Icrontic's Review... Very Good!

[bERNIE]

http://www.icrontic.com

Go check it out... 95% and check out the benchmarks when the details are maxed out...

John.

[Cheesekeeper]

A very good review. It's nice to see a more positive spin on the Parhelia. The only problem is that it was only compared to the Radeon in the benchmarks (and it still lost). The Geforce4 4600 comparisons tend to look a little bleaker..........

[tmservo]

Interesting, though, that it scored 100fps+ in triplehead. That's pretty impressive.

[mhm]

Interesting comments:

It's not that the Parhelia doesn't know what to do with some applications or games. It's that the games and applications may not know what to do with the Parhelia! This is clearly evidenced in DroneZ below.

It is crucial to remember that many software and game applications may not fully recognize the Parhelia card and thus disable some of the OPENGL optimizations.

[Drizzt]

Impressive review. Really really a smart guy :-)

I expecially appreciate the pro's and con's section with this con's:
"Everyone wants the "BEST" frame rate"

[trk2]

Clearly matrox has driver issues as seen in drones. But, what's really interesting are the triple head scores.

Look at the quake III bench where he also bench's triple head, the 3840*1024 is actually faster then the 1280*1024 score (graph 4 on the chart). OK, it's only faster by .3fps but if the card is fill rate limited like everyone else suggests, how is this even posssible?


You know the easiest way for Matrox to get out of this mess? Announce a Parhelia Max card with a core clock between 275-300 using hand picked chips. Keep the ParMax at $400 and drop the price of the other parhelia's $50-$75. Maybe we should start a petition for a ParMax card...

[Cheesekeeper]

Better still, drop the Parhelia price by $75, and bring out the Max at $400. I havne confidence that with some work, the Parhelia could fulfil its promise - but it has to be able to compete with similarly priced cards. $475 would put it way over the price of the cards that the speed bump would be trying to bring it in line with.......

[trk2]

Yes, see that's why I typed, "Keep the ParMax at $400 and drop the price of the other parhelia's $50-$75."

[GT98]

Interesting comments:



quote:
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It's not that the Parhelia doesn't know what to do with some applications or games. It's that the games and applications may not know what to do with the Parhelia! This is clearly evidenced in DroneZ below.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is crucial to remember that many software and game applications may not fully recognize the Parhelia card and thus disable some of the OPENGL optimizations.
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Very interesting....still sitting on the fence, though I dont feel as bad as I did yesterday

[CHHAS]

Me neither, but it's still a lot of money ... my usual limit is around $100 for a graphics card.

[Cheesekeeper]

trk2: Ooops, sorry. I read that differently the first time.....

[isochar]

This guy is heavily biased, even more so than Firingsquad. 9.5 for stock performance is a bit of a stretch....

[Michel Carleer]

Did I see correctly?
It is compared to a Radeon 8500, yes, but an AIW Radeon.
Isn't the AIW underclocked with respect to the plain Radeon?
Just asking, not criticizing.

[GT98]

Originally posted by isochar
This guy is heavily biased, even more so than Firingsquad. 9.5 for stock performance is a bit of a stretch....

Well what I took from the review was that he wasn't looking at it as a total end all for gamers...At the start of the review he stated that he worked for a local TV station doing graphics works for commerials and the like

We feel there is a lot more to this card than the benchmarks that determine the bragging rights of who's fastest on the video dragstrip. In real life I'm the Production Manager and Creative Director of a local television station serving almost 3 million viewers. We demand a lot from our computer tools used in our graphics and video suites. Everyday we create commercials, promotions and marketing projects through the use of software such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and 3D powerhouses like Softimge XSI.

[typedef enum]

I agree...I said almost the same thing in another forum.

What Matrox must do, with respect to their pricing, is to get the retail boards down to about ~ $300.

Remember the GeForce3 launch? Initially, nVidia was having difficult in manufacturing the chip, and actually delayed it in order to do one last respin...That last respin ended up with much better yields, and hence, they were able to bring the cost down. Prior to that, they were talking about a $450-500 card, and by the time it actually shipped, you could find retail boards @ Best Buy for $350 or less.

It will be even more crucial for Matrox to bring the cost down once the other competitors bring their new products to the market. If we're to believe the rumours regarding R300, this product is just a couple of weeks removed from being announced. Unless ATI is planning to target the $400 price-point (which is not consistent with ATI's past history), Parhelia is going to have a very tough time selling this board, given the R300 specs.

Again, Matrox _really_ needs to use the next 2 months or so in trying everything possible to lower the cost of the board down to a more attractive level. If they can do that, then I think they will, at the very least, have a much easier time selling people on the features.