Parhelia impressions at b3d

[Hati]

Someone got his hands on a 'p' board and seemed impressed.
Looks like first review boards will be out in early June.
See

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1050

Hati

[VJ]

Here is the text...

form http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1050 :
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ben6
Member

Joined: 08 Feb 2002
Posts: 90
Posted: Thu May 23, 2002 4:21 am Post subject: Matrox meeting , no benchmarks but

I'm not going to gvie any guesses on performance , as the boards I played on this morning are beta. However here's what I got from my meeting (excluding anything that might be considered um off the record)

1. Displacement mapping absolutely rocks . Adding arbitrary geometry to figures or in outdoors terrain is a serious step in the right direction.
2. FAA absolutely also rocks. Swimming textures in buildings in FS 2002? GONE.
3. 10bit color was a little bit of a disappointment. Because the LCD monitors that were used in the demo, it downsampled to 8bit color. While there is a difference in banding, it was less apparent than I expected. When I test the card with 3 CRTs I'll take a deeper look into it.
4. It will not be a Quake3 Geforce4 Ti killer with the way most reviewers run the benchmarks. Of course with 80 million transistors on a .15um process, there's likely to be a lot of heat, and it's unlikely that the Parhelia 512 will have a more than 300mhz gclock.
5. Having said that, Matrox suggests, and I agree with them 100% that performance in Quake3 is fast enough today. Turn on FSAA (games with stencil buffers have issues with FAA) anisotropic filtering and Surround Gaming , and it should be completely playable
6.Surround gaming absolutely rocks. I got to play Quake3 and on 3 monitors it was absoletly smooth. One little note, while playing , I didn't consciously look to my right or left, but in my peripheral vision caught movement on the extra monitors and I was able to react without thinking
7. Matrox suggests, and after walking around the show floor, I agree, that DX 8 games will be more prevalent this Christmas. The number of DX9 games will be very limited if any at all. Thus their decision to go with DX8.1
8. If you have a chance and are at E3 go to the AMD/Matrox/Alienware lot (last year's G.O.D) lot , take it. Soldier Of Fortune II and F1 2002 makes great use of surround gaming . The HUGE monitors for the racing game are the way to play a racing game.
9. Parhelia 512 can multipass render . 8 textures per pixel is possible on a Parhelia
10. Review cards are likely to be sent out in early June. WOOHOO!!! Final retail boards will likely be out in late June/early July.
12. Did I mention Displacement Mapping totally rocks ??? Watching a character be N-Patched , then displacement mapped, makes a totally different look
13. To give you a sense of how powerful the pixel shaders are capable of being. The ocean demo with a shark, the bass, a school of fish? Everything is bumpmapped and using 4 textures per pixel. The Bass consists of 8 pixel shaders with 100 pixel shader instructions.
14. The anisotropic filtering did sharpen Quake3. The Parhelia is capable of dynamically allocating 64 texture samples in a pass . In other words 1 pixel with 64 sample anisotropic filtering, or alternatively 4 pixels with 16 sample aniso in a single clock.
15. Performance hit with 16x FAA in one application (no numbers, sorry) was about 20% with their 4x FSAA around 50% . Sorry , can't say more.
16 Only one mode of FAA 16x at the moment.

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Looking good... Looking very good indeed...


Jörg

[roadie]

nice 1

[thop]

retail boards end june/early july? just in time for UT!

[Greebe]

Thop, it's been stated many times that this is the timeframe inwhich the cards would be released.

[Fubar|wtf|]

unfortunately UT2K3 has been delayed till august 2nd

[Kosh Naranek]

Originally posted by Fubar|wtf|
unfortunately UT2K3 has been delayed till august 2nd

Doesn't matter ... helps actually.

If P is released in June/Early July then the most severe driver bugs will be eliminated when UT2003 arrives.

[Hati]

There is some more info coming from ben6 at beyond3d:

I and Matrox don't want to give anyone the wrong idea.Without AA and anisotropic filtering the Parhelia is likely not going to win on "simple" games like Quake3 against a Geforce4 Ti4600, as the clockspeed isn't going to be 300mhz. Once you go beyond 2 textures in a game, add FAA and anisotropic filtering , however, the Parhelia shouldn't be touched by the Geforce4 Ti4600. As to whether that's enough, this summer/fall? I really can't say, except to look at the Microsoft Meltdown and GDC presentations for what a accelerator for DX9.0 PS 2.0 and VS 2.0 would require. Also note the Displacement Mapping and Surround Gaming features , and 10bit color. And Matrox's history.

I was surprised to read about the clockspeed, as I thought Matrox usually does not give out infos on this topic.
Also, if chip clockspeed is below 300MHz (as implied by ben6), chip and memory clockspeed will be different then?
Hope the review boards will be out soon to clear some issues.
Hati

[roadie]

matrox cards always have different core/mem speeds. my max uses a ratio of 3:4 core to mem speed (150/200 or 165/220)