Matrox Parhelia Prototype on eBay

[Wombat]

Originally posted by Kruzin
Who says it isn't dual channel?
It looks to be the same board as the 128meg, just 1/2 the RAM.
That's like assuming the 256meg board is quad-channel, just because it has more memory chips.

I say so, because I can read RAM specs. The Infineon chip used is a 4M x 32 part. So, 32-bit data bus per chip. It takes 8 RAM chips running in parallel to give the Parhelia its 256-bit wide data bus. You can add more chips, and wire their address pins differently, to add more data space (as the 256MB Parhelia almost certainly does), but you cannot take chips away without decreasing the data bus width.

With only 4 chips, you have a 128-bit data word width (unless you do some <I>really</I> hackish stuff, like what I alluded to before).

[Kruzin]

Well, you are correct. While it used the same P chip, same memory controller, the drivers only used 1/2 of it.
I suppose it was kinda intended to be akin to the P-6/750, but it got canned before it came out.
No great loss, but it would be kinda cool to have a card that was never actually released. But not worth it to me at $165+...

[Tom]

No great loss, but it would be kinda cool to have a card that was never actually released. But not worth it to me at $165+... [/B]

Agreed.....I bid $15.00 and was instantly outbid by proxy..
.....I also think that $165.50 is too high a price....

[bsdgeek]

So it would have been as 9500Pro is to the 9700Pro, same core, 1/2 memory bus.

If that's true, then had Parhelia been more accepted/faster that would have been the $$$ maker for Matrox.