My retail Parhelia 128MB has significantly lower core/mem speed.

[sangwooksohn]

Hi?

Today, I recieved my Parhelia 128MB Board.
It's the retail version which has the model number of PH-A128R.

After I set up the driver, I dumped the bios to see what speed I have.

And the result is:

Core speed -> 207000 (207MHz)
Mem speed -> 518000 (518MHz)

When I saw the Matrox website it says that the retail 128MB version of Parhelia comes with 220MHz Core and 550MHz Mem clock speed.

http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/parhelia/series.cfm

I would understand if it's 217/542, like many others, but 207/518?

What the hack is that?

What's going on?

Please help me decide what to do with this.

Thanks in advance.

Sang

[borat]

2 choices, either ammend the bios yourself(search the hardware forums for "bioshack" and it will tell you what you need to do).thats the quick way, just set the core and mem to 220/550, or you can call matrox directly and ask them what to do about it which will be lengthy and may result in returning the card. i dont know how that leaves your garantee but i think if they say the card does 220/550 then running it at tht speed means your garantee is valid, thats just my opinion though so dont count on it.(if you dont tell them how will they know?)

[UtwigMU]

IIRC Matrox posted a fix for this (at least for 217MHz cards).

Go ask in tech support forum.

[Haig]

When I saw the Matrox website it says that the retail 128MB version of Parhelia comes with 220MHz Core and 550MHz Mem clock speed.

Under that quote, we state:

*Clock speeds may vary by +/- 10%

[Kurt]

@Haig: does that depend on the part not supporting a higher speed and hence being factory set at that speed or is it a "bug"?

[Wombat]

Originally posted by Haig
Under that quote, we state:

Yeah, like that plus sign is ever necessary.


Hey, sangwooksohn. If it were me, I'd be pretty pissed off about getting a part 7% slower than advertised. But you wouldn't know, because somehow your card arrived DOA, it must have gotten a jolt before it left the factory or something.

[Tomasz]

Originally posted by borat
2 choices, either ammend the bios yourself(search the hardware forums for "bioshack" and it will tell you what you need to do).thats the quick way, just set the core and mem to 220/550, or you can call matrox directly and ask them what to do about it which will be lengthy and may result in returning the card. i dont know how that leaves your garantee but i think if they say the card does 220/550 then running it at tht speed means your garantee is valid, thats just my opinion though so dont count on it.(if you dont tell them how will they know?)

Well, I guess 220/550 is not guaranteed if you read the fine print. By saying +/- 10%, it appears as if Matrox only guarantees 198/495 in the worst case.

[bsdgeek]

I had a 217/542 card, and I didn't care much since I knew to identify it and fix it, but what about all of the people that don't read MURC or check Matrox for updates?

And how did this happen anyway? It doesn't seem like something that would be "easily messed up", you know?

[sangwooksohn]

Thanks guys. I tried the fix for 217 from Matrox Website, and it says mine cannot be updated.

Anyway, I asked for RMA and I did recieve the RAM # for the graphic card.

It's just that I bought the new product and I will recieve the refurbished one if I send mine for RMA.

I guess it's just me having bad luck.

Thanks.

Sang

[K6-III]

You could have just edited the pinsfile...

[Wombat]

Originally posted by K6-III
You could have just edited the pinsfile...

If it's clocked <I>that</I> low, it's probably for a reason.

[Tempest]

Originally posted by Tomasz
Well, I guess 220/550 is not guaranteed if you read the fine print. By saying +/- 10%, it appears as if Matrox only guarantees 198/495 in the worst case.

Yeah, and the 10% rule applies to all models, including the bulk and 256 MB models that already sport lower clocks. Just how long has that "fine print" been there?

Selling "LE" or "SE" editions of top end cards to people ignorant enough not to know the difference is already close to cheating IMO. But if one buys an expensive retail piece of hardware named XYZ (not "XYZ LE" or " XYZ SE") he expects to get (at least) the clock speeds that were advertised when XYZ was introduced. Hoping that your customers will be ignorant enough not to check the clock speeds and including some fine print saying "your clocks might actually be 20% lower than someone else's" is NOT the way to make customers happy.

[Indiana]

Originally posted by Tomasz
Well, I guess 220/550 is not guaranteed if you read the fine print. By saying +/- 10%, it appears as if Matrox only guarantees 198/495 in the worst case.

Originally posted by Wombat
If it's clocked <I>that</I> low, it's probably for a reason.

Exactly. Sounds like Matrox has become desperate enough to sell "defective" chips!!
ALL other manufacturers - and here not only of gfx-cards, but also the CPU-makers rate those chips that do NOT meet the required clock-speeds or have other "issues" as defective. Often those chips are still sold with downspecced tech-details (See Radeon9500, AMD Duron, Intel Celeron) at a much lower price to keep the yields high.
But selling a chip that does not meet the desired clockrates still at the full price just stinks (especially considering that this full price is much too high even for the full-clocked product... ).

Would you buy a car that is advertised as having 200 PS (with a very small footnote that actual specs might be 10% lower) and then get one with only 180 PS ?!? Or buy a CPU Intel 2.8GHz for the 2.8GHZ price just to find out that you got a 2.5GHz part the first time you put the CPU in your computer

Matrox has done many DUMB moves in the past, but this is one of their dumbest ever, you should consider this as major cheating on the customer!!


What makes the whole thing even worse, is that this is a retail card.

[Kurt]

Then again you're basing your assumption on *one* card.

M is not the only having products out there that do not meet the specs (we've had several GF4 Ti4600 retail from MSI that were shipping with varying clockspeed -some a good 20% lower than spec). For the 217MHz "model", I'd say 1% deviation is acceptable. I don't know their building process, but I guess there's a reason why chips are clocked at a certain speed and others not.

[Indiana]

Originally posted by Kurt
Then again you're basing your assumption on *one* card.

No. I'm basing this on the fact that Matrox officially states this on their website.
This is thus NOT an "assumption", but according to Matrox' own website and Haigs post "normal" behaviour.

And there were other reports about surprisingly low clocked retail Parhelia cards not only on this forum, e.g.:

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40926&highlight=Parhelia+AND+clock

Besides, I'd really like to see a +10% clocked Parhelia directly from Matrox, since even oc'ers only managed about +25% for Core and mem using crazy coolings and voltage-modding that will most likely kill your gfx-card in a very short time....