BAD parhelia image problems, reputation damaging!

[Kurt]

Originally posted by 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.

one more:

do the Heidi driver support TripleHead? methinks a way to solve the problem in AutoCAD is to limit screen support to 2....

[DGhost]

crow, I would love to sit and wait for a resolution, except for the fact that I am expecting to sell computers off and have to buy a new one several months later, after being in a blackout on technology. i don't really know if I have *time* to wait for a resolution

[crow8k3a]

i don't use autocad, i only touched it once :-p.

3dsmax doesn't seem to have any problems that i have noticed on my system. It works in triple or dual. I use opengl for it, so i have not tested any heidi drivers. Not sure about wysiwyg, the new feature in drivers. Check matrox official forums to be sure.

for maya there seems to be some glitches in triplehead and duahead independent. Other users are reproducing these and matrox is talking w/ maya people to get them fixed soon. One others didn't experiece that i did was the timeline at the bottom not showing up under independent mode, but was fine in clone, i havne't done extensive testing to see whether this was my specific project settings or not.

oh, and photoshop 7, works really well. I normally run either in triplehead if i'm not using something color intense, or dualhead independent for illustrations w/ lots of color gradients.

any other questions let me know, or if i forgot to answer one.

[UtwigMU]

Banding in Max or Maya?

[afterburn]

Maybe I am doing something wrong, but I don't see any banding at all. Does anyone have a program available for download like a demo that causes banding with others, cause I sure don't see it.

[bERNIE]

Hi afterburn,

I couldn't see it either but now I can. The first time I ever noticed it was running Kyodai Mahjonng. I think the demo is available at www.kyodai.com. In order for me to notice it I had to run it in a windowed mode and get any of the confirmation boxes up on screen then launch a blank IE window and I can see it. If I close the confirmation box on Kyodai then then banding goes. So for me, it's a 2D box on top of a 3D window that seems to show it! Weird!

Regards,

John.

[afterburn]

No banding... but what have you done!?!?!? You have made me a MahJongg addict again! I thought i was clean...

[bERNIE]

Many apologies

[crow8k3a]

i don't notice banding in maya. i do notice it in many games, such as nolf2 and bf1942.

[VJ]

Apparently, there is an (albeit expensive) fix, posted by Normico:

http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/Forum8/HTML/001617-5.html

One expensive solution:

I have a friend, in fact he is in the Home theater business....and got himself a transcoder from KEy digital Systems, as a demo...
Lucky me... I got it for a few days... and I was able to fix the banning issue. That's right I fixed the banning issue..( not really)... It's just a bypass... but here's what I did.

Hooked up the DVI output to the transcoder... only at 1024*1769 or less at 60hz... from the transcoder I got 1024*786 RGBHV @60hz... to a 21 inch sony mulitsync.
Hence I got no H-banning during game play since the card is using the external DACS for this.

It just goes to show..
want to spend over a 1000 bucks?

If this holds, than it means the problem lies in the DACs of the Parhelia...


Jörg

[Wombat]

We already knew that the digital output was clean, no surprise there. Don't way too much attention to Norcimo though, the guy's an idiot.

For that kind of money, the "better fix" would be to get DVI-D monitors.

[VJ]

Yes (I read that in the thread as well ).... I just figured it might be interesting. But are there DVI-D CRT monitors ? (I still prefer CRTs for photo-editing)

Oh, is the banding less when a BNC-cable is used ? (as opposed to the standard VGA cable)


Jörg

[Wombat]

No such monitors that I'm aware of.

I haven't heard about people comparing BNC, but I doubt it would help much. BNC offers a sharper picture due to the lack of interference between wires in the monitor cable. The banding seems to be created on the P itself, so you're just going to do a better job of transmitting a crappy signal.

[VJ]

Ok, thanks, guess I'll contiue lurking around...
Featurewise, the Parhelia seems like *the* card for me: if they would fix this stupid banding issue, I'd immediatly buy one. Now I'm just waiting, and even considering purchasing a PCI-G450 for the time being (I have other uses for PCI later on)...


Jörg

[Maggi]

using BNC doesn't change a thing ...