Is Matrox saying ‘Single-core? No thank you!’ ?
We’ve recently been discussing the prospects of Matrox’s new ‘lower cost’ video editing card, the RT.X2, with an early adopter and came across what looks like an industry first...Apparently, in its quest to ensure that users experience the RT.X2 in an optimum platform, Matrox seems to have rather cut off the single-threaded past of the desktop computer.
According to our source, when they tried to install the card in a single-processor PC, the driver installation flatly said ‘No’, or maybe ‘Non’, as Matrox is based in Quebec in the French part of Canada.
This was no lamer desktop, either – the system in question was apparently an Athlon 64 FX-57 with 2GB of RAM.
Despite this being the top-choice AMD desktop processor, until the dual-core FX-60 arrived, the fact that the FX-57 is single core means Matrox won’t let you install its RT.X2.
So for the moment it seems that the bare minimum is a dual-core processor.
If you look at Matrox’s perilously short list of validated motherboards and processors here, even a Pentium D would be sufficient, although not recommended for editing high definition footage.
It looks like Matrox’s current favourites are all dual-core, dual-processor Opteron configurations – something we feel every self-respecting hardware enthusiast should own anyway.
Presumably, though, when Matrox gets its hands on some Intel Core Marchitecture processors its favoured platforms will be somewhat different.
