I've never owned a Matrox card, so I'm not defending them out of pride or anything like that, but I think the price is fair.
Look at the features, and the technology that this card has, I think it justifies the price.
I would consider this card if OC'ing it brings it on par with the big dogs...the goodies would end up giving this card the edge in that respect.
I don't usually speculate...because I've been wrong too many times, but with 2 years invested in R & D, and creating this card...I'm sure they are just teasing the market.
For all we know, they could have a 400+ MHz core ready, and are just waiting for the right time to unleash it...do it too early, and NVidia has a chance to beat it.
*edit*
Just wanted to show why I am speculating a serious ass kicker coming from them soon.
They have definately planned for bigger and better...
Quote:
On the flip side of the board you'll see all of the solder pads for an extra 128MB of memory and all of the pads for the termination resistors that go along with the added memory. Matrox will be offering a higher clocked version of the Parhelia with 256MB of memory later this year
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The last sentence has my attention.
Condsidering the "current" configuration of 128 MB at 550MHz can deliver 17.6 GB/s...there's no possible way that 220 MHz can digest that data
that fast. Ok, a "higher clocked version", what could they possibly have up their sleeve that would need 256 MB at 17.6 GB/s????
If that faster version falls within an inch of 400 MHz, I'll be the first one to buy it, without even waiting for a review.