Why are Matrox cards barely talked about?

K

K-TRON

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 29, 2008
Messages
336
Can someone explain to me why Matrox isnt talked about so much anymore.
They used to be pioneers in the graphics industry.

I have always kept their line of cards to be within the type of cards as say the workstation cards from ATi and nVidia

Is it wrong to compare the two?

Does anyone know if Matrox cards are better than quadro's or firegl's for CAD?
And
What niche are Matrox cards primarily used for?



I would like to learn a little more about Matrox because I am considering using one over a Quadro for CAD purposes, and I wanted to see how it would compare.
I would be using the pci express interface.


Thanks for your input,

K-TRON
 
I think they are primarily for multi monitor. The Quadro core is the same as GeForce, so if Matrox could compete in CAD, they could also compete in gaming (at least for OpenGL).
 
Matrox hasn't been competitive in the high end graphics card world for a while now. I think they are focusing more on multi-monitor workstation cards and multi-monitor support. I think the last matrox card that was competitive in performance against Nvidia and Ati was the G400 back in like 1999.
 
They haven't attempted a high-end gaming card since they originally released the Matrox Parhelia in 2002. The numbers for the hardware were impressive so it got some of us excited. However, when it finally came out it turned out to be a pretty mediocre card with fairly low benchmarks.

Haven't seen anything from them since.
 
Yeah they haven't made a gaming card since their half directx 8 half direct x 9 card. Via graphic cards deserve more spotlight then them. The only thing their cards had going for them was the triple monitor support, other then that they were as slow as a ati 8500 pro and cost around $200 more at the time.

Wiki has a good read up on why their last card was a failure. Also details some of its interesting features.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrox_Parhelia
 
ÆonTrinity;1033611279 said:
While we're on the topic, why havn't I heard anything about S3 in such a long time? Back in 1996 when I was using a 120MHz Pentium, S3 had a near monopoly in graphics chips.
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Intel GMA
 
ÆonTrinity;1033611279 said:
While we're on the topic, why havn't I heard anything about S3 in such a long time? Back in 1996 when I was using a 120MHz Pentium, S3 had a near monopoly in graphics chips.

EDIT:

Wow, this looks like a possible alternative to using a 780G chipset for a HTPC. https://s3gstore.s3graphics.com/cgi...mplate=PDGTemplates/FullNav/SearchResult.html
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Yeah they had some worthy cards to own back then, but now they just make one low end card that is meant to compete with the ati radeon 3450 and the 9400 series.
https://s3gstore.s3graphics.com/

Here is one review I have found. Not a very good one considering that they are benching these cards with settings that are not playable at all, but it does show that it can keep up in some instances. Also it is more likely to be a fan site considering the name, but its all I found in 30 seconds.
http://forums.s3chromezone.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=591

If anyones is really interested in buying one you also have to consider driver support, and if it will work on any future operating systems.
 
S3 isnt on topic
I want to know about Matrox not S3.

Does anyone actually own a QID, Parhelia, or G/P series card here?
If anyone does it would be great to chime in ;)
I want to know if any of their pcie cards can perform well in CAD

K-TRON
 
K-TRON said:
S3 isnt on topic
I want to know about Matrox not S3.
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He's using sarcasm to illustrate Matrox's general irrelevance to the central focus of most tech fansites, such as this one: gaming.

Matrox does not make cards suited for high-performance gaming, thus we don't talk about them. From what I understand, their focus is on image quality and color quality, and thus their products are excellent for, say, professional graphic designers. Less so for gaming.
 
I remember having a Matrox Millenium card which basically shredded anything I threw at it. I was playing Battlezone 2 at the time, but no matter how many units I cheated in, I just couldn't get the card to struggle.
 
I have used my Matrox G550 card with pleasure for years. It replaced a Voodoo III 3000. I replaced it with the Matrox card to gain multi-display support as well as crispy 2D quality (back then nVidia and ATi cards had crappy RAMDACs and therefore relatively sucky 2D).

At this point Matrox is in the consumer market with their triple-head box, remote KVM switches (via fibre), quad-head cards and lots of nifty gadgets for businesses and people with far too much money. Also note that GPUs were never Matrox's primary focus. They're in lots of markets NVidia and AMD/ATi have virtually no presence in. Peruse Matrox's site if you want to learn more about their activities :)
 
K-TRON said:
S3 isnt on topic
I want to know about Matrox not S3.

Does anyone actually own a QID, Parhelia, or G/P series card here?
If anyone does it would be great to chime in ;)
I want to know if any of their pcie cards can perform well in CAD

K-TRON
Click to expand...

I have a Matrox quad monitor card.... :) At work, most of the traders use Matrox for three/four monitor support. Hence why Matrox is still in business.

Matrox in the gaming scene might be non-existant but in financials and medical. They own it.

to the rest.. the [H] is much more than games though. For that very fact look at the Computer Audio, Network security, OS etc subforums. They all are not about games, hence why I still lurk these places :)
 
figgie said:
Matrox in the gaming scene might be non-existant but in financials and medical. They own it.
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They also do multi channel capture cards for nice security systems, post-production video editing systems(think tv studio work), air traffic control video cards, display walls, etc.

Matrox is a big player in a bunch of fields, they just pretty much got out of the consumer space.

To the OP if you were doing 2d only cad I would say matrox would be fine. For 3d rendering when the graphics card is used for rendering I'd stick with a nvidia or ati solution. Really for standard stuff they would be better anyway unless you are running a bunch of monitors.
 
JohnleMVP said:
Matrox hasn't been competitive in the high end graphics card world for a while now. I think they are focusing more on multi-monitor workstation cards and multi-monitor support. I think the last matrox card that was competitive in performance against Nvidia and Ati was the G400 back in like 1999.
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Hey, I owned a G400 back in the day, it was a great card, but short lived at the top. Parhelia made Matrox give up against Nvidia and ATI.
 
thans guys for the input. After reading up on their website it seems that they are about perfecting the image, and finding ways to get that clarity on a larger scale (ie, lots of screens)

I guess i will have to look for a good deal on a quadro than ;)

K-TRON
 
figgie said:
I have a Matrox quad monitor card.... :) At work, most of the traders use Matrox for three/four monitor support. Hence why Matrox is still in business.

Matrox in the gaming scene might be non-existant but in financials and medical. They own it.

to the rest.. the [H] is much more than games though. For that very fact look at the Computer Audio, Network security, OS etc subforums. They all are not about games, hence why I still lurk these places :)
Click to expand...


Matrox was one of the original Fearsome Threesome that made their own chips and sold cards based on those chips (the other two were Number Nine and ATI), and, even then, their niche was driving multiple displays (it was Matrox and Number Nine that pioneered dual-display cards for AutoCAD) in the early 1990s. It was the birth of 3dfx and nVidia (and a resurgent ATI) that quickly forced Matrox to almost reinvent itself into a strictly-niche company (as opposed to dual displays, Matrox of today is into more triple and quad displays off a single card; their multi-display cards are standard fare in Bloomberg display terminals, for example, despite the Bloomberg standard fare being a mere two screens). Number Nine is dead (the pieces largely split among VIA and AMD, which acquired ATI), leaving Matrox the only one of the original Fearsome Threesome still extant as a separate company.

Number Nine (the only American company in the Threesome) in addition to being S3's most well-known partner, also manufactured high-end graphics chipsets itself (despite propoganda to the contrary, the first generally-available 128-bit graphics chipset was launched by Number Nine with the Imagine128; this was targeted primarily at CAD users, though it also was a dynamite card for general Windows NT, as opposed to Windows 3.x/9x usage). Why did Number Nine die? First off, the Imagine128, while quite good, was also quite pricey (especially compared to nVidia or ATI); second, that relationship with S3 came back and bit Number Nine (as a company) rather badly; lastly, it was a series of ATI graphics chipset introductions, and the massive (for the time) price cuts that followed (I was working for a VAR that sold both retail and white-box cards from ATI and Number Nine; mostly, these were midrange cards from Number Nine's Vision and Motion product lines, while ATI countered with first the original 3D RAGE, then the 3D RAGE II, and 3D RAGE II+. It was the introduction of the 3D RAGE II that was the beginning of the end for Number Nine, as it pushed the original 3D RAGE down to compete with the S3-powered Vision line from Number Nine; however, ATI followed up with the die-shrunk 3D RAGE II+ (which appeared in no less than four different retail-box models from ATI, as well as several white-box models, some of which had no retail peers; one of our hot-sellers was an odd duck of a PCI card with 2 MB of VRAM, but upgradable via an ATI SODIMM module to 6 MB. This card was VERY popular for CAD users driving a single workstation (surveyors, architecural firms, government customers) and wanting to do so on the cheap.)

It was right around this time that I bought my first ATI-based card (it was a 3D RAGE-based whitebox PCI model), which would be replaced within a year with my first AGP-based ATI card (the All-In-Wonder Pro) which started a run of All-In-Wonder cards of various sorts (the last such card I've owned was the AIW 9700 Pro, which is also the only AIW to ever fail while I owned it; every other ATI card I've owned was passed down to another owner, and is still in service). In fact, except for a ten-day period this month where I was running with onboard nForce-based graphics, I've been running ATI graphics nearly exclusively since the tail-end of Clinton's first term.

(Yes; the nForce graphics was replaced with an ATI-based card.)
 
We use Matrox Editing cards in our Workstations for Video Editing.
The RT.X2 is our newest card that does HD, the other card we use is an RT.X100 paired with a Matrox G450.
 
Stiletto said:
Why are Kyro cards barely talked about? :D
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ancient tech.

as a random aside to the guy talking about Number Nine above: I actually had their last consumer card for a bit: A "Ticket to Go", I believe it was called. Ran Starlancer pretty well :)
 
I used a g400 MAX for YEARS as my media PC's video card. It had WAY better TV out than any other card. (This is when we all used CRT TVs with svideo being the best thing out there)

It was stellar and it was a pretty decent game accelerator also. I think I finally threw the card out before I moved little over a year ago.
 
PGHammer,

look at my time just on this forum... this was before the makeover, and before the loss of info. I have been on these forums since the days of VESA port based cards and the world of quake. Yes, that is quake numero uno not Q3a. ;)

Number9, Matrox, S3, Sis, Kyro (which I still have the tile based card somewhere). I known about them and where matrox forte is as being in IT, my job is to know these things for a commercial applications.
 
Another thumbs up for the G400. 300Mhz RAMDAC was appreciated (and unique) back in the day. Too bad d-sub is kinda dead now...
 
I remember driving past Matrox in Montreal a year ago and remembering how I though the G400 was the god of video cards.
 
Oh right, Kyro... *memories come flooding back*

Man, I feel old now :)
 
Forealz said:
Kyle's grammar has definitely improved in the last 10 years.
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That article made me lol. Since I've only been around for the last 3 years, I've been used to the "professional asshole" and the no-BS straight-to-the-point style Kyle has at the moment and figured he was always like that. But after reading this, I'm amazed at how informal his article was written. :D!
 
Elledan said:
Oh right, Kyro... *memories come flooding back*

Man, I feel old now :)
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Man, I owned a Kyro II. Wait, I still have it. The Hercules Prophet. Bought it on impulse at Staples because a cute girl from my highschool class was working there. I naturally tend to like obscure things or things that are quirky and less popular. Was really sick of my Voodoo Banshee.


BAD CHOICE. I mean, I loved how all the marketing told us how the Kyro was smart and only rendered what was seen, etc. It all made sense...but it had no marketshare and too little support. It played that Wolfenstein like game alright...what was that called? Years before Return to Castle Wolfenstein...it was a time travel game with nazis and a castle...But yeah, most of my Quake II days were spent with the Kyro II. I learned after that to not buy obscure cards anymore and just go for the market leader just in terms of support and community.
 
Forealz said:
Kyle's grammar has definitely improved in the last 10 years.
Click to expand...

I swear I was just reading the monologue of a rap song about video cards. Had to keep scrolling back up to make sure the auther was Kyle! =)
 
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