Hoax spec != the ixbt specs

[Anonymous Coward]

The 8 pipe deferred renderer, 2 MB cache etc thing was around much earlier as ixbt's article ... and an obvious hoax.

We didn't, either.

[Futurepower(R)]

We had no problems with Matrox drivers until Windows XP, either.

No one at Matrox or Microsoft mentioned this.

[Futurepower(R)]

Good point. No one at Matrox or Microsoft mentioned this.

But, please don't call me a ding-dong. I'm trying to know 3 operating systems, and 3 computer languages, and I have other complex technical interests, and I have a life. It is easy to overlook something.

Pwr Management on Windows sucks? How about linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least windows doesn't *crash hard* on the 3 different laptops i've used when it 'goes to sleep'.

It's been done for years.....

[hardave]

...under X. I know X-Windows has supported multiple physical interfaces for ages. Someone where I work has an SGI Octane setup so that two people can have individual X sessions at the same time. It was alot cheaper to buy a keyboard and split a dual-headed box in half, then to buy another SGI.

IIRC XFree does as well, but I'm not sure as I've never needed to try it. But from dorking around with the XFree config it seems possible.

Slashdot = no respect for NDA.

[mumblestheclown]

Once NDA has been violated, is it ethically correct to encourage all to pour through the breech? Or, is it better for society that even if there is a breech of contract, responsible individuals work to intelligently minimize the damage? For shame, slashdot.

Re:Slashdot = no respect for NDA.

[acceleriter]

Did you read the story? They can't violate an NDA if they didn't sign one. And they didn't.

Re:Slashdot = no respect for NDA.

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot has no respect for the laws and ethics or bussiness... its not a real news site anyway...

10 bit DAC

[chafey]

The Matrox cards have always been considered the top of the line as far as image quality goes. Sure their 3D performance lags behind nVidia and ATI, but the images are very crisp and sharp - something very important to those who do non gaming work at high resolutions such as programmers and graphic artists. The 10 bit DAC is very important - it allows you to calibrate the gamma of your display without losing colors. After gamma calibration, an 8 bit DAC will not allow you to use all 8 bits for displaying colors. This means you will not be able to see all 16 million colors for a 24 bit image. The matrox's 10 bit DAC doesn't have this limitation and will always display all 16 million colors even with gamma correction.

Re:Mod parent down, and the post right above mine

[harlows_monkeys]

This is such an obvious troll, but it seems like the moderators are too stupid to figure this out.

The moderators live in a universe where time only moves in one direction.
Hence, they think that when you write a screenshot to disk, you must have already taken the screenshot, and so the act of writing it to disk cannot affect the image in the screenshot.

How does it work in your universe?

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers: Explanation

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I am running XP on a Gigabyte 8IRXP which is Intel 845 based. The P4 is a 1.8GHz chip overclocked to about 2.4GHz with no other tweaks. I have a G550 in dual-head mode talking to two LCD's (SGI 1600SW) at 1600x1024 and it takes less than 3 seconds for a "dir" command to completely display over 450 entries in a regular 80x25 DOS window. I am running the latest drivers from Maxtrox's website.

Re:Major problems with Matrox drivers: Explanation

[Lord Omlette]

Bullshit! My G550 is working just fine on my WinXP box. If fucking with the IRQ settings doesn't do anything for you, try d/ling the beta drivers from the site & loading those up.

Matrox still better in 2D?

[m_evanchik]

I've often heard tell in the past that Matrox has better image quality in 2D (which is what I work in). Is this still the case?

Re:LCD-heater

[Anonymous Coward]

"WasterDave: "Computers. Lots of computers."

You laugh, but why not? Have your 24/7 computer help with the heating. And you can compute with it. Try that with your furnace.

Huh? Writes it to disk before it gets captured?

[Namarrgon]

How exactly can you write a screenshot to disk, causing the system to stutter, and then capture the screenshot while it's stuttering? Doesn't that violate causality?

Most software I've heard of actually obtains the data before saving it to disk...

Re:Huh? Writes it to disk before it gets captured?

[Toraz Chryx]

It would seem that some software creates the file THEN captures the image THEN streams the data it just captured TO the file.

Thanks for the tip about Windows XP.

[Futurepower(R)]

Thanks for the tip about Windows XP. Is Windows XP the Windows ME of the NT series of operating systems? It would make my life much more pleasant if Microsoft would not sell products before they are ready; it's amazing how much Microsoft reduces the quality of my life.

We have a lot of experience building systems, but not a lot of experience with XP. It is a little difficult to sell Windows 2000 now, because customers demand the latest.

I'd love to sell only Linux or FreeBSD systems, but the user configurability just isn't there yet. I think it won't be long until Linux is ready, however. When it is, that will be a wonderful day in my life. (In my experience, FileZilla is an example of an open source project that is better than the closed source alternatives.)

We sell systems with Intel motherboards, both the Intel 845BGL and the Intel 815EEA2. Both systems have problems with slowness using Matrox video cards. We've tried only one ATI card; it was better, but there were still problems.

The Pentium IV machines (Intel 845BGL) have 2 GHz processors, and 256 MB of 266 MHz DDR SDRAM with ECC.

The Pentium III machines (815EEA2) have 866 and 933 MHz processors, and also 256 MB of memory.

We've tried G400, G450, and G550 Matrox cards, all with the latest Matrox drivers from the Matrox web site. All are unacceptable in the ways discussed in my original post.

We are using Promise FastTrak 100Tx2 controllers for mirroring two Western Digital 40 GB 400BB hard drives. The motherboard IDE controller has a DVD drive and a Plextor CD burner on one channel, and a Western Digital WD1200BB 120 GB drive on the other. This configuration works fine with Windows 98 SE (within the horrible limitations of the OS, of course).

We have tested the Pentium IV machines without the Promise RAID controllers, and the problems continued. I just realized that we did not uninstall the Promise drivers when we tried pulling out the Promise controller.

Why not use 2 video cards?

[Namarrgon]

With 2 PCI ATI or GF4MX cards, you can get 2, 3 or 4 monitor support. Cheaper/faster and quite likely better 3D drivers than Matrox, based on past experience.

Re:Why not use 2 video cards?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Except for the performace hit you take for having A having 2 cards with no AGP, and the fact that they are 3 seperate cards, using differnt (and differnt types) of slots, sounds like a bad mixure to me if performace or reliablity is you goal. Not to mention it takes up 2 extra slots, that might not be avalible depending on you system.

Thanks for this info.

[Futurepower(R)]

Thanks for this info. Obviously, something goes wrong somewhere when we do the installations. See my post #3506450 for more information about our systems.

We've been selling Matrox adapters...

[Futurepower(R)]

We've been selling Matrox adapters since before the Millennium I. Never had any problems in either Windows or Linux until these with Windows XP.

Re:LCD-heater

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I'm not laughing. I own a Vax. There were some volcanologist graduate students, that were poking around the neighborhood last summer, they thought that they had discovered some unknown thermal vent on an obscure satellite heat map. They were disappointed when I explained it was just the trusty MicroVax. I felt kinda bad, to tell the truth.

Re:Three heads-2D quality.

[Anonymous Coward]

That and the 2D has to be the equal or better than.
Nvidia cards don't have the best rep. when it comes to 2D.

Re:LCD-heater

[Anonymous Coward]

HaHa! You own a Vax. Sorry.

LCD? We don't need no steenkin' LCD!

[TWX_the_Linux_Zealot]

"I can't envision hooking up 3 CRTs, but using 3 17" LCDs side by side would definately kick some serious asses."

Hell, I _have_ three CRTs hooked up together, two on my Matrox G450 and one on a Riva TNT PCI that was laying around. 3840x1024 is sweet!

"Just hoping they will have drivers for my favorite OS though. ;)"

And yes, it works in X, so I assume that it'll be a priority to get X working on this new card. In fact, Matrox wrote the initial stuff for the G450, and I would think they'd likely continue this trend.

3LCD

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so the Next Thing To Have(tm) is not one thing but three - three 42" NEC-plasma screens!!! Anything in the name of realism.

Re: Hope so, but don't expect it...

[dusty123]

Yes, Matrox has Linux drivers for their products. The problem is that they are far from complete. In my case I own a Matrox G550 and there is no way to get the TV-Out running with Linux. Same for G450, only the TV-Out for the G400 works. The worst thing about this is that Matrox will probably never support the TV-Out with Linux, they even seem to be not interested in this market as they don't answer any questions about this topic in their Matrox forum.

Way to go Matrox.

[MADCOWbeserk]

I've always liked Matrox cards, ever since the MGA and Millenium. They usaully have rock solid drivers, support for alternate OS's, and the best 2D picture on the market. Although the G450/550 might not be as fast as Nvidia/Ati offering, they only cost $100 or so. The features and quality of these card blows away anything that the the other guys offer at twice the price. Matrox dual monitor and TV out is way ahead, and the "headcasting" is very cool. As for XP driver support, I havent seen a problem with matrox cards yet. But every system is different and I have seen alot of XP driver problems in general. You could always try the WIN2k drivers. The only bummer about this card is the $500 price tag. Oh well.

Three heads better than four?

[jonbrewer]

For the past year I've been using a Matrox G200 MMS Quad card. (yeah, it's PCI and only 8mb * 4, but all I do is code.) At the moment I've got four matched IBM digital flat panels hooked up. (note, this doesn't inspire too many kind words from my coworkers!) I like it, however, #1 doesn't get much use. In Win2k, I have the taskbar in #3, and so my vision is centered, with #2 and #4 peripheral. I'm actually seriously considering removing the #1 panel!

What I'd really like to see from Matrox, and the industry, is some improving on the 1280*1024 @ 85hz limit for DVI spec. AFAIK you can't get digital output from a card to a flat panel monitor at higher than this resolution. (IBM's top end flat panel uses all four channels of a modified G200 to get digital to it's 2560*2048 model.)

If Matrox's new card will support a high res digital panels on an agp interface, I'll be first in line to pick one up.

Speed?

[Namarrgon]

This thing looks great on paper - depth-adpative displacement mapping, and enough vertex shaders to deal with the resulting critical mass of triangles. Quad texturing on each of four pipes, and the requisite 256 bit DDR memory bus to keep it fed. And all running at 350 MHz... sounds like a monster - but there's a couple of significant gotchas raised by the Digit-Life translation.

First, that massive 20 GB/s of bandwidth is going to be needed, every bit of it. There is no bandwidth-saving logic on the chip at all, unlike ATI & nVidia's latest. Since occlusion detection can make a significant difference, and Z compression & fast Z clear also help a great deal (ATI claims their 8.8 GB/s performs like a 12+ GB/s system, a 36% boost), the Parhelia could be considered to have only 55% more bandwidth than a GF4 Ti4600 instead of 110%. If the next-gen offerings from ATI & nVidia have similar memory specs, the Parhelia could be at a significant disadvantage almost as soon as it comes out.

Second, the Digit-Life article mentions that early scores (from very raw drivers) show a mere 20-30% increase in scores over a Ti4600. Now admittedly this should increase, but Matrox are not known for their 3D driver optimisations, and nVidia are. A unified driver architecture will give you a head start right out of the gate, as you can take some advantage of previous optimisations immediately, whereas Matrox will have more work in front of them to get their drivers performing near the potential of the hardware. Look at ATI; it took them 6 months of focussed effort (and the odd quality hack along the way) to get their drivers up to scratch. Matrox have not traditionally given their 3D side or their software side as much attention, in my experience.

To me, while the triple-head feature could be useful to some (though I dislike external DACs - it's difficult to sync them closely to internal DACs, causing monitor beats), the 10 bit colour is to be applauded, and the vertex handling sounds very nice, anyone looking for performance would be better advised to wait for R300 and NV30.

On a slightly different note, was anyone else disappointed by the quality of the 16x AA screenshots? I expected more. The edge-only AA feature sounds like a very good idea (though it will not help alpha textures, just like multisampled implementations), but I'm a bit jaded after the miracles promised by ATI's SmoothVision didn't exactly set the world on fire. Guess we'll have to wait for performance figures.

Also, I wonder what their yields will be like. 80 million transistors on a 0.15 micron process sounds like something that's difficult to do cheaply.

Re:Speed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Matrox had unified drivers long before any other manufacturer.

Re:LCD-heater

[Anonymous Coward]

hehe! he probably uses it too!

Fishy screenshots

[jakobgrimstveit]

Look at this picture: http://hard.zol.com.cn/2002/0511/images/20695.jpg

Isn't it rather strange that the scan lines for all three screens are exactly in the same height on the screen?

I believe this is a hoax. No more, no less.

Re:Fishy screenshots

[wheany]

No they aren't. Look at the bottom of the screens.

Re:Fishy screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

take a closer look they are not at exactly the same height

Re:Fishy screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Their all being driven by the same
clock signal on the video card,
which is where the scan line position
would originate
(the vga signal has a pulse
which tells the monitor when to
"start at the top" when drawing the image)
so all 3 would naturally have the same scan line,
more or less.

Re:Fishy screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better - look and see that it doesn't appear the the green power lights are on on the monitors either - heh

now we need good goggles

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me a dreamer, but I still want VR like back when they hyped it as such. Good, cheap, light, motion detection goggles with three, full res 'screens' would -rock-, especially since you wouldn't get 2.5 inches of monitor plastic running lines through the game field.

Maybe this is a Popular Science fantasy, but I still dream about totally locking my senses into a computer generated world.

Re:Mod parent down, and the post right above mine

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually quite logical to write a file of the size the image will eventually be before taking the picture. It minizes any sort of extra hiccups you'd get if the OS had to report an out of disk space error in the process.

sorry about that

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just that my noggin' is ringing from another Win glitch, along with wifey complaining about another weekend ruined by Windows.

I installed NetGear cards all around at one site, figuring they would of course play nice with the Netgear switch. Wrongo. I finally swapped them for EdiMax cards, which work. Why, I dunno.

But the interrupt steering does play an unknowable role in this headache.

It had to be said

[Anonymous Coward]

the juicy details: Matrox gives head!

so what?

[Profe55or Booty]

i saw a 5 monitor system in Swordfish(tm)

FPS for trihead != FPS for single output

[Mongoose]

Hey kid, FPS for trihead isn't the same as FPS for single head output.

..may as well be Vapourware till we see benchmarks

[n4zgl]

Firstly...Matrox released two weeks early in China, they are a huge market to them, so they get the 'scoop' from Matrox. Anyone how can read or translate Chinese can get this news, so no NDA's are being violated :)

As for the cards specs? Looks interesting on paper, but valuable experience teaches to 'wait and see'. One really interesting bit is 16xFS Anti Aliasing...this seems squarely aimed at the gamers market. Will the nvidia heads be swayed? If this card is in the market before NV30 hype starts (late July) then I think Matrox will cut a LARGE slice of the 3D pie.

Re:LCD? We don't need no steenkin' LCD!

[jo42]

Ah, pffht! I had three [3] SGI 1600SW's running at one time off of one machine. 4800x1024 in (still) state-of-the-art LCD glory.

CRT's Bad, LCD's Good.
Linux Bad, FreeBSD Good.

Interrupt conflicts

[Futurepower(R)]

Thanks, it is valuable to begin thinking more clearly about interrupt conflicts. What you say makes sense.

I'm sympathetic. Microsoft and its uncaring ways have often devastated my weeks and weekends.

Combine it with THIS and... WOW.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.massmultiples.com/mass_multiples/c3h18_ horizontal.htm

And only another $4000. Right on.

Re:LCD? We don't need no steenkin' LCD!

[TWX_the_Linux_Zealot]

Well, I had the distinct luxury of spending about $250 for all of the monitors...

Ha! Beat that! Mister High and Mighty Silicon Graphics Man!

*grin*