Parhellia RAMDAC quality @ High clock

[eighteen_psi]

Hello, all. I was refered here from the 2CPU.com forums for more specific info on the Parhellia I'm considering for my workstation.

The workstation, used mainly for 2D content creation, currently has a Radeon 9500 pro in it. The card performs well but the lack of quality at high pixel clock rates is irritating. I run a Sony F500-R monitor that will run 2048x1536@80hz or 1600x1200@100hz but when the pixel clock heads north of around 250MHz, the picture quality heads south in a hurry

I run a custom 5-BNC cable that *should* cover the bandwidth (at least I think)...if the RAMDACs are to blame, will a Parhellia (which I've been considering for a long while) do me proud at high bandwidth settings?

I haven't run a Matrox since the G400Max due to lack of 3D horsepower but I never play games anymore and rarely do any 3D work (and 99% of that is rendering). One more question: Can the Parhellia keep up with a pair (or 3?) monitors at such resolutions/refresh rates? I don't have the money for more of em just now but It'd be nice down the road.

[Mikko]

Hi!

I don't have much experience on such high resolutions/refresh rates, but I would assume that Parhelia can give you much better image while using those resolutions. If you look at these specs and compare the refresh rates between the Parhelia and Radeon 9500Pro, you will see a clear difference on them:

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

http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9500/radeon9500pro/specs.html

Btw, if you want to use TripleHead, then remember that 1280x1024 is the maximum resolution you'll get on each monitor.

[az]

Yes, the P should give you a better picture. If you don't need 3D, then the Millennium P750 is cheaper and offers the same, only slower. The P650 is cheaper and slower again, has no fan, and "only" dualhead (a triplehead upgrade has become available für $90). If you want three truly independant displays, you'll need a dualhead card and a good PCI card.

AZ

[eighteen_psi]

I have no doubt the matrox is a better looking 2D card. Perhaps a driver-related issue or something holding back the 9500P intentionally? (I run FireGL X1 Drivers from Dell myself, with a rivatuner soft-mod). I've personally run 1600x1200@95hz on it..as well as 2048x1536@70hz.

Can anyone speak from direct experience or am I just gonna have to give it a try and trust Matrox?

Originally posted by Mikko
Hi!

I don't have much experience on such high resolutions/refresh rates, but I would assume that Parhelia can give you much better image while using those resolutions. If you look at these specs and compare the refresh rates between the Parhelia and Radeon 9500Pro, you will see a clear difference on them:

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

http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9500/radeon9500pro/specs.html

Btw, if you want to use TripleHead, then remember that 1280x1024 is the maximum resolution you'll get on each monitor.

[Whirl-Secret]

I replied recently to another post, I went from 9700 Pro tp P650 and noticed a huge image quality rampup, and gladly sacrificed the Quake 3 fps for Photoshop goodness (I would actually say the P650 is faster in photoshop and InDesign etc anyway).

This is only on one monitor, a sucky 19" Hansol 900P. However, with glyph antialiasing, gigabit colour, higher refresh rate and the incredibly crisp Matrox display I am pretty much willing to forgive the P650 anything - it's a perfect 2D card.

Parhelia does have some slight issues, there is sometimes some banding in 3D with alpha blending, and the Fragment Antialiasing (again in 3D) is supposedly not as good as the P650 / P750.

I don't know quite how good the Parhelia is compared to the P650 in 2D (according to Matrox, not that much - http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/c...s_parhelia.cfm - look at the last figure, about 15% difference).

Incidentally the P650 and P750 go up to AGP8X, and the Parhelia only 4X.

Sometimes I wish I'd gone for the Parhelia just to future proof the card a little bit more, but for the price difference I got another 512Mb of system ram and boosted performance a huge amount anyway.

My opinion: if you don't game, the P650 for sure and the Parhelia almost certainly would be a massive upgrade over the 9500 Pro. I'm still grinning when I look at how beautiful even my desktop icons look compared to everyone elses

[Kurt]

Then again, the P650 is limited to 1280*1024 on LCD screens and DulaHead only.

The P750 OTOH does 1600*1200 with LCD screens and is TripleHead. It costs slightly much, but it a lot more future proof All decent 17" LCD will go to 1280*1024 and the newer 19" to 1600*1200 that the P650 can't use -granted they're not as cheap as 17-inchers but they are not that expensive either.

[bsdgeek]

No, the P650 should be able to do dual 16x12 DVI.

[Kurt]

Originally posted by bsdgeek
No, the P650 should be able to do dual 16x12 DVI.

They changed the specs. When I bought my P750 it listed only 1280*1024.

[bsdgeek]

No, I don't think so. That's always been a selling point of the P650, and there's only been one version of that page.

[Maggi]

Originally posted by eighteen_psi

Can anyone speak from direct experience or am I just gonna have to give it a try and trust Matrox?

Welcome to the MURC ...

here at work, I run a Parhelia 128, feeding two Eye-Q 777 (22" CRTs using Diamondtron tubes) in either 1600x1200@100Hz or 1920x1440@75Hz through 5 wire BNC and I must admit the picture quality is nothing short of amazing (until you run into Parhelia specific issues which have been discussed on this forum extensively)

But be aware, that even on the big Parhelia you might run into bandwidth limiitaions, namely at 2048x1536 your refresh rates will be capped at 71Hz for both VGA heads, although both the card and the monitors should be able to go higher when judged by their specs.

[Kurt]

Originally posted by bsdgeek
No, I don't think so. That's always been a selling point of the P650, and there's only been one version of that page.

was there another doc comparing the various models??