Matrox: Parhelia?

Parhelia (the news is a bit down)

Re: Matrox: Parhelia?

It has gotten quite a lot of publicity allready, and IIRC it has a couple of 11 pages forum threads around the net...

And as matroxusers.com has not gone public with rumours without backup earlier, I'd say somethings coming our way

here is one of the threads over at murc... (Oh, and watch out for the "crystall ball" room... It's 99.9 BS...!)

They really know how to entice pple. I'm just worried how nVidia will suddenly announce their next latest chip and everything goes nuts from there on since they release a new chip ever so often.

Just wondered if anyone has succumbed to the temptation that is the latest gaming offering from Matrox?

ShopMatrox.com Pre-order Parhelia512 ($399 US, £279 GBP)

it sounds more like a graph workstation card than hardcore gamer card for me.

Its meant to be their entry back into gaming cards as far as I was aware...
Especially since it has triple monitor support for surround gaming....

Hi ya Arris,

My understanding is that it was supposed to be a 'mid level priced' gaming card. That $399 isn't 'midlevel' to me! :dead:

ATI is dropping prices next week, nVidia has a new gaming 'code' (C for Graphics), Creative/3dLabs is readying the VPU & Matrox is asking that kind of money for a AGP8x (who has a mobo for that?) that has "partial" DX9 support? I wish them luck, but I can't see a bunch of sales for it at that price.

Have you looked at the nVidia C for Graphics site? Interesting stuff there. I get the impression that DX is going to be history, but I may have misunderstood the intent of the 'code'.

Have a good one,

I was under the impression that that card was aimed at 3D Graphics rather than gaming. I read an article on it not too long ago in Computer Graphics Magazine or some other Graphics mag that was boasting its features for use in graphics workstations.

wait til Ati launches R300 and Nvidia launches NV30. Then we can have a huge price war!

Triple Monitor Support.

Just read the review @ www.maximumpc.com July/02 issue.
Yea, fast & all that, but what strikes me is the Triple Monitor Support & the 150° field of view.

The Matrox Parhelia NDA for all sites will come down tomorow, the same it is supposed to be available for purchase. Expect a lot of reviews on it.

Arnt there like 2 versions of the P-152, an 128DDRRam and a 256DDRRAM....who needs 256DDR-RAM when we have been using 64DDRRAM for like 1.5 years (Geforce2 Ultra+) and 128DDRRAM for like 6 months?

Ah, back in town after a great biennial meeting of the CYM in norway...

Now i'm just waiting for the Parhelia to arrive...
I pre-ordered quite early (nr 87 in Europe I think), as i think it's going to be worth it... (Besides, my pre-order price is 299$ )

Ok... Where to start with that statement...

First off, who cares about what has gone before?!? Why would you want to compare a brand new card with a 1.5 year old card? That's like me wondering why GPU's started using DDR instead of PC-66 RAM, considering there wasn't any card that had DDR 4 years ago!
And there is a big difference between what Nvidia offeres compared to Matrox... Matrox is a name that says Quality, whereas Nvidia says Speed...

The Parhelia has been created to handle games with all eyecandy on, with reasonable speed, whereas the GF series has gone for highest speed, thinking if it's fast enough, it doesn't matter that it loose much speed with anisotropic filtering, FSAA etc...

Lastly, there isn't two versions like what you're describing...
The databus is 256 bit wide, which with DDR-RAM gives you a 512bit throughput...

There will be a difference between the OEM ver of the card, and the retail, and between the 128mb and 256mb version...

(Full interview here)

JAV> Well, considering the 3dlabs Wildcat is going to be priced above the Parhelia (£385 for 64MB, £480 for 128MB) I'd say it's an entry to the game arena...
And Matrox is quite likely to do that same that Nvidia and ATI does with a product launch...

They launch the product with a high pricetag, then just before they release the product, slashes the price...

And yes, it is targeted towards gamers, but also proffesional use... Read the full interview for more info..


Lokem> Yes, Nvidia will announce a new chip... They allways do... But mostly that's just a tweak of the prev core with a higher clockspeed... It's been quite some time since Nvidia announced any new tech... (Not counting new FSAA algorithm's)
So I wouldn't worry too much about that... Besides, what do you want mostly:

1. Over 200 fps in Q3 with medium to low quality
or
2. Around 70-80 fps with all eyecandy on in new games

I know what I want......

.02$

That is correct! And as Mr.G mentioned, Creative owns 3DLabs which means we have more competition.

Here's a review ( or preview ), I hope it's the beta drivers that explain the lack of "groundbreaking" performance.

Matrox Parhelia @ Hardware.FR

The NDA expired today, I'm surprised I haven't seen more of those.

There are currently 4 german, 1 french and one Isreali review up (that I've found), though the isreali site has just written about the pics, which they've gotten from another site...
(I'lll start posting links when english reviews go online, or if you request the german ones...)

And so far I'm quite confused...

From what I've heard from the betatesters, the card is just great!, but from the reviews, i'm getting a different picture...

Granted, all of the benchmarks suffers from immature drivers, but still!
In some cases the Parhelia is quite good, but in one test it gets beaten by a G400 MAX!

I seriously hopes Matrox fixes the speed ASAP, or I guess I won't be buying the Parhelia... :-/

First english review is now up here at Tom's...