Parhelia 3D Interference/Banding Issues Causing A Stir.

[VigilAnt]

Hello, please discuss the editorial with the above name and found at www.murc.ws in this thread.

I had been waiting to post this item up in hopes that Matrox would make an official announcement. My sources tell me, though, that Matrox Graphics upper management, and you all know who that is, is not interested in addressing the problem because they don't believe it's much of an issue.

<a href="http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36666" target="_blank" >There is a thread in the forums that is detailing the problem, so read up if you aren't sure of what it is all about.</a> I find it hard to believe that the very same people who want us to believe that the image quality is so much more important than upper performance envelopes will at the same time ignore a very major concern such as this. I was told that Matrox knew about the problem before releasing and marketing gave the chip a go ahead anyhow. The hardware team knew how to fix it, and several other issues (which I will post about later), and it would push the release of the card back about another month for a new revision of Parhelia. This would have probably addressed the performance and image quality issues, but marketing decided it was time to release it and that's just what they did.

Now since marketing gave it the go ahead, they are trying to sweep it under the rug in an attempt to downplay the problems and avoid losing face. I find it completely despicable that they would bold faced tell customers that the image quality of a Matrox Parhelia is something special, then let this happen all knowlingly. Great bargain for the price, right Matrox? Next thing you know, they will be trying to convince us that it is a feature.

VigilAnt

[luni]

Guess the ball has started rolling now...

[Sinistral]

- So it is a Hardware Issue? No Driver Update with the problem fixed? With all the bad news. Matrox needs a heavy duty Over Haul. -

[Umfriend]

Maybe someone should post a link to this and the other VigilAnt thread to the internet press (register and the like) to get this big?
Umf

[mgu2]

Re: Parhelia 3D Interference/Banding Issues Causing A Stir.

I was told that Matrox knew about the problem before releasing and marketing gave the chip a go ahead anyhow. The hardware team knew how to fix it, and several other issues (which I will post about later), and it would push the release of the card back about another month for a new revision of Parhelia. This would have probably addressed the performance and image quality issues, but marketing decided it was time to release it and that's just what they did.

This is just too much. This is a crime, it is called deception. The situation almost looks like Matrox houses some white-collar nvidia/ati saboteurs that know damn well what is the biggest selling point of Matrox cards!

[GNEP]

I saw it the other day, because I went looking for it (don't usually run things in the situations where it would occur). And when it occurs, it is a pretty obvious flaw.

It fair blows a hole in the "image quality" thing, and even if most people would not see this most of the time, the reputational damage it is doing may well be killing one of the only really strong markets that Matrox has left (people who like IQ). Because before buying the card, to hear about this would be enough to put you off, even if you never would have seen it in real life because you don't run windowed stuff.

Crazy.

[RainMaker]

Well, before you guys all start a lynching mob (oops, too late) you may consider the fact that it took all these people all this time ot recognise a problem that was in Parhelia from the beginning. That would make this a minor issue in my book. It doesn't help Matrox much to start a panic here (oops, again too late). How many would have noticed this problem if it hadn't been pointed out?

Well, I'm not really defending Matrox, but just want to urge people to put this thing in perspective.

[103er-Fan]

I really hope that this management sees that we want this issue to be fix, since it is not a minor issue

[GNEP]

It's too late to claim that this is a minor issue - the problem these days is that as soon as something like this is spotted it is all over the web and the reputational damage is done.

Solution? Either make damn sure that these sort of issues don't happen in the first place, or tell the public soon and often after it is spotted what is going on. And keep telling them. Silence WILL NOT WORK with this sort of issue. That makes people (a) draw the conclusion that it is a hardware issue, and so knocks out any IQ advantages that P might have had, and (b) will mean that more people will remember the Parhelia for its hardware problems for a long time to come - even if these "memories" are based on false information to start with.

Hey - how many people do you come across that don't know about surround gaming, and thing that the P is far to slow for any modern games? This isn't true, but it's what people will remember based on the first reviews.

Gnep.

[Hati]

Well, I'm not really defending Matrox, but just want to urge people to put this thing in perspective.

And I do not want to bash Matrox but I found it hard to believe that they released the cards not only knowing about the issues but not letting hardware team fix this.
If VigilAnt is right this wouldn't have been a big delay (one month for the next revision).
I would not have been surprised if I was reading this from some other companies - but not from Matrox.
For me Matrox still stands for high quality products and I hope they proof this right with the next revision of Parhelia.
Hati

[yuppi]

I really hoped that the bug might be fixed with a bios/driver upate :-(
Shame on Matrox for that. And even more shame for the lame fan on P.

[UberLord]

Originally posted by Hati

For me Matrox still stands for high quality products and I hope they proof this right with the next revision of Parhelia.
Hati

For me they have lost their hard earned reputation of image quality. I just posted my take on this over at DriverHeaven after keeping silent waiting for matrox to do something. As they're obviously doing nothing with existing customers then I'm doing something to stop potential customers being dissappointed.

[Cobos]

I'm feeling the same way myself....It's pretty serious when such a major issue can knowingly go past Matrox without them stopping the card. But the really interesting thing about this is that Vigilant implied the M engineers could get a higher clocked Parhelia out the door with a little more time. And even though I beleive P is fast enough, the fact that all the first reviews slammed it for not being fast enough DID hurt sales, and 1 month later they would still have some time on R9700 and such it would have been a much better product (especially with the price they are selling them for).
I'm seriously considering if I should buy a Parhelia at all now.... especially since I want one without the 3D disturbances and hopefully without AGP 8x since my new MB doesn't support that.

Cobos

[R.Carter]

Originally posted by RainMaker
Well, before you guys all start a lynching mob (oops, too late) you may consider the fact that it took all these people all this time ot recognise a problem that was in Parhelia from the beginning. That would make this a minor issue in my book. It doesn't help Matrox much to start a panic here (oops, again too late). How many would have noticed this problem if it hadn't been pointed out?

Well, if you see this issue it looks a lot like a bad monitor or interferance problem. Many people might not think it is due to the video card at all.

So its not unreasonable to think that it might take people a while to start testing and eventually figure out that its a flaw in the card.

As well, not everyone who noticed this flaw would have started whining about it on forums right away. Most would likely contact Matrox and try RMAing their card first and other things before they figure out it appears to be a design flaw of some kind.

[James_D]

I'm currently working on a research project at Pecs uni. in Hungary. Where we use a custome made laser projector to project an computer overlay onto a retina similar to NOMAD head-mounted heads-up display that overlays a red-only overlay. But with a slight difference we dont use mirrors, but send a laser beam to a retina implant. But that's not my point. We used also the MEMS(from Microvision) prototype together with a Parhelia, and tested out some few games. And the for some reasons the parhelia created epileptic seisure when the screen was light. It was just a few days ago(a costudent read the matrox forum and had a bright idea.) that we found out that it was the Parhelia, after changing it with a ati 8500. I don't know wether the bug can create an epileptic seisure viewing a normal crt. But epileptics should pay extra attention to, weither they have an increase in epileptic seisures infront of a pc with a parhelia or not.

Anyway we hope that the bug will be fixed shortly, because it's a very cheap way for us to use 3 displays (two on the retinas and one for the external view.)