256MB Matrox Parhelia Out!

[lutjens]

Back in the day, I was impressed by my then new Matrox Mystique. I took my hiatus from the computer world for a couple of years. I returned to buy a new P3 and bought a Matrox G400 (remembering my previous experience). Never again will I buy a Matrox card.

And considering the price is astronomical. The card performs very poorly and is far slower than NVidia or ATI's cards. The latter cards will perform better due to their advanced memory conservation techniques anyway.

But let Matrox wallow in their tiny niche market...

 

[CrystalMethod]

Please keep in mind 3D cards and 3D gaming cards are two different things. It was never targeted as a "gaming" card, even from the beginning. They just stated that it "could" be used in gaming, and is the only card that offers a triple display. Some of you guys are are reading only the bits that you want to see, not the complete thing. It performs as an adequate video card for gaming, if you're not running higher than 1024 X 768, with no noticeble difference. The problem is that most of you are gaming oriented, and aren't seeing the flip side to the graphics industry. For the ATI fans, why aren't you buying the Radeon 8800 Fire GL's? They by all means should out perform anything but the 9700's, but they don't for gaming. The Nvidia fans should be buying the Quadro's, which should out perform the regular GF4's, but they don't when you put them in a gaming situation. The Parhellia will give the same performance across all applications. Something that no other card does. I'd kill to have a 256 meg card when I open Maya, but unfortunately due to finances, I'll have to settle for a Radeon 8800 or a Quadro4 XGL, and dedicate one of my other systems as a gaming system, and upgrade the video card in it at a later date. or...

...save myself the cost of buying the system components and time and money to put together another system and buy a Parhelia.

Gotta look at it from a few different angles. The Parhellia's are definately not for everyone, but there's no reason to flame a good product, just because if doesn't meet YOUR needs. Gaming isn't everything. Some of you need to realize that.

 

[SemiCycle]

Radeon 8800s and Quadro4 XGL cards won't outrun their sibling counterparts in gaming. I know that that 8800 is clocked slightly faster on the memory and Nvidia does disable some of the features on the G4 GPUs for the G4 TI series of cards and only enables these features for the quadro cards (hardware AA lines), but there really are no differences in the hardware.

The MAIN difference is still in the drivers. And those enhanced drivers are made to increase the perforance of professional applications like CAD and 3DSM.

I wont even touch how many driver plug-ins are around that increase performance in these applications even more.

Take a look at how the 8800 and the Quadro4 destroy their gaming counterparts in these professional benchmarks.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/video/firegl8800-quadro4/index2.html

Now take a look at how the Parhelia struggles to keep up with the same gaming cards.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/video/3dsmax5/

I understand that we may be being alittle harsh on the Parhelia, but it just hasn't lived up to much or its hype. I don't think that this is all Matrox's fault though. If you take a look at many of the press releases HERE , you can tell that Matrox really did push the features of the card more then the gaming aspects, BUT they made a huge mistake by putting the card in so many review sites that rely on gaming as the primary test for comparing new video cards.. They should have known that the gaming aspects of the card was going to be stressed more then anything else.

The parhelia is a solid "overall" performing card with a very nice and COMPLETE feature set, but it seems to get outperformed no matter you compare it to.

 

[Cowboy X]

Well said Slip Knot .......... that's something I should have mentioned , the card is now claimed to be a 'buisness ' or professional card . It's price approaches + surpases the prices of some already in that niche but it is outperformed by them ! Makes one the say what is the use of a Parhelia ........... soundly thrashed in games , equally beaten in buisness/ professional appz . It may claim to be an all round card for the pro who wants a little gaming as well , at gf3 or 8500 levels . But the same quadros mentioned in this thread can do the same with the detonator drivers instead of the quadro ones . All it takes is to setup a gaming partition and working partition .

I'm not anti-Matrox at all and I was really looking forward to the parhelia's release as a dx8 card with several dx9 features and high bandwidth . I like many others who see the prices and the specs on paper have a right to be very disappointed .

 

[Yodums]

Sorry to resurrect the thread but I just had to chip in my 0.02.

As mentioned by slip knot, the drivers are designed to focus in the AutoCAD area or graphics design in general. nVidia's and ATI's drivers are designed to excel in gaming. Actually the 128MB Version is pretty good in gaming. If you compare high resolutions assuming most users use 1280x1024 with AA on to the max, the Matrox is probably equal or better in terms of FPS and beats it in quality. My friend (The only one in the OC Database) who has the Matrox actually benched 3DMark at the settings he ran his game at and got 5ish K, I got 4.5K and that's running 1024x768 which is the resolution I play at. People should stop comparing stock settings but what they actually play at.

Cowboy: It's a DirectX 9.0 card and still has room to grow.

Backup :http://www.matrox.com/mga/media_center/press_rel/2002/parhelia_board.cfm

Yodums

 

[CrystalMethod]

I'm not pro Matrox in anyway, nor am I against them. I just think that the Parhelia is tailored to a very small market. Was it a bad marketing strategy to advertise it as a gaming card at all? Yes. All the benchmarks I've ever seen with the card are on single displays. What happens when you go with dual displays?

 

[Cowboy X]

No Yodums it is not a DX9 part ........... it has partial DX9 capabilities but not all . It therefore has a better feature set than a DX 8.1 card but that's about it .

Those 3d mark scores you give show adequate - average gaming performance . But the price is too much for that level of performance my GF3 would laugh at that card . Sure it has good visuals but then get an ATI which is almost as good and has dualhead gaming ability . As it is right now the 9500 pro will surpass the Parhelia in just about every single feature , offer FULL dx9 ability and be about $150 cheaper !!! All the while wiping the floor with Matrox's gaming performance .What would one get as a gamer ......... triple head ( cool ) , slightly better image quality ? Is it worth the extra $$$$ ?

And as I said before the Buisness picture doesn't improve much when one consides that a fire glor quadro will eat it alive and then have the ability to run almost as fast as their desktop variants with the appropriate drivers .

 

[Yodums]

Like I said, the scores given were with all detail levels on and I would like to see a card compare to that, My Radeon 8500 lost to it when it was supposidly reported 'faster' by Anandtech. I've had a friend tell me to take a few screen shots in WC3 and compare them to his, the quality is pretty noticeable and even in UT2K3. You can notice the jaggies, the Radeon and GeForce 3 can't see much detail compared to the Parhlia -- the trees were black and you couldn't notice them and quality. Also, do you have a source where you are getting the 9500 Pro is going to offer everything the Parhelia has with the same image quality? Speed is probably a given already. Alot of people how they complain about how expensive the card is when they bought the Ti4600 when it was 350.00, people jumped on the band wagon for the Radeon 9700 when it was expensive as well.

Yodums

 

[Cowboy X]

I guess you will agree with me that the Parhelia isn't competitive speedwise with the TI 4400 . But just about every review shows the 9500 pro on its beta board at stock speeds outperforming the TI4200 ......... some specifically chiponline.de and hardocp show it beating the ti4600 !

In all reviews the 9500 pro easily beats the Ti4600 once settings such as anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are enabled . It is also going to have a price less than $200 and be fully DX9 . There are unfortunately no head to head comparisons between the Parhelia and the radeon 9xxx series . but all the Matrox reviews I've seen show it being beaten severly by the Ti4600 whereas the 9500 pro can beat the Ti4600 efen in its beta state and with only 64 mb .

Price and performance wise the parhelia is simply outclassed .

I like every one else, therefore have every right to complain about the Parhelia's absurd price . My ATI-built 9700 Pro cost me less than the price of a Parhelia !!!!! And here is what I get with my now mid-range system ( it's actually lower spec'd than yours and only 256 mb at present )

oc'd 3dmark ............ 12319
" " 12228
stock " 12104

With 4xAA the score was I think 9769

This is well out of the Parhelia's league and cost me $319 , to be fairer I mentioned the 9500 Pro previously in the thread . But to look at price again the plain 9700 ( non pro ) version will definitely be cheaper than the Matrox ( unless they chop prices dramatically ) and will give similar performance to my card esp if oc'd .

 

[Goo Kenson]

That card is only good for office work. It gets ****ing TERRIBLE benchmarks for gaming. Everyone thought the Parhelia would be Matrox's gaming card. HA! It sucks for gamers, no matter how much RAM.

 

[Yodums]

I guess you will agree with me that the Parhelia isn't competitive speedwise with the TI 4400 . But just about every review shows the 9500 pro on its beta board at stock speeds outperforming the TI4200 ......... some specifically chiponline.de and hardocp show it beating the ti4600 !

In all reviews the 9500 pro easily beats the Ti4600 once settings such as anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are enabled . It is also going to have a price less than $200 and be fully DX9 . There are unfortunately no head to head comparisons between the Parhelia and the radeon 9xxx series . but all the Matrox reviews I've seen show it being beaten severly by the Ti4600 whereas the 9500 pro can beat the Ti4600 efen in its beta state and with only 64 mb .

Price and performance wise the parhelia is simply outclassed .

I like every one else, therefore have every right to complain about the Parhelia's absurd price . My ATI-built 9700 Pro cost me less than the price of a Parhelia !!!!! And here is what I get with my now mid-range system ( it's actually lower spec'd than yours and only 256 mb at present )

oc'd 3dmark ............ 12319
" " 12228
stock " 12104

With 4xAA the score was I think 9769

This is well out of the Parhelia's league and cost me $319 , to be fairer I mentioned the 9500 Pro previously in the thread . But to look at price again the plain 9700 ( non pro ) version will definitely be cheaper than the Matrox ( unless they chop prices dramatically ) and will give similar performance to my card esp if oc'd .

Point taken however what do they bench at the settings they actually play at? Most people here play on a 1280x1024 resolution and with mostly all the detail levels turned on etc. as well.

Yodums

 

[MospeadasDark]

Probably the only decent review of the Parhelia, GF4, and 9700 Pro:

http://www.darkcrow.co.kr/matroxreviewdirectory/matroxcontent.asp?idx=32&contentpage=1

It's in korean, but you can have a look at the screenshots and numbers. These benches were done before the 1.01 drivers which gave ~10FPS(not up to, but average) all around and boosted the 3D applications. Matrox has a seperate driver for the 3D apps and one for everything else.

Here is UT2k3 bench in english:

http://www.darkcrow.co.kr/englishdirectory/englishcontent.asp?idx=3&contentpage=1

This bench was done with the official 1.01 drivers. Latest driver for the two others too.

 

[SemiCycle]

Nice link MospeadasDark. I just wish it would have worked in my altavista translation engine

If you haven't looked through the review yet CrystalMethod, here is a pic of the triple head score. It is actually pretty impressive.

 

[PhobMX]

Nice link MospeadasDark. I just wish it would have worked in my altavista translation engine

If you haven't looked through the review yet CrystalMethod, here is a pic of the triple head score. It is actually pretty impressive.

excuse my n00bness, but triple head is used for... ???

 

[Darkseid]

for 3 monitor view, you can have one game split over the 3 monitors

 

[SemiCycle]

excuse my n00bness, but triple head is used for... ???

The reason why the scores are so impressivve is because really when running a game in triple head view the resolutions are really the following

640x480 = 1920x480
800x600 = 2400x600
1024x768 = 3072x768
1280x1024 = 3840x1024
1600x1200 = 4800x1200

 

[MospeadasDark]

excuse my n00bness, but triple head is used for... ???

FPS, Flight Sims, buncha RPG's, Racing...well, any game that decides to support it. Officially supported games:

http://www.matrox.com/mga/3d_gaming/surrgame.cfm

Mind you, many D3D games work in dualhead/triplehead anyways if the game detects your desktop resolution being stretched too.

 

[PhobMX]

sounds cool, but not to mainstream IMO, maybe thats why parhelia has got low popularity. I guess that a memory controlled parhelia with 256mb would rock

 

[MospeadasDark]

I think the P's low popularity in the gaming sector, yeah.

NV's line, it's MX line is about 90% of it's sales. The GF4 4600 is all 2%. That should tell you how much of the market this general forum really is.

The 256MB Parhelia is clocked slower than the retail's. The core is more or less the same. I can only think of one game that would use 256MB of ram. Photoshop depends more on system ram than video. Matrox cannot compete w/ 3DLabs in 3D apps which would very much fancy this much ram.

I'm not really sure where they were going with this one. Esp since the pricetag is $500-600.

 

[WildArmSX]

this card is so sweet becasue you can have up to three CRT Monitors. REad an articale about this card awhiel back didn't think it would come with this much ram but hey no complaint here. All this card needs now is a TV tuner.