| |
Q: Voodoo2, while being a solid product over all, is nowhere near the image quality of the G200 line. Voodoo3 may not be a big improvement. Do you think gamers care?
A: I believe that gamers are some of the most discerning users in the market. They really do notice and really do care about the quality of the rendered image - provided that it is being rendered faster than hell. The way that a game looks on screen has a direct effect on how the gamer interacts with the game. When an image looks real and life-like, it creates a more immersive gaming experience. Matrox is committed to pushing the envelope in 3D rendering in both speed and image quality.
Q: Is the dedicated 3d-hardware market dead?
A: Almost. It shouldn't be long now :)
Q: The market seems to have settled on 16 megabytes of local memory for 3d boards. Some like No9 and ATI are pushing that limit to 32. What is the goal for the next Matrox product, and why?
A: The G400 product will have a maximum memory size of 32MB. Amazingly this is equivalent to the amount of system memory standard in a high-end PC one year ago today. Given that the Matrox G400 also supports full AGP4x texture mapping with a peak throughput rate of 1GB/sec, it is doubtful that moving beyond 32MB will provide much real benefit to end users. There is always the perception that bigger is better, though.
Q: The G200 line is about 35% slower in the 3d simulations I run than the TNT. What is your goal for your next generation product? Can you give us fill rate numbers?
A: The Matrox G400 Max is engineered to be a world leader in 3D acceleration. The raw fill rate of the product is in excess of 333 Mtexels/second, which is more than 3 times the speed of the G200. We have also dramatically increased the quality of the 3D rendering in addition to increasing the speed.
Q: Is there room for improvement in 2d acceleration? What will the next Matrox product bring us?
A: There is always room for improvement. With our next product, the Matrox G400, you will see the fastest 2D performance in the industry. In fact we are now able to run a 1600x1200 desktop in true color at the same speed as 640x480 in 8bpp!
Click to continue
|
|
D3d benchmark numbers from Sharky Extreme: Forsaken Demo 16 bit color.
Q: The feature set of the G200 line is impressive. What features will be added for the next generation, and how will these impact the games we play?
A: The most revolutionary 3D feature that we have added with the Matrox G400 is true Environment Mapped Bump Mapping, which will make a huge impact on the look and feel of the games we play. There are screen shots on our web site of applications like Slave Zero from Accolade with Bump Mapping enabled and disabled - they are worth taking a look at.
The developer feedback regarding this particular feature has been overwhelming and I think that you will see a lot of content jumping on the 'Bump bandwagon'. We have also added anisotropic filtering, 32-bit rendering from 32-bit textures, AGP texturing, 32 bit Z-buffer, 8-bit stencil buffering, non power of 2 mip-mapped textures up to 2048x2048 in size and tons more.
One other really neat feature that we have added to the Matrox G400 is a capability that we call DualHead Display. Basically, this means that from a single AGP chip we can drive two separate images to two monitors.
Q: When will we see the next Matrox product?
A: The Matrox G400 product will be available in June.
Q: Will a small company like Matrox maintain the pace set by companies like Nvidia and 3dfx? Do you hope to even surpass their efforts?
A: Honestly speaking, in terms of sales figures and number of people, Matrox is much bigger than either Nvidia or 3Dfx. This is partly due to the fact that we are both a board company and a chip company. At this point in time we see our rate of innovation increasing and our goal is to lead the industry.
Q: What do you see for 3d hardware in the year 2000?
A: The year 2000 will bring enormous changes. You will see at least quadruple the maximum rendering power of today, new quality features and new renderers. It is a great time to be alive and to be a gamer.
|
|
