A benchmark I´d like to see...

[mwobbe]

...would be a clock to clock comparison of Parhelia against a downclocked Ti4600 with 220/250 MHz.

That would be a fair comparison and it allowed to see what the strenghts and weaknesses of Parhelia´s design really are and which potential might be left for further exploration (more optimized drivers, higher clockspeed). Maybe this way one could find possible driver bottlenecks which usually get ironed out later in their developement.

I think at present P´s most hindering weakness is it´s low core clockspeed. One must be quite optimistic to expect comparable framerates in today´s games with only little more than 2/3 of the competitor´s clockspeeds.

Has anyone already done such a comparison?

[[Ch]amsalot]

Why not compare it to a GeForce4 Ti 4200 (250 Clock, 500 Memory (64MB vers.)).

Could it possibly be that the GeForce4 Ti 4200 is less than half the price?

-[Ch]amsalot

[bobby2]

or better yet - why not with version 1.0.1 drivers for both cards (as good as one can get at least for the 4600)

[mwobbe]

Just curiosity!

Because in it´s present shape and considering which software is available at the moment using which special functions of a videocard the Parhelia is just too expensive with a price tag around 500,00 €.

(That is, if you do not really need it´s unique features as triple head e.g.)

I´d love to see P´s performance improve with newer drivers, but I´m not too optimistic that we will see a 20%+ speed improvement anytime soon.

[[Ch]amsalot]

As people have been so quick to point out, clock speed isn't everything. Parhelia is performing poorly because nothing is taking advantage of its advanced architecture ('cept Matrox's own benchmark). By the time something does, you'll be comparing Parhelia to next gen cards (and hopefully, you'll be comparing Parhelia II to the next gen cards)

In order to bump Parhelia's clock speeds up, you'll need new cooling (water cooling?) for sure, but my guess is you have voltage issues. Wombat and the other processor design gurus would know more.

-[Ch]amsalot