Australians All Let Us Rejoice...

[Yxalitis]

WooHoo, My Parhelia is on it's way!
Should be here by Friday, if the Airmail Fairies are in a good mood;
How much did it cost me?
$750 AUD delivered, and yes, that's the Retail version

I got this from SilverBulletPC, for $405 USD Delivered.
Richard at Silver Bullet was helpful, enabling me to avoid Johnie Howard's Election Mandate

I will update you all when I get it.

Oh, this is a list of all the graphics card I have had in my PC as far back as I can remember:
I may have forgotten one or two!
Cirrus Logic CL4564
Tseng Labs ET4000
Tseng Labe ET6000
Creative Blaster 3D
Generic Voodoo 4MB
Matrox Millenium 4MB
Canopus Pure 3D Voodoo 6MB
Creative Voodoo 2 12MB
Matrox G400 16MB Single Head
Creative Geforce 256 MB SDR
PixelView Geforce 3
Asus Geforce 4 Ti4400
Gainward Geforce 4 Ti4200
X-tasy Geforce Ti4200 (GREAT overclocker!!)

I will be very interested in the 2-D Image Quality, as I am sick of crawling text when viewing black writing on white backgrounds!

[Marshmallowman]

cool, let me know how long it takes.

Might to have give that ago in a couple of months.

Still can't work out why Johnies so happy to have a "MAN" date...I did not think he was that open minded

[Yxalitis]

It's Here!!

OK, it took 6 days to get to my front door.

Haven't installed it yet, will let you all know (That's one person, so far !).

[TdB]

Haven't installed it yet, will let you all know (That's one person, so far !).

the rest of us is interrested too, but sometimes I am just too much a lurker to answer all the posts.

[stev1337]

i am interested too
what happen if the card is defect?? send it all the way back to US and all the way back to AUS??
i dont trust on-line shopping

[The_King]

6 days is not too bad. I have been waiting 4 days just to get a motherboard over from Melbourne !! F#ck, what is Australia Post doing??!!

[adhuang]

If you are happy with the packaging and the card is in full working order then I will definitely get one from Silver Bullet as well.

By the way, how is the card packaged? Did they do anything special to protect the card from being demaged?

[Yxalitis]

It's Perfect!!

OK, my first days results for you all.

The installation was a breeze, no problems at all, which is a relief, after all the sad cases you read about in the forums. I did NOT have to re-install Windows XP, it worked just as it should, detected new card, asked for drivers, installed, rebooted, hey Presto! I particularly liked the option to choose start up resolution and font size BEFORE rebooting! Nice touch Matrox .
My system Specs:
P4 1.6A @ 2.2GHz
Asus P4T-E mobo
256 MB RDRAM
SB-Live! Value
40GB Fujitsu HDD
9GB Quantum Fireball+ HDD
Pioneer Slot-feed DVD ROM
Some other 24X CD-ROM
Viewsonic 19" G790
300W Power Supply
MS Trackball Explorer
MS USB Keyboard.
Matrox Parhelia!! (Replacing an overclocked Geforce Ti4200@4600 Speeds)

Image Quality:

Firstly, IQ, and let me say it’s true. I have never seen my monitor look so good, after years of viewing through Nvidia’s crappy filters, my Viewsonic is suddenly worth the small fortune it cost me. I usually run the desktop at 1280X1024@85Hz, but 1600X1200@77Hz is now a real possibility. I even had to lower the brightness settings. Black text on white no longer jitters back and forth, and everything is easier to read.

Gaming:

Just a quick couple of benchies, so that the FPS crowd can get their joliies and go away.

BEFORE: (Geforce)
3DMark,
no AA default settings
11,000 (Well, 10,998)
2X AA 8,800

AFTER: (Parhelia)
3Dmark:
no AA default settings
7,770
16X FAA
6,800

So, as expected, no where near as fast as a humble $340 AUD Geforce.
BUT:
UT2003 (Yes, the leaked beta build 927) runs MUCH better on the Parhelia, without all the choppiness of the Geforce. I am not sure if this is just to do with the extra 64MB RAM, I don’t think so. The way the Parhelia handles itself is just better, I can see part of the screenpause when textures are being fetched, but the gameplay is un-interrupted. It’s hard to explain, but when the Geforece fetched textures, the whole screen jittered, with the Parhelia, only part of the screen paused, leaving gameplay smooth. These are only fractions of a second, but when the whole screen paused under the Geforce, you really notice it, with the Parhelia; I only saw the screen pause phenomenon while my daughter was playing, you aren’t aware of it when playing.

DVD, and TV-Out:

OK, this is just fantastic, quite simply the best I have ever seen, DVD’s run without any choppiness, and the image quality on the screen is perfect. Compared to the Geforce TV-out, which was appalling, I have a perfectly sized and centred image. DVD Max is even smart enough to full screen the TV when I played a DivX! Clever Matrox!

Overall:

Well, I was going to sell this (At a profit, as Matrox cards are at a premium down here!) and order in the Radeon 9700, but after my experiences, I will keep my Parhelia, thank you very much! A worthwhile purchase, and one that won’t depreciate at the astonishing rate Nvidia cards do. I know I will be able to sell this card in 1-2 years and still get 70-80 % for it. Try doing that with your Geforce 2!!

Ok, I will add a little more later, after I run some more tests.