Parhelia performance under DoomIII per John Carmack.

[Dilitante1]

HMMMMMmmmmmm

If Carmack invested more resources into P tweaking instead of the X-prize http://www.msnbc.com/news/904842.asp?0cv=KA01 maybe the game would look better.

[DedicatedFan3D]

The Parhelia board that is in my posession happens to be what I THINK may have been sent to JC as well (I have no possible way of confirming that) and it DOES perform faster than the retail version. I have no way of verifying the clock speed of this card either, other than it benchmarked about %10 faster than the retail version I had previously.

Some strange things about this board though:
It has a wire that goes right across the top of the PCB to another unit.
Apparently it does not use the same Chrontel units that a retail board has.
Now quality-wise it is the same as the retail board, I have tried every res at every refresh and cannot tell any difference.
BUT, it is faster, whether that's due to a core clockspeed increase or different BIOS I don't know.
But JC may very well have had a faster board that what was shipped.
However, I agree with Greebe, he's a schmuk. What we're seeing him do with the Parhelia is what I saw him do with the Riva128 many years ago.

"HEY THIS IS A GREAT CHIP" then 3 months later "I hate Riva128, wish it would die" and that last part is VERBATIM!

JC did not want Quake3 on Dreamcast, he cited that their contracts were "screwy" then about 20 lines down in his .plan he would also go on to say that they lost 120 million that month (sega).
But once Sony comes into play, Quake3 was fully ported onto PS2 and on the shelves in about 2 months whilst the DC port took roughly a year and a half.
Go figure, he goes to whoever waves the dollar.

[Stringy]

Don't forget, JC is in it for the money...
So is Matrox for that matter...
They both care what the consumer wants to a point...
In that respect they act alike...

For the most part JC says these things in order to keep himself and his future titles on the hot burner... To generate conversation and sometimes controversy inorder to keep the limelight and thus garner more potential buyers...

Matrox had the goods with the P, they had unfortunate execution problems... Clock speed, Banding and overall delays...
Nice to see them come out with some bread and butter cards based on the P core, hopefully they will do well...
Here's to recouping the P's R&D costs and future R&D projects


Craig

[DukeP]

Hear hear, Craig.

It is unfortunate, but all areas of merchandise needs a star.

For some, JC IS a star. For me, he is. Be it abilities or just timing, he DID put out some of the first good 3d games.

Unfortunately, he pretty often behaves like a star.
Since he is working in the computerprogramming compartment, people (me as well) expect him to behave like a university trained scientist. He isnt. Not really.

The analog to a muscician, a former garageband-now-turned-rockstar, is much closer.

As for the P.

The story goes, that mony talks or people walk.
It takes more than one proffesion to build a bridge, so to speak. Cant do it with only carpenters.

Best wishes,
~~DukeP~~

[drslump]

First I'd like to thank K6 for the info, however since I don't know how he got it I'll not believe it at 100%

I'll have to wait 'til D3 goes gold, if it runs better on a GF4-MX than on the P. I'll be greatly dissapointed with it.
iD is in its rigth to don't support a video-card because it's not very popular but what will they put on the game box? "compatible with a 64mb DX8.1 GPU (except Matrox Parhelia!)".
I don't think so, he'll have to tweak the engine to perform ok on the Parhelia.


I'm not a profesional programmer but I do like to code and Parhelia is great for programmers. I can run the IDE, the debugger, the API help and run the program. All visible in the screen.
Every gfx dessigner, programmer, video-editing, musician I've spoken to love the Parhelia for it's dual/triple-head implementation.
I'm sure iD have some matrox cards running on its office's PCs.

ciao,
ivan

[Norcimo_RIS]

Look at it for what it is. Why many users defend a product that has shown outrightly that is not a good . Almost a year know and still people debate over the parhelia. Look at the facts:

1. Parhelia is not the only card that can offer triple head, there are many solutions for this... Specially since the norm is mostly desktop applications..

2. For 3D artists? In fact we all know that the 3D guru of all platforms is SGI..no real proffesional will even look at a PC, never mind using a Parhelia for it...

3. For desktop publishing>? The industry uses MACs for that stuff, everywhere you see a printing station, they use MACs hooked up to large scale print machings for newspapers and magazine publishing. Even the artists all use MACS.

4. Poor, very poor FPS in gaming..
5. Electronicly Flawed ( banding issue ).
6. Video Quality, The only good thing this card has, and frankly not for long, DVI is becoming the norm in video data transfer, so throw out (RGB) who cares? 5th order filers and wetnot? Go for DVI.
7. High priced.

Seven deadly sins and seven combinations that contributed too the overall piece of unorganized grabastic software and hardware doomed for failure. Not to mention long developement times in driver issues..and failure to publicly anounce the banding issue.

So Carmac saying he found bugs in the Parhelia... you know what? He probably did.

[MaartenLierop]

Well, you clearly are not involved in the graphics industry, some comments:

1. Parhelia is not the only card that can offer triple head,

true, but it is a very easy way for people like me, I want things to work correctly. To make Triplehead with more than one videocard always gives more problems.


2. For 3D artists? In fact we all know that the 3D guru of all platforms is SGI..

Ther are Much more half-proffesional people working in the industry than fully proffessional. The market for SGI is very very small in adition to the market for Parhelia.


3. For desktop publishing>? The industry uses MACs for that stuff.

OH?! faro how long? The Mac is running on old reputation rather than better perfromance for this kind of work. It is losing its first place, without a change for a come back.


4. Poor, very poor FPS in gaming..

true

5. Electronicly Flawed ( banding issue ).

Well, I don't have it, and some people do. I don't know if it is a majority wich has this problem, but the number of people complaining about it on this site, and the matrox forum is not too big.

so "deadly" sings.... i don't see them (well ok, not all of them . at least)
regards

[GinoCyber]

"2. For 3D artists? In fact we all know that the 3D guru of all platforms is SGI.."


Uh huh. Show me how many real animation facilities that have hundreds of employees modeling and animating are all equipped with an SGI station.

Most of these houses will have an SGI stations for the head animator and his team. All the employees that are just modeling and doing basic animation will use a PC. Once their part is done, they give it to the head animator and he along with his team will do the rest.

Ciao

[Mikko]

Originally posted by DedicatedFan3D
The Parhelia board that is in my posession happens to be what I THINK may have been sent to JC as well (I have no possible way of confirming that) and it DOES perform faster than the retail version. I have no way of verifying the clock speed of this card either, other than it benchmarked about %10 faster than the retail version I had previously.

...BUT, it is faster, whether that's due to a core clockspeed increase or different BIOS I don't know...

Hi!
Could you copy/paste your Pinsfile.txt here, so the others could try it and see if there's any difference on performance?

[Maggi]

Originally posted by GinoCyber
"2. For 3D artists? In fact we all know that the 3D guru of all platforms is SGI.."


Uh huh. Show me how many real animation facilities that have hundreds of employees modeling and animating are all equipped with an SGI station.

Most of these houses will have an SGI stations for the head animator and his team. All the employees that are just modeling and doing basic animation will use a PC. Once their part is done, they give it to the head animator and he along with his team will do the rest.

Ciao

Even then, the days of SGI for 3D apps is definately over, simply because the PC has overtaken SGI in versatility and performance, about two years ago.

[Android604]

Oh come on... we all talk about how the Parhelia is more than a gamers card... and we get disappointed when a game isn't coded for it? Too funny, games are for gaming cards, and gaming cards are for games... wake up Parhelia won't run games well, so why on earth would games/programmers try to make Parhelia run them?

Greebe spells it out perfectly when he says "Don't get me wrong, P has it's share of issues, but it also has strong points that greatly outweigh the trivial gamers only issues they incessently whined about." So why do we 'non gamers' worry about D3? Perhaps it is because we are more gamers than we would like to admit? or that 'gaming hardware' like ATI9700 is actually good enough for our non gaming needs?

I for one don't blame anyone but myself for foolishly buying a P and yes I do enjoy 16xFAA but honestly would rather have an ATI.
Andrew

[GNEP]

This is true. I don't see myself getting Doom3 until it is in the bargain bins...

[Strahd]

Originally posted by K6-III
As for SIS, he says they have talent, but he doesn't really like working with them due to the fact that none of them speak decent English...

Well, your either full of crap, or Carmack is an even bigger arse than I thought for saying things like this.

[K6-III]

For those of you who are interested in how I got this info, I got a chance to sit down and talk with John at Space Access 2003 (I'm more interested in Armadillo than DoomIII). I'm flying home today.

The stuff he's doing with Armadillo is absolutely amazing!!! No, he is not as stuck up as some of you might think. He just doesn't work with the vidcard manufacturers on thier terms, but his terms. (SIS had an on-site engineer at ID for several months).

Now, if any of you know where to get several thousand gallons of 90% Hydrogen Peroxide anywhere in the world for Armadillo, you'll quickly become friends with Carmack...

[GNEP]

Hmmm - I'm sure one of our refineries or chemical plants will make that stuff... unfortunately no access to it for analysis-boy