update on Parhelia: hate to say i told u so....

[Malakai]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1645

theres the review at anandtech, and although it looks good and the AA is pretty, it offers no performance gains over a Ti4200, and is barely better w/image quality.

and its AA will be incompatible with many games due to not being aboe to work with stencil buffering, and with the estimated price tag of well over 400$ its just not going to make it, and in turn i think Matrox will go out of business as a result.

if they would have implimented some form of Z-ocullsion than it would perform much better, but they didnt, so it wont.

[dew042]

Originally posted by Malakai


theres the review at anandtech, and although it looks good and the AA is pretty, it offers no performance gains over a Ti4200, and is barely better w/image quality.


I think the exact quote was: "There's no doubt that the analog output quality of Parhelia is excellent, it's definitely the best we've seen to date." I can't say I have ever been impressed with the output quality of a Nvidia product. That's important to me.

Regardless their cards are still some of the best for dual-head and i expect to see them continue. I am interested to see a TV dual head product since ATI can't seem to make some drivers to get theirs to work.... and i don't trust nvidia to put out a card with good 2d image quality.

Its not a great review, but after the price drops (which it better) i think i might go for one.... the 2d quility is still important and my trusty g450 ain't getting any younger...

dew.

[Mr. Chambers]

damn... i was hoping it would at least be an OK card.. more competition leads to cheaper prices!! lol.. oh well.. maybe 3dLabs's card will be a disapointment too :P hopefully the R300 will rock though...

[mEKbOY]

No surprises to me.

[aixelsiD]

I'll buy if the price drops 100 or so. But Overall, I think it was a good first try, and hopefully they'll do better on the next try. But aren't the 4200 and the Parhelia roughly clocked the same speed? Because that might be why they perform roughly the same.

[Xaeron]

Yeah they're clocked about the same.... I just don't understand why people say the 2d isn't good on nVidia. This is my first nVidia card (i use to hate nVidia's monopoly, but I gave up) and I think 2d is great.... I'm sorry but I don't see how it can get too much better :eh?:

[Malakai]

u cant even say clock for clock parhelia performs well, cause a TI4200 is clocked about 100mhz slower on the ram and 30mhz faster than the parhelia.
parhelia is 220/550 and the Ti4200 is 250/444 for the 128meg version.

the image quality IMO<----- is just a tad bettter than gf4, so no big win there with me.

400+$ for this? na, it would need to be 200$ even to even get me to notice it, and being that this card will be competing with the R300 and NV30, it doesnt stand a chance

[aixelsiD]

Ah, but most reviers are saying it's the GPU that is holding back the card. The Memory itself is extreme overkill for what's out today. You also have to realize this card "supposedly" (that's the keyword) will work much much better when things like DX9 and such come out. So, for this card we really have to wait and see.

[Zuck Gou :)]

Originally posted by Xaeron
Yeah they're clocked about the same.... I just don't understand why people say the 2d isn't good on nVidia. This is my first nVidia card (i use to hate nVidia's monopoly, but I gave up) and I think 2d is great.... I'm sorry but I don't see how it can get too much better :eh?:

I used to use a Radeon 32mb DDR LE, and about a month ago I bought a GF3Ti200, and believe you me, the 2d difference is huge! Text is so much blurrier on the Geforce3, I wish I could go get a 8500 to get the crisp 2d back, but I need the VIVO on this card.

[takiwa]

Anistrophic ain't up to par...

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/02q2/020625/images/comp-anisotropic.png

[aixelsiD]

It just may be me, I thought that without it, the GF4 didn't beat the Parhelia, but it switched when anisotropic was on. Anyone else think so?

[sfa ok]

Originally posted by Malakai
...and with the estimated price tag of well over 400$ its just not going to make it, and in turn i think Matrox will go out of business as a result.

You can't be serious...Matrox doesn't get it's big money from the gamer market. I'm disappointed in the Anandtech review, they didn't look at the strong points of a Matrox card, which is 2D and the multiple monitor support.

Matrox is definately not in danger if the Parhelia turns out to be a failure.

[Bobby_Mac]

what differences are the 256mb version going to offer?
beside the increase ram will it have a higher clock speed?

[aixelsiD]

Originally posted by ThatGuy
what differences are the 256mb version going to offer?
beside the increase ram will it have a higher clock speed?

I don't think it will. But I'm not sure on that. Oh, there is one difference, it will cost more. :D

[rUfUnKy]

Originally posted by sfa ok


You can't be serious...Matrox doesn't get it's big money from the gamer market. I'm disappointed in the Anandtech review, they didn't look at the strong points of a Matrox card, which is 2D and the multiple monitor support.

Well I dont know if this is were matrox was trying to go with this cards selling point ether but it seems to me theres a reason Maximum pc's july issue is sporting Jk2 as the topic of the parhelia...

[OCed_5150]

Looking at a TON of reviewage across the web about this card, all I can say is...

NOT!

Performance too little, price tag to HIGH.

I was hoping, maybe with a lot of you too, that this card would be killer... <sigh>.

Well... there's always the up coming NV30 or R300.

:)

[sfa ok]

Originally posted by rUfUnKy
Well I dont know if this is were matrox was trying to go with this cards selling point ether but it seems to me theres a reason Maximum pc's july issue is sporting Jk2 as the topic of the parhelia...

I'm not saying that the card isn't targeted for games, just that
1. Anandtech didn't do a complete enough review
2. Matrox will not go out of business if this card fails.

[Malakai]

if the Parhelia flops, Matrox will hurt badly from it. they have spent over 4 years doing R&D for it, this was their big secret project.

and its a DX9 GAMING<----card, not a G550. this card has been marketed from the beginning as a gaming card, and for them to say they arent competing with Nvidia is just silly. they say things like that because they are scarted of Nvidia.

And why would a business pay 400=$ for a Parhelia when they could have the same badass image quality from a G400 for 50$?

[Check-X]

I'm VERY dissapointed in the reviews I've read so far about the Parhelia, not ONE review has posted FPS in ANY game in Surround gaming mode, which was one of the new technologies that would interest true gamers over benchmark junkies. Sure the antriscopic filtering isn't nearly as good as the GF4's but the Parhelia's Super Sampling is BAR-NONE.. pure kickass image quality.. .NOTHING comes close to it.

Someone mentioned the 3D Labs cards...
oh well.. maybe 3dLabs's card will be a disapointment too :P
Obviously you haven't been following the 3D Labs card.. the P10 is called the "WildCat" and comes in 3 flavours VP 770, 870 and 970.. the budget card (VP 770) will be priced around $500 and the top dog of them (VP 970) is about $1200. These cards were never intended for gamers, they are made for CGI and CAD type work. We'll have to wait for Creative Labs to take the WildCat core and dumb it down and make it for gaming and hope they don't release a card that flops.

[aixelsiD]

I don't believe Parhelia failed completely. In fact, I'm impressed by it, because they haven't been in the Gaming buisness for a long time, and they came up with something that has the potential to become the best card availible. Don't think Matrox will lose any money on this card. They probably learned quite a bit about building a gaming card, and what they need to improve. I guess now all we can do is wait. Hopefully Parhelia will get some improvements before the r300 and the NV30, because it's gonna need it or it's a dead fish in the water (unless if overclocks like the 1.6a, wouldn't that be heaven :D)

[OCed_5150]

Originally posted by Check-X
I'm VERY dissapointed in the reviews I've read so far about the Parhelia, not ONE review has posted FPS in ANY game in Surround gaming mode, which was one of the new technologies that would interest true gamers over benchmark junkies.

This might help Check-X...

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,269289,00.asp

[seamadan000]

1st of all, check out the extremetech review- it helps to see the true purpose of the card.

Also, many of you are forgetting the role of driver development. These little snippets of code are worth an extra 10% or even 20% increase of speed, now look at the time that the two big players have had to optimize.

I think this is a pretty good card for a first attempt in such a long while. As long as Matrox sticks with it the Parhelia 2or3 will be a killer- just give it some time.

Also the increased transistor count of this core that was needed for the feature set is limiting clock speed. The card is obviously core speed limited (thats the conclusion that the reviews came to) and is begging for a move to a smaller process. once it moves to say .13 micron it should fair better.

thats my 2 cents
________
HONDA XR100 (http://www.cyclechaos.com/wiki/Honda_XR100)

[Malakai]

IMO 2 things could push the Parhelia to a very good #1 spot, even if it remains at the same price.

1) impliment some form of Z-buffer, fast Z clear, anything to help it not move polygons that dont get drawn on the screen.
2) get Fragment AA working with ALL games.

with those 2 main things its performance would increase by a nice amount, and it would offer universal compatibility.

and bumping the GPU clock a bit wouldnt hurt at all.

[aixelsiD]

Originally posted by Malakai
IMO 2 things could push the Parhelia to a very good #1 spot, even if it remains at the same price.

1) impliment some form of Z-buffer, fast Z clear, anything to help it not move polygons that dont get drawn on the screen.
2) get Fragment AA working with ALL games.

with those 2 main things its performance would increase by a nice amount, and it would offer universal compatibility.

and bumping the GPU clock a bit wouldnt hurt at all.

It would be a major help if they shrunk the core, bumped up the speed, and then they lowered the price, too. Even if it wasn't the best performer, just as long all framerates are playable (75fps+), The quality of the pictures would make it worth not having 200fps in quake.

[Malakai]

Originally posted by aixelsiD


It would be a major help if they shrunk the core, bumped up the speed, and then they lowered the price, too. Even if it wasn't the best performer, just as long all framerates are playable (75fps+), The quality of the pictures would make it worth not having 200fps in quake.

everyone keeps making it sound like the parhelia's visual quality is like amazing, it is good, but barely noticably better than a GF4.

there framerate would increase substantially if they would implement some form of Z-occlusion

[aixelsiD]

Originally posted by Malakai


everyone keeps making it sound like the parhelia's visual quality is like amazing, it is good, but barely noticably better than a GF4.

there framerate would increase substantially if they would implement some form of Z-occlusion

I didn't say that GF4 graphics weren't amazing, but the Parhelia's are currently the best out there, even if it's only a marginal difference. And I agree about Z-Occlusion. Hopefully they'll get it right before Nvidia and ATI put out their cards, otherwise they won't get any signifigant amount of gamers to buy.

[Tracert]

Im not so sure that Z-Occlusion is really an answer for them (this may also be a reason for the better image quality). The way it looks to me is that the memory bandwidth isn't / shouldn't be the problem. I think with all the memory bandwidth in the world wont help em much until they get the Mhz up on that GPU.

Needs to just go plain old faster.

[Malakai]

Originally posted by Tracert
Im not so sure that Z-Occlusion is really an answer for them (this may also be a reason for the better image quality). The way it looks to me is that the memory bandwidth isn't / shouldn't be the problem. I think with all the memory bandwidth in the world wont help em much until they get the Mhz up on that GPU.

Needs to just go plain old faster.


Z-occlusion is loseless compression and calculating what pixels wont be drawn on the screen in the final scene. neither have any influence whatsoever on image quality.

whether it needs it or not (and i think 100% that parhelia does) wasting bandwidth is just plain wrong, and more bandwidth cant ever hurt, only help.

[Tracert]

Originally posted by Malakai


Z-occlusion is loseless compression and calculating what pixels wont be drawn on the screen in the final scene. neither have any influence whatsoever on image quality.

I would agree that compression alone would most likly not have any impact on final image quality (I find it hard to believe that they are not doing any type of this), however any time you remove something on an image that is not supposed to be there adds a level of risk. Although this process has seemed to be very good, there is always room for error and thus a tiny hit on the image quality.

Now when the quality of an image is so close to another competitor as it is between the ATI, GF4 and others then this small change may be just enough to put them in first on the image quality scale.

Really the point I was making is that they most likely are not using all the memory badwidth they have available now. So even with the compression and Z-occlusion there is a good chance that you wouldn't see any real difference in performance.

Right now it looks like the GPU is the limiting factor on this card. Of course we are all speculating and non of our points can be proven with out more testing.

[aixelsiD]

Originally posted by Tracert


Right now it looks like the GPU is the limiting factor on this card. Of course we are all speculating and non of our points can be proven with out more testing.

So I guess the question is: Who is gonna be our guinea pig and buy one of these? :D

[Tracert]

I would like to nominate Malakai. He does a good job at seeing what a card can do.

;)

[aixelsiD]

Originally posted by Tracert
I would like to nominate Malakai. He does a good job at seeing what a card can do.

;)

I'll test out the card if you buy it for me, or it's cheap at newegg (I'm planning my newest rig now, by the time it's out at newegg I'll be ready to buy my parts). But I won't be able to do triple monitors.

But if those two things don't work out, I second that nomination.

[Tracert]

I don't know what you consider cheap... but the kind of prices they were saying (~400.00 US) I wouldn't even put it in the same thread with the word cheap uttered (although I can't see it staying at that cost long).

With that said... and with the motherboard I have, you can tell that I don't exactly spend lots of money just for the smell of it, so I guess its up to Malakai ;)

[aixelsiD]

Originally posted by Tracert
so I guess its up to Malakai ;)

Well, hopefully he has 400 bucks on him. And cheap to me means 250 or less (unless this card can do some damage overclocked, than I'd say 300 or less)

[Tracert]

Originally posted by aixelsiD


Well, hopefully he has 400 bucks on him. And cheap to me means 250 or less (unless this card can do some damage overclocked, than I'd say 300 or less)

Wow,

I wish I had your money, cheap to me is $75 or less.

;) :p

[Malakai]

no parhelia for me...im a budget overclocker.

i look for the best deals, good steppings, and moderately priced vid cards, and md them to get good scores/performance/ect.

400$ is more than half the price of my whole box, even if it were better than the GF4 i wouldnt get one.
and i hate broken features more than anything.....thats why i never got an 8500, or a p4, or a Kyro II back in the day.
if you want to be sucessful getting into my wallet and taking a chunk of money out of there, your stuff better work exactly the way u say it will when i get it...
so far Nvidia is the only company that has done that time and time again, i totally respect them for that.
if Nvidia keeps up these awesome features and great performance that always work, and work well with ALL games (quincunx AA for example), they will keep getting my money.

now if someone wants to send me a parhelia to review, id be more than happy to:)
i do kind of unorthadox reviews. my main concerns are image quality and o/c'ability. i can take most cards quite a bit higher than the reviews say w/ some custom cooling.
and thanks to a member called Silver, volt modding/soldering cards is in my near future:)

[aixelsiD]

I'm using cheap as directly proportionate to how well the card does. I think it's a great card, so I'll pay more for it. If you want what cheap is to me, it's 100-150 bucks for a vid card. (but then again, this is my parents money I'm tossing out the window, not mine so.....) :D.

I think all we can do is wait until it comes out at newegg, and see what the price is. Hopefully they got a huge discount on it, because I would like one. I have an idea. You can get a vid card for free if you do a review on it right? Anyone want to do one for OC'ers.com (that's if I'm right)?

[Maxvla]

love your avatar dislexia... would be even better if the light was spinning behind your name. :D

[aixelsiD]

Thanks. I'm assuming you get the meaning between it and my forum name? :D

And btw, Ideamagnate made my avatar, so give him a PM and tell him you like it.

[Maxvla]

no i mean... the light in the background of your avatar. make it a animated gif where the text stays the same but the light behind it spins. actually wouldn't be too hard to do if you have the original frames.

you know it would fit right into your theme of confusion... spinning background behind oddly arranged letters. might put someone in a trance however. lol.

[aixelsiD]

Oh. Well, I still think you should try to figure out what the avatar has to do with the forum name. And also, I'd only like it to cause trances if someone rich is around. :D

[Maxvla]

Originally posted by aixelsiD
Oh. Well, I still think you should try to figure out what the avatar has to do with the forum name. And also, I'd only like it to cause trances if someone rich is around. :D

um... overclockers forum... i don't get it. :confused:

[Tracert]

I think he is refering to the meaning of dislexia and the way his name is spelled (backwards) and the orientation of the letters (also backwards) spelled the correct way in the avatar.

[seamadan000]

soooo....

about that video card


;) just kidding guys

(i got the dislexia/ letters mixed up thing. good for me)
________
Side Effects Of Zoloft (http://www.classactionsettlements.org/lawsuit/zoloft/)

[aixelsiD]

Originally posted by Tracert
I think he is refering to the meaning of dislexia and the way his name is spelled (backwards) and the orientation of the letters (also backwards) spelled the correct way in the avatar.

That is correct.