Need new PC: Parhelia or Ati 9700

[Kruzin]

If you feel another users statement is in error, you are welcome to offer your opinion, in a non-insulting way.
Because you feel you have found fault in another user's post DOES NOT give you the right to call them an idiot.
PERIOD.

Grow up, or be gone.

[defaultuser]

Whatever.

I guess anyone coming to a video card forum asking for general hardware advice is gonna get whats coming to them anyway.

Yeah, I'll play nice with the other kiddies.

[Marshmallowman]

my old 1.4G thunderbird chews more juice than a 2000 palamino...and a *LOT* more than an 1600XP..

just upgraded to a 1500XP, guess what..temps dropped 10C and suddenly my 400watt PSU is pumping out less heat and all my voltage have gone up, must becuse its using more power

I have read a few artciles around the Net talikning about abit boards having trobles with palmino's and thoroughbreds, even on there very latest board....

you have one of the slowest, and least power consuming palamino's and you think your an expert on all of them?

CRACK...thats the sound you get when you get to far
"out on a limb", and possibly what you are smoking while you do it.

[defaultuser]

Originally posted by Marshmallowman
my old 1.4G thunderbird chews more juice than a 2000 palamino...and a *LOT* more than an 1600XP..

Then I guess it wouldn't push you any closer to the edge you're teetering over if I told you that I have two friends with KG7 boards both running a 1.4GHz T-bird, AND an XP 1800+

Oh no, those COULDN'T be the very same hot-running chips YOU claimed I didn't have any experiences with.

I have read a few artciles around the Net talikning about abit boards having trobles with palmino's and thoroughbreds, even on there very latest board....

Might be more convenient if you actually supplied a link or two, since even the omniprescient Google failed me on this one. KG7? Problems? Where?

just upgraded to a 1500XP, guess what..temps dropped 10C and suddenly my 400watt PSU is pumping out less heat and all my voltage have gone up, must becuse its using more power

Yeah, and that reduction in power wouldn't have ANYTHING to do with the reduction in clock speed, right. You do know the 1500+ runs 66MHz slower than the 1.4 T-bird you replaced, right?

To be prefectly honest, the power reduction in the Palomino is much less than the %20 hype. It's more around %10, which is not a whole helluva lot.

Even a trivial upgrade like a 1GHz T-bird to an XP 1900+ becomes an adventure, as the upgrade sucks an additional 15 watts under load. A system that was original stable can easily be undone by a load that heavy.

[DGhost]

Originally posted by defaultuser


Thats funny, because my KG7 had ABSOLUTELY NO problems with my XP 1600.

This wouldnt have anything to do with you being an idiot and trying to upgrade from a slower T-bird to a faster Palomino without upgrading the borderline 250-300w powersupply, would it?

You do know that the jump from a 1GHz T-bird to a fast Palomino is over 30 watts, don't you? Upgrades arent as easy as a simple switcherooo these days.

thats funny, because again, every KG7-RAID i have worked on would not work with an 1800+ correctly. by bumping voltages some worked right, others worked right if you dropped the bus speed down to 100mhz. some just flat out didn't work. i never said that *all* KG7's didn't work with Palominos - just that all the ones i have ever seen don't.

and, the power supplys were not borderline. they were SPI 300W-350W PSU's - ones that work fine with 2100+'s. or P4 2.53's. doesn't make a difference.

if you have quality components, the increase from upgrading your processor is trivial. or if the system was built to support such upgrades.

the 1.4G TBird is spec'd out at requiring the same amount of maximum current that a 2100+ does... a 1500+ will consume a *lot* less current than a 2100+ or a 1.4TBird. the 1500+ acctually consumes the same amount of current as a 1.1ghz T-Bird. despite the 233mhz lead. so... in addition to the 66mhz clock speed difference, there is also the fact that clock for clock the palomino core does consume less power. in fact, its right about 20% less, as last i checked 1100 * 1.2 == 1320, or right around the 1.33Ghz that the 1500+ runs at. and the 2100+ is spot on with the 1.4Ghz t-bird as well.

a system that was designed to handle 1.4Ghz T-Birds (and could handle them fine) can handle a 2100+ without a problem from the power aspect of it, provided that the motherboard has no problems with the palomino core.

edit: and, as you pointed out, the upgrade from a 1ghz tbird to *any* palomino does not result in a 30W increase in power consumption. it tops at about 17W.

[Marshmallowman]

you worry me, 30 seconds on google

http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kg7kr7/instabilities.htm

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/479/

I am aware my 1500xp runs at only 1333, it will be run a lot higher when I unlock its multilplier,

But I did the changeover from the 1.4tb knowing that, that accoriding to AMD's data sheet it use a lot less power(>10watt) even than a 1600 XP which is 1.4Ghz

and it a lot runs cooler!

PS: the second link has quite a few reports

[BigDH01]

I'm not quoting ATi PR, I was actually referring to reviews like the one I actually made a link to in my post. They are not yet allowed to post actual FPS only the relative performance to other products. This, however, does not mean that ace's, anand's, etc. didn't have an actual board to review. They have FPS numbers and you could probably extract them from reading the reviews then taking the percentages and turning them into FPS based on previous reviews of the ti4600. I don't see why you'd call Anand or Ace's non-independant. IMO, Ace's has always done a fine job reviewing every type of product. And ranting about ATi's "vaporware" does not change the fact that some of matrox's 3d IQ features are broken. You own a P, aren't you at least a little upset? I know I would be. It's not that the P is a bad card, it's that it's a bad value. But hey, I'm sure you're happy with yours, and to each their own.

Dustin

[afterburn]

They dont have boards yet, they figures they have came from them visiting an ATI meeting and being allowed to play some with systems prepared by ATI. It even says so in the article(s). That is not what i call independant and uncontrolled by ATI.

[[Ch]amsalot]

Ali,

With all due respect, your example is ridiculous.

Do you think every company out there who are looking for new cards are going to re-write all their (expensive) software, or fork out the money to MS for XP, plus more money to their software suppliers for their costing/payroll/General ledgers etc to make sure they are XP compatiple, just to run a new graphics card?

Whatever company is still holding on to Win9x for compatibility reasons is not going to be inclined to fork over $300+ for a video card that's simply going to be used to display 2D graphics, when a sub $100 card will fit the bill. I dare say that any company so concerned with compatibility will only switch to "new" video cards that are known to work with their equipment... so we're talking at least a generation or two behind Parhelia.

I hope today is a better day for you.

-[Ch]amsalot

[madshi]

afterburn, ATI allowed anandtech to test the 9700 in their own PC. Please reread anand's 9700 preview. And the funny thing is: He published two previews at the same time: 9700 and 9000Pro. And for both previews he used the same PC and a GeForce ti4600 as comparison. So you can take the absolute FPS from the 9000Pro preview and the relative info from the 9700 preview and a little calculator and voilà - you have a real 9700 preview, done on anand's own hardware with absolute benchmarks.

[Ch]amsalot, I'm a software developer and need to test whether my stuff still works unter win9x. So I need a graphics card, which does work in win9x. Another thing: Some old games simply don't work in XP, another good reason for win9x drivers.

[kaasboer]

Hi madshi,

you're right, there should be Parhelia drivers for Win 98. There should also be drivers for XFree, but my guess is: Matrox was under extreme pressure to get the P out as fast as possible, they did not have enough time or ressources for more than the most important drivers. I hope we'll see the missing stuff "soon(tm)". If not it would be just another nail in the coffin...

But as far as Ati is concerned: maybe they still write drivers for Win98, but they didn't manage to get some DRI/3D-Support for XFree with any card that's newer than the old Radeon (R100). Quite ridiculous for a large company like Ati, isn't it?

cu,
kaasboer

[[Ch]amsalot]

madshi said,

[Ch]amsalot, I'm a software developer and need to test whether my stuff still works unter win9x. So I need a graphics card, which does work in win9x. Another thing: Some old games simply don't work in XP, another good reason for win9x drivers.

Those are legitimate reason for desiring Win9x drivers for Parhelia.

-[Ch]ams

[Ali]

Originally posted by [Ch]amsalot
Ali,

With all due respect, your example is ridiculous.



Whatever company is still holding on to Win9x for compatibility reasons is not going to be inclined to fork over $300+ for a video card that's simply going to be used to display 2D graphics, when a sub $100 card will fit the bill. I dare say that any company so concerned with compatibility will only switch to "new" video cards that are known to work with their equipment... so we're talking at least a generation or two behind Parhelia.

I hope today is a better day for you.

-[Ch]amsalot

Thanks, much bettter day today.

Anyway, what I want is the Parhelia for my dev machine. I run XP most of the time, but it dual boots into both Win2K and Win98SE. To be honest I could probably get rid of win2K because everything that works on XP seems to work on 2K, but Im not willing to make an arse of myself (again) by rolling out a app that doesnt work on EVERYBODYs computer in the business.

About using win98. The majority of computers here are P3 450s (with 16Mb G400s), and they came pre-installedm and with licences for win98SE. Computers have a recommended depreciation period of 3 years, and my company is cheap, so keep them for ever, these computers will never get an upgrade untill they are totally dead. As an aside, the receptionest at the factory has a 486SX25, while the one here has a P4 1800. They both do the same stuff!

My company mainly handles Hire Purchase for retailers around the country, but we also have comercial properties, and do the odd personal loan. The actual database(PostgreSQL) is running on a Debian server. The machines that have access to that database are mainly win98 machines. They are MAC address logged/verified before access is alowed. No actual data is kept on the MS machines. Therefore the security of the computers running the DBMS is relatively unimportant. Oh, and everything is behind a firewall of course.

Ali

[Jacco Hoeve]

Wow ..

well atleast its off topic now!! Be nice to each other ppl

[bibble]

was there a topic?