I don't often see eye to eye with Scali but the moving goalposts in this argument did not help the other side's point at all.

If any system would have a high end card(like the Matrox) included it would be the Pentium - back then it was established as THE powerhouse in an era where most were surfing the x86 code base on their "small scale" 486s.

And yes, technological superiority did not totally translate to performance due to the platform and the low core clock.

amadeus777999 wrote:

If any system would have a high end card(like the Matrox) included it would be the Pentium - back then it was established as THE powerhouse in an era where most were surfing the x86 code base on their "small scale" 486s.

I'd like to add that the Matrox Millennium was considerably cheaper and more 'mainstream' than Matrox' earliest offerings (Matrox Ultima and Impression, as mentioned before, with optional 3D acceleration, the whole package aimed mostly at CAD workstations).
So the Matrox name did have a ring of 'unobtanium' and 'professional gear' to it, but more because of the earlier products than the Millennium itself.
Having said that, because the Millennium arrived somewhat later in the Pentium 60's lifecycle, there were also Pentium 60s with the first-generation MGA as stock video card (which makes sense since the P60 was even more high-end at that time, with only the 66 above it).

Or perhaps more exact: the Millennium *became* cheaper and more mainstream. Introduction price was still quite silly money (although the competition was charging similar prices, or worse), but it came down quickly (possibly because of big OEM deals such as with Compaq). At introduction (1994?) it was around $1000, but by 1996 you could get a 2 MB WRAM Millennium PCI for about $260.

Scali wrote:

...Instead you are just derailing an otherwise nice conversation about Pentiums and video cards, and are completely out of touch with the rest of us.

I did not wanted to involve, but I just couldn't pass the opportunity to say "yeah I totally agree with that".

appiah4 wrote:

I don't often see eye to eye with Scali but the moving goalposts in this argument did not help the other side's point at all.

Since you accuse me, do point out the goal posts I moved.

Your trajectory was from "period correct" to "configured together in the wild" before finally landing on "available together en masse". I suspect there's just something about the combination you don't like.

The scope of a question will evolve for various reasons and not just for the sole gain of the asker. If you ask how common a combination was in 95 but decide to accept as an answer that a big company may have offered that combination in the 90s, you'll arguably have widened the scope of the question, or moved the goal posts. I'd say my posts didn't move in that way and indeed the original question was restated many times.

Clearly you're free to question related proposals like the existence together of particular components in a compaq pre-built without thereby abandoning your original question of how common it was to have those components together. I don't believe it was established that compaq had a pentium 60 and a millennium together in 95 so you would question it, but if you're looking to argue that that having been the case shows that the combination was common enough, you'll agree that your first step is to establish that it existed. Maybe you wouldn't and you'd be content with assuming from assumptions, that's fine, but you also wouldn't be upset with others for not doing the same. If you did establish it, great, then you can look at the relevance of it and what of it can be accepted and what should be rejected.

vvbee wrote:

If you ask how common a combination was in 95 but decide to accept as an answer that a big company may have offered that combination in the 90s...

But you have not done this, you have started by questioning whether the pairing even ever existed and there is a difference. From thereon your demands for proof evolved as your conviction came under attack first by injecting the component of rarity then through the dismissal on grounds of anectodality; this is moving goal posts as far as I am concerned.

And you are still replying to this thread out of the same conviction and desire to be right. You will regret it at a later tüme. Just shrug it off walk away and cool it I would say.

The fact that the original question was "how many people" is to acknowledge that some did and to suggest that not many. Fairly reasonable by the looks of it, as no one in the thread so far had one and scali's magazine tour found only scattered indications from the years surrounding.

Actually, the original thread was about video cards for a P60 with some looking at it from the point of view of period correctness. You then wanted to know if the MGA was somewhat common together with a P60. Scali went and answered that question by finding several mass manufactured systems with that combination. Remember, Compaq and Gateway were not boutique vendors in that era. They wouldn't have been shipped in trivial numbers.

As you now seem to be looking for specific market breakdown information (why?), I'll let you know when I have access to Gartner's market research or a time machine - whichever happens first.

He found and linked to a website that listed two video cards for the compaq pentium machines, only one of them being the millennium. Not surprising since the p 60 came out two years earlier and would've been paired with something else in the interim. Whether compaq sold the p 60 with the millennium the website didn't tell, let alone whether people - or maybe offices in this case - bought it over other options anymore. I can easily imagine you going for a more mid-range video card if you still eyed a p 60, or got a cheaper video card to put the difference into a newer pentium rather than going for the millennium.

As for the gateway from the jan 1996 magazine, we're already into 96 but if we somewhat reasonably assume that the machine was out in 95 rather than in 96 then that's one example. Again, whether people went for it we can't say from this alone. If you're willing to accept this as solid enough indication of the extent of adoption, you're free to do so. You can't force me or someone else to accept it, obviously, and I wouldn't say it's evidence enough yet to make a call about the combination not being uncommon.

Are you at all familiar with how Compaq marketed in those days?

vvbee wrote:

How many people would have been rocking the professional-grade matrox millennium with pentium 60s in 95?

vvbee wrote:

They offered an option with the pentium 60 and a matrox millennium and buyers were there?

vvbee wrote:

If you or someone you know invested in a pentium 60 with a matrox millennium, that's fine. I suspect not many did.

Compaq wrote:

Video Pentium Pro - Matrox Millennium PCI Graphics Card w/2MB 60 MHz WRAM Pentium - Matrox Millennium PCI Graphics Card […]
Show full quote

Video
Pentium Pro - Matrox Millennium PCI Graphics Card w/2MB 60 MHz WRAM
Pentium - Matrox Millennium PCI Graphics Card w/2MB 60 MHz WRAM QVision 2000 QVision 1280/p
486 Units - QVision 2000 QVision 1280/p

In this case, there were 2 options, with the Millenium being the newer option when compared to the QVision 2000, which was also offered on the 486 variant. Therefore, the Millenium the better option.

It is a reasonable assumption that some will have the lower end, and some will have the higher end. I agree that it is more likely, given the range of choices between 60MHz and 133MHz Pentiums, that most getting the bottom option on the Pentium platform also likely got the QVision card, but that in no way precludes the possibility. Moreover, the PC Mag article is a good indicator that it was reasonable. Given that even a Pentium 60 was still a venerable processor in 1995, I think that the best analogy would be a dual-core Core i3 vs a Quad Core i7 of the same generation. Different levels of performance, but still valid and capable of functioning with a professional card.

I think that vvbee's question hasn't evolved that much. In fact, it's been consistently an issue of it being an uncommon combination, rather than an impossible one.

I also think that vvbee has been a bit condescending, which has caused several to descend upon them.

I ALSO think that we've beaten this horse enough...it is quite dead.

fitzpatr wrote:

In this case, there were 2 options, with the Millenium being the newer option when compared to the QVision 2000, which was also offered on the 486 variant. Therefore, the Millenium the better option.

The assumption you make here, as already pointed out before, is that you assume they are *options*, as in, people could choose the card when ordering.
I do not think this was the case.
I think there are two possibilities:
1) The earlier Pentium models (as the 486 models) shipped with the QVision, because the Millennium didn't exist yet. They were later replaced by the Millennium.
2) The low-end Pentium models shipped with QVision, the high-end ones with Millennium.

I personally think 1) is more likely (why would they offer the option only on some models, but not on others? Why can't you choose with the 486 and the Pentium Pro, if it's all the same product line? There are no other choices on the machines either, so why only the video card?).
Ordering machines 'a-la-carte' wasn't a thing back them.

In the case of 2) you have to wonder when a Pentium 60 was considered 'low-end', since the Deskpro line started in 1994, when only the P60 and P66 were available, making the P60 second-highest, and only marginally cheaper than a P66. The line was eventually extended all the way up to the Pentium Pro... but at what point did they start using Millenniums? And where was the P60 positioned then?

I mean, these Deskpro's aren't fooling around. I have the 486DX2-66, and it came with 16 MB of memory, which was a lot for a 486. It also has onboard SCSI and LAN, which are obviously high-end options. The only differences from the Pentium Pro 200 I have (the highest-end model) are the CPU and the video card. For a 486-system this must have been an extremely expensive option back in the day, not to mention 'nonsensical' to the average consumer. But it was marketed at high-end businesses, workstation-class.

Edit:
I found a pricelist from 1994:
https://books.google.nl/books?id=AcDPzRXuvqsC … epage&q&f=false

The Deskpro XL560 is the Pentium 60 model, the XL466 is the 486DX2-66.
And indeed the XL466 is more than twice as expensive as some other 486DX2-66 models... It is more expensive than many Pentium machines, and nearly the same prices as the XL560 (you'd wonder why you'd even go for the 486 at all at these prices... but I have the machine at home, from a company that had a number of them).
To get an idea of just how high-end the Deskpro series was... Might also put the possibility of a Millennium card into perspective. These machines weren't exactly aimed at being the most affordable option, and saving a few hundred bucks on a video card doesn't seem to be much of a concern at these prices.

The only machine that is even more insanely priced, is the Dell OptiPlex.

fitzpatr wrote:

I also think that vvbee has been a bit condescending, which has caused several to descend upon them.

My impression of scali from some previous exchanges was that he may go for the person rather than the thing being discussed. But rudeness was definitely from many sides including mine, let's be clear.

You all can bite me I've got a Pentium 90 with a Mach64! =)

vvbee wrote:

My impression of scali from some previous exchanges was that he may go for the person rather than the thing being discussed.

Then you got the wrong impression.
Also, this appears to be an implicit admission of guilt that you were deliberately provoking (which I figured quite early on, since you immediately responded with things like accusing me of being 'confrontational', while I merely asked you to elaborate), and you are somehow trying to justify this.
Any personal remarks I made were mainly addressed at your poor behaviour in this thread, and were completely called for as far as I am concerned (as evidenced by everyone else chiming in).

appiah4 wrote:

...And you are still replying to this thread out of the same conviction and desire to be right. You will regret it at a later tüme. Just shrug it off walk away and cool it I would say.

I did not wanted to involve, but I just couldn't pass the opportunity to say "yeah, I totally agree with that".

Scali, you too, please (shrug it off and walk away I mean).

tayyare wrote:

Scali, you too, please (shrug it off and walk away I mean).

As I was trying to say in my previous post, I feel that vvbee was deliberately attacking me. I don't think I am in a position to just 'shrug it off', because I want to make sure he doesn't try this again in the future (the fact that he continues to argue in this thread doesn't bode well in that respect).

vvbee wrote:

fitzpatr wrote:

I also think that vvbee has been a bit condescending, which has caused several to descend upon them.

My impression of scali from some previous exchanges was that he may go for the person rather than the thing being discussed. But rudeness was definitely from many sides including mine, let's be clear.

Scali is one of the few people who know their stuff - inside and out. He's a true professional unlike you.
Don't hide your ineptitude to comprehend where you "slipped" in this thread behind pompous, fake self criticism to appear "fair".