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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga Hardware News => Topic started by: whabang on June 25, 2002, 10:13:15 PM
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Tom's hardware has made a review of the new Parhelia 512 from Matrox.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be as hot as the hype claimed...
Read more here (http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/02q2/020625/index.html).
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Mixed but postly positive review. Here's a clip:
Parhelia can indeed be viewed as an excellent alternative to the established competition, which makes things pretty exciting.
We already presume that the Parhelia will find many friends. However, if you are one of those who expect the Parhelia to be the super-product to topple NVIDIA from the 3D performance throne, you're going to be rather disappointed. Rather, the 3D quality is to be found in the details.
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Don't forget the Matrox Parhelia-512 was tested on a Windows bloatware system, so on a AmigaOneG3-SE board with AmigaOS 4 you'll get different (read: much better) results :-D
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True, and also Tom's hrdware has been heavily favoring Radeons lately, which we will also be getting(first even).
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I think the results will start to improve when drivers get more mature and there comes games that can take full use of parhelia (&DX9).
When Parhelia drivers come available for AmigaOS4, I bet there is u13 technology available and Parhelias around 400Mhz... as well as some other new GFX cards.
Radeon8500 will be the 3D GFX card for my next Amiga. ;-)
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AFAIK, even the Geforce3 cards are not being used to their fullest potential..
When programmed, a game must use the functions a card has to offer either by DX or OpenGL (whatever) , and I don't think that the matrox cards extra vertex shaders/pixel shaders/texture shaders are used..
I'm not saying that the review(er) is bad, the geforce4 should also be able to perform better when it's features are used to it's fullest, but I do wonder if the extra stuff on the parhelia were used..
Let's wait untill games are programmed using the DX9 API or something similar..
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redrumloa: If "Tom's hrdware has been heavily favoring Radeons lately," then why did they conclude that Nvidia's GeForce4 is still on top of "the 3D performance throne??"
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redrumloa: If "Tom's hrdware has been heavily favoring Radeons lately," then why did they conclude that Nvidia's GeForce4 is still on top of "the 3D performance throne??"
I read Tom's hardware alot. They give the overall impression that they prefer Radeons over the Geforce line. IMO while the NVIDIA Geforce4 may hold a slight edge in performance over the Radeon8500, the Radeon8500 is a far superior card. basic 3D fillrate is not everything.
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I think it's due to immature drivers, and not the Parhelia hardwares fault.
Give it time, and things should speed up greatly.
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Matrox's announced spec's for this card:
GPU: 375 Mhz
RamDAC: Dual 400 Mhz
Does not sound like the test board was a production unit!
Loki
:-?
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A quick glance at Matrox site and they seem to have removed all references to the speed (Mhz) of the GPU!!
Loki :-?
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GPU: 375 Mhz
RamDAC: Dual 400 Mhz
Does not sound like the test board was a production unit!
Matrox have never said their chip would run at 375MHz..
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I read Tom's hardware alot.
You should find a new site to read.. Tom has become a joke in the hardware community..
Ace's Hardware, Beyond3D and Tech Report are good sites. Ace's will post their Parhelia review later this week.
Anand is also pretty good..
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HardOCP is good if you like squeezing the last ounce of performance out of hardware by overclocking.
Their tests are more demanding aswell.
Tom sold his site to some publishing company didn't he?
It doesn't seem that impartial anymore.
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I read HardOCP and Anandtech alot also.
WTF is wrong with Tom's Hardware now?
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WTF is wrong with Tom's Hardware now?
Don't know maybe...
It's not flavour of the month :-P
or
It's out of fashion :-D
Aren't serious computer users like us a wierd bunch.
LOL
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Matrox have never said their chip would run at 375MHz..
You are right in that they never officialy said that, BUT they did leak it on their OWN web site and on numerious other sites. If you search this site you will find plenty of data backing this up including links to the pertenent pages!
Loki
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It didn't seem to me that Tom's Hardware was kissing Matrox's Ass with their review. It rated the card dead last on most tests!
I can't wait to see what the really tough reviewers will say. :hammer:
Loki
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Drifting slightly off-topic. I often see/hear people commenting how "such-and-such a card is often better than so-and-so's card, but it seems slower due to poor drivers."
While this may be true, real world performance *is* dependant on good drivers. I mean, what good is a high performance 3D chip if the software is going to crash your system?
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Can Matrox compete with ATI and nVidia?
I as recall, it’s rumored that ATI’s R300 is soon to be release in the near future…
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While this may be true, real world performance *is* dependant on good drivers. I mean, what good is a high performance 3D chip if the software is going to crash your system?
I don’t have any major problems nVidia cards and drivers.
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I wasn't thinking about nVidia, but more in regards to some above comments and anandtech reporting that Matrox Parhelia drivers cause system crashes. Everyone knows, or should know, that nVidia has the best drivers. (But for how long...?)
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@redrumloa
> WTF is wrong with Tom's Hardware now?
Oh... Don't you KNOW? All the elite users thinks he is a L4M3R!!!
By the way, did I mention my latest purchase to be able to run Windows XP2005 B1RC7 on my P4-1700MHz?
j/k... :-)
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Yeah, I'm not always sure how accurate Tom's is, anymore, either. Though I had thought he was on a bit of a GeForce kick lately. And what wasn't accurately shown was that really, these three cards (GF4Ti, Radeon 8500, and Matrox) weren't that far apart, performance-wise.
The Paraplegic (or whatever the heck it's called) :-D should perform fairly well for whatever application you throw it in. (I, personally, don't care much for it, but that's more my opinion of Matrox than anything else...)