3dCenter.de - Parhelia vs GF4 @ 220/275

[mikeul]

"but it certainly has a LOT of 3d-features!"
Unfortunately, it's not quantity that counts - or else you could emulate everything instead.
But the Parhelia seems good indeed. I only don't like it's PRICE, it's too EXPENSIVE.

[Cheesekeeper]

Personally I'd say that the timing of the Parhelia release was not good. Ordinarily, the $400 price would be easily justified against the competition (and still is, except possibly when it comes to gaming). The problem is that for the most part the Parhelia doesn't offer any serious advantages for current games - as Matrox has said, this is a card for the future.

The big problem is that by the time there are enough games which can really make proper use of the Parhelia's talents, NVidia and ATI will be into their next cycle. It makes the choice a little harder - buy a card now for $400, and get no serious immediate benefits, or wait until the newer games come out, and see what your $400 buys from ATI and NVidia then.

To qualify those remarks - surround gaming is great, but I'd doubt many people will get a lot of use out of it (not enough games supported, plus the need for extra hardware). 16x FAA looks stunning, but is not miles ahead of 4xFSAA, which the GF4 can do and still keep up. As always, the picture quality and stability will be top notch - but (and I'll probably get smacked for this), some of the current Geforce cards have very respectable picture quality. Not quite up to Matrox, but the better GF cards can easily draw even with ATI. I have a Gainward GF3, and the quality is not that far off my G400Max.......

[MetalCartman]

The price is absolutely justified (for me), because I need DVDmax to watch the movies that my DVD-Player can't play (divx...) on the TV. So, let's see, I could buy a €200 gaming card, but then I had to buy the SigmaDesigns RealMagic X-card ($100~€120) to have a decent TV-Out, which would come at the cost of a PCI slot (priceless!). and then I'd have to mess with incompatibilites, one more driver, etc. i guess you get what I mean.

Cheers,
Cartman

[Flyke]

The price is absolutely justified (for me), because I need DVDmax to watch the movies that my DVD-Player can't play (divx...) on the TV.

I think the radeon 8500 offers something similar ??
But do correct me if I am wrong !
Can anybody comment on the radeon 8500 tv out functionalities vs say G400 dvdmax ?

This is one of the main reasons I'm in line for a Parhelia too!
But I reckon my trusty G400 can live another couple of months at least..

/Flyke

[Indiana]

Yes the Radeon8500 and 7500 have something called Theater mode in the newer drivers that's working equivalent to DVDMax.

[MetalCartman]

Indiana, since you have a Radeon 8500, what can you say about the quality of the Theater mode vs. DVDmax? Especially if there are black borders on TV with the ATi.

Thx

[Fenrir(AVA)]

Originally posted by Cheesekeeper
The big problem is that by the time there are enough games which can really make proper use of the Parhelia's talents, NVidia and ATI will be into their next cycle.

Hopefully Matrox is committed to the Parhelia core and will have a revision/updated core/chip by then, as well. Hopefully.

[Indiana]

Originally posted by MetalCartman
Indiana, since you have a Radeon 8500, what can you say about the quality of the Theater mode vs. DVDmax? Especially if there are black borders on TV with the ATi.

It's working fine here. When using the ATI player you can (like with the G400) even minimize the player to the tray and still get the full-screen video on the secondary CRT/TV.

The Radeon8500 does not output a full PAL overscan picture like the G400 does, still it has driver options to set the width an height that are enough here to get rid of any black borders, but I've read from people that had small black borders on the top and bottom left even with the vertical size set to the max. Seems to depend on the TV.

There apparently seems to be an "overscan" button, that you can enable by some registry settings, but I didn't try it up to now - as I don't have black borders without I didn't need it up to now, so I can't say anything about how useful it is.