Announcement

**lecter** · 16 August 2002, 02:15

I had to choose between a 400$ Asus Ti4600 Deluxe and the Parhelia. So far I'm not dissapointed, I don't really think it offers that good value for the money but I still preffered it over the GeForce. I dunno, maybe that after quite a few Nvidia's I wanted to see something new and what with the driver improvements planned I should get even more satisfied with it. Point is, at the same price I chose less FPS, more quality. It's up to you what you choose to buy, from my point of view the Parhelia is FAST ENOUGH.

**Marshmallowman** · 16 August 2002, 02:18

three moniter support is a pretty exclusive feature and it's implemented in very a functional way.

...and other things

**HexOne** · 16 August 2002, 02:23

I agree with you lecter, the Parhelia is fast enough, but its not fast enough to justify a $399 pricetag. Its features are good and I doubt I would ever use the three monitor support but I would most definetly use the DVDMax feature, what I LOVE about my G400.

The reason why performance matters so much for these high priced cards is the TTL, or the time to live. A card like tha Parhelia wont provide a good value for the money because it wont age well compared to a same priced R300 or even the G4 4200.

**Greebe** · 16 August 2002, 02:24

What a cluge. Sounds exactly like what a Q3 fps countin nVidiot would say. Price is too high because it lacks the horse power a significantly lesser card, but none the less has a huge amount of features the other doesn't have.

I suppose you base your choice of family car to buy on top end speed alone ignoring any and all other factors too huh? (I highly doubt you would).

If it's speed you need then just buy whatever fills your bill and be done with it.

**HexOne** · 16 August 2002, 02:29

Greebe
I dont even play q3, hate the game:P

why are you attacking me about what car I would buy?? (own a Toyota Corolla btw)

I want decent speed which the Parhelia provides and I want ALOT of quality which the Parhelia provides and I want features.
The Parhelia is good enough in all parts but when I consider how long this card will last me its just not long enough for the money they are asking and compared to the price of other cards on the market that will last longer.

**Greebe** · 16 August 2002, 02:46

Good grief Charlie Brown! I didn't call you an nVidiot, you only came off sounding like one. Additionally if you don't get the car analogy you're more lost than I expected. Besides it wasn't an attack, but an accurate musing based on your comments which most certainly do not add up.

Longentivity doesn't per se have todo with any given products speed, but with support and features it has. Take the G400 for example. Many here dispite it's greatly lagging in the speed dept. refuse to give up on it even tho it's been three years since it hit the market.

I still have mine for the above reasons

**HexOne** · 16 August 2002, 03:02

I'm one of those people, I still use a G400 in my main computer. But now I'm starting to need a new one because it lacks T&L. I could just as well be using a TNT2 Ultra because speedwise they are comparable, but the TNT2 Ultra doesnt have Dualhead so thats out of the question for me.

The issue here is not me, its the price of the card and how people are willing spend that money on it. There are very few who I know of that actually think the card is worth $399.

**Greebe** · 16 August 2002, 03:27

Well the opposite can be said. It is worth the cost to those who need the features it sports.

If a TnT2 Ultra had Twinview (which is nothing more than stolen Dualhead technology) would that fit your bill? It wouldn't for me cause it's 2D sux.

**UberLord** · 16 August 2002, 03:32

Originally posted by HexOne
The issue here is not me, its the price of the card and how people are willing spend that money on it. There are very few who I know of that actually think the card is worth $399.

I'm very happy with the P. I paid top whack for the retail version from the Matrox shop (as they had it in stock and no-one else did

)

I think that it's FAA and image quality is worth the money after owning Matrox Mystique, Matrox G200, nVidia GF1, Kyro 1 & 2, ATI 8500 and finally back full circle with the P. (yes - I'm a graphics card-a-holic

)

The lesson I've learned here is that the horsepower really comes from the CPU, not the GPU. Only the ATI 8500 card was the fastest around when I bought it - the others were always slow in comparison to other cards on the market at the time.

As of yet I don't have a triple head or even dual head solution - mainly due to a severe lack of space atm. But the was I see it is my G200 lastest over a year. Thats the longest ammount of time a graphics card has spent in my box. I think that the P. will last even longer.

Worth the money? I would say yes

**HexOne** · 16 August 2002, 03:43

Ofcorse its always a personal preference on how much people are willing to spend ona certain product. But as can be seen from a poll on a forum on a Matrox fan site people are not willing to spend that much money on the Parhelia.

**Ryu Connor** · 16 August 2002, 03:48

The Parhelia was my only option for pushing my monitors at 1600x1200 in dual indepedent. The NVIDIA budget cards can't do it, the filters are too poor because of the price range. The NVIDIA nView cards can't do indepdent displays (in Windows 2000) and the NVIDIA based PCI cards are all MX series cards that retail for ~$99, which brings up back to the previous budget card corner cutting. I wouldn't consider ATI due to their drivers, but I believe they are in the exact same boat as NVIDIA with regard to their support for multi-monitor.

To me the P's performance is irrelevant. A usable 3200x1200 desktop has proved infinitely more useful than any 3D feature the various cards can spit out.

**MWM** · 16 August 2002, 04:17

All-rightythen....

I'll preface this by saying my impression of Parhelia comes entirely from the net. No stores in my city carry it and I personally don't know anyone who owns one. I doubt I will ever actually see one running.

The cheapest I can find Parhelia (bulk) in Australia is $A899 plus freight, retail cards (which as best as I can tell are still not available) exceed $A1,000.
On a direct exchange rate comparison these equate to US$490 and US$545 respectively.

For such an extravagent outlay why should I not reasonably expect a level of performance is at least equal to if not better than the current top card?

While many of you are obviously happy with Parhelia, and far be it from me to criticise your new pride and joy, why does any response to that posed question come down but it's feature set is the best on the market

Yes, it's feature set is unquestionably the best on the market, but for this level of pricing why should there have to be a choice between features or performance?

From my perspective as a strictly home enthusiast, the only features that A] interest me, and B] are lacking in NV30?R300 are Triple Head, FAA and most importantly, the revered image quality.

Triple head. Parhelia simply lacks the power to effective run FPS on three screens. It's gaming performance across the board is around two thirds to a half of what is needed to be competative.

FAA does not work consistantly. Most impressive when it does work, but clearly pixelated shadows spoil the effect.

Image quality is not just defined by a video signal. The standard of texturing Parhelia generates is the worst on the market. Drivers can fix this issue yes, but why is it an issue at all. White papers clearly advertise a level of aniso-filtering which Parhelia does not currently deliver.
Returning to the signal quality, though not an electrical engineer, just comparing surface mounted components between Parhelia and Radeon 9700 Pro, I'm guessing the latter is going to be found wanting in comparision. (Finally a win for Parhelia)
Enough of my rant anyway.

If Parhelia as it currently is were priced at $A500-600 I would probably buy one, if it ran at 300Mhz+ at it's current price I would probably buy one, but as it isn't and doesn't, the answer is no.

Finally, this is just my opinion. I am simply evaluating Parhelia as it pertains to my needs. If you all want to deride me an ignorant NVidot or whatever, so be it, I don't intend having a flame war with people I don't know who live in far off lands....

Live long and prosper/Valen be with you ect...

**donny** · 16 August 2002, 04:42

The triple head may be a selling point for some, but I do not even know anybody who runnings two monitors. I think Matrox should have a P. on the market at a lot lower price with only a single head, no dvi.

**Sasq** · 16 August 2002, 04:54

well donny know you know at least one person running dual head. one crt and one lcd

ME

Dan

Yes	0%	53 votes
No	0%	116 votes

Announcement

The Parhelia is NOT worth the price they are asking for

The Parhelia is NOT worth the price they are asking for

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