NVidia Killer

[topicolo]

yeah, ati seems to be fairly incompetent when it comes to writing drivers. This is the same on the pc side as well. Nvidia's crack team of elite driver writers is unparalleled in the graphics industry. To paraphrase an immature counter-strike player, "it 0wnz j00!"

 

[Bengt77]

What are you all talking about...

...when the thing you should all REALLY be looking out for is the new card from Matrox, the so called 'Parphelia'. It's not 256-bits, doesn't do dual-head, can't handle 256MB of RAM. No, it's 512, can handle 3 displays (they call it 'surround gaming', go figure) and has a crappy 512MB of RAM. Sounds mean, doesn't it?!

Only negative aspect of what's known till now: it's only for PC. Damn!

 

[topicolo]

Re: What are you all talking about...

Originally posted by Bengt77
...when the thing you should all REALLY be looking out for is the new card from Matrox, the so called 'Parphelia'. It's not 256-bits, doesn't do dual-head, can't handle 256MB of RAM. No, it's 512, can handle 3 displays (they call it 'surround gaming', go figure) and has a crappy 512MB of RAM. Sounds mean, doesn't it?!

Only negative aspect of what's known till now: it's only for PC. Damn!

True, but historically, Matrox has been even more awful at producing drivers than Ati! When Matrox released the G200 a couple of years back, they just had DirectX support--they didn't even have OpenGL! People who wanted to play Quake II (it was new at the time) had to use an "OpenGL wrapper," which basically emulated OpenGL drivers in software and it resulted in a HUGE performance penalty. One thing that Matrox has going for it is that their cards usually produce very high image quality, but that's about it.

I predict that even though the Parhelia 512 has great specs, it'll flop because it's drivers won't utilize the hardware at all and also because they're gonna be charging $400US for that sucker.

 

[Chisholm]

wow!

Yeah that card does look bad ass, but I agree it'll be cost prohibitive to really make a dent in the market. I used to love ATI cards on the PC side of things, but the drivers/software would be a nightmare at times. The software is kinda' crummy IMO. I switched over to a 3dfx card and loved it so much I purchased a new one just days before finding out they were going out of business. Fortunately I was allowed to return it to the store. I have been using Nvidias ever since and love them. The drivers are so easy (from my experience) to install and I've yet to see one crap out. In the last year at word we've purchased around 40-50 IBM's that came standard with Nvidias inside and they're all doing great.

I think if ATI comes out with a competitive product, Apple will sell it. Until then they'll stick with Nvidias in their upper lines of machines.

 

[Beej]

Originally posted by topicolo


umm, ALL pcs are shipped with graphics cards, except those with integrated graphics that no one ever touched anyway. You meant 3d cards, didn't you? You've gotta be more specific.

You know what I mean... yes, 3D graphics cards, obviously. Sorry.

 

[Cappy]

Re: What are you all talking about...

Originally posted by Bengt77
...when the thing you should all REALLY be looking out for is the new card from Matrox, the so called 'Parphelia'. It's not 256-bits, doesn't do dual-head, can't handle 256MB of RAM. No, it's 512, can handle 3 displays (they call it 'surround gaming', go figure) and has a crappy 512MB of RAM. Sounds mean, doesn't it?!

Only negative aspect of what's known till now: it's only for PC. Damn!

Don't kid yourself. Before it's "official" announcement the promotional material from Matrox were circulating around to various PC sites for the Parphelia and Mac OS X was listed. That's not to someone didn't doctor it but I would find that unlikely since I saw this on PC sites and not Mac sites. Of course Matrox could have had the support there and then backed out. Who really knows? The card certainly is impressive on paper. The last thing to consider is that Apple could have asked for them to keep Mac support quiet until later this year so they can make a splash. Who knows? We'll just have to see.

 

[Cappy]

Re: Re: What are you all talking about...

Originally posted by topicolo


True, but historically, Matrox has been even more awful at producing drivers than Ati! When Matrox released the G200 a couple of years back, they just had DirectX support--they didn't even have OpenGL! People who wanted to play Quake II (it was new at the time) had to use an "OpenGL wrapper," which basically emulated OpenGL drivers in software and it resulted in a HUGE performance penalty. One thing that Matrox has going for it is that their cards usually produce very high image quality, but that's about it.

I predict that even though the Parhelia 512 has great specs, it'll flop because it's drivers won't utilize the hardware at all and also because they're gonna be charging $400US for that sucker.

You're right about the history but I wouldn't base a current/future release off of something that happened back in what? 1998?

Also Matrox typically not only has the best display quality but the fastest 2D. Not that there's a huge market for super fast 2D in the home crowd. They've learned a thing or two in the last few years I would like to think which is why they've stayed out of the consumer market for the most part during that span.

Lastly keep in mind that all of the video cards throw great specs around and then the consumer never really sees them. nVidia was criticized heavily during the same period you spoke of about Matrox where they announced chipsets with some great specs and then none of their products came close to producing those specs. ATI made major PR statements about their Charisma Engine in that it was going to be something like 30 times faster than anything else. Resulting products...not even close. That's not to say that had developers wrote strictly for ATI and certain functions that it wouldn't be that much faster.

So essentially they're all guilty. Sales are really the final decision maker on how far products gets developed. I doubt we'll see a Matrox card at the local Best Buy for PC's and Matrox will have to have a lowend version for OEM's to use to score well with consumers.

So in the end we'll probably see Matrox have a good product that will likely be expensive and catered to the high end/prosumer crowd which is also more of the Mac crowd as well.

 

[Cappy]

Re: wow!

Originally posted by Chisholm I think if ATI comes out with a competitive product, Apple will sell it. Until then they'll stick with Nvidias in their upper lines of machines.

Even as long as their competitive I think we'll see nvidia be the main focus of Apple. Apple went with nvidia for a variety of reasons and performance wasn't really the number one reason. The nvidia switch came about more because nvidia has an excellent rep in the desktop PC industry and was one of the darlings of the stock market while everyone else was hurting. The nvidia drivers could have been horrible for the Mac(which many can claim are) and Apple would still go with them. Jobs wants to lure PC users and power users over to the Mac. ATI's rep in the desktop PC industry is just not very good despite their competitive specs. They are improving though so if they can get their act together then yes we may see more ATI focused products.

Now laptops are a different story which is why Apple has stayed with ATI. ATI has an excellend rep for laptop video chipsets unlike nvidia who is essentially new. nvidia has some nice stuff(performancewise) but they're just new.

 

[Wry Cooter]

I think Apple will continue to court and support both ATI and nVidia, so that they always have a backup choice when things don't gel for a variety of reasons.

They seem to have survived to be a duopoly of sorts, ATI might be slow on drivers, but have better 2D support for DVD and non 3-d rendering, nVidia may be able to match or exceed ATI, but may be prone to having their supply go to other customers. And both tend to leapfrog each other technically, taking advantages of lulls in each others product cycles rather than battling it out head to head. From that point it is merely a matter of working with their OEM customers to meet their needs.

 

[Rower_CPU]

Re: Re: What are you all talking about...

Originally posted by Cappy
Don't kid yourself. Before it's "official" announcement the promotional material from Matrox were circulating around to various PC sites for the Parphelia and Mac OS X was listed. That's not to someone didn't doctor it but I would find that unlikely since I saw this on PC sites and not Mac sites. Of course Matrox could have had the support there and then backed out. Who really knows? The card certainly is impressive on paper. The last thing to consider is that Apple could have asked for them to keep Mac support quiet until later this year so they can make a splash. Who knows? We'll just have to see.

You also have to watch out for the dreaded "Voodoo6" effect.

3Dfx promised the Voodoo6 would blow away anything out there...only problem is that it took them a year or two too long to get it out the door. nVidia put out the first GeForce cards and killed 3Dfx.