Matrox and 3d labs...

[Fluff]

Matrox better watch out for 3d Labs, they seem to be in direct competition,

http://www.3dlabs.com/product/data/wcvp560.pdf

This card was on Komplett for £149 the P was on there for ~£300.

I know it's only 64mb, but it has comparable features, decent workstation support and DUAL DVI.

What price point will a cut down parhelia come in at?

[Tjalfe]

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[Fluff]

removed the .

[Chrono_Wanderer]

IMO these cards belong to very different niche if you ask me.

The Parhelia is aimed as an all-round card that has good multimonitor support, triple head 3d acceleration, "best" 2D acceleration+high res (CAD + Engineering), video editing (WYSIWYG), medical (their PCI-X Medical Parhelias) and a bit of 3d gaming (SurroundGaming).

On the other hand, 3DLabs VP cards belong to the Pro 3D (even though this on is entry level), heavy geometry calculations, and ESPECIALLY OpenGL 2.0 support for pro 3D.

3DLabs cards should be shitty at running extreme resolutions like 2048x1536. Note that their RAMDAC is 370MHz, thus they can't drive monitors at 2048x1536x32bpp > 60MHz; whereas Parhelia can do 85Hz. Chances are when you have an engineering you are likely to use one of those 24" 2048x1536@85Hz Display w/high quality 2D. Also Parhelia's DVI can do 1600x1200x75Hz last time i checked (correct me if i am wrong here). So yea. Different niche. Pro 2D+video vs. Pro 3D+heavy DCC.

[Fluff]

3d labs seem to have made a decent card that fills a gap in the market, for a cheap/decent dual display workstation card for the money. But i am waiting on a review from someone, to make a proper opinion.

[TdB]

Note that their RAMDAC is 370MHz, thus they can't drive monitors at 2048x1536x32bpp > 60MHz

Im a bit confused by that.
is that why it can´t run that res higher than 60 hz, because IIRC the old g400max with a RAMDAC @ 360MHZ could run that res in 85hz (i never tried, but that is what the box says).

[Ribbit]

2048 x 1536 x 85Hz x 1.1 x 1.1 ~= 325MHz

The 60Hz limit is probably not due to the RAMDAC speed.

Fluff, there are a couple of reviews of these cards out there, and they've been mentioned on these forums - have a search for 3DLabs and/or Wildcat.

[K6-III]

Well, you could then probably push the refresh higher via PowerStrip.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

i think its up to the manufecteurer to implant the resolutions... maybe Matrox can boost higher due to their better electronics components?