What are your first impressions of the Parhelia ?

[DexterAtDaLab]

A lot worse then expected, I am dissapointed

I didn't expect it to outsmoke the compettion but I hoped it would atleast run on par.

I'll probabbly still get it becuase I would like to go dual-head and I'm use to playing with a tnt2(non-ultra) so it will be better than I got... but I'll be waiting to get the 64mb version becuase I have no plans to spend 400 bucks for something that performs so poorly!

[frankymail]

About Parhelia's not being able to sacrifice picture quality to gain fps': is that bad? Would you prefer to play Doom 3 @ 1024x768 w/o aniso and AA @ 100 FPS, or would you rather play it on a Parhelia at 1024x768(with 10bits internal rendering) with 16XFAA and aniso maxed out @ 50 fps ? There's no question i'd go for the latter. Anyway, when very taxing games based on the Doom III engine start getting out the door (like JKII or MOHAA for Quake 3), we'll be driving flying cars (or at least i'll have changed video card at LEAST once...).

But again, this is JMVOTS; any nVIDIOT is free to say the opposite (joking, I have a GeForce 4 Ti 4400 review sample and it is a very nice card, but my main problem with it is that the 2D quality at very high resolution(like 1920x1200 on my W900 FT is slightly inferior to that of the Radeon 8500 (and very probably parhelia's...)

[isochar]

Originally posted by frankymail
About Parhelia's not being able to sacrifice picture quality to gain fps': is that bad? Would you prefer to play Doom 3 @ 1024x768 w/o aniso and AA @ 100 FPS, or would you rather play it on a Parhelia at 1024x768(with 10bits internal rendering) with 16XFAA and aniso maxed out @ 50 fps ?

Actually, I play Tactical Ops a lot right now. To get acceptable performance out of my G400max I have all details set at low and the resolution at 640x480. (~70fps)

[Greebe]

Chamsalot, et al, not to specifically pick you out of the crowd, but if you're going to compare Parhelia on all levels then open your eyes! There is alot more to this card than just fps. Toss all that into the fray and you'll begin to see the big picture.

Immature drivers which haven't been looked at being optimized yet. Features that none of the competition has. If your going to make statement like above then be at least be considerate of what all this card offers, otherwise you'll be seen as nothing but a biased nVidiot/ATi fanantic.

[Mumrik]

Originally posted by frankymail
About Parhelia's not being able to sacrifice picture quality to gain fps': is that bad? Would you prefer to play Doom 3 @ 1024x768 w/o aniso and AA @ 100 FPS, or would you rather play it on a Parhelia at 1024x768(with 10bits internal rendering) with 16XFAA and aniso maxed out @ 50 fps ?

It looks more like the choice will be between 50fps and 20...

I'm really dissappointed. I wasn't expecting Ti4600 beating performance but I was expecting something not too far behind. Not as drastically inferior as what we're seing from very reputable reviewers here...

Let's also not forget that higher resolution equals higher quality, parhelia doesn't really deliver here either, with 128mb RAM and insane memory bandwidth I was hoping for far better gaming in 1600x1200...
It seems the only thing it really has going for it in games is FAA 16x and slightly (according to some reviewers) better general IQ.

I was really looking forward to Dual Head, high quality TV-out and FAA 16x, but I also want to play games in 1600x1200 and it seems Matrox wasn't able to deliver what I was hoping for. I really don't want to support nVidia but it looks like I'll be buying a Ti4200 and then waiting for ATi's R300 to come in... I have no illusions of Matrox raising performance with 30-50% in driver development.

Originally posted by Greebe
Chamsalot, et al, not to specifically pick you out of the crowd, but if you're going to compare Parhelia on all levels then open your eyes! There is alot more to this card than just fps. Toss all that into the fray and you'll begin to see the big picture.

We want all the great IQ stuff if it means going from 150fps to 80-100, but not if it means going from 80 to 30 or 50 to 20.... it must be playable too.

[Greebe]

Let me repeat (GAWD!) this card is smooth, it doesn't choke at extremes, and yet you keep hammering on the same things which are no more relavent than your claims of a well known ATI or NVidia sponcered site is willing to give an honest review of this product.

[Mumrik]

Originally posted by Greebe
Let me repeat (GAWD!) this card is smooth, it doesn't choke at extremes, and yet you keep hammering on the same things which are no more relavent than your claims of a well known ATI or NVidia sponcered site is willing to give an honest review of this product.

Only according to you guys...

Read these graphs

I'm not convinced...

[GT98]

Originally posted by Greebe
Chamsalot, et al, not to specifically pick you out of the crowd, but if you're going to compare Parhelia on all levels then open your eyes! There is alot more to this card than just fps. Toss all that into the fray and you'll begin to see the big picture.

Immature drivers which haven't been looked at being optimized yet. Features that none of the competition has.

Well part of the problem is that yes the Parhelia offers Surround gaming, 10 bit color support, and host of other features that the other cards dont offer...but do most people care about them for the most part? Its going to be hard to sway people on those marks and thats problem. Plus having your Next Gen Hardware performing as horribily as it did with current games vs the comps Last Generation cards makes alot of people wonder and I'm one of them. Matrox says oh our Parheila is optimized for next Generation games...but why does it do so crappy compaired to what else is out there in the UT2003 test? Newer drivers Might correct the problem and close the performance gap, but alot remains to be seen. The BBz say the card runs smooth etc, but thats all in that person's perspective and is based on option and not what people would call hard facts (i.e. FPS) and once again you would have hard time convising someone on buying card just because XWZ told me it was smooth running on a AMD system.

The Specs show an awsome card, but its real world performance leaves alot to be desired. Is the card going to Parrell the P4? All hype and no performance to back it up when its compaired to Comp out there? I REALLY, REALLY wanted to see this card Run with big dogs, but ATM I feel really let down after waiting 2 years to see this happen. I was expecting so much more. I'm still undesided if I want to get the card or not and I'm not going to make a snap desition till I read what everyone has said on here and let it all settle in

Scott

[agallag]

If the parhelia was released a year ago, I would've been all over it. However, since my personal situation has now changed (engaged, bought a new house), I won't have a TV beside my computer anymore. The TV out capabilities of my G400 were the main selling point for me, but that just won't be necessary anymore. Now I can get a dedicated gaming card (probably a radeon 8500) for about 1/3 the price of a parhelia, and I'll probably throw my G400 into a multimedia machine in the livingroom eventually (for non-DVD movies and MP3s only).

I could even get a radeon 7500 AIW for about half the price of the parhelia, and that way I'd have a tv in the computer room too.

[[Ch]amsalot]

Greebe said:

Chamsalot, et al, not to specifically pick you out of the crowd, but if you're going to compare Parhelia on all levels then open your eyes! There is alot more to this card than just fps. Toss all that into the fray and you'll begin to see the big picture.

I stand by exactly what I said, at $400 I expect the card to outperform lesser priced cards. To wit, I expect to be able to run more than 2X (16-sample) anisotropic filtering (with this disabled, it makes you wonder how slow is it with 8X aniso?). I also expect it to certainly smack my GF4 Ti 4400 in the benchmarks, yet it looks as if even my $235 Leadtek GF4 Ti 4400 would run the most intensive DX8 compliant games at the same speed (note the Codecreatures Benchmarks: http://tech-report.com/reviews/2002q...a/index.x?pg=4 ). Finally, I expect the 16xFAA to work flawlessly, and from several screenshots I've seen there have been examples of lines that were aliased (I will grant, however, that for the most part 16xFAA works and is noticeably superior to the current competition).

You ask me to consider the other features of the card, so sure. Triple Head gaming would be phenomenal, but with a 24" GDM-FW900 and a 17" DVI LCD, I have no more room on my desk (yeah, I know, many of you wish you had my problems). Of course, the solution to that is a bigger desk, but my point is Triple Head is not a very practical feature for many. Also, and please correct me if I'm wrong, you can't power three LCDs with triple head (not that you'd want an LCD for gaming, but...). It does have its limitations.

Hardware displacement mapping is another feature that isn't practical... unless you like running Matrox demos. This will change in the future, but seeing as it is a DX9 feature, all next gen cards will most likely implement it.

10-bit gigacolor, glyphAA, all features that are specific to 2D professionals. When you compare what a professional needs to what a mainstream enthusiats needs, then it becomes an issue.

My bottom line is, and has always been, is that there is not enough "oomph" in Parhelia to justify the $400 price tag. I'm sure it will be a big hit for Photoshop users like Asia Carrera, but for the rest of us it's not a worthwhile investment.

Finally, Greebe said,

If your going to make statement like above then be at least be considerate of what all this card offers, otherwise you'll be seen as nothing but a biased nVidiot/ATi fanantic.

My motto is be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind. Actually, that's not my motto. But if you don't say what you mean, you can never mean what you say.

-[Ch]amsalot

[God_Devil_Morta]

U know, I expect that this card to preform around the Ti4400 level, maybe the Ti4200 level, with everything enabled.... Right now I have a Radeon 8500 in my comp, was thinking of buying this card for a self Christmass present...but now I"m not so sure. I think I'll wait for the R300 and see how much the price difference and preformance is when it comes out compared to the Parhelia...

[mikeul]

Funny that you guys give excuses for the parhelia's performance, but when competitors face the same difficulties, you laugh at them.

[mikeul]

"aniso maxed out @ 50 fps ?"

The aniso is maxed out at 2x on parhelia, whereas on nvidia and ati cards it's maxed out at 8x...

[Myrv]

Actually what's annoying me the most is the requirement for .NET

What were they thinking? How is this card going to work under Linux?

[dneal]

Newegg has some nice Radeon 8500LEs with 3.3ns DDR for $98. Can't go wrong there. I didn't

After Carmack's statement I don't think there's much to dispute anymore. Especially if one of the few games you are looking forward to is Doom 3.