Parhelia AGP 8x out!

[Ribbit]

Am I reading that right? They've got FAA working with stencils?!?!?

[UtwigMU]

Nappe1: Would you have any inisight into Summer that Haig mentioned.

Also here.

[Nappe1]

Originally posted by UtwigMU
Nappe1: Would you have any inisight into Summer that Haig mentioned.

Also here.

nope.. I have been so long doing any research on 3d hardware that it takes a bit time to get everything up and running. I am not even sure if I have any of contacts left, because so much have changed on case of matrox.

in any case, I am keeping my eyes open, but so far nothing to report.

[Kruzin]

I'd be marveled if we saw anything good this summer.
I don't doubt there may be a new card, built on the crapdog chip, but there will not be anything new chipwise.

[XHotKolaX]

Hehe=P

Now the more important question is...would it even be worth it to buy if the core is indeed 260-290MHz. Or even 300MHz. By then ATi and nV's new cards will be out and their current, even cheaper. And given M's dubious future for any type of gaming.

[mdhome]

Oddly enough I have been delaying buying a P because I am waiting to hear about the new revisions. My current card, a gf4200 isnt a bad card but I'd like some clarity in the picture ;-). I am currently refusing to buy ATI until their support is trained by something other than monkeys. Sorry ATI but I had a bad experience with a Radeon


MD

[Che Guevara]

@a_h:

Some games which (sometimes!!!) have trouble with FAA of original Parhelia: Morrowind, Serious Sam 2, Enemy Territory, Warcraft 3, Farcry...


Even without DX9 features a Parhelia with higher clock and without any bugs would be interesting... but what about the future of Matrox gaming support

[borat]

just found this product number on the RMA page here:

http://rma.matrox.com/

use the product scoll menu, and just under
PH-A8x128,
you will find: PH-A8x256,
thats to whoever asked about the 256 version, so it looks like at some point they had plans for it, and more than likely there are boards with it in somewhere.

Fair play if these rumours about bug fixes,clocks and memory controllers are true then they should have simply done a 2 tiered product line up, cut price buggy chips in a Geforce MX style range, and then a G400MAX style parhelia 8x with higher core clocks, memory clocks and evrything fixed. The extra mark up they could have made from inflating the Max price would have equaled the mark up from selling a faulty core at the mid range price. At least thats what i would have done. It would have kept them in the market with a pretty high end card at the time. Maybe this summer thing is a die shrink of the fixed cores now that this has emerged.

[a_h]

@Che Guevara: I never saw *artifacts* with neither Morrowind nor Warcraft. If you mean troubles, then yes there were some (grid effects), but they could be fixed driver wise.

However matrox isn't that fast with fixing bugs, since I got the 1.6 and could say hallo to some good known bugs (FSAA-grid, tooltip-bug, both reported for 1.5).

Are there really hardware FSAA issues? The only thing i know of, is that FSAA doesn't treat all angles equally, but that's in practice just academic.

Cheers, Hannes

PS: hey, a revised P is always good, isn't it? And if it's only to keep driver development going...

[Venturer]

Originally posted by borat
just found this product number on the RMA page here:

http://rma.matrox.com/

use the product scoll menu, and just under
PH-A8x128,
you will find: PH-A8x256,
thats to whoever asked about the 256 version, so it looks like at some point they had plans for it, and more than likely there are boards with it in somewhere.

Fair play if these rumours about bug fixes,clocks and memory controllers are true then they should have simply done a 2 tiered product line up, cut price buggy chips in a Geforce MX style range, and then a G400MAX style parhelia 8x with higher core clocks, memory clocks and evrything fixed. The extra mark up they could have made from inflating the Max price would have equaled the mark up from selling a faulty core at the mid range price. At least thats what i would have done. It would have kept them in the market with a pretty high end card at the time. Maybe this summer thing is a die shrink of the fixed cores now that this has emerged.

Thx borat!
So, for now all i have to do is to damage "properly" my P256 with a massive overclock, and then send it to RMA. Hopefully they will send me back a new P256 8x!

Jokes apart, i found some part numbers in Matrox's RMA page i don't understand:

PH-A64B ----------> Is it a standard Parhelia (not Millennium) with only 64MB video RAM?

QID-QDA8X128 ---------> Is it a PARHELIA QID with AGP interface? I thought QID series are only avaiable with PCI.

PH-P256
PH-P256HR3D
PH-P256SG
Can someone explain me what type of cards are these?

And what about GN and KT suffixes?

I know PH A256B/R stand for BULK or RETAIL!
But what P A256-GN/KT stand for?

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Nappe1
Something, that murcers might find rather interesting. (look especially the date.)



also, I have been let to know that soon after that, p8x was finalized as 0.15µm and it was really capable reaching that core clock range.

I really hope that they have been able to respin it to 0.13µm... otherwise it will be too little and too late.

Funny thing, I looked at the date and thought CR*P! Beats me why...

I somehow now find myself less able to use non-expletives to describe what I think they should have done in the past 1.5 years...they better release a card faster than 275MHz (I suppose your contact "smartly" avoided the correct speed, or maybe 275 is just a strange attractor...). It's probably ready for the 0.09 move...

[Nappe1]

Originally posted by Kurt
Funny thing, I looked at the date and thought CR*P! Beats me why...

I somehow now find myself less able to use non-expletives to describe what I think they should have done in the past 1.5 years...they better release a card faster than 275MHz (I suppose your contact "smartly" avoided the correct speed, or maybe 275 is just a strange attractor...). It's probably ready for the 0.09 move...

in fact, release clocks were left undecided.

another note: that's MY send log. (blue texts were written by me.) Back then, I was still able to do Blind Cross Check to all info and when those lines were written, two sources without knowing each other, had confirmed information directly or at least indirectly.

[Che Guevara]

Originally posted by a_h
@Che Guevara: I never saw *artifacts* with neither Morrowind nor Warcraft. If you mean troubles, then yes there were some (grid effects), but they could be fixed driver wise.

The lines along bitmap objects in contact with polygon objects or in front of water in Morrowind are a hardware problem and can not be fixed driver wise, but they are fixed in Millenium P cards... and if you really want to see FAA bugs, play Enemy territory (railgun map) for example with FAA...

In Warcraft there are sometimes lines between different ground textures on some landscape sets.

The list of problems is very, very long, but most are not really big and I'm glad that the fixed it in newer cards.

[Kurt]

@Nappe1: so....depending on the yield they could have released a 290MHz part...I guess 1.5years later the production tech has advanced enough to warrant that 290 mark...

I guess they'll just release a 250MHz parts - cheaper and easier to implement. They're not players in the 3D arena anymore...

[Tom]

Originally posted by Kruzin
marvel

Marvel? Hmmm....
"Think of all the insects in summer & what you have to do to get rid of them".......from Haig........spray? or maybe Osprey?