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Below are direct quotes about Matrox products over the years. I won't post the entire articles, but I will try to make a point about Matrox history. The parhelia seems to be the equivlent of the G200. Of course not in terms or performance, but in terms or relative performace and product cycle life it does. The card isn't meant for the hardcore gamer, but instead the professional who games occasionally. It has great feature set like many of Matrox's past cards, but all the new features it is introducing will be absorbed by the industry within the next 1-2 product cycles. My personal conclusion -- Matrox has never taken the lead with any of their ***3D generation*** cards. They always seem to be a step or 2 behind the competition when it comes to 3D performance, but overall, they still deliver a compelling product that many people enjoy. (someone must like their cards, because they are still in business). The release of the Parhelia was very different from their previous graphics chip endevors. They let out the specs of what seemed would be a smoking piece of hardware. They stressed features of the Parhelia that lend themselves to GAMING like 20GB/s memory bandwidth, 256bit GPU and DDR bus, T&L, pixel and vertex shaders, Hardware Displacement Mapping, Depth-Adaptive Tessellation, 16x AA and last but not least, Triple Head & Surround Gaming. They really burned themselves by promising so much and delivering so litle. Matrox is stuck in a time warp of putting out featured filled mediocre performing cards. I really wanted one of these cards, but i guess I should have taken the hype with a grain of salt, and half a bottle of tequila. Either way, take a read tell me if you think has really changed.
Anandtech G200 review
August 16th, 1998
(conclusion page - last page)
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As a Voodoo2-killer, the Mystique G200 is a failure, however since it was never intended to be a Voodoo2-killer then the success of the G200 is much more than originally expected. The hard core gamer will probably want to wait for a Savage3D or a Riva TNT, however for an average gamer without an immense budget the G200 takes the place of the i740 as the ideal 2D/3D combo chipset.............
Matrox tried their hand at the 2D/3D combo market once again and this time emerged victorious. Matrox emerged not with the title of world's fastest performer, not with the widely sought Voodoo2-killer name displayed on their belt, but with the feeling of success draped across their faces in the form of a smile knowing that there will be quite a few gamers out there who, for the first time, are proud to be powered by Matrox.
Anandtech Matrox Millennium G400 & G400MAX reveiw
May 20th, 1999
(Final Thoughts - last page)
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The G400 is finally here, and it is definitely not a Voodoo3 or TNT2 killer. The hard core gamer that simply wants performance will probably want to stay away from the G400, however if you don't mind not having the absolute best in 3D performance then the G400 quickly becomes a viable option............
Matrox definitely has a winner on their hands, the G400 is much more than everything the G200 should have been, and it's no surprise that such a combination of features, performance, and outstanding image quality will be making its way into the hands of quite a few anxious users that have renewed faith in Matrox. Myself included
Let's just hope that Matrox can iron out the last few bugs with their ICD, and work on improving performance. Although the G400 will probably never reach TNT2 Ultra levels of performance, the closer Matrox gets, the better. The cards are ready and out in the open, you make the decision.
Anadtech Matrox G450 Review
September 5th, 2000
(Final Words - Last page)
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The G450 is by no means a savior for Matrox, instead it's simply protecting a territory that they have worked so very hard to acquire.
It is very simple to compare the G450 to NVIDIA's GeForce2 MX and say that the latter is the clear winner, however the two chips are most definitely geared towards different audiences.........
For 3D performance, that includes gaming performance as well as high end 3D rendering, CAD, etc... the GeForce2 MX is a clearly superior solution to the Matrox G450............
As far as functionality goes, Matrox's DualHead is superior to what we have seen thus far from NVIDIA with their TwinView. NVIDIA will most likely continue to improve TwinView so that one day it may be just as feature-filled as what Matrox is currently offering, but then we raise a question of when.
So if you want the performance today, you go to NVIDIA, and if you want the features offered by DualHead, the Millennium G450 is the perfect solution for those that felt the Millennium G400 was a bit too expensive just for multi-monitor support.
Tweakers Australia Matrox G550 Review
March 9th, 2002
(conclusion - Last page)
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As already stated, if you looking for a card to play your favorite 3D shoot-em-ups on, then stay away from the G550. If superior 2D graphic performance is the more favorable requirement, then I would strongly suggest the Matrox G550 Dual-DVI. Whilst only being able to test the analog CRT performance, I can safely conclude that the G550 offers the absolute best 2D picture quality I have ever seen. 3D quality was also very impressive, but as expected the frame-rate severely limited. Being the type to play a game once in a while, I would still have to say that 95% of my time working with computers productively is spend staring at plain old 2D. While not everybody fits into this category, there is a still a demanding market that does. Outstanding 2D performance, impressive features and an awesome amount of functionality makes the G550 worth a really close look, especially if you're like me! I rate the Matrox G550 Dual-DVI 9 out of 10, taking into account what the card is primarily designed for - which is definitely not 3D performance!
Anandtech Matrox Parhelia Review
June 25th, 2002
(Final Words - last page)
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The Matrox Parhelia is Matrox's best effort in the 3D graphics market to date. It offers tangible features, the highest performance Matrox has ever been able to provide and a good set of drivers just out of the box. The problem being that Matrox isn't competing with the ATI and NVIDIA that they once were, these two companies are utter giants today (especially NVIDIA). Their drivers are much more optimized and they've had much more experience with tuning their hardware and software for performance so that they do produce the highest frame rates possible......
In order for Parhelia to be an attractive performer at this point you have to be a heavy user of one of the following features:
Games that make extensive use of quad-texturing
Games with lots of complex pixel/vertex shader programs
Fragment Anti-Aliasing
Surround Gaming
The first two bullets on the list are basically out of your control; games will take advantage of the quad-texturing capabilities of Parhelia going forward, and some already do today (UT2003). There are almost no games on the market currently that put the pixel/vertex shader units to any serious use and thus you won't see much benefit from Parhelia there, at least for the immediate future.....
In the end it comes down to what sort of a value Parhelia brings to the table. At its ESP of $399, Parhelia doesn't deliver performance that's equivalent to what a $399 card should provide. With FAA enabled the situation turns out to be much better, but as we told Matrox a few months back, if they want to make a comeback they have to top all charts. If you look at the performance under Unreal Tournament 2003, the Parhelia is entirely too slow compared to the GeForce4; and we're not even taking into account the fact that in the very near future ATI's R300 will be introduced with much higher performance under Unreal Tournament 2003. As a pure gamer's card, the Parhelia gets mixed results.
Where the Parhelia can truly shine is in the relatively small niche that is interested in features like Surround Gaming, triple-head outputs, and those users that do play with AA constantly enabled. The analog image quality output of the Parhelia is also excellent, so those professional users that are looking for a solution with crisp display capabilities will find comfort in Parhelia. But in the end we're not talking about a large portion of the market that will be drawn to Parhelia, just the small percent that Matrox indicated they were going after in the first place.
We'd honestly like to see a more competitive Parhelia part, but it seems as if that will take another couple of product cycles at minimum. The good news is that Matrox is committed to supporting Parhelia and they do have a roadmap to follow-up the chip with refreshes and new architectures. Will we see a refreshed Parhelia this year? We wouldn't throw out the possibility, but the important thing is that there is something in the works. With Parhelia out the door the folks at Matrox can breathe a small sigh of relief now that their 2-year old is finally walking, but they can't get too complacent as it's the Parhelia refresh that will determine whether Matrox has what it takes to remain a player in this competitive business.
Anandtech G200 review
August 16th, 1998
(conclusion page - last page)
---------------------------------------------------
As a Voodoo2-killer, the Mystique G200 is a failure, however since it was never intended to be a Voodoo2-killer then the success of the G200 is much more than originally expected. The hard core gamer will probably want to wait for a Savage3D or a Riva TNT, however for an average gamer without an immense budget the G200 takes the place of the i740 as the ideal 2D/3D combo chipset.............
Matrox tried their hand at the 2D/3D combo market once again and this time emerged victorious. Matrox emerged not with the title of world's fastest performer, not with the widely sought Voodoo2-killer name displayed on their belt, but with the feeling of success draped across their faces in the form of a smile knowing that there will be quite a few gamers out there who, for the first time, are proud to be powered by Matrox.
Anandtech Matrox Millennium G400 & G400MAX reveiw
May 20th, 1999
(Final Thoughts - last page)
---------------------------------------------------
The G400 is finally here, and it is definitely not a Voodoo3 or TNT2 killer. The hard core gamer that simply wants performance will probably want to stay away from the G400, however if you don't mind not having the absolute best in 3D performance then the G400 quickly becomes a viable option............
Matrox definitely has a winner on their hands, the G400 is much more than everything the G200 should have been, and it's no surprise that such a combination of features, performance, and outstanding image quality will be making its way into the hands of quite a few anxious users that have renewed faith in Matrox. Myself included
Let's just hope that Matrox can iron out the last few bugs with their ICD, and work on improving performance. Although the G400 will probably never reach TNT2 Ultra levels of performance, the closer Matrox gets, the better. The cards are ready and out in the open, you make the decision.Anadtech Matrox G450 Review
September 5th, 2000
(Final Words - Last page)
---------------------------------------------------
The G450 is by no means a savior for Matrox, instead it's simply protecting a territory that they have worked so very hard to acquire.
It is very simple to compare the G450 to NVIDIA's GeForce2 MX and say that the latter is the clear winner, however the two chips are most definitely geared towards different audiences.........
For 3D performance, that includes gaming performance as well as high end 3D rendering, CAD, etc... the GeForce2 MX is a clearly superior solution to the Matrox G450............
As far as functionality goes, Matrox's DualHead is superior to what we have seen thus far from NVIDIA with their TwinView. NVIDIA will most likely continue to improve TwinView so that one day it may be just as feature-filled as what Matrox is currently offering, but then we raise a question of when.
So if you want the performance today, you go to NVIDIA, and if you want the features offered by DualHead, the Millennium G450 is the perfect solution for those that felt the Millennium G400 was a bit too expensive just for multi-monitor support.
Tweakers Australia Matrox G550 Review
March 9th, 2002
(conclusion - Last page)
----------------------------------------------------------------
As already stated, if you looking for a card to play your favorite 3D shoot-em-ups on, then stay away from the G550. If superior 2D graphic performance is the more favorable requirement, then I would strongly suggest the Matrox G550 Dual-DVI. Whilst only being able to test the analog CRT performance, I can safely conclude that the G550 offers the absolute best 2D picture quality I have ever seen. 3D quality was also very impressive, but as expected the frame-rate severely limited. Being the type to play a game once in a while, I would still have to say that 95% of my time working with computers productively is spend staring at plain old 2D. While not everybody fits into this category, there is a still a demanding market that does. Outstanding 2D performance, impressive features and an awesome amount of functionality makes the G550 worth a really close look, especially if you're like me! I rate the Matrox G550 Dual-DVI 9 out of 10, taking into account what the card is primarily designed for - which is definitely not 3D performance!
Anandtech Matrox Parhelia Review
June 25th, 2002
(Final Words - last page)
--------------------------------------------------
The Matrox Parhelia is Matrox's best effort in the 3D graphics market to date. It offers tangible features, the highest performance Matrox has ever been able to provide and a good set of drivers just out of the box. The problem being that Matrox isn't competing with the ATI and NVIDIA that they once were, these two companies are utter giants today (especially NVIDIA). Their drivers are much more optimized and they've had much more experience with tuning their hardware and software for performance so that they do produce the highest frame rates possible......
In order for Parhelia to be an attractive performer at this point you have to be a heavy user of one of the following features:
Games that make extensive use of quad-texturing
Games with lots of complex pixel/vertex shader programs
Fragment Anti-Aliasing
Surround Gaming
The first two bullets on the list are basically out of your control; games will take advantage of the quad-texturing capabilities of Parhelia going forward, and some already do today (UT2003). There are almost no games on the market currently that put the pixel/vertex shader units to any serious use and thus you won't see much benefit from Parhelia there, at least for the immediate future.....
In the end it comes down to what sort of a value Parhelia brings to the table. At its ESP of $399, Parhelia doesn't deliver performance that's equivalent to what a $399 card should provide. With FAA enabled the situation turns out to be much better, but as we told Matrox a few months back, if they want to make a comeback they have to top all charts. If you look at the performance under Unreal Tournament 2003, the Parhelia is entirely too slow compared to the GeForce4; and we're not even taking into account the fact that in the very near future ATI's R300 will be introduced with much higher performance under Unreal Tournament 2003. As a pure gamer's card, the Parhelia gets mixed results.
Where the Parhelia can truly shine is in the relatively small niche that is interested in features like Surround Gaming, triple-head outputs, and those users that do play with AA constantly enabled. The analog image quality output of the Parhelia is also excellent, so those professional users that are looking for a solution with crisp display capabilities will find comfort in Parhelia. But in the end we're not talking about a large portion of the market that will be drawn to Parhelia, just the small percent that Matrox indicated they were going after in the first place.
We'd honestly like to see a more competitive Parhelia part, but it seems as if that will take another couple of product cycles at minimum. The good news is that Matrox is committed to supporting Parhelia and they do have a roadmap to follow-up the chip with refreshes and new architectures. Will we see a refreshed Parhelia this year? We wouldn't throw out the possibility, but the important thing is that there is something in the works. With Parhelia out the door the folks at Matrox can breathe a small sigh of relief now that their 2-year old is finally walking, but they can't get too complacent as it's the Parhelia refresh that will determine whether Matrox has what it takes to remain a player in this competitive business.
) and put in a really big heat sink with a couple of fans down the back with some ducts (like that Sun card and like the Wildcats) then they could clock it higher.
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