Why not Matrox

S

stealthy123

2[H]4U
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Feb 4, 2005
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They used to be a legit player in the days just before parhelia, but they got out of consumer level graphics it seems.

I wonder why if they could stay valid in the market place for the years previous, I mean I used to see matrox cards at fry's next to the geforces.

It seems that the parhelia spec wise was way ahead of it's time, and even nividia and ati have adopted some things from that card(memory placing) so it would seem matrox wasn't that far off.

Couldn't just a process shrink and some tweaks make it valid today even if just the performance level of like a 6600 peopel would still buy it just for the 3 screen thing.
hell if they weren't still over 300 dollars I would buy one, well that and I am damn sure not spending 300 bux plus on anything agp.

surely a manufacuterer somewhere hears us begging for a legit third choice.

I would be in heaven if s3, matrox got their stuff together and there could be legit choices out there other than the big two.
 
Matrox suffered three simulaneous blows that set them back years during the Parhelia launch.

First, Matrox released a product just prior to the RADEON 9700 Pro, which when released promply garnered top jock strap gripping from the enthusiast community (HardOCP included) ... problem? Everyone and their mother was glued to frames per second and 3DMark scores.

I bought the Parhelia right after it was made available. Guess what? It was awesome. NO, it was not the fastest. NO, it was not the sexiest. But it did deliver a helluva gaming experience in Surround Mode. I picked up three LCD monitors and absolutely went hog wild in a wide range of games from Quake III to NASCAR 2003 Racing Season. And the image quality was second to none. NONE!

Fast forward and now with the leadership from Kyle and crew, we're waking up from the ridiculous notion that a card with higher FPS in a game makes it tops. I was arguing this on every board I had an account on, and nobody wanted to hear it. Its highly gratifying to now have the online hardware review community getting a clue.

Second blow? Parhelia was (AND STILL IS) extremely overpriced. In an effort to compete with ATi and nVidia, Matrox should have aimed a little lower considering the cost of two additional displays to actually make the Parhelia worthwhile.

Third blow ... according to insider information provided by MURC.com (Matrox enthusiast site), Matrox had schizophenia with the development of the Parhelia. Game card? 3D Modeler? Commercial Graphic Adapter? YES, YES, and YES! OOOoops!

And I guess there is a number four ... lots of their R&D folks walked when the money started drying up.

That's why Matrox is where they are now. I don't see them recovering and its a shame. They were once awesome, and the Parhelia was better than it got credit for.
 
they were the ones that started the whole IQ thing in my opinion

I will still buy one of there pcie 1x vid cards if they ever release the damned thing
 
I keep hoping they'll give up on the make thier own chips thing and become ATI or NV's high end card maker, then make pro 3d cards and custom designs based on ATI or NV chips. SLI on one card w/ 3 outputs & surround enabled, etc.
 
why not a bigger GFX card manufacturer buying them out then throwing money into R + D
is the praphics market so hard to not be able to pull that off, they have name recognition already which has got to be valuable.
 
I remember the goods days of the very high end video card back in 1996-1997, The MGA Millenium!! I had one mystique and one G400 and since then, I haven't found another manufacturer that has better or equal video output quality. Not even ATI, even less nvidia. The quality difference is very noticeable, and is the sharpest I have seen. I just hope Matrox could bring a success story à la 9700 Pro just like ATI did 3 years ago to set them back on track.

Para
 
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