parhelia goes down...

[Mr ABIT]

From [h]ard|ocp

Earlier today a well-known German website disclosed their Matrox Parhelia numbers. The pages seem to have been removed at this time. While we cannot legally give you the content, as it is copyright material, we can certainly discuss what we have seen.

Aquanox - Parhelia was beaten by ATI's 128MB 8500 and the Ti4600 nearly doubled the score.

Comanche 4 - Parhelia not breaking the 30FPS barrier at 1024x768 while the Ti4600 broke 40.

Jedi Knight 2 - At 1024x768 the Parhelia was about 30% behind both the 8500 and the Ti4600.

3DMark2002 SE v330 - Just breaking into the 7000s while their test system was breaking 10K with the Ti4600. The 8500 dusted it again as well.

Quake 3 Arena - Parhelia lagging way behind both cards and not even giving deathmatch playable frame rates at 1600x1200 in my opinion.

At this point I am really wondering what Matrox was thinking. I know full well that they have explained that their Parhelia will be the card for tomorrow, but while it is currently not keeping pace with the current generation's GPUs, across the board, you have to wonder. Triple head gaming is not going to save Matrox this time round if what we saw is correct. I can certainly understand their reasons with not wanting to give the [H] a card at this point.

matrox has a lot of work to do if this turns out to be how the parhelia performs in general
:(

[Humantuckshop]

Well, I never thought the Parhelia was going to be a gamers card anyway...... The 2D performance will be outstanding tho. :D

Although it may well be that it's the drivers at fault, maybe they are hurrying to develop some new ones?

[mird-OC]

come on. wait for the real review already. up and gone, it may aswell not exist. a phantom tardware review and kyle who's throwing a paddy coz he didn't get a card.

i've been keeping an eye on the MURC forums and some of the parhelia beta testers on there have been giving hints as to it's performance.

such as running UT @ 16X FSAA @ 3840 x 1024 @ 80fps on a P3 700.

[KingJackal]

Yeah - if you ask me it's a load of BS.

I know people have been running UT2k3 with triple-head playably with the Parhelia.

So my guess is it's one of these:

- Bad drivers
They've only got their drivers cranking for a couple of games. The engines that site tested hadn't been optimised, hence the low performance. Come release date a lot of that will be fixed though - there's still take on the clock for their driver guru's.

- Old drivers
That site used some older beta drivers that hardly work, let alone show what the card is capable of.

- Complete BS
That site is exactly the above. Just a quick way to get a HUGE amount of hits on their main page.

- The card sucks
The Parhelia really is that crap.

....somehow I seriously doubt the last option. It'll be one of the first 3 for sure.... ;)
*waits for the REAL, outside NDA numbers*

[[H]arls]

I think we should all wait and see what the real numbers are like from sites that actually have the card, when the NDA expires.

But come on guys...its Matrox for gods sake. They make badass workstation cards, and theyre damn good at it, but they just arent meant for gaming or competing with the geforces & radeons.

(Tho i still think the [H] should have got one to thrash, I like their reviews)

[Gh0s7 L3mUr]

I expect that the results were probably a combination of your first three guesses KJ.

I agree [H]arls, Matrox rocks in workstations. That's their market, that's who they target their cards at. I think all this talk of Matrox vs nVidia vs ATI is more wishful thinking on the part of gamers who have been screaming with desire for a third major player to enter the market, and through playup by Matrox have got their hopes up about the Parhelia. In reality I think any performace they have as far as games are concerned will be purely an added benefit for the buyers this card is targeted at.
Still, I can't wait to see some real reviews, hopefully comparing it to the likes of nVidia's highend workstation card (bugger it, don't you hate it when a name completely slips from your memory banks... must reboot before BSOD pops up.... hehehe :o ), and ATI's equivilent.

[dairyboy]

early reviews seem to be indicating large profromance advantages at 1600X1200 with 4xAA ,Level16 anisotrophy.

We all love 4aa and Aniso right?...:D

[KingJackal]

Originally posted by Gh0s7 L3mUr
Still, I can't wait to see some real reviews, hopefully comparing it to the likes of nVidia's highend workstation card (bugger it, don't you hate it when a name completely slips from your memory banks... must reboot before BSOD pops up.... hehehe :o ), and ATI's equivilent.

You mean the nVIDIA Quadro4 series ( especially Quadro4 500/550/700/750/900 XGL ) and the ATi FireGL 8800 cards....
;) :p

And yes, I think you hit it on the nail - any gaming benifit will be icing on the cake for their customers. :)

[Ragnor]

I remember reading that the InqWell isn't getting a card either they usually have pretty straight up no BS reviews...

I think matrox just wants to create an early buzz and doesn't want any minor negative features exposed by the sites that people trust the most....

[[H]arls]

Originally posted by dairyboy
early reviews seem to be indicating large profromance advantages at 1600X1200 with 4xAA ,Level16 anisotrophy.

Were did you get those numbers from? Early reviews are saying this thing gets beat to death by a Ti4200.

Who saw Carmacks little .plan update about the card? Now he's someone who knows his graphics, and he pretty much laid the smack down something wicked.

[Maverick]

June 25, 2002
-------------
Ripped from John Carmacks .plan update:


The Matrox Parhelia Report:

The executive summary is that the Parhelia will run Doom, but it is not
performance competitive with Nvidia or ATI.

Driver issue remain, so it is not perfect yet, but I am confident that Matrox
will resolve them.

The performance was really disappointing for the first 256 bit DDR card. I
tried to set up a "poster child" case that would stress the memory subsystem
above and beyond any driver or triangle level inefficiencies, but I was
unable to get it to ever approach the performance of a GF4.

Obviously more than driver related. Matrox have gone for brute memory horsepower and yet nVidias highly optimised crossbar memory architecture coupled with highly optimised drivers still takes the cake. A bit of a concern, even this early.

[mird-OC]

Originally posted by [H]arls
Were did you get those numbers from? Early reviews are saying this thing gets beat to death by a Ti4200.
all the reviews that stressed the eyecandy features of the cards came to this conclusion. at 1600x1200 with all options on the parhelia can manage almost twice the frame rate of a ti4600 in many benchmarks. which says to me (contrary to carmacks babble) that the bandwidth is definitely there.

[Roman]

yes, sadly the Parhelia did not live up to her hype...

no geforce4 killer, a Geforce3 killer at best, and even that is kind of doubtful...

but what does impress is the complexitiy of the chip and the triple monitor support... that makes for some seriously kickass desktop and gaming experiance...

[[H]arls]

Originally posted by Roman
...but what does impress is the complexitiy of the chip and the triple monitor support... that makes for some seriously kickass desktop and gaming experiance...

Not if it plays at 20 FPS* it doesnt.

Jeez im cynical today. :)



(*Completely made up FPS - but you get the point)

[mird-OC]

well i think it's doing pretty well... and considering it's engine is running a full 100MHz slower than Ti4600, i think we can forgive it for not crapping all over it on it's release. everything looks good to me so far... anyone would be hard pressed for any REAL reasons to by a Ti4600 over a parhelia, and i think there's still much in store for the future (new drivers, implementation of the new features, OC'ing etc etc).

[Wibber]

I wouldn't buy either :)

[Gh0s7 L3mUr]

Originally posted by KingJackal


You mean the nVIDIA Quadro4 series ( especially Quadro4 500/550/700/750/900 XGL ) and the ATi FireGL 8800 cards....
;) :p



Yip those the ones :D

[utopian201]

the parhelia with all quality options on, outperforms a Ti4600

Matrox has cursed OpenGL drivers, so once they fix those.........
and the Geforce drivers have been maturing for a long time, the architecure since GF1 to GF4 is still the same almost

much like when R300 comes out, ATi will have to start all over again....

but for $400US..........is that the same price as a Ti 4600?
hhmm..........i guess ive been brainwashed by the nVidia machine (framerates aren't everything..................ITS THE ONLY THING!!) gargh

oh btw what is the min fps u should have again, was it 30? or?

[KingJackal]

Originally posted by utopian201
oh btw what is the min fps u should have again, was it 30? or?

For online play I try and ensure ( obviously try, given hardware limitations ) I get a minimum of 50-60 fps. I would PREFER to be able to achieve 75 minimum.

Note: I don't give a sh*t about peak fps - only sustained fps ;). And yes, I'm a framerate w[H]0r3 ( TBird 1.4/512MB DDR/Radeon7500, and plays most games at 800x600x16 ;) ). But then - if you've ever played RTCW online ( or been slaughtered at an L3, heh ), you'll find I'm not bad either.... :D

Hype

I think the Parhelia HAS lived up to its hype - but not to external hype.

Let's face it, Matrox NEVER said 'we're making a framerate beast' - quite the opposite in fact. However, there ARE plenty of dillusional fanb0ys out there that pumped it up to be that, purely cos they wanted to see Ti4600's looking not-so-fast....

I'm quite impressed with the card. 1024 gaming sucks - but pardon me, I don't buy triple out cards for $400 USD to play at 1024 :rolleyes:. 3X 1280 maybe.... :cool:

Plus I will be very keen to see what dev's can really do with displacement mapping, FAA etc. Basically ( to sound ever like the reasearch scientist ;) ), interesting.... very interesting....
:D

[mird-OC]

in the firingsquad review they commented on the FAA... saying playing 16XFAA @ 1024 looked just as nice (if not nicer) and played just as well as 4XAA @ 1600, and the frame rates were (of course) much higher.

they have some screenies which show it really is that good. it's so nicely AA that in game you really probably couldn't tell what res you're playing in - absolutely no sign of jaggies anywhere, just silky smoooooth :D.

[Roman]

Originally posted by [H]arls


Not if it plays at 20 FPS* it doesnt.

Jeez im cynical today. :)



(*Completely made up FPS - but you get the point)

yes i see what you mean... ;) :)

but it isn't that bad a card, pretty much at Geforce3 Standard level...

[Maverick]

Yeah, we have to remember that we havent seen a new architecture (truly new) for some time (Radeon 256?) or for nVidia -the Geforce 256. These architectures BOTH took a while for drivers and hardware (Radeon 7500 and Geforce2 GTS respectively) to "mature". I dont think we have seen the Kyro mature yet -but Kyro2 vs Kyro1 should give you the idea as well:)

So in that light. The Matrox card is VERY promising. The fact that they have maintained their IQ King status is kinda pleasing. - I can sleep soundly at night knowing Matrox are still the IQ king:)

No matter what the performance in the Unreal 2 test -or even Doom3. Parhelia is first and foremost a Pro card. Photoshop users are surely creaming themselves with the thought of 3x 21" Trinitrons :rolleyes: