Matrox Parhelia benches! weee I saw it in person!!!

[{PainCresT}DAn]

its bacsicaly some feature that only renders what is visible and nothing else thus saving bandwidth and for allows more polygons to apear without so much degredation.

[bubblbobbl]

Even films use special techniques to keep the flow smooth at that framerate by using

"Even films use special techniques to keep the flow smooth at that framerate by using very calculated camera movements. "

I'd like to point out those special technicques are called nature of chemical film. It blurs if there is movement during it's exposure... it's why when you have a low shutter speed on your 35mm camera you have to be verry careful not to get a blurry image...



I'd also like to say, as was stated before, any card that is out before doom 3 comes out, should be expected to bearly run it, or I won't expect the game engine to be around or have nearly as many game incarnations as the quake 3 engine has.


Keep this in mind the game quake 3 was toned down to keep frame rates high in multiplayer action, carmak will be going for eycandy galore in doom 3 since it's being designed for a single player experience. Now this matrox card might have a few features that the current lign of NVIDIA and ATI Products lack. BUt this lign has been out for months now, and the matrox card is not... so as "future proof" as you may think this card is, I know i'll personally be buying a new video card by the time doom 3 comes out, and that card will most likely run it great...

i'd also like to point out that every new generation of graphics card focuses more on upping the minum frame rate dramatically so that frame rates don't drop. Hardware T&L was a MUCH larger step in this direction then more multitexture and more memory bandwith... those actually aren't nearly as technoligically ingenious as people seem to think.

Like I said earlier, Video card companys would win my buy a lot easier if they didn't try to put soo much foresight into their cards, becuase guess what, the card ISN'T going to be the best card for games in the future, and i'm gonna want a new one, so make me a card that's good for the games that are out when the card is out... and make it have a price that works well with a 6-8 month video card life cycle and i'll be happy as a pig in mud.


Oh yeah and not to rip on tripple monitor support but what I'd much rather see then tripple monitor in one card, is run a fast AGP card for front monitor, and have someone get around to making a PCI card that's not years out of date and market it with software support for them to handle toned down graphics for left and right screens for multimonitor. As limited as the PCI bus may be, it's still not taxing your AGP bus even more in graphics. As long as your PCI bus isnt' already way to overcrowded it should be ok... but the only real thing that NEEDS to be running on PCI when you play games is network....

[Dr Mordrid]

Why bother developing a 2 card solution requiring the the PCI bus when both AGP and PCI are on the short list for replacement?

Dr. Mordrid

[PowerHungry]

I want to reply to my use of the word "future-proof" without editing my previous post. When I used that word, I meant it more as being useful for a longer period of time than most current hardware will be. Nothing, especially in the computer industry, is futureproof.

Multitexturing gives the performace required, and is not revolutionary, tho currently, the Parhelia (and the P10), have the only implementation of a 256 bit memory interface, which is double that of the competition, and use a new memory packaging technology (I think - BGA?).

[Wombat]

I don't think AGP and PCI will be replaced that fast Doc. 3GIO <I>is</I> coming soon, but it allows for complete emulation of these other busses, and since there are so many peripheral cards out there that are unlikely to be instantly re-engineered, as well as "older" systems out there, it's likely that these "outdated" protocols will not vanish overnight.

[Jon P. Inghram]

How about making a video card that fits into a processor slot on a dual CPU system?

[{PainCresT}DAn]

Did you guys see this acticle at The Register its about Nvidia's Cg technology, its knida interesting, check it out;

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/25732.html

[Dr Mordrid]

Key point:

"Overall, Cg is not a generic language for graphics programming; it is a language for NVIDIA's current generation of graphics card. It has a different set of goals from what’s required to design computer graphics at the heart of the successful computer games of tomorrow.”

In short: more a marketing ploy than anything else.

Dr. Mordrid

[Jutai]

Bubblbobbl,
I agree that Carmack designs ahead of the video card market because he will turn his engines over for future titles. I don't agree however that T&L is a bigger step than increased memory bandwidth for years the industry has know memory has been a serious bottleneck for GPU's (even before they were called GPU's)
even Carmack stated this was a problem and seemed intigued by a future solution that would make steps to solve this bottleneck.
(some might even speculate the Parhelia is the card he was refering to)

Do you really understand the direction Matrox is going and that it has in fact been going since they started? I know your new to the forums so I just want to let you know Matrox has and is continuing to develop graphics technologies both in their cards and in the industry. Helping develop new AGP standards contributing to API development and more. Matrox said specifically that their card was not a "Framerate Killer", that has been said but don't forget Matrox also said this card is feature rich, the flash intro on the website says Performance, Quality and Features and there is a reason Quality is in the middle in big letters. Matrox is also concerned with being a successful company and they know R&D costs money so they expect to sell cards they've developed for a long time to gain a profit from their design. I am not trying to flame you but it sounds to me that NVidia is doing exactly what you want every six months they release a "framerate killer" that plays all of the released games fairly well. I just don't understand why you are complaining that Matrox doesn't do that, Matrox do what they've always done, other companies cater to other users. I prefer Matrox graphics products but have no problem recomending other products to freinds and colleagues that will benifit more from their products.

really i wrote this with the best intentions please don't take it as a flame

-chris k

[{PainCresT}DAn]

Jutai

I totaly agree... Currently I am running a GF3 Ti200 64MB MSI vidcard and I would say that its ok but when I try to put the eye candy on it seems to drop below half of the framerates that it was wihtout the eye candy. From what I saw with the values posted I would say that a 30% loss is much better than a 50% to 60% loss.

I've checked it out, I would have to set my Vid Settings to 640x480 to have descent framerates (60 + FPS). On a:
MSI K7T Turbo 2
AMD Athlon XP 1800+@2000+ (11.5x140=1610)
786MB CAS 2 Micron
MSI GF3 Ti200 64MB
WD Caviar 60GB 7200RPM ATA100
SBAudigy Gamer
Intel Pro 10/100 NIC

You know I thought by now I could finaly play unreal with everything on and have it smooth at 1024x768 but I don't see that happen for a long time on the Nvidia camp.

Matrox products get better with time (Firmware updates, Drivers...) instead of die'n quickly.

[Wombat]

Must be something else with your system. I have a Ti200, and I'm playing 1024x768x32 just fine.

[{PainCresT}DAn]

Originally posted by Wombat
Must be something else with your system. I have a Ti200, and I'm playing 1024x768x32 just fine.

When things like smoke are displayed on the screen... I play CS a lot a when a smoke bomb is thrown my video chops out totaly goes as low as 30 but usualy 40 to 50 FPS from 100 FPS.

And if your wondering that problem happens in all games that have the same smoke effect... its like a slowdown in but kinda like a slow motion type thing.

[mmp121]

My Smoke bomb experiences...

Pain,

I don't know what it is with your setup, but when I played CS, with my G400 MAX running Win98SE back when smoke bombs first made their way into CS, I never had the dramatic slow downs that you refer to. I played at 1024x768x16, and would always be in the 35-50FPS range, smoke or not. Heck the hardware is the same as what's in my sig.

I've since given up CS (too much cheating).

[bubblbobbl]

Originally posted by {PainCresT}DAn


When things like smoke are displayed on the screen... I play CS a lot a when a smoke bomb is thrown my video chops out totaly goes as low as 30 but usualy 40 to 50 FPS from 100 FPS.

And if your wondering that problem happens in all games that have the same smoke effect... its like a slowdown in but kinda like a slow motion type thing.

sounds to me like more of an internet connection related problem then a video performance problem with the whole slow motion thing.

[Pace]

What makes you think it's an internet connection related problem?