Boy, do I feel down...

[moreau]

Well Matrox/MURC friends, all of this news on the front page has me rather bummed.

Actually, my emotional response is more complex than that. But, all in all I'm really amazed that the Matrox that I have always known and loved may be a thing of the past.

I bought my parhelia and am enjoying its use. But let's face it, when you make a substantial investment in a product, be it 400 bucks for a graphics adapter, 30,000 bucks for a car, or 200,000 bucks for a house, you aren't just buying the functionality of the item.

After all, a 8MB 2D card would be functional. A bicycle or a compact car might suffice. A piece of sheet metal on poles might suffice. So why spend the money? Well if you ask any micro economist you will be told that when we spend disposable income we aren't just buying function, we are buying additional satisfaction or enjoyment.

But there is a more subtle effect here. Why buy one 30,000 dollar car over another. Both might provide additional satisfaction or enjoyment. Well, you buy a car or house that also makes an appropriate statement. Those things are chosen conciously or unconciously to represent you, your sensibilities.

So if you buy these items and find out that you weren't getting the intangilbe qualities you were expecting, it is a dissapointing.

Yes, my parhelia functions just fine. But I buy matrox for something more: a quite sensibility of function and substance, not just flash and glitz and sexy metrics. I own Nissan cars rather than Chevy camaros. Dollar for dollar the chevy is faster, accelerates, etc. But the nissan says: I value quality first, oh and by the way, this car can still kick some ass if it needs to (nissan maxima is an amazing car). Sort of the well thought out splurge rather than a visceral knee-jerk reaction.

Matrox was always that. Damn the benchmarks, I do what I want with quiality unassailable. From a company that make choices based on logic and function other than pimping warez to leet wankers with skillz.

Sigh. Now it looks like not only the tech is misquided, but the company itself is rotting from the head down. that is of course, based on the assumption that the front page articles are true...

Had to vent, thanks if you read it all.

Dr. Moreau

[GNEP]

Well put!

My feelings are a little different: I really like and enjoy my Parhelia, and on a personal level what others think of it don't really bother me.

However I want it to sell well to a lot of people. Why? Because the larger the established user base, the more likely the features it offers are likely to be supported. And the more likely that software and games are going to be absolutely 100% compatible with it. If the installed base is small and seen as irrelevant to developers, then it may not even feature on the test programs of developers, let alone earlier on for optimised routines.

So we will never get to see the most of it. Which saddens me greatly. For instance, I think that any game written which really uses displacement mapping would absolutely fly on the Parhelia (partly because of the dynamic LOD and hardware adaptive tesselation). But if there are quicker, different ways of acheiving the same or similar effects using R300 or NV30 based hardware, then we will never get to see DM in use.

This is what saddens me.

Gnep

[Technoid]

Unfortunatley the industry and buyers are caught in a "More MHZ are better" "More FPS are Better" frenzy

[DentyCracker]

While I'll still get a Parhelia, it looks as if that will be the last matrox graphics product I may buy. I may buy an RTX100 or other video processing board but I fear that the graphics section of matrox will soon become irrelevant. There just seem to be too many parallels to Aureal and 3dfx. I hope it isn't so and dread the thought of turning to ATi *brrrrrrr*.

[mutz]

...don't know why everybody around here wants to start digging graves while the patient is still breathing...

Maybe because this site has suddenly become dominated by gamers, FPS freaks and a whole gang of vultures from other graphic religions.

I like my Parhelia very much for my purposes, and I have the feeling that the majority of the views ranting around MURC represent a minority customer base.

While some of what is being said may have some material truth, blowing up a depressing cloud of negativity isn't doing anybody any good, and is only food for those who delight in and feed off more negativity.

[moreau]

Well, the forums have gone to the dogs somewhat (certainly different population than when i joined back in the day).

What is different is the presence of such dialogue on the front page of the MURC.

I realize Ant has handed over the Keys recently, and in that may lie some relevence.

However, I don't suppose Vigilant would have arbitrarily been chosen to take over management, and I would hope he can be trusted at least as much as I grew to trust Ant.

CEM

[Greebe]

Ant hasn't handed the keys over... it's just that he hasn't had much time to post up stuff in awhile (work related). From what I gather there are three MURC Writers that he's given permission to adding info on the news page and that is as far as it goes.

Knowing Ant as well as I do I'm sure he trusts them, so I would think you can too

[SpiralDragon]

no problem with matrox products just dont want to see the company go down.... cant bare the thought of buying any other brand........ i think it is safe to say that we all expect better from matrox.... maybe not on the FPS scene but at least more on the qulity.. and i agree on the functionality part.... i mean the 3 monitor obtion is great... but why add in an expensive 3D subsystem that can not compeet..... not in the workstation arena and not in the gaming arena.......... my moto is; do it right or dont do it at all ....