Parhelia in the house!

[Jake]

Finally, the great P!

Hi guys,

First let me just express a HUGE thank you to the BBZ for sharing your experiences with us. I really envy you. P looks to be amazing. I'm glad however that you got the card to test before everyone else, nobody deserves it more than you for all your effort over the years in this great forum.

CONGRATZ!!!

Now for a question:

I seem to remember that when using dvd-max on my old G400 I was unable to minimize the player program because of the video overlay. If I did the TV-output would just go blank screen.

Does this still happen with P or can my wife watch a divx movie on the tv in our livingroom, while I use the computer for other full-screen tasks?

Regards,

Jake

[Kruzin]

Nice butter-up job

As I found with all my G series cards, that completely depends on the application being used to play the video, not the card.
Some will work the way you want, others won't.

With Parhelia, it does support overlay on both primary and secondary. I can now drag my video window to the secondary, and it will keep playing. I also found with this setup, i could drag a video window, and the remote control to the secondary, and tell the player to go full screen (not using DVDMax). Like this, I can then not only see the flic, but have control from the second display without losing the picture.

[runderwo]

So, uhm, what about Win9x drivers? I hope they don't drop support entirely.

[Kruzin]

Nothing we can say about that one.
Hopefully they do come out with support.
The best bet for this to happen is if they hear from enough people that they want it.
I'd suggest posting to this thread at Matrox's forums, and letting them know you would like to see it happen:

http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/Forum8/HTML/001259.html

[Yannick]

I know that among all the wonderful new state-of-the-art features filling the Parhelia this will sound funny, but...

Do Parhelia drivers still provide PixelTouch ?

Because although I am a Matrox user because of image quality, good 2D and 3D acceleration and so on... PixelTouch is still among my top five "Most Often Used Features" list...

Don't think that will change my buying decision... but still I'd like to know...

[thop]

does the parhelia actually support any kind of motion compensating? iDCT? how noticeable is the Glpyh AA?

[SJRACER]

Thanks Kruzin for all the info!!!! I have been away for a while and just checked the board for the first time tonight. I cant WAIT to get mine!!! Sounds like Matrox truely came through once again. It will be nice to have a Matrox card back in my Main system.

Thanks again

SJRACER

[Mikko]

Since I have been reading all the information that you BetaBoys are willing to give us regarding Parhelia (big thanks for that),
I am now very much confinced that I should buy this card as soon as it gets it's way to Finland!

I just want to ask this question:
Has anyone tested "Grand Prix 4" with Parhelia?
Is it smooth to play with every details maxxed?

[Kruzin]

PixelTouch is still in there.

Motion comensation is in there.

[Yannick]

Now, if even PixelTouch is still here... that card's perfect

Thanks for the info !

[Muad'Dib]

*Going to clean my pants now*

Can't wait for my paycheck to preorder this beastie.

Thanks BBz for all your info!

-D

[Ali]

Originally posted by Greebe
ALi, where a link to whatever article on this app?

The link to the start of the article is:

http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/wildcatiii/index.php

Page 4 is where they start using that app.

The link to the app is:

http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/wildcatiii/ogl_fsaaview.zip

The app at that link is a slightly updated one.

The amazing thing for me is a the clarity of the Wildcat SuperScene which is 16XFSAA

I feel the 16xFAA of the Parhelia is the real selling point. Surround gaming is cool, but I doubt it will be used by more than 5% of the buying public.

If the 16xFAA is as clear as SuperScene, then thats amazing, considering the performance available.

Ali

[BuddMan]

I'm gonna go ahead and post these two links to see what people think. Kruzin took a shot of Dungeon Siege with FAA enabled. Notice the shadows in his PIC .

Doesn't look too bad, but the shadows do have massive jaggies and look somewhat abnormal. Now take a look at a pic I got off the Dungeon Siege Vault website HERE . Notice the shadows again.

There seems to be an issue with the Parhelia displaying shadows at least for this game. Also, Kruzin said the shadows look the same with both FAA on and off, so I guess it wouldn't be an FAA issue. I just wanted to know if the shadows look at all like Kruzin's pic on other cards. I tested it out with a GF2 and my old ATI card and the shadows did not look like Kruzin's pic, but instead more like the 2nd pic (the way it should be displayed).

I don't want to pound this issue into a pulp or anything, but I just find this very interesting and wanted to know what others thought. This is not an attempt to bash Parhelia either, so please don't flame. Thanks.

[R0M]

Hi Buddman,
It seems that there is a misunderstanding going on between stencil shadows on Parhelia so let me explain. Parhelia will not FAA stencil shadows simply because they're not polygons. As for Dungeon Siege, they are projected shadows. And it all depends how zoomed you are when taking the screenshot. Try zooming in all the way in on your ATI or Nvidia and see what happens. Take a look at the shot here to have an idea what i am talking about:

<a href="http://www.gamesdomain.com/news/images/seige_04.jpg">Games Domain Dungeon Siege Screenshot</a>

Regards,

[AlgoRhythm]

FWIW, I just got back from my brother's and he was playing DS on his GF3. The shadows looked all jaggy and weird on his, too...


AlgoRhythm