RTX.100 hands on review
 

For those interested my hands on review of thenew RTX.100 is now posted on the Videoguys.com website
Guys, I love this card. Install was a breeze and after 2 weeks of pounding it is rock solid. I had my first hiccup last night when I installed some additional effects. I was getting flickering in the new flex 3d cube and ripple transitions. Rebooting the system fixed it completely. That was my first reboot since setting up my cable modem connections over a week ago!
Matrox learned alot from the RT2000/RT2500 days and more importantly they listend to their users, dealers and integrators. The result is what I feel is the new standard by which other cards will now be judged.

Check out the review. www.videoguys.com/RTX100review.html

All comments /feedback welcome.

Gary
Videoguys.com

Thanks Gary -- this is the only other PC-based editing card with real-time DV output other than the Canopus DV Storm.

Actually Pinnacle has just released the ProONE RTDV. our first units are on the way to us. It is a Pro-One with a second C-Cube chip added for Real-time DV output. Pinnacle also has a 2.0 driver realease that adds some cool new features and improves the cards stability, performance and quality.

The big plus of this card is that ti will give you real-time DV output and full performance on a PIII 1ghz machine.

Gary

RTX.100 System Requirements
 

I saw on Matrox site that this card has a recommended 2.2 Ghz Pentium 4. Is that really what this card needs to work? I was thinking about doing the buy back program on my RT 2500 to get the X.100, but see that kind of stopped me in my tracks. I only have Pentium 4 1.5 Ghz.

Best,
Big James

Yes. We only recommend the RTX.100 on a P4 2.2 or faster. (Or Athlon 2000+)

Anything less will not give you the full adverstised feature set. I go into this in more depth at the end of my review:

Give it the Power it needs!
We tested the RT.X100 in an HP 1100i workstation with a 2.2 Ghz P4 processor, 784 megs of Ram, G550 graphics card and Medea 2/160 VideoRAID SCSI for storage running Windows XP. This system meets or exceeds the recommended system specs for this card. As a result we were able to get all of the advertised features of this card and combine them. Even when we combined 2 layers ach of video and graphics with 3D Fx, color correction and speed controls we had perfect playback, both DV and analog. If you put the RT.X100 in a system with less power, you will get less real-time performance. I do not recommend using the RTX.100 in anything less then a P4 2.2 Ghz or Athlon XP2000+ or faster.

For real-time export of MPEG2 files you will require an additional dedicated hard drive or a Medea VideoRAID. With a single VideoRAID you can store all your video and have enough disk throughput for real-time MPEG2 output. Even better, with a VideoRAID all your storage is available to you. You aren't dedicating an entire drive just for real-time MPEG2 output files. We've gotten together with Medea and Matrox to offer you a $50 savings PLUS a FREE 3940UW SCSi controller when you purchase both an RTX.100 and a VideoRAID.

Matrox lists a minimum system requirement of a Pentium III at 1 GHz, Pentium 4 at 1.7 GHz, or Athlon XP 1500+. If you choose to run the RT.X100 in one of these minimal configurations you will NOT get real-time DV output or the ability to combine multiple real-time filters and effects. To me, this is like buying a Ferrari and only driving it in crowded city streets. I just don't see the point. If your going to invest in a great card like the RT.X100, the least you can do is give it the CPU power it needs to get the job done right!

GAry

What about Dual Proc
 

Does it take advantage of systems running dual processors? I was thinking about getting one of the Dell Workstations in the future that has dual 2.4 Ghz Xeon processors will it work with this hardware or will it be no different then with one processor?

Best,
Big James

It will take advantage of dual processors for encoding and rendering. The real-time minimum is for processor speed. Two 1.8Ghz do not cut it. You have to have a 2.2 or faster as your base processor speed, even with 2.

Gary

What about Xeon
 

What about Xeon processors does that change anything? The Dell workstation I was looking at used dual 2.4 Ghz Xeon, but even a 1.6 Ghz Xeon has a ton of advantages over a standard P4 2.2.

Best,
Big James

James,

According to Matrox,
Dual 1.7G Xeons would not work.
Dual 2.4G Xeons would work, but only under WinXP. Under Win2K, the 2nd CPU does nothing for the RTX.

You might want to note that:

A 1.6GHz Xeon has no advantage over a P4 2.2GHz.
In fact, a 2.2GHz Xeon has no advantage over a P4 2.2GHz.

Unless your going to get dual CPUs, it's more performance and cost effective to stick with a P4.

You can find benchmarks here:
[url]http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/02q1/0203131/dual-06.html/[url]

This makes sense. Both chips have the same CPU core and the same size cache so you'd expect performance to be identical.

George