Matrox G800 vs. Nvidia's next card

[Mr. Cold]

Ok, quick poll:

Which card do you think will be faster/better - Matrox's G800 (the best version of it they release) or Nvidia's next top-of-the-line card?

Now, this is all just prophecy. I'm just curious on who will be the big winner the next go-around for all-around best graphics card for a PC.

[Kruzin]

I predict that things will follow their current trend.

G800 will probably not be as fast as whatever nVidia has out that month (but still plenty fast enough for any game, just like G400 is)...however it will contain ground-breaking features that other companies will be scrambling to copy for the next year...

[DuRaNgO]

YEEEEAH, Baby!

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P3-700e @ 1052! Check it here!
Abit BE6-2
TwinMos 128mb pc-133
G400 (vanilla!!!) 32mb @ 167/208
Maxtor 15.3gb 7,200rpm
SB Live!
Winblows 98se & DX7
and 384k DSL!

[Brian R.]

When you concentrate on speed, you're hard to beat in fps. When you concentrate on display quality, you get the best looking image. The big question is: What quality do you think is more important? Neither manufacturer is far behind the other in their less-emphasized attribute.

What Kruzin said is just a reflection of corporate policy and goals.

What I'm curious about is what the video characteristics of cards will be five years from now...

[This message has been edited by Brian R. (edited 02 August 2000).]

[Ali]

I would guess the G800 will be fast, but does that matter? Will it have FSAA that is better quality that 3dfx? Will it have key frame interpolation like ATI?

The G400 is fast enough for todays games, but could you imagine playing quake3 with every single texture bump-mapped, and have realtime expressions on characters faces when you shoot them?

Matrox has always been about quality first, speed later, and thats how I would like them to stay.

Ali

[Helevitia]

The funniest part of all this to me is the fact that I can play any game out there right now on my G400 vanilla with my old setup(k6-2 500, 192MB memory) without any probs or noticable enough slowdown.
I will admit that when I upgraded to my t-bird, I did notice even more smoothness in CS and UT. The point is, the G400 is more than enough for any game out there and there is no reason to spend $400 on a video card. The GF2 w/ twinview is definitely a viable option. I have not seen the quality of the video nor have I tested the stability of the drivers. I did come across a GF2 32MB sdram singlehead card the other day for $100 and so I went ahead and bought it. This card will go in the kids machine. If anyone is interested in what my opinion is of it, let me know.

Dave

[isochar]

I use to think that the g400 is fast enough...

Although everyone here says 30-40fps is enough at 1024x768x32, I have to disagree. After playing on my CLAP2 at 70-80fps, I can notice a HUGE difference when changing back to the g400max. The game seems "slower". So slow that I can't play a fps (Q3 or UT).

Any other game besides a FPS, the g400max does just fine.

Just my opinion...

[Zuofu]

How can you speculate based on non-existence data? Why even bother to waste your time, especially at the current pace the industry moves. I'd say the nVidia NV40000000 TTS (Tera-Texel Shader) will beat the G800000MAX Octa-Head by 72.530 FPS in Quake VII Arena. 530fps for the NV40Mil ver 457.5 for the Matrox (v-sync disabled of course).

As far as I'm concerned, if its not in store shelves, it non-existent. I've seen too many cards either fall far short of leaked/pre-production specs (TNT, Savage 2000) or disappear completely (Tritech Pyramid 3D, Bitboys)

BTW, 30FPS is only decent for slow moving objects, in really fast games like Quake III, 60+ is ideal. Imagine a box moving from one side of the screen (1024x768) to the other in lets say 10 seconds. Well...at 30 fps, the box would have 30x10 or 300 frames to do the animation. 1024/300=3.41... which means that the box would move 3.5 pixels in each frame, which isn't very bad. But lets say we had to make that move in 2 seconds instead of 10. Well..that would mean only 60 frames to complete the animation which means a jump of about 17 pixels per frame, which means major jerkyness. But if you had an nVidia GTS that did 60FPS instead of 30, you would have to move the object only 8.5 pixels per frame, which equals much less jerkyness.

[This message has been edited by Zuofu (edited 02 August 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Zuofu (edited 02 August 2000).]

[Cloudy]

I agree with zuofu, the problems is that s our graphic adapter become stronger, game engines become more dtailed and more complicated (which is cool). A year ago I was content with 800x600, today I play @ 1024x768 and I can't stop dreaming of playing games at HDTV resolutions with 100fps (1 frame / refresh hz). That will prppably e here by the time my kids go to school (I'm not even married).
Still, we've gone a great way since the first CGA cards to the millenium1 and to the G400. If we keep this pace, by 2010 we'll have desktop solutions as that could compete with todays newest SGI super computer or pixar's current stuff.

A little off topic but one day (in 3-4 years I hope)when operating systems and drivers will work wih multi processors the way BeOS currently does, we won't need much more than a few Ghz of cpu(s) horsepower and a nice graphic adapter will give us the option to play at the resolution and graphic detail of toy story 2.

Last thing - Finat Fantasy VIII in-game graphics are as good as Final Fantasy VII's movies. In LucasArts "day of the tentacle" you could play on an in-game computer the whole "maniac mansion"...

Just give it some time friends. And if you can, persuade Kruzin to give us some tips about the latest hardware he's testing for the big M.

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Cloudy
Asus P2B-DS, 2 x Celeron 400@75Mhz, 192Mb Ram, SB Live! Platinum,
2 x IBM 4.3Gb scsi,IBM 22GB IDE, Pioneer DVD ROM scsi, G400 32MB DH (Oc to 111.1%).

[Borg]

well I think that G800 wil not be faster then GFgts2 or next.gen Nvidia cards but in the range of them, with much better visual quality , best driver & tech support , some NEW features wich other doesnt have & ofcourse MURC ..this makes for me the choice No1

...what to say once MATROX always MATROX !

[Zuofu]

I don't understand how you believe Matrox has good drivers in contrast to nVidia. Remember the whole G200 ICD fiasco and then the G400 OpenGL problems?
I agree on the image quality part, but as I said - this type of speculation is quite pointless.

[skeoch]

I've got to go with borg on this one, I cant see Matrox out striping all the other cards in the market place, but I can see it being a great piece of hardware

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P3 700Mhz cB0 stepping, G400MAX,Abit BE6-2 RV Bios,Quantum KX 7200 13Gig,256Mb 100SDram,Asuscom ISDN,SCSI 100Mb zip int,SB Live Value,Tosh 6702, HP 9110i.

[DuRaNgO]

There's a simple reason why Matrox doesn't talk much about their next-gen cards

Do you remember how nVidea scrambled to have fsaa enabled to compete with 3dfx?

And how they scrambled when the G400 came out with EMBM and dual head?

So when the "G800" comes out with 3) better and/or totally new features, they'll be laughing last again

Keep them guessing
jim

[Borg]

OK here..my friend had a Gforce from ASUS & he had lots of problems with drivers ,games like Q3 or UT , AGP & stuff , some drivers were better then other releses but there was always some problem left so dont tell me that MATROX have only ICD problems & worse thing is that hi actuly destroyed hes Gforce with WRONG BIOS UPDATE...& how can this happend ?

why does the card accept wrong bios inf ?

after this he wnet to G400MAX & is much happier now , still he miss some speed of Gforce butt generaly he is happy & still have the broken GFORCE..mabe someday NVIDA will relese some FIX utillity..who knowes ?

With MATROX this doesnt happend & if MATROX TECHIS makes some fix utills wery soon
afterall they alwas listen to us MURCERS & have their people overhere HAIG for examp.

THEN whats up with VOODOO OGL ICD ? or ATI ,PREMEDIA or other ???

Today the only good ICDs are from NVIDIA & MATROX & there is apsolutly NO CARD on markt that has no problems & works AWSOME .

MONITOR SUPPORT is the best of all & the abbility to create your own inf & refreshs , haveing control over every single monitor parametar is GREAT with MATROX drivers ..& where is NVIDA ? or ATI ,or other ?

I realy dont need 200FPS all I want is playble performance in 1024x768x32 wich in most case is & great VISUAL & COLORS..men there is non card with colors like MATROX..

Iv had expirenece with the most brand cards :

RIVA 128 , TNT2U,AUSU GFORCE,VOODOO2,VOODOO1,ATI EXPERT PLAY 98,MATROX G100,G200,MYSTIQUE,MILLENIUM 1064W,M3D..some S3-s

[Barbarella]

hi,


Borg : the opengl fiasco time has gone. Today
matrox's driver can be compared to any other and more.

About perf, a lot of people forget that keeping high 3D quality and high FPS is really hard.