This is a killer card for multi-screen work. I have one at my office in a W2K system that?s hooked to 3 displays for visualization and it rocks.
What got me fired up was that during a conversation about these cards with one of my customers (that's testing them in his lab) I found out that he's also a Mac user and asked a Matrox rep about the cards working with the Mac OS. The rep told him that they were looking at having support for the Mac OS sometime in 2003. But he would not give a specific date.
Now most people normally wouldn?t be talking to a company rep about a consumer level video card. But my customer plans on purchasing potentially large quantities of this card and it talking with Matrox directly about it.
The overall number crunching power of this card might not be as great as that found on the NVIDIA Quadro4 or ATI 9700 (for the PC) but the three screen thing is very nice for graphics work, page layout, and video editing. I can?t tell you how happy we are with the one we have at our company.
I seriously hope that they are going to support the Mac in the future.
This is a killer card for multi-screen work. I have one at my office in a W2K system that?s hooked to 3 displays for visualization and it rocks.
What got me fired up was that during a conversation about these cards with one of my customers (that's testing them in his lab) I found out that he's also a Mac user and asked a Matrox rep about the cards working with the Mac OS. The rep told him that they were looking at having support for the Mac OS sometime in 2003. But he would not give a specific date. </strong><hr></blockquote>
That's a change. Matrox basically pretended that the Mac didn't exist when the Parhelia came out. It probably had something to do with getting seriously burned by Apple on the RTMac card.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if Parhelia drivers make it to the Mac, it will because of customer demand. I doubt Matrox is too eager to listen to Apple right now.
...It probably had something to do with getting seriously burned by Apple on the RTMac card.
...</strong><hr></blockquote>
What's the story on that? I remember when they announced that and how great it was going to be and ... poof ... nothing. <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
<strong>No fancy busses, the existing workstation cards just plug into an AGP slot. Not really a big deal unless you need the driver certification that comes with those cards (or something exotic like alternating scan stereo) as the Mac gamer versions are damn near the same thing. Nvidia and ATI silicon is the same off the fab for all their respective cards, no magic differences for Fire or Quadro silicon.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Some of these cards require AGP Pro, which is really just some extra power lines to the slot. This allows cards with higher power requirements to be used without having to resort to the use of a hard driver power connector. There are 2x and 4x versions, I believe. A G4 machine is perfectly capable of having such a slot, Apple just hasn't chosen to do so (yet).
<strong>What's the story on that? I remember when they announced that and how great it was going to be and ... poof ... nothing. </strong><hr></blockquote>
Apple worked closely with Matrox on the card, which Matrox spent a lot of time and money developing. They finished it and sold it for $1000 a piece to anyone wanting to do real time effects in FCP. Not quite a year later - and, apparently, a good while before Matrox had recouped their investment - Apple rolled out a version of FCP that didn't need it to do the same real-time effects. Matrox slashed the price, and reegineered a version that used DVI rather than ADC and was compatible with Premiere in an attempt to get more life out of it. I haven't heard much about it since.
Word was that Matrox was pissed. I can't really blame them.
<strong>Apple worked closely with Matrox on the card, which Matrox spent a lot of time and money developing. They finished it and sold it for $1000 a piece to anyone wanting to do real time effects in FCP. Not quite a year later - and, apparently, a good while before Matrox had recouped their investment - Apple rolled out a version of FCP that didn't need it to do the same real-time effects. Matrox slashed the price, and reegineered a version that used DVI rather than ADC and was compatible with Premiere in an attempt to get more life out of it. I haven't heard much about it since.
Word was that Matrox was pissed. I can't really blame them.</strong><hr></blockquote>
If the Matrox specialized graphics hardware is so lame that it can't out perform a G4 w/ limited FSB bandwidth running the OS and GUI, then to hell with them. Hardware manufacturers should deliver products that add value, and Matrox hasn't done that in a long time. Their GPUs have sucked since '97, and their only advantage is triple headed (now that everybody else does double headed).
I know this does not mean much but Industrial Light and Magic just released some software called OpenEXR, some stuff from their website:
[quote]OpenEXR is a high dynamic-range (HDR) image file format developed by Industrial Light & Magic for use in computer imaging applications.
OpenEXR has already been used by ILM on 4 major motion pictures -- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Men in Black II, Gangs of New York, and Signs -- and is also being used on several other movies currently in production.
OpenEXR's features include:
Support for 16-bit floating-point pixels. The pixel format, called "half," is compatible with the half datatype in NVidia's Cg graphics language and is supported natively on their new GeForce FX and Quadro FX 3D graphics solutions.
Supported Platforms
OpenEXR works on GNU/Linux, OS X 10.2, and IRIX. It should be fairly easy to port to other UNIX-like operating systems<hr></blockquote>
It's just a HDR image file format, HDR being images that hold "more colors" than usual 32 bit bitmaps (to put it simple), which gives better quality when doing a lot of processing work with the images.
<strong>I know this does not mean much but Industrial Light and Magic just released some software called OpenEXR, some stuff from their website:
[/URL]</strong><hr></blockquote>
ATI's 9700 supports this format too. Floating point pixel formats aren't new, but hardware support for them is. Its a valuable capability in image processing and 3D rendering, and now that its in hardware we ought to see it start showing up in real-time processing.
ATI's 9700 supports this format too. Floating point pixel formats aren't new, but hardware support for them is. Its a valuable capability in image processing and 3D rendering, and now that its in hardware we ought to see it start showing up in real-time processing.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes but my point behind quoting this site is just like Shake for the Macintosh...why would they do it (Apple in this case) if there was not something really good coming out?
<strong>Yes but my point behind quoting this site is just like Shake for the Macintosh...why would they do it (Apple in this case) if there was not something really good coming out?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Its been obvious for a year now that the ATI9700 and geForceFX would eventually make it to the Mac platform. There isn't much of a mystery here.
Comments
<a href="http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/parhelia/home.cfm"; target="_blank">Matrox Parhelia</a> card.
This is a killer card for multi-screen work. I have one at my office in a W2K system that?s hooked to 3 displays for visualization and it rocks.
What got me fired up was that during a conversation about these cards with one of my customers (that's testing them in his lab) I found out that he's also a Mac user and asked a Matrox rep about the cards working with the Mac OS. The rep told him that they were looking at having support for the Mac OS sometime in 2003. But he would not give a specific date.
Now most people normally wouldn?t be talking to a company rep about a consumer level video card. But my customer plans on purchasing potentially large quantities of this card and it talking with Matrox directly about it.
The overall number crunching power of this card might not be as great as that found on the NVIDIA Quadro4 or ATI 9700 (for the PC) but the three screen thing is very nice for graphics work, page layout, and video editing. I can?t tell you how happy we are with the one we have at our company.
I seriously hope that they are going to support the Mac in the future.
<strong>Another card that we might see this year on the Mac is the
<a href="http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/parhelia/home.cfm"; target="_blank">Matrox Parhelia</a> card.
This is a killer card for multi-screen work. I have one at my office in a W2K system that?s hooked to 3 displays for visualization and it rocks.
What got me fired up was that during a conversation about these cards with one of my customers (that's testing them in his lab) I found out that he's also a Mac user and asked a Matrox rep about the cards working with the Mac OS. The rep told him that they were looking at having support for the Mac OS sometime in 2003. But he would not give a specific date. </strong><hr></blockquote>
That's a change. Matrox basically pretended that the Mac didn't exist when the Parhelia came out. It probably had something to do with getting seriously burned by Apple on the RTMac card.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if Parhelia drivers make it to the Mac, it will because of customer demand. I doubt Matrox is too eager to listen to Apple right now.
<strong>
...It probably had something to do with getting seriously burned by Apple on the RTMac card.
...</strong><hr></blockquote>
What's the story on that? I remember when they announced that and how great it was going to be and ... poof ... nothing. <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
<strong>No fancy busses, the existing workstation cards just plug into an AGP slot. Not really a big deal unless you need the driver certification that comes with those cards (or something exotic like alternating scan stereo) as the Mac gamer versions are damn near the same thing. Nvidia and ATI silicon is the same off the fab for all their respective cards, no magic differences for Fire or Quadro silicon.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Some of these cards require AGP Pro, which is really just some extra power lines to the slot. This allows cards with higher power requirements to be used without having to resort to the use of a hard driver power connector. There are 2x and 4x versions, I believe. A G4 machine is perfectly capable of having such a slot, Apple just hasn't chosen to do so (yet).
This unit is AGP 8x buzzword compliant, but uses a power connector on the board, so no need for the Pro designation...
Mmmm... Quad PPC970s w/ a Quadro FX2000...
Now the question, dual Cinema Displays, or some 'new' 3840x2400 MegaCinema HD Display (maybe around 32" or so...)?!?
;^p
<strong>What's the story on that? I remember when they announced that and how great it was going to be and ... poof ... nothing.
Apple worked closely with Matrox on the card, which Matrox spent a lot of time and money developing. They finished it and sold it for $1000 a piece to anyone wanting to do real time effects in FCP. Not quite a year later - and, apparently, a good while before Matrox had recouped their investment - Apple rolled out a version of FCP that didn't need it to do the same real-time effects. Matrox slashed the price, and reegineered a version that used DVI rather than ADC and was compatible with Premiere in an attempt to get more life out of it. I haven't heard much about it since.
Word was that Matrox was pissed. I can't really blame them.
<strong>Apple worked closely with Matrox on the card, which Matrox spent a lot of time and money developing. They finished it and sold it for $1000 a piece to anyone wanting to do real time effects in FCP. Not quite a year later - and, apparently, a good while before Matrox had recouped their investment - Apple rolled out a version of FCP that didn't need it to do the same real-time effects. Matrox slashed the price, and reegineered a version that used DVI rather than ADC and was compatible with Premiere in an attempt to get more life out of it. I haven't heard much about it since.
Word was that Matrox was pissed. I can't really blame them.</strong><hr></blockquote>
If the Matrox specialized graphics hardware is so lame that it can't out perform a G4 w/ limited FSB bandwidth running the OS and GUI, then to hell with them. Hardware manufacturers should deliver products that add value, and Matrox hasn't done that in a long time. Their GPUs have sucked since '97, and their only advantage is triple headed (now that everybody else does double headed).
[quote]OpenEXR is a high dynamic-range (HDR) image file format developed by Industrial Light & Magic for use in computer imaging applications.
OpenEXR has already been used by ILM on 4 major motion pictures -- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Men in Black II, Gangs of New York, and Signs -- and is also being used on several other movies currently in production.
OpenEXR's features include:
Support for 16-bit floating-point pixels. The pixel format, called "half," is compatible with the half datatype in NVidia's Cg graphics language and is supported natively on their new GeForce FX and Quadro FX 3D graphics solutions.
Supported Platforms
OpenEXR works on GNU/Linux, OS X 10.2, and IRIX. It should be fairly easy to port to other UNIX-like operating systems<hr></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.openexr.org/"; target="_blank">OpenEXR</a>
<strong>I know this does not mean much but Industrial Light and Magic just released some software called OpenEXR, some stuff from their website:
[/URL]</strong><hr></blockquote>
ATI's 9700 supports this format too. Floating point pixel formats aren't new, but hardware support for them is. Its a valuable capability in image processing and 3D rendering, and now that its in hardware we ought to see it start showing up in real-time processing.
<strong>
ATI's 9700 supports this format too. Floating point pixel formats aren't new, but hardware support for them is. Its a valuable capability in image processing and 3D rendering, and now that its in hardware we ought to see it start showing up in real-time processing.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes but my point behind quoting this site is just like Shake for the Macintosh...why would they do it (Apple in this case) if there was not something really good coming out?
<strong>Yes but my point behind quoting this site is just like Shake for the Macintosh...why would they do it (Apple in this case) if there was not something really good coming out?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Its been obvious for a year now that the ATI9700 and geForceFX would eventually make it to the Mac platform. There isn't much of a mystery here.