Thinking of getting a Parhelia, but which OEM or Retail?

[treilanin]

Yeah I must admit I am a bit ashamed that I went with a GeForce4 Ti4200 a few weeks before the Parhelia launch. In retrospect I really wish I waited and bided my time til I could afford the Parhelia. Sure the GeForce was fast but the 2D was quite blurry. And to make matters worse my house is filled with Matrox cards on older machines. I have 2 G400 32MB cards and a 8MB Millenium mocking me with their vibrant displays on lesser monitors in comparison to the GeForce4 Ti4200 on my Sony G400 monitor. *sigh*... So now I am considering purchasing a Parhelia and chucking that GeForce to my piece of junk second computer to make it a secondary gaming rig/linux dev box.

Now the real question is "Are the differences between an OEM and Retail card worth the extra money?" I have investigated online in Canada and most stores only carry the OEM version of the card for around $515, whereas I can buy the retail card directly from Matrox for $618. Are there some extra features, beyond the bundle and extra MHz that are truly worth the extra $100? I am thinking of tacking the Parhelia onto a P4 2.4B based machine in my next upgrade if that helps in splitting hairs .

[Kruzin]

The only difference is the clock speeds.
OEMs are not quite as fast as retails.
But my OEM is plenty fast for me...

[Agent31]

I know this is the Matrox Hardware board, but which brand of GF4 did you get?

[Novdid]

I'm considering a retail Parhelia.

Money is the reason I haven't got one already...

[mutz]

...ya know, I bought Mil I 'cause the pic was so good, I bought a Mil II for the piggy-back, a G400 'cause I didn't want to wait for the Max, when the Max came out I had to have it, then came the G450 got that too...

Now I've got the P 128 retail, but when the P 256 comes out, will I be happy with the 128?

I'd go straight for the P retail and not muck around over the bucks, otherwise you KNOW you won't be happy...

[treilanin]

I got an MSI Geforce4 Ti4200 which is driving a 17 inch Sony G400, the sad part is my linux box is running a G400 32 MB driving a 17 inc no name brand monitor. You know what makes me mad is the fact that the G400 based machine is more vibrant on a monitor that is not a trinitron. *sigh* That's what I am seriously considering dumping it for a Parhelia. I miss matrox and I have 3 other computers with Matrox cards and they look nicer then my MSI.

[mutz]

...that's it.

[Cobos]

The reason I'm thinking about the retail is the difference isn't that big and theoreticly it is 10% faster (200 -> 220Mhz)so if I later decide to sell my Parhelia it would probably be worth a little bit more, i.e. look at the price difference between a G400 and a G400 Max now.

Cobos

[McElvis]

Does the OEM version of the Parhelia ship with the Reef demo?
Or is it only the Retail versions?

Thanks.

[mutz]

...dunno. Somebody gotta B?

[KeiFront]

Both ship with the reef demo.

[WyWyWyWy]

And you can actually download them off matrox.com...

[rally]

Hi, i've just registered on here, what an excellent resource for matrox cards this is
Rather than start a whole new thread i would like to know what is the difference between the OEM and retail versions of the G550 DVI card?
Any input greatly appreciated.

[K6-III]

Where can you download the reef demo from.....I have not seen it available for download....

[testjoe]

I know what u mean.

Originally posted by mutz
...ya know, I bought Mil I 'cause the pic was so good, I bought a Mil II for the piggy-back, a G400 'cause I didn't want to wait for the Max, when the Max came out I had to have it, then came the G450 got that too...

Now I've got the P 128 retail, but when the P 256 comes out, will I be happy with the 128?

I'd go straight for the P retail and not muck around over the bucks, otherwise you KNOW you won't be happy...

Funny I'm just like you. We're so retarded! I will probably have to get a P-256R at least for my home system to replace the 128. Luckily the G400Max was my next Matrox card after the Mil2 so I skipped a couple steps. At least my watercooling setup allows me to buy cheap Intel P4's after price drops and run them at the speed of the flagship P4.. That might be my one saving grace.. Since whatever the latest P4 out costs, it is at least double the price of the next one down.. anyone that buys a $500 P4 2.8 right now for example would either have to be spending someone else's money on it or, i dunno what... Since it will be half the price in a few weeks.. Buying the latest Pentium ever since the beginning no doubt qualifies for the list of '10 worst investments' candidates.

Joe T.