Tweet
Parhelia in the house!
That's right!
No foolin' this time
The card has been announced, and it can now be said:
I got my Parhelia! (actually had it for a couple weeks, but had to wait till now before I came out in the open.)
There will undoubtedly be many questions.
For those who are not familiar with what the BBz can/can't say, I'll outline
it for you. We are still under NDA for many things. There are a few rules
we must follow:
-No benchmarks on non-public drivers. (You will have to rely on reviews for those)
-No benchmarks from us period untill reviews are posted.
-No comments about unannounced features that may or may not be in future drivers.
-No comments about future plans for hardware or software/drivers.
-No dates outside of what is in official press releases.
-No technical info outside of what is in the public white papers.
On to the meat...
The card: 128meg Parhelia
OS: WinXP pro
System: see sig below
The card is dual-DVI output. For those of us without DVI, there is a DVI-VGA adapter
much like with the G550, and a large DVI-Dual VGA splitter cable for triple-head
support, and a VGA-TV breakout cable, same as G450 and 550.
My primary display is on the single adapter, displays 2 and 3 on the y-cable.
With my set up of 3 CRTs, I can choose from Single display, DualHead (stretched),
DualHead (independent resolutions), DualHead Clone, or TripleHead (stretched).
As you can see in my sig, I'm not exactly running a powerhouse processor, so I won't
bother with any solid numbers on benchmarks. I will say that in 3Dmark2001, my score
more than quadrupled in comparison to the G550 I was running. In the games I play
(Half-Life/TFC, Unreal Tourney, Q3, STV:EF (sorry, no newer games here)) I was able
to increase detail levels and resolutions significantly, and still end up with faster
performance than I had.
As always, image quality is job1 with Matrox. Parhelia is no different.
Just when you thought your desktop couldn't look better, along comes M to prove you wrong.
Gigacolor looks great, and my desktop is faster than ever.
My 2D AutoCAD work is smoother moving and sharper looking than I could have dreamed.
But I think the most impressive thing I've noticed with Parhelia is the 16xFAA.
OH MY GOD!
With this enabled, even 800x600 looks good in games. Not a jaggie in site.
And the performance hit is minimal when compared to other forms of AA.
Only about a 10-15% drop in FPS is all I see on my system.
Of course, even with my rig, I don't need to drop down to 800x600.
Games I was running at 800x600 on G550 with medium details are now running at
3072x768(surround) or 1280x1024, with details maxed, and 16xFAA on.
In UT, I have been running the S3TC compressed textures in OGL.
In STV:EF, anisotropic and simple shaders are supported and enabled (and looking amazing).
TFC never looked so good (it's stunning what 16xFAA can do for a game).
Surround Gaming is way cool too.
I will be posting a batch of some pics I've taken (mostly [MU] UT pics).
No foolin' this time
The card has been announced, and it can now be said:
I got my Parhelia! (actually had it for a couple weeks, but had to wait till now before I came out in the open.)
There will undoubtedly be many questions.
For those who are not familiar with what the BBz can/can't say, I'll outline
it for you. We are still under NDA for many things. There are a few rules
we must follow:
-No benchmarks on non-public drivers. (You will have to rely on reviews for those)
-No benchmarks from us period untill reviews are posted.
-No comments about unannounced features that may or may not be in future drivers.
-No comments about future plans for hardware or software/drivers.
-No dates outside of what is in official press releases.
-No technical info outside of what is in the public white papers.
On to the meat...
The card: 128meg Parhelia
OS: WinXP pro
System: see sig below
The card is dual-DVI output. For those of us without DVI, there is a DVI-VGA adapter
much like with the G550, and a large DVI-Dual VGA splitter cable for triple-head
support, and a VGA-TV breakout cable, same as G450 and 550.
My primary display is on the single adapter, displays 2 and 3 on the y-cable.
With my set up of 3 CRTs, I can choose from Single display, DualHead (stretched),
DualHead (independent resolutions), DualHead Clone, or TripleHead (stretched).
As you can see in my sig, I'm not exactly running a powerhouse processor, so I won't
bother with any solid numbers on benchmarks. I will say that in 3Dmark2001, my score
more than quadrupled in comparison to the G550 I was running. In the games I play
(Half-Life/TFC, Unreal Tourney, Q3, STV:EF (sorry, no newer games here)) I was able
to increase detail levels and resolutions significantly, and still end up with faster
performance than I had.
As always, image quality is job1 with Matrox. Parhelia is no different.
Just when you thought your desktop couldn't look better, along comes M to prove you wrong.
Gigacolor looks great, and my desktop is faster than ever.
My 2D AutoCAD work is smoother moving and sharper looking than I could have dreamed.
But I think the most impressive thing I've noticed with Parhelia is the 16xFAA.
OH MY GOD!
With this enabled, even 800x600 looks good in games. Not a jaggie in site.
And the performance hit is minimal when compared to other forms of AA.
Only about a 10-15% drop in FPS is all I see on my system.
Of course, even with my rig, I don't need to drop down to 800x600.
Games I was running at 800x600 on G550 with medium details are now running at
3072x768(surround) or 1280x1024, with details maxed, and 16xFAA on.
In UT, I have been running the S3TC compressed textures in OGL.
In STV:EF, anisotropic and simple shaders are supported and enabled (and looking amazing).
TFC never looked so good (it's stunning what 16xFAA can do for a game).
Surround Gaming is way cool too.
I will be posting a batch of some pics I've taken (mostly [MU] UT pics).
Comment