the big parhelia review conclusions thread

[Marshmallowman]

and the P10 is performing below other current cards in workstation benchmarks....and it is around the $1000 mark, parhelia might even outperfom it

give it time, understanding comes with time

[nggalai]

Originally posted by Marshmallowman
and the P10 is performing below other current cards in workstation benchmarks....and it is around the $1000 mark, parhelia might even outperfom it

give it time, understanding comes with time

*nod*

Just one correction: the smallest Wildcat VP costs $500, not $1000. And it beats Parhelia at least in 3DMark, and certainly in ViewPerf.

ta,
-Sascha.rb

P.S. and no, I don't care about 3DMark scores. But that's the only P10 scores flying around right now, unfortunately.rb

[Jupp]

Just for the record, from the latest German "PC-Magazin".
Printed Issue 8/2002

Parhelia - First Impressions.

General flavour of this review is the same as in all other reviews published so far,
but on reading further on I found this:

Quote:
"... Aquamark Bench ...
Running at 1024x768 the GF4 scored 60 fps, approximately doubling the Parhelia framerate.
Unexplainably is the subjective impression: The GF4 is stuttering sometimes while the Parhelia is
playing smoothly all the time."


R.

[Marshmallowman]

I think both P10 and parhelia have a lot more performance to come...

The benchmarks I saw were at (which has been removed)
(it was for $1000 dollar one)

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,263385,00.asp

they were for pro apps (cad...etc) and the P10 only beat the quadro in a few synthetic fillrate tests..but they did comment that they expected things to improve...

DAMN..I wish I had saved it

[Marshmallowman]

Has anyone done in directx 9(beta) tests?
Probably pointless, but it would be interesting anyway

[notagain]

My conclusion is that as it is showned there

http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2002q2/parhelia/index.x?pg=5

the idea that the matrox card has a Delta & minimum frame rate spot on compared to a so called histerical Frame rate of the Nvidia card, is pure Bulls, or marketting if you like..

sad sad sad sad sad

[Kruzin]

Originally posted by Jupp
Just for the record, from the latest German "PC-Magazin".
Printed Issue 8/2002

Parhelia - First Impressions.

General flavour of this review is the same as in all other reviews published so far,
but on reading further on I found this:

Quote:
"... Aquamark Bench ...
Running at 1024x768 the GF4 scored 60 fps, approximately doubling the Parhelia framerate.
Unexplainably is the subjective impression: The GF4 is stuttering sometimes while the Parhelia is
playing smoothly all the time."


R.

This is what we have been telling you right from the start.
The card is smooth. I don't care what the benchmarks say, even on my slow system it's been a pleasure to work and play with.

[Marshmallowman]

firing squad liked it
they used a 2G athlon winXp 1G of ddr ram

toms not so happy
pentium 2.2(400mhzfsb)
512m of ddr ram(winXP)

extreme tech 2G athlon
512m ddr (winXp)
benches not so good

gamepc
p4(north) 2.53 G
512 of rdram win Xp
benchs looking better

anand
2.1 athlon
256 of ddr, winxp
not so good

more memory seem to help a fair bit(greater than 512)

the top end P4 with RDRam evened up the benches a bit
(compensate for unoptimised drivers?)

so it should scale well with CPU.
maybe it favours athlons, but a faster P4 does do well.
memory intensive?

The more I see the better it looks.
It will require 4G processor and 2Gs of highspeed ram to get the most out of it...futureproof

[notagain]

Kruzin

I know its hard some time, when you really expect something, you blind your self away.

[Cheesekeeper]

Originally posted by Kruzin


This is what we have been telling you right from the start.
The card is smooth. I don't care what the benchmarks say, even on my slow system it's been a pleasure to work and play with.

It doesn't surprise me that a Matrox card can produce smoother gameplay at lower frame rates - this has always been the case. If a G400 can provice at least 30FPS in a game, it should always look top-notch. What worries me is what happens when the Parhelia is getting rates of 15FPS in Doom 3. Matrox card or no, it's not going to be looking smooth then.......

[Kruzin]

Originally posted by notagain
Kruzin

I know its hard some time, when you really expect something, you blind your self away.

not even worth replying to.

[Technoid]

To Much Nvidiot Thinking!

When Nvidia started to go head to head against 3Dfx they emphasised image quality over raw FPS!

They said that 30+ at 32bbp is much better than 60+ at 16bbp!

3Dfx countered with “60+ fps is the only that matter”!

3Dfx is dead now….

Nvidia started to adopt the same philosophy…

Their fans are definitely praying the FPS hymn…

[Fenrir(AVA)]

I think it will be intresting to see the next interview with someone from Matrox. Intresting to see what they would say about the card, and why the chose to release it in its current state. I wonder if they realized it would get this much negative attention.

[matinee]

Well, I was hopefull, but now..

I'm still using a G400 MAX, dont run that many FPS games, need image quality and run dualhead at different resolutions so I'm an ideal candidate.

However recently I've played the JKII demo, and I *definitely* want to play the game. The G400 MAX is not good enough to play with all the options on. For now I've bought JK (1) which at least has the advantage of running very fast at 1280x1024 !

Given the crap performance of the parhelia, the comments on firingsquad about Leadtek's 2D performance and the sheer cost of the card - 275 quid in the uk(!) I'd be a complete mug to buy one.

What exactly does it give me? triple head is nice, but I can manage with dualhead and stick in a PCI card (non primary monitors dont need to use speed demon cards after all) - a configuration that has less limitations, I should add.

Gigacolour and displacement mapping? Another environment bumpmapping in my opinion - nice for demos, useless for anything useful.

I'm also not happy with Matrox's driver releases. They *all* have bugs and OpenGL is substandard. I simply refuse to believe based on Parhelia and my experience of the G400 that they've improved.

I'm so disappointed that Matrox had the mindshare, but completely failed to deliver. They promised great image quality, good performance and stable drivers. Image quality is not worth 300 quid, especially when other cards are now said to be almost identical quality wise.

Still, I wont be buying just yet - I'll finish Jedi Knight first.

Unless a miracle happens however, there's no way I'll be touching Matrox with a bargepole.

PK

[aldamon]

Originally posted by Sinistral


- Ok, how bout being able to play a Stragety game on 3 Monitors. Offering more view of your terrain (there are games on PC's that arent FPShooters...)? Offering pretty much 3 times the desktop workspace. And im pretty sure the Proffesional market shadows the Gaming market quite easily.

And just my 2Cents about the whole situation. If you arent going to use the Cards features, and are looking for a Hardcare Game only card. Then stick with ATI or Nvidia. -

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that triple head gaming will be banned from major LAN competition. It's simply not practical (space) and anybody using three monitors in such a venue would be lynched for "cheating." I'd also bet that the average Diablo or Everquest player is NOT going to drop $400 for a card when their $40 GF2 will run those games just fine.

I'm also going to say that while ALL video and graphics professionals would love to have three displays, the percentage who already have three monitors OR who will actually be able to convince their company to buy two more monitors will be extremely small. Christ, I have a G450 in my Dell workstation at work and I'll be damned if I could get a second monitor let alone a third!

Also, I don't think the professional market shadows the gaming market at all. Ever since the Quadro's release, NVIDIA has been "blurring" (some would say literally LOL) the difference between the gaming and professional market on both a price and performance level. What would happen if NVIDIA released a "GF5" professional card that was only $100 - $150 higher than its gaming card? If the peformance was in line with the GF4 Quadros, I'd wager the other companies would go belly up and fast.

I'm just disappointed. I like to see prices drop with competition, but this time the price is high and the payback is just too low.

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