Matrox announces two new cards

[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.

[mikeymike]

The benchmarks I've seen of the Parhelia compared with the GF4 and ATI 9700 definitely suggested that the Parhelia got demoted to the task of floormop :-)

But then, 3D was never Matrox's forte.  I'd have thought they'd have clued up a bit by now though.

[System]

I cant imagine a GF4 Ti4600 costing 500$ american let alone that much more when you do the conversion...here a GF4 Ti4600 was perhaps 350 at its absolute highest...

I had a Parhelia for a week... got to install it..tinker... benchmark and send it back to my buddy who didnt want to do the benchmarking...

It wasnt all together pathetic... tri display where cool...but it was not a stable card...and it was and is over-priced... the Quadro multi-heads where out and cost MUCH less money... the OpenGL quality/drivers/etc where poor...the 2D was great but not much differant then an Nvidia/ATI...

I think Matrox is almost done as a card company... from the G550 onward they have been stumbleing...

[KrasH]

I have to admit that the Matrox Perlhemia (whatever) card would be great for "surround Gaming" but they are too slow compared to other cards out there. In 3D Mark 2001se benchmarks (oh no, not another benchmark comparison) the Matrox cards struggled to hit 6500-7000 3D Marks. That compared to GeForce 4 Ti 4600's at about 12000,13000 3D marks and the ATi Radeons hitting and overtaking the 14k mark. If I recall, the matrox cards did compare well/better in 2D benchmarks atleast.

On the subject of quality, matrox should do what ATi did and Nvidia seem to have done, cheat with the drivers. Did a Future Mark '03 with my GF4 Ti4800SE (Basically a Ti4200 for 8X AGP) and got 1500 future marks. Then after installing the latest detonators got over 1800. Now they must have cheated with the drivers

Anyways, a 3 Monitor setup on a card that can compare to the Ti's/FX's and Radeons would be great..