BBoyz, do you have bulk or retail cards?

[jsb]

http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/parhelia/series.cfm

JSB

[VJ]

Good question !

Hey, how come they are clocked differently ?
I thought the only difference between bulk and retail was the supplied software (and the box ) ?


Jörg

[Kruzin]

Yes, we have the bulk or retail cards.

Come on.
By now you know clock speeds are something we can't talk about.

[VJ]

Ok, but is there any reason they are clocked differently ?
(I used to buy bulk-scsi-cards: card was exactly the same, but without the nice box and driverdisks - which were downloadable btw, and it was a lot cheaper )

I suspect the bulk-versions are more aimed at corporate use, but if a company needs Parhelia boards, would they settle with lower clocked ones ?
(or is matrox aiming at contracts with computerbrands, e.g. Compaq ? )


Jörg

[Kruzin]

Let me say this one more time slowly before I close this thread.

We
can
NOT
talk
about
clock
speeds
.

[Ant]

So Kruzin what is it exactly you are trying to tell us?

[Kruzin]

I am going to reopen this thread with an apology for being snappy with you guys. It was late last night, and I was cranky when I closed this, and I didn't take the time to look at jsb's link. I've only just now revisted this thread and re-examined it. This is the first time I've ever seen Matrox publish clock speeds on their site for any of their cards.

With that said, I will answer that the card I got is clocked at OEM speed (bummer, huh?).

As to why there are different clock speeds, I can only guess that it's for the same reason every other chip maker (graphics or CPU) offer different clock speeds from what is basically the same chip.
Yield.
Not every chip produced can run at the optimum speed. The better chips get marked as retail, the ones that can't pull off retail speeds get put in the OEM bin. This is nothing new. Matrox did it with G400/G400Max. Intel does it all the time. It's just the way things work...

[VJ]

Kruzin:
No problem, we all have days like that .

Thanks for explaining that about not all chips produced being able to work at full speed, I wasn't aware of that...


Jörg

[Kenshin]

yes for exemple every geforce4ti 4200 can't work at 300Mhz

[frankymail]

Kruzin, you may say it was late laste night and everything, but here we call this PMS Anyway, how about overclocking? I'm sure that Matrox hasn't included any overclocking utility, but is the latest version of Powerstrip compatible with Parhelia ? If indeed it actually is, how far have you taken your board ?

[Lemmin]

I would not be surprised to see a MAX version of the parhelia at some point in the near future - either that, or the 512mb versions might well be clocked at, say, 250mhz core, 300mhz mem.

We know the G400 MAX was a 'picked' product (i.e. they tested their G400 chips, and the small percent that could hack the faster speeds were sold for a premium). If they are also testing and sorting for the retail/bulk, then its a fair bet they could be picking out the top 5% or 10% that can manage more than 220mhz - once enough of these are stockpiled its worth doing a production run. This is especially worthwhile if you can sell the end product for £30+ more.

LEM

[az]

Maybe you could answer these question too, Kruzin (if not, I understand it): How do you know what your card's clock speed is, and what speeds are your RAM chips?

AZ

P.S.: Thanks for taking the time and sharing all your knowledge with us, I really appreciate it

[Kruzin]

Per the page jsb linked to, and the fact that mine is an OEM, I assume it's running at 200core, 250mem.

Franky-
I have made no attempt to o/c it. I doubt powerstrip has support for it yet, and even when it does get support for P, I won't be using it (some of you may remember that when PS first added G400 support that I was the first to learn it had a tendancy to trash the cards BIOS).

[cerb]

Originally posted by Lemmin
We know the G400 MAX was a 'picked' product (i.e. they tested their G400 chips, and the small percent that could hack the faster speeds were sold for a premium).

I disagree. I have a "vanilla" G400 with 6ns memory (as evidenced by the markings on the chip).

I have tested how far it will overclock and I can only take the memory to about 180Mhz (from the default 166), which is just shy of the default speed of the 5.5ns ram on the MAX version.

As for the core speed, I managed to get that from the default 125mhz up to I think 176, which is higher than the default clock of the MAX. It may well have gone higher (I never really tested to see just how high), but it doesn't make any difference, because the 6ns memory will always be the bottleneck.

Compare this to people who have vanilla G400's with the same 5.5ns ram that the MAX has - I know there's a few people here lucky enough to have scored one of these. They can acheive sometimes up to 200MHz+ on their memory speed - much higher than the default MAX, and about inline with the overclocking potentional of a MAX.

It appears to me that the MAX was just a vanilla G400 with faster (hence more expensive) ram. The core itself seems to handle the higher MHz, just that the extra power is wasted when it's teamed up with the 6ns ram.

It could well be a similar scenario with the Parhelia.

[DGhost]

the product launch for the parhelia appears to include many changes for M, which i believe is a good sign. things like the clock speed illustrate how much Matrox believes in this product and just how open they are willing to be about it.

about overclocking it... this card is already a beast. the only thing that overclocking it would improve is performance in simple apps like Q3 or 3d mark... granted, most people i have ever talked to who overclock their systems only do it for more NVMarks... go figure...