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I just wanted to write a short report about the Parhelia and gaming.
Unfortunatly I haven't had much time to play many games, but I have been able to check some
The system was:
Athlon XP 2000+
MSI 745 Ultra
512MB Infineon PC-266 RAM
Matrox Parhelia 512 Retail 128 MB
WD 80GB (7200rpm, 2mb cache)
IBM 40GB (7200rpm, 2mb cache)
Pioneer DVD-106S
Soundblaster Live! 1024 (no official drivers installed yet!)
Max Payne
At first it didn't want to start, so I downloaded the patch and it ran without problems! It looks beautiful on the Parhelia! 1024x768x32 16xFAA and Aniso turned on (also everything maxed in the options) while I can enjoy very smooth gameplay
ST: Bridge Commander
A game with good graphics and fun too. I played it with the same settings like Max Payne, and it runs also very well. Only stuttering with some very high-poly custom models I downloaded.
The bad thing is the "Enhanced Glows" option, which makes the ships look MUCH better, I can check it, but it doesn't seem to work ingame, the engines, lights and so on aren't glowing on the ships
I hope this can be fixed somehow.
Also there are some not anti-aliased jaggies on some parts of several ships, which can be mainly noticed in close-up views.
Diablo II
Yes I know, not a 3d game but still fun.
The interesting thing is that when you run it under Direct3d and force Aniso Filtering via the drivers, the game gets actually filtered! I don't know if that works on other cards, but it didn't on my V5 5500, if you have the game, you might want to have a look at this.
M$ Train Simulator
As usual same settings like Max Payne and unfortunatly I am VERY disappointed by the FAA. The game runs smooth, but it is mostly CPU dependant. Now to FAA: Many edges doesn't get smoothed, basicly you can even run the game without 16xFAA and the difference isn't noticable that much. Only the tracks and some parts of the trains are profiting from FAA, while many other things which have definatly noticable jaggies don't get any FAA.
I hope that can be sorted out somehow, my old V5 5500 could do that better with 2xFSAA and the Radeon 8500 I had could also do that better with 4xFSAA
Also the disadvantage of the low Aniso Filtering from the P. is clearly noticable: The Radeon looked way better in that game, because of the AF.
ST: Armada II
Again the usual settings it runs very well and looks pretty nice with 16xFAA, I am very pleased with it.
GTA 3
Yet again I used the Max Payne settings, main difference is that this is on my old, unpatched and knackered installation, which even ran really poor on my V5 5500.
I was a bit surprised that it was playable, 16xFAA diffenatly makes the look of the game much better.
Morrowind
The settings I used should be known, I turned up visibility to 100%, but forgot to turn on the shadows....
Like GTA3 this was an old installation on my slower HD, and I am pretty disappointed by the P.
Even in my villa in Belmora I get only around 18-25fps, Belmora outside would be only around 10-12fps. Maybe Aniso has something to do with that, or is it only the old installation (with No-CD but unpatched, btw)?
The great things are the water effects which I saw the first time in real action (my V5 5500 couldn't do them of course) and they are great! I hope we will see more games taking use of those DirectX8 effects in the near future.
I will try it on a fresh installation ASAP.
I was just about testing WarCraft III and I will post my results here. Tomorrow I guess Serious Sam TFE, Schiene&Straße (Trains&Trucks Tycoon), Conquest: Frontierwars and maybe Deus Ex/UT will be tested, I will keep you up to date
Unfortunatly I haven't had much time to play many games, but I have been able to check some
The system was:
Athlon XP 2000+
MSI 745 Ultra
512MB Infineon PC-266 RAM
Matrox Parhelia 512 Retail 128 MB
WD 80GB (7200rpm, 2mb cache)
IBM 40GB (7200rpm, 2mb cache)
Pioneer DVD-106S
Soundblaster Live! 1024 (no official drivers installed yet!)
Max Payne
At first it didn't want to start, so I downloaded the patch and it ran without problems! It looks beautiful on the Parhelia! 1024x768x32 16xFAA and Aniso turned on (also everything maxed in the options) while I can enjoy very smooth gameplay
ST: Bridge Commander
A game with good graphics and fun too. I played it with the same settings like Max Payne, and it runs also very well. Only stuttering with some very high-poly custom models I downloaded.
The bad thing is the "Enhanced Glows" option, which makes the ships look MUCH better, I can check it, but it doesn't seem to work ingame, the engines, lights and so on aren't glowing on the ships
I hope this can be fixed somehow.
Also there are some not anti-aliased jaggies on some parts of several ships, which can be mainly noticed in close-up views.
Diablo II
Yes I know, not a 3d game but still fun.
The interesting thing is that when you run it under Direct3d and force Aniso Filtering via the drivers, the game gets actually filtered! I don't know if that works on other cards, but it didn't on my V5 5500, if you have the game, you might want to have a look at this.
M$ Train Simulator
As usual same settings like Max Payne and unfortunatly I am VERY disappointed by the FAA. The game runs smooth, but it is mostly CPU dependant. Now to FAA: Many edges doesn't get smoothed, basicly you can even run the game without 16xFAA and the difference isn't noticable that much. Only the tracks and some parts of the trains are profiting from FAA, while many other things which have definatly noticable jaggies don't get any FAA.
I hope that can be sorted out somehow, my old V5 5500 could do that better with 2xFSAA and the Radeon 8500 I had could also do that better with 4xFSAA
Also the disadvantage of the low Aniso Filtering from the P. is clearly noticable: The Radeon looked way better in that game, because of the AF.
ST: Armada II
Again the usual settings it runs very well and looks pretty nice with 16xFAA, I am very pleased with it.
GTA 3
Yet again I used the Max Payne settings, main difference is that this is on my old, unpatched and knackered installation, which even ran really poor on my V5 5500.
I was a bit surprised that it was playable, 16xFAA diffenatly makes the look of the game much better.
Morrowind
The settings I used should be known, I turned up visibility to 100%, but forgot to turn on the shadows....
Like GTA3 this was an old installation on my slower HD, and I am pretty disappointed by the P.
Even in my villa in Belmora I get only around 18-25fps, Belmora outside would be only around 10-12fps. Maybe Aniso has something to do with that, or is it only the old installation (with No-CD but unpatched, btw)?
The great things are the water effects which I saw the first time in real action (my V5 5500 couldn't do them of course) and they are great! I hope we will see more games taking use of those DirectX8 effects in the near future.
I will try it on a fresh installation ASAP.
I was just about testing WarCraft III and I will post my results here. Tomorrow I guess Serious Sam TFE, Schiene&Straße (Trains&Trucks Tycoon), Conquest: Frontierwars and maybe Deus Ex/UT will be tested, I will keep you up to date