What are your first impressions of the Parhelia ?

[crow8k3a]

wow , you do an incredible job at assuming my friend.

first of all. I am in computer graphics, and i primarily use my comptuer for graphics. I already have a grant so i can get this card. I just want to know how it will also be in gaming, since in some of my free time i do like to do some of that. Last i heard that wasn't a crime.

thanks for your input, however misguided.

[crow8k3a]

sorry about that moderator, i just figured if i mention haig you would believe me.

That's true, he could be reporting that conservatively.

[Dogbert]

Guys, try to relax a bit.

The informations as we know it is:

Bad:

1. Parhelia is expensive (400$)
2. FPS wise it's being kicked by cards one quarter of it's price

Good:

1. Parhelia has the best feature set (even though most of us won't use all of it)
2. Best IQ around


But, we also know/assume this:

1. IT ISN'T OUT ON THE SHELVES YET
2. Every new computer hardware that comes out costs a premium the first few weeks, prices will drop - hopefully significantly
3. The drivers are still (very) young
4. *IF* [M]atrox manages certified OpenGL drivers, it'll be the cheapest solution around for this 400$ premium price.

*MY* counclusion (assuming I could afford this card) would be:
Don't pre-order. Wait for the card to come out, wait for one or two new drivers revisions. A few weeks after it's out, prices will drop somewhat. By then, you'll still get a Parhelia, only with better performance and at a lower price. OpenGL certified drivers will be a huge bonus as well.

Take it easy.

[Zyn]

Im waiting for someone, hopefully a hardocp review to peltier watercool the parhelia and bring the gpu up to about 300+mhz.

hey why not?
that should kill some of the slack off.

[blade-be]

I see a lot of of the following reasoning: just wait half a year till the prices come down and the drivers mature.

WTF ? This just shouldn't be happening. More and more companies rush to bring out their products that are immature across the board (small hardware flaws, immature drivers, lower speeds than promised).

why don't companies just move their cycle and wait till the product is FIT for release instead of saying: here's our 400 dollar product. It's not actually worth the 400 dollars right now but it will be in 6 months ! They conveniently forget to say that by then :
A) other and better products will be out (that, granted, have the same problems)
B) their product will (amongst others because of reason A) no longer cost 400 dollars

*sigh* it's all about the money

ps: this isn't directed solely at matrox but hardware companies in general (hell, it took my radeon 8500 5 months to be on a reasonable level of performance and 'bug-free'ness)

[WayneHu]

For this Parhelia, I think Matrox does not do what some people expected about the performance of existent applications, and possibly future applications?

Although Matrox had claimed this one is not the top performance card, however, the price tag makes most people think this one should be.

For the first generation of Parhelia, it looks like Matrox should release the 64MB version with cheaper price (around $200~230)instead of 128MB version near $400 dollars that cannot achieve the performance of the proto-type design. Then most customers should be happy with the rich features although the performance is not the top one (but still acceptable).

[Technoid]

URG!
SIGH!
URK!

[Cheesekeeper]

As we've all been saying for sime time, the frame rates aren't that important. I've been saying that, and I still believe it. There are a few things that I need consider before laying down $400 (well, I'm in Aust, so it'll be more than that) for a gaming card.

1) Will the card keep up in future games? I already have a Geforce3, so I don't want to be buying another card that will be obsolete in a matter of months. I'd want the Parhelia to show some of the staying power of my G400Max.

2) What other options would my $400 afford me? This is an important one. NVidia and ATI will most likely be releasing new cards soon, and they'll probably be at about the same price. If the Parhelia can't hold its own against their current cards, how is it going to compete with the next ones? Matrox have been pointing out that the Parhelia is designed for tommorw's games. This means it also has to compete with tomorrow's cards. Matrox always have better quality, and their drivers are always good too (well, usually good). That may not be enough to justify the difference.

I don't care what frame rates the card will get, as long it looks good, and runs smooth. Based on the current benchmarks, I can't be confident that this will be the case until we see Doom3 running on it. By the time that happens, our $400 will be able to buy some much newer cards.........

[mikeul]

I'll not comment on the part saying that matrox has the best image quality as the mods here would be angry, but I'll repeat once again that the lack of anything superior to 2x anisotropic worsens image quality.

"*IF* [M]atrox manages certified OpenGL drivers, it'll be the cheapest solution around for this 400$ premium price. "
The Geforce 4 MX, Radeon 8500 LE and Xabre 400 are far cheaper.

"don't expect the Jedi Apprentice to beat a a Sith of a higher level in an all out match."
In Episode 1, the apprentice Obi Wan won against the Sith...

[RichL]

I'm afraid I'm in with the "Very dissapointed" crew.
I know Matrox insisted that the Parhelia wouldnt be a GeForce killer, but like a lot of people here, I at least expected it to come close!
It doesnt really matter if the Parhelia only drops a few FPS with all the eye-candy etc turned on, if it's slower than molasses in winter anyway. So what if GeForces drop a huge amount of FPS when turning on the extras? The 4600 was being benchmarked at about the same FPS as the Parhelia with all the goodies on, but crucially, the GeForce can turn the goodies off and ramp the FPS back up when required.

Like many people, I bought my G400Max when it was king of the FPS hill and I've kept it playable in most games by careful tweaking of the in-game settings. When I buy a new graphics card, I'll be looking for something that is close to the fastest FPS card out there, knowing it will last some time before it will no longer cut the mustard.

I want the same clarity and 2d quality as my G400, but with enough brute horsepower to give me a few years gaming before upgrade. Sadly, the Parhelia really doesnt look like its up to the job.

[Snake-Eyes]

sigh

Well, I was told by one of the BBz that I might be happy to have kept this GF4 Ti4600 when the news finally broke, and I guess he was right. Trust me though, I don't mean that as a flame at all.

Parhelia's overall technology and performance look acceptable to me, except for the anisotropic limitation issue. From the reviews, and from various statements reviewers credit Matrox having made about this issue, I think I would prefer the 3D gaming image output of my GF4 over the Parhelia. I for one notice the textures before I notice the aliasing in my games, so the first setting I tend to tweak is the anisotropic filtering level (2x isn't what I use, either). After tweaking that, I start playing around with AA settings, to see what the highest level of AA I can achieve with the chosen aniso is, while still being satisfied with the game's performance.

Based on currently reported results (I've read every English review I can find so far..), the Parhelia's FAA is unmatched, barring a few induced-rendering bugs (which I fully believe Matrox will exorcise anyway). However, statements that the card is currently limited to 2x aniso (which is fairly crappy, leading me to want to argue about the image quality comparison results, at least in 3D / games, right now), and that the higher level aniso is disabled for 'performance reasons' (not making that up- it was credited to Matrox in one of the reviews) really frustrates me.

Combined with the below par test results in many games I play or plan to play in the future (and pointedly ignoring 3DMark results), I can honestly say that it IS a good thing I didn't skip over GF4 to get a Parhelia right now.

That's not to say that with further driver improvement, possible clock rate increases (not necessarily by shrinking the die, as many have been corrected on the assumption that a smaller die size automagically = higher possible clocks), and the new DX release, Parhelia won't become a very attractive solution. But until (/and if) this situation occurs, I'll have to stick with the GF card.

Okay, for the rest of the people here, don't take this to mean that Parhelia is a bad buy. It IS for people like me, who primarily play games and do the average run-of-the-mill type things that home users normally do with their computers (ie. the occasional Word document, e-mail, web-browsing, print the rare picture, and play games..). For those that use their computer for other things, Parhelia's other features could make it the only game in town (three displays seems especially useful for many work-related things, and the 10bit color mode only slightly less so, if mainly for image/video).

[borat]

as for rushing drivers out they hav'nt as i see it, haig hited he has been working on them for some time now wth the intention of having good drivers upon release, i think the drivers are fairly good at the moment and the most you can hope for is a 10% performance boost in the furure, but seriously can you tell me tha parhelia is unplayable in any of the benchmarks so far? the bbzs have also stated that parhelia feels smoother than the compitition when in real gameplay. however to really get the best image quality anisotropic filtering needs to be properly enabled in the drivers, leave it up to the user to decide if its too slow or not.

[GT98]

Originally posted by mikeul

"*IF* [M]atrox manages certified OpenGL drivers, it'll be the cheapest solution around for this 400$ premium price. "
The Geforce 4 MX, Radeon 8500 LE and Xabre 400 are far cheaper.

The problem is that your confusing all those low end cards with Professional Cards from 3Dlabs and the like. I dont think those cards come with Certified "professional" OpenGL drivers anyway.

[Reckless]

Originally posted by Kruzin
If you want your posts to be believed the first time around, try posting a link next time.

A bit unnecessary don't you think? He didn't exactly rant and rave about wild figures.

The performance may go up by 10% and maybe it'll be more but it might very well also stay the same or even drop. Nothing is for certain unless its known that there are lots of outstanding bugs that are all performance related. Unless being a beta tester gives you access to the code for your own assement then we cannot very well put a lot of faith in your second statement either.

[APEXNETHOR]

I had to go with a vote of dissapointment since I had thought that the Parhelia card would of done much better than the current day offerings from the big dogs like Nvidia's GF 4 Ti4600, and ATI's R8500 but I was wrong.

But on the bright side the Parhelia surely gets top shelf praise from me in the quality of graphics when FPS are not needed.