BAD parhelia image problems, reputation damaging!

[Maggi]

easy guys, easy ...

for one, I wasn't dead serious with my comment, which should have been obvious by use of this smiley > in my reply.

For the other, DGhost has been here forever and he surely does know about all pros and cons concerning Matrox, ATI and NVidia, their products and their support


To me, seeing that DGhost is about to leave Matrox completely behind only indicates how frustrated he must be, obviously caused by lack of feedback on those brought up issues and I found it pretty amusing that you two (crow8k3a & James_D) were touting "don't come back whining ...", because he (DGhost) is definately aware of what he'll leave behind and what he'll face when heading towards the competition.

Seeing that you both were not aware of DGhost's background in terms of Matrox and MURC, clearly classified you as Mini's, despite how long you've been here and how great your knowledge elsewhere might be ... but this is really not an issue and I don't wanna diss any of you or soemthing to that extend, I just found it funny and worth mentioning in this particular context.

[Cobos]

Since it is pretty clear the banding problem is hardware related, there is very little you can actually do.
I'm pretty sure the problem is within the Parhelia core and such the only solution is the exchange the chip, something Matrox is not very likely to do. Except for that you can minimize it and thus mostly remove the symptoms (sp?) but not the disease.
That's why there are few solutions here, they have been said and Matrox has ignored them (yet?)

Cobos

[Indiana]

Originally posted by crow8k3a
wow, u think problems are magically fixed at the snap of our fingers?

If you honestly think nvidia or ati is gonna give you better tech support you must be outside your mind.

Don't come back crying later when your card has more issues and ati or nvidia doens't want to even hear about it.

DGhost did give them quite some time to fix it up. However the offcial stance of Matrox is that the banding is "normal" behaviour of their card, so it's quite safe to assume that it will not be fixed EVER.

BTW, ATI while generally having bad customer support, RMA those R9700 which have the banding problem without problems - and this is the way Matrox should do as well.
BTW, in the old times Matrox were known for their generous RMA policy, maybe they're currently just lacking the money to be able to afford doing so.

[drslump]

Hi,

I've been with matrox hardware since the doctor told me that my eyes were suffering 'cos I was too much time in front of the computer. Then I had to do a choice, either I cut my computer hours or buy a better IQ graphic card, so I bought a G400 (quite an investment at the time).

In my case the parhelia has an horrible banding effect, even gaming at full screen w/ vsync on and all the other tricks used.
I'm not saying I will not buy another matrox card but next time I will wait to see which hardware suits me better. Maybe I'll go for matrox, nVidia, Ati, SIS or Trident or whatever has a good IQ and good "useful" features.
I bought the P. as soon as it was available assuming that being from Matrox it was a wise choice but I was wrong.

The matrox tech support is great but sales it's not. I tried several time to contact them about the banding issue and they always gave me the same answer : "we can't guarantee that the replacement hardware will not have the problem" and when I reply I never get an answer.

If it was a new born company I could "understand" this but being Matrox makes me thing that have to be something wrong in the PC industry. What can make a so beloved company to act in this way?

And btw either Matrox was giving hand-picked samples to Anand, Tom and the rest or they made an awful job reviewing the P. without noticing the banding. But then again, who trust that reviews?

ciao

[James_D]

Maggi: Yup... point taken...

[DGhost]

crow: if its been a snap of the fingers, its been a 4+ month long snap of the fingers. (over 5 months since it was originally reported to Matrox, but that wasn't by people who acctually had to pay for the card like I did) my hands are getting awefully sore.

the same thing goes for you in assuming about who I am and how much I know (or don't).

Last time i heard of any problems on an ATI card they had people RMA'ng their boards within a week or two of it being noticed.

Just because Matrox has very approachable Technical Support or Customer Service (or DevRel) doesn't make it good. ATI has started posting regularly over at rage3d, if i remember correctly. And ATI (or any of the vendors that sell NVidia products) wouldn't hesitate to recall boards for either of these issues.

Quite frankly for me these two issues have been the only thing i have had to rely on Customer Service or Technical Support for, and unfortunately for them their superiors chose good issues to screw up on.

We still love you Haig... you still do wonderfully...

DevRel is a different boat. Matrox DevRel has been wonderful to work with. Dunno about ATI and NVidia, as I don't have any reason to get in touch with them (maybe after I own one of their cards again I will). Everything I have heard is that ATI's is pretty much a pain in the ass to work with unless you are JC and NVidia's is just alright.

this has nothing to do with how long i've been registered here, or how long i've been using Matrox products... I will never give up my G400MAX and i still have a Millennium 2 sitting on my desk that I used to use. I put a G450 in my moms computer so that i knew i wouldn't have to worry about any of the random issues that I have seen with other video cards, despite having ready access to other much cheaper video cards, even ones that perform better. Hell, i used the G400MAX instead of a GeForce and a Voodoo5. had them both sitting on my desk but neither one was good enough to go into my main machine for more than a week at a time.

But times do change. ATI has come a long way since their original Radeon - the 8500 I owned and used for a while was mostly stable, compared to the Radeon that was a huge step forward. Let alone compared to the Rage 128 products, where even with the last set of drivers you would have to install them 3 or 4 times in order to get it to work correctly.

NVidia has come a long way. Their products have come from having compatability issues with every chipset on the market except Intel's to being more compatable than ATI's. They have mostly learned from their mistakes (such as the one not to draw all your power from the AGP slot), their drivers have improved substantially. Their drivers correctly supported Windows XP's GUI accelerate at launch, compared to ATI's drivers which were still having issues with this last time i used my 8500. and compared to the little problems Matrox is still having with this (my mothers G450 was having severe performance issues with certain effects, a drastic change from what I remember happened with the G400). I think that in the amount of time i have owned the GeForce I have seen less blue screens related to the nvidia drivers than I have seen coming from the Parhelia drivers. but, its been a long time, and i honestly am probably forgetting things. the Parhelia certainly isn't as bad as the 8500 was when I got it.

and yes, the last two and a half years that i have spent fumbling around here has been "forever" in computer years. A lot of things have come and gone, and a lot of people ditched Matrox (and MURC) after the G550 launch. A lot has changed and a lot has stayed the same. Shame I didn't find MURC sooner, this has pretty much been the only forum I have stuck with for this long...

on a side note, that doesn't mean i will be leaving MURC... just means my next system probably won't have a Matrox card in it. I'll probably pick up a laptop as I probably will not be able to keep a desktop system around. I was mostly just posting out of frustration (as i usually am not quite this vocal about things.... just rather annoyed...)...

[crow8k3a]

Dghost
well i wasn't assuming anything about u, i have seen u post many times, so i was responding to your text only.

Alot of us have backgrounds that equally if not more qualify us about talking about the level of technical support and quality of video cards.

I realize it has been a while since they have known about the banding issues. I would definately wait for an official response before i make any premature decision about what my next card will be, and in any even now, it wouldn't be a radeon 9700 or any of the current nvidia cards out, what the future holds i do not know.

maggie
i didn't really see the smileys, but i don't like seeing people take something someone else is doing, as waht they should be doing, or as a "good" move, without first evaluating for themeselves their needs.

[Maggi]

Originally posted by James_D
Maggi: Yup... point taken...

glad to hear ...

Originally posted by crow8k3a
maggie
i didn't really see the smileys, but i don't like seeing people take something someone else is doing, as waht they should be doing, or as a "good" move, without first evaluating for themeselves their needs.

fair enough ... sounds fine to me


Just for the record, there always have been a few "smart minis" that don't know jack, but insist on giving "wise advices" ... that was the main reason why I put you into that boat as well, but obviously you proved me wrong.

All peachy again ?

[James_D]

Aye.. all peachy...

[Kurt]

Originally posted by crow8k3a
<snip>I realize it has been a while since they have known about the banding issues. I would definately wait for an official response before i make any premature decision about what my next card will be, and in any even now, it wouldn't be a radeon 9700 or any of the current nvidia cards out, what the future holds i do not know.
<snip>

beh...the official answer is : "this is normal behaviour". basically, what you can do to not have the problem is run dual DVI screens (AFAIK) -which pretty much kills the TripleHead feature usefullness. For me, it makes the P a whole lot less interesting as I don't need 2 screens for work...and gaming on 2 screens is not as interesting as on 3...basically I find the Radeon line a lot more interesting in that respect (especially the new 9500 models) -I'm not waiting for Nvidia as we probably won't see the cards before March.

It becomes simple arithmetics: Radeon 9500 ~150 EUR (without taxes) vs Parhelia ~420 EUR (without taxes) or a G550 if I really need DualHead...

Maybe they should stop marketing TripleHead and wait for another hardware release (P8X anyone? ). Just point out the fact that they have the best 2D and the best Dualhead implementation. They might even find/market some usefulness for GigaColor for the stock market...

[thop]

Originally posted by Kurt
They might even find/market some usefulness for GigaColor for the stock market...

"See your stock falling faster then ever, in 40bit!"

[James_D]

Originally posted by thop
"See your stock falling faster then ever, in 40bit!"

hehe

[crow8k3a]

yah thats cool :-p

the normal behavior just means that all cards are doing it, it would be abnormal if it didn't. However they haven't said what they plan to do about it, or if it is possible to fix. Hopefully they will come up w/ something soon that will satisfy us.

also i love surround gaming and triple monitor, works great for using photoshop and maya/max at the same time. i hope future cards continue to support it

[UtwigMU]

crow, could you please give a more detailed experience with parhelia, photoshop, max, maya and autocad.

Are there any glitches, how's banding in those applications?

How do they work across 3 screens?

Does gigacolour work across 3 screens?

How are the Heidi drivers?

Did you have any AutoCAD experience?

Benefits/problems in those apps would be my main factor when deciding for or against Parhelia.

[Wombat]

Does gigacolour work across 3 screens?

Nope. That one's a hardware limitiation.