Matrox announces two new cards

[tonyw]

From The Register, Matrox has announced the P650 and P750 multi-head display cards.

http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/mill_pseries/

For professional applications, but you can imagine the surround-action game that could use one of these.

tony

[Darth_X]

After triple-head.. what's next?

[Alcom]

What i like most about it is the line at the bottom:

"(check regularly for updates on support for other operating systems)"  

could this mean that an OS4 driver is possible in the future ?    :-)  :-)

[JoannaK]

Well. perhaps 6 displays so one can make nice cube of those  biggie LCD screens and live inside it.  :-D

Frankly, those cards are just cost optimized  versions of old (and sadly underpowered) Parnhelia. It was not a bad card but way too weak on 3D performance to compare allready existing  Ati or Nvidia products on same price range.

[Mad-Matt]

The cards may underperform in Single display 3d operations, but im willing to bed it kicks ati and nvidia in the ass for 3 screen gameing

[mikeymike]

Matrox have too much of a bee in their bonnet about image quality preservation*, it's the main reason why the Parhelia series really suck for 3D performance.

The amount of image compression that goes on with most 3D graphics cards when drawing 3D is unbelievable, and the Parhelia is trying to keep up when the amount of bandwidth required to push through uncompressed 3D textuers is huge.

* - When in 2D, you're only drawing a single 'picture' at whatever resolution, the memory usage and bandwidth required to do it at a reasonable rate has been available for a long time now.  When in 3D, each different wall/floor texture is an image in itself.  A good comparison is this - just imagine if, when you browse the web, all images on web pages were uncompressed bitmaps, and you're on a modem connection.  You'd have to wait from here till next year for each page to load :-).  With some decent image compression routines, you can make the images look near identical to the original to anyone looking at the image and not zooming in on it.

Heh - that's impressive - all the images on that Matrox site URL are broken :-)

[seer]

@JoannaK,

Have you tried the Parhelia yourself ? Or are you basing it on some reviews ? The speed difference compared to a GF4 isn't that much, and  like Mad-Matt sais, the framerate doesn't drop when using 3 displays... Playing Quake III, Unreal 2, Wolfenstein, Jedi Knight is in 1 word great, people should try it sometime... I wouldn't call a framerate of 90 vs 100 FPS underpowered. Besides, the screen display is supperior and having your desktop 3 screens wide is a real bonus...Just hate to go to work and use a big 19" (CRT) screen when I at home I can use 3 15" (TFT) screens  :-)

I do hope however that like the Dual Monitor feature all cards "took" from Matrox, that tripple head will make it's way to the big boys (ATI/nVidia) someday..

[System]

the 2D is great...but ATI/Nvidia's 2D is great also...and much cheaper...

[seer]

> the 2D is great...but ATI/Nvidia's 2D is  great also...and much cheaper...

Cheaper yes, the Parhelia is overpriced now compared to the GF4,, but I didn't buy it recently, but when it was just released. The price was similar to the GF4, and I wasn't impressed by the 10 FPS speed difference, nor with the 2D display of the GF4.. And yes, I did compare the GF4 4600 with the Parhelia myself, and yes it's a personal opinion.

[N7VQM]

Triple head seems nice but, I rather it were three displays making one single screen-sized image, if you catch my drift.   Tho, some people might get headaches from that!  ;-)

[mikeymike]

If Matrox provided the other two Iiyama 19" monitors to match the one I have for free, I might consider using a Parhelia-type card :-)

[tonyw]

"Tho, some people might get headaches from that!"

Or nausea. I can't stand those surround displays at videogame parlours - they give me motion sickness - without moving!!

tony

[mikeymike]

I bet Comanche 4 would seriously whup ass if it could draw the surround display properly onto three monitors :-)

[System]

The price was similar to the GF4

hardly... cheapest parhelia is (NOW) 325$ that I've been able to find thats from newegg.com  perhaps GeForce4's cost near that some places...but I got a Ti4400 ages ago for 250.

and I wasn't impressed by the 10 FPS speed difference

the differance was/is MAJOR not 10FPS... it was quality/speed and stability... all major factors... parhelia choked on them...

parhelia's 10bit per component reduced Alpha to 1 bit ... it was a hack

[seer]

> hardly... cheapest parhelia is (NOW) 325$ that I've been able to find thats from newegg.com perhaps
>GeForce4's cost near that some places...but I got a Ti4400 ages ago for 250.

When I bought the Parhelia it was 499 Euro. A GF4 4600 was also 499 Euro. This was when it was released in the Netherlands.

>the differance was/is MAJOR not 10FPS... it was quality/speed and stability... all major factors...
>parhelia choked on them...

Personal experience ? Or read in a review ? Some cards seem to have banding problems but I'm not sure how many cards have problems, besides, people have problems with nVidiaATI cards as well. As for stability, this card is more stable with a res of 3072X768*32 then my old GF2 at 1024*768^32. The drivers seem better at release then nVidia drivers.

>  parhelia's 10bit per component reduced Alpha to
> 1 bit ... it was a hack

Nothing wrong with that, Matrox did (does) tell that you only get 1 bit Alpha , and some games look better in 10Bit GFX mod, some don't.