What can save the Parhelia ?

[DrDS]

In gaming and 3D perf:

- a 0.13 die with a clock speed like 300 MHz

- a big improvement of driver and why not, a GPL-like driver ( everybody can work for improve the perf )

- a "saving bandwitch and calculation" mechanism

- a better price

What do you think ?

[Fenrir(AVA)]

Works for me, but a 300mhz+ clock speed would be better. Price drop would be great, especially seeing how poor the card is performing.

[Dogbert]

Eww, actually I don't think Parhelia should be "saved" at all...

Read the FiringSquad review.

[Cheesekeeper]

How about a freak timewarp, causing the Matrox office and Parhelia manufacturing facilities to simultaneously travel back in time, allowing the Parhelia launch to occur 2 years ago. That should do it........

[DrDS]

Originally posted by Dogbert
Eww, actually I don't think Parhelia should be "saved" at all...

Read the FiringSquad review.

I see the review and the neo-seeker review.

It's better and we can see how good driver can improve the perf but it's not good, it's just not so bad.

[103er-Fan]

Well, first I think a price drop would do the job. Especially here in european regions, the card costs up to over 560€, which would be around 140 US-$, and that is way too much price difference!
Next step are definatly the drivers, they need to be improved and I am sure that Matrox will improve them! Just look at the Radeon 8500, when it came out it didn't even had Smoothvision enabled or could compete with a geForce3 Ti500, no Smoothvision works, most of the compatability issues seems to be solved and it is faster than a Ti500 in almost every test.

About a die-shrink.... maybe, but Haig stated that the 300 MHz core clock might be possible, but you need a larger heatsink. I think if you really do that, you can get at least above 250 MHz. On the other side, I wouldn't want to try to overclock it because of the high price.

[killercheung]

I hope next gen Parhelia will be better, because we can see Matrox starting focus on 3D gamming again.
If it is not as fast as next gen ATI / Nvidia product, hope it will be at least 80%~90% of their performance with more mature driver and faster clock.

Lower the price, redesign core, higher the clock is MUST do for Matrox now. Since 17.6G /S memory bandwidth is the best avalible in the market and the card is not limited by it, I think HSR is not really necessary for now.

GPL driver? I don't think any of them (ATI/Nvidia/Matrox...) is brave enough to share those information, because it is really danger to let their enemy know too much....

GOD Bless Matrox.
When will the time of Matrox Millennium came back?
The next Millennium?

I am still remember the time I am using Matrox Millennium - It is the fastest and greatest card, and this card come with me for 3 systems or nearly 2 years.

[Cheesekeeper]

About a die-shrink.... maybe, but Haig stated that the 300 MHz core clock might be possible, but you need a larger heatsink. I think if you really do that, you can get at least above 250 MHz. On the other side, I wouldn't want to try to overclock it because of the high price.

As is, I don't think there's justification for the high price tag. If performance stays more or less the same, they'd need to shave at least $100 off the price to get any reasonable number of sales.
Plus, the comments reagrding the relative quality of aniosotropic filtering on the Parhelia give reason for concern.

If they can get the clock up to 275 or 300, that should (hopefully) be enough to bring the perfomance to a level where it could justify its current price. The kicker is that they would need to do this very soon, as it won't be long until it has a whole new round of contenders to deal with.

If Doom 3 is released around christmas, that will be about the same time as ATI and NVidia are likely to be pushing their newest offerings........

[Umfriend]

RSN

Umf

[CHHAS]

It'll be enabled with new drivers I'm sure of it

[Dogbert]

With RSN, nobody will care for FPS anymore.
We'll just was GREAT picture quality and enough frames / sec(x) to have all the 'important parts' moving smoothly and naturally.

[frankymail]

Why wouldn’t you overclock you Parhelia? What are you afraid of? If you use the retail HSF assembly, there is no concerns to have at all, and if you use another heatsink-fan/waterblockm you can either put some white thermal paste back on and strap back the retail hsf and RMA it (though only bad boys do this… ) or you can just buy a new one and make yourself a very nice paperweight/doorstop/keyring I know I’ll experiment a lot with the retail heatsink-fan that comes with the P4, and then liquidcooling+peltier and even maybe CO2 phase change (I’ll have to heavily modify my existing system though…). BTW, anyone into chemistry? I use 3M Fluorinert fluid in my cooling system, and I want to enhance it’s calorific capacity and reduce it’s surface tension; I don’t want to use “Water-Wetter” because Fluorinert is quite expensive (I paid $400 for two gallons, but the MSRP is about $500 per gallon) and I don’t have any way of separating them afterward. I thought of using either %100 pure
ethanol of cyclo-hexane. Both would burn/evaporate very quickly and leave very little residues. I can get both for almost nothing, and I was wondering which one would be the best choice… (fluorinert kinda nullifies any explosive potential, so fire/explosion would be issues).

Thanks in advance,
Francis

[mikeul]

"It'll be enabled with new drivers I'm sure of it "
Are you a matrox employee?

[Sasq]

mikeul, the RSN feature is a joke, gag, spoof - see http://www.soontm.com

"It'll be enabled with new drivers I'm sure of it "
Are you a matrox employee?

are you a troll, if you really wish to contribute valid information and/or views please do so. If you only wish to missread posts and cause trouble, please refrrain from posting.

[Stringy]

I'm with frankymail it's obvious one short coming is the core clock...
how long did it take Matrox to announce the Max version of the G400?? I forget, I'm pretty sure it wasn't announced when the G400 was released...

a Mhz bump of say 30-50 Mhz would make it all that more competitive in the FPS driven world..
Esp. in games such as Q3a which aren't taxing the Gfx card much at all now-a-days...

so when is K. J. Liew of MGATweak fame gonna update his utility?!? or does it work without an update?!?!



Craig