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The role of Matrox Hardware
Well kids, here is what I have to say:
I'm a loyal Matrox user. I have evangelized them to all my ATI and Nvidia friends, here at work. Actually, I am actually the only person I know (in Euclidean Space, not Cyber Space
) that uses Matrox. To most people, Matrox' 3D capability is still based on the m3d, which is farthest from the truth.
I play all the games at nice resolutions and frame rates, I tell them. But, alas, they just smirk and look at one another as if they are in on a secret that I couldn't possibly understand.
But to this day I believe in one undeniable truth: if you want a video card for serious work, with features that enhance your productivity, then Matrox is really the only solution in the consumer market. Sure you can buy $1000+ CAD/Workstation cards, but those are for specialists. The rest of us need quality and intelligent pricing. The only company that is providing that regularly IMHO is Matrox.
So why did I purchase the video card that you see listed in my signature, under gaming machine? Well, the price finally dropped into the 150 dollar range, and I wanted to move my G400 into my Wkst (to replace my G200, which didn't like my VIA chipset based motherboard as well).
I've never considered myself a GeForce basher. But, I always laughed at the notion of a $400 gaming-only card. But now they are priced in the sweet spot, 125-150. So, I thought I would give it a try. After all, no one here denies that the GeForce is a card (well, chip, but you get the idea) designed specifically to address the needs of gamers. And my experience thus far has been favorable. I don't know what frame rates I get, as I stopped running timedemos quite a while ago. But what I can tell you is that on my BX mobo, running win98SE with DX8, I installed the following games: HL (+Actionb4 +CS +Science and Industry), Q3A (+Rocket Arena), UT, and Serious Sam in an afternoon and all ran "out of the box". Well, I actually made sure that before I ran them I had all the appropriate patches (1.1.0.6, 1.27G, the second disk for UT+4.26). Moreover, I set them all to run at 1280, 32bit, high quality, and, though I don't know the FPS, they all run just fine.
My point? Well, now I can tell people from experience what I have always told them from pure commen sense: you buy a card to suit your needs, as there is no one-size-fits-all product. If I only owned one machine, I would choose for myself a card that did most things well, but put an emphasis on quality. To me, that spells Matrox. If I was more oriented to watching DVD's and Games, then I would consider ATI and their Radeon line. Well, actually, I personally would not use an ATI, as I have not been satisfied with their driver support, and I don't feel they can claim the workstation quality that Matrox does. But, I can understand why people, intelligent people, choose ATI based on their product features. Finally, if you play games as a priority, then GeForce is a good solution, though I personally wouldn't pay the amounts they talk about for the newest versions.
I realize that having a second machine dedicated to gaming is a luxury not everyone can afford. But since I have generated the extra parts to accomplish this, I feel I've made a good decision with my card selections.
By the way: if you run AutoCAD 2000i, or 3dStudioMax, and you configure it to work with your G400, it really performs well! I finally installed those progies and pointed them to use the OGL ICD in PowerDesk, and I very pleased with how fluid they are. Granted I'm not rendering the Space Shuttle in real time with an accumulation buffer, but for reasonably sized graphics, everything is quite nice.
So I see the trolls toss out flame bait for us MURCers to jump on. And I think that our frustration with Matrox' lack of information makes up prone to bristle up. But for all the speculation and occasional anger, I for one hope that whatever happens (and whatever names get "fabricated" on the net), the next Matrox offering take the core elements that have made me a Matrox fan and expands on them: quality, compatibility, features, expandibility.
One last thing: Matrox, do you think you guys could include the feature connectors on future products? Here is what I'm thinking: I loved the fact that the Matrox cards could be purchase piece meal. I bought a G200 largely because I could add the RR to it, and spread the cost out. Moreover, when the G400 came out and supported the RR, it gave me an upgrade path. Now, you folks have indicated a commitment to providing the video feature in your product line, and it would be nice to see future cards available in a two card solution. (just as now we have Marvel or G+RRG, you could have eTV or G+RRe). Moreover, if the new card was compatible with the RR, then I could upgrade my display adapter and keep for now my RR, then upgrade to the e version later.
In a sense, all you would be doing to abstracting the CODEC from the display adapter, which would open an entire gamut of options. Users could have the flexibility to select their CODEC based on need.
Thank you for taking the time to read this far.
Respectfully
Charles Moreau
------------------
Gaming System:
Asus V7700 GeForce2 GTS, Win98SE, PIII 550E @733, Asus P3B-F, 128MB Crucial PC133 CAS3, SBLive Value,WD136BA 7200 2MB,
Workstation:
Matrox G400DH 32MB + RR-G, Asus CUV4X-D, PIII 733E, 512MB Crucial PC133 CAS2, Adaptec AHA-29160, IBM 36lzx 9GB, Quantum Atlas 10KII 9GB, Plextor 40Max, Yamaha 8424 SCSI
I'm a loyal Matrox user. I have evangelized them to all my ATI and Nvidia friends, here at work. Actually, I am actually the only person I know (in Euclidean Space, not Cyber Space
) that uses Matrox. To most people, Matrox' 3D capability is still based on the m3d, which is farthest from the truth.I play all the games at nice resolutions and frame rates, I tell them. But, alas, they just smirk and look at one another as if they are in on a secret that I couldn't possibly understand.
But to this day I believe in one undeniable truth: if you want a video card for serious work, with features that enhance your productivity, then Matrox is really the only solution in the consumer market. Sure you can buy $1000+ CAD/Workstation cards, but those are for specialists. The rest of us need quality and intelligent pricing. The only company that is providing that regularly IMHO is Matrox.
So why did I purchase the video card that you see listed in my signature, under gaming machine? Well, the price finally dropped into the 150 dollar range, and I wanted to move my G400 into my Wkst (to replace my G200, which didn't like my VIA chipset based motherboard as well).
I've never considered myself a GeForce basher. But, I always laughed at the notion of a $400 gaming-only card. But now they are priced in the sweet spot, 125-150. So, I thought I would give it a try. After all, no one here denies that the GeForce is a card (well, chip, but you get the idea) designed specifically to address the needs of gamers. And my experience thus far has been favorable. I don't know what frame rates I get, as I stopped running timedemos quite a while ago. But what I can tell you is that on my BX mobo, running win98SE with DX8, I installed the following games: HL (+Actionb4 +CS +Science and Industry), Q3A (+Rocket Arena), UT, and Serious Sam in an afternoon and all ran "out of the box". Well, I actually made sure that before I ran them I had all the appropriate patches (1.1.0.6, 1.27G, the second disk for UT+4.26). Moreover, I set them all to run at 1280, 32bit, high quality, and, though I don't know the FPS, they all run just fine.
My point? Well, now I can tell people from experience what I have always told them from pure commen sense: you buy a card to suit your needs, as there is no one-size-fits-all product. If I only owned one machine, I would choose for myself a card that did most things well, but put an emphasis on quality. To me, that spells Matrox. If I was more oriented to watching DVD's and Games, then I would consider ATI and their Radeon line. Well, actually, I personally would not use an ATI, as I have not been satisfied with their driver support, and I don't feel they can claim the workstation quality that Matrox does. But, I can understand why people, intelligent people, choose ATI based on their product features. Finally, if you play games as a priority, then GeForce is a good solution, though I personally wouldn't pay the amounts they talk about for the newest versions.
I realize that having a second machine dedicated to gaming is a luxury not everyone can afford. But since I have generated the extra parts to accomplish this, I feel I've made a good decision with my card selections.
By the way: if you run AutoCAD 2000i, or 3dStudioMax, and you configure it to work with your G400, it really performs well! I finally installed those progies and pointed them to use the OGL ICD in PowerDesk, and I very pleased with how fluid they are. Granted I'm not rendering the Space Shuttle in real time with an accumulation buffer, but for reasonably sized graphics, everything is quite nice.
So I see the trolls toss out flame bait for us MURCers to jump on. And I think that our frustration with Matrox' lack of information makes up prone to bristle up. But for all the speculation and occasional anger, I for one hope that whatever happens (and whatever names get "fabricated" on the net), the next Matrox offering take the core elements that have made me a Matrox fan and expands on them: quality, compatibility, features, expandibility.
One last thing: Matrox, do you think you guys could include the feature connectors on future products? Here is what I'm thinking: I loved the fact that the Matrox cards could be purchase piece meal. I bought a G200 largely because I could add the RR to it, and spread the cost out. Moreover, when the G400 came out and supported the RR, it gave me an upgrade path. Now, you folks have indicated a commitment to providing the video feature in your product line, and it would be nice to see future cards available in a two card solution. (just as now we have Marvel or G+RRG, you could have eTV or G+RRe). Moreover, if the new card was compatible with the RR, then I could upgrade my display adapter and keep for now my RR, then upgrade to the e version later.
In a sense, all you would be doing to abstracting the CODEC from the display adapter, which would open an entire gamut of options. Users could have the flexibility to select their CODEC based on need.
Thank you for taking the time to read this far.
Respectfully
Charles Moreau
------------------
Gaming System:
Asus V7700 GeForce2 GTS, Win98SE, PIII 550E @733, Asus P3B-F, 128MB Crucial PC133 CAS3, SBLive Value,WD136BA 7200 2MB,
Workstation:
Matrox G400DH 32MB + RR-G, Asus CUV4X-D, PIII 733E, 512MB Crucial PC133 CAS2, Adaptec AHA-29160, IBM 36lzx 9GB, Quantum Atlas 10KII 9GB, Plextor 40Max, Yamaha 8424 SCSI
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