ATI 9500 non pro 128 v. Parhelia 512 - 128

[iampedro]

I have some questions to ask you about the differences between these cards.

1. How is it like to play C&C Generals / Zero Hour with this Matrox v. ATI card?

2. How are the frame Rates compaired?

3. How are matrox drivers when it comes to performance?

[gangster]

Based on what I have read, the 9500 non-pro should still easily beat the P in performance, the 9500 series oc very well. The 9500 pro will smoke it. It's not likely better in image quality though. This is not based on C&C specifically, just general comments.

[gangster]

There's also a small chance you can soft-mod the 9500np into a 9700...

[Chrono_Wanderer]

actually, when you turn on Aniso on, its a different story. ATI will also smoke Matrox in that.

But I heard ATI is also cheating in their drivers. While nVIDIA is boosting their quality, ATI is decreasing their quality. The thing about nVIDIA is they have a huge pro driver team and I heard the det 50s translate original codepaths in games to optimized codepaths to suit the NV30 line. That imo is acutally a very smart approch. You get speed and quality but that

off topic

Anyways, can you get a 9500 PRO? Its much faster. Or a 9600 PRO. I heard 9600 pro is also very fast.

But then 9500 vanilla is also good enough. It will smash the P into pieces in terms of gaming.

[bsdgeek]

Actually, a 9500 vanilla and Parhelia are very similar to each other in game performance, with Parhelia being able to smash the 9500 into pieces with 16xFAA vs 4xMSAA. There are even times without AA/AF where Parhelia is faster.

I'm using this and this for comparison, which of course does not include C&C generals, and I don't have this game so I don't know of any numbers for it.

With Parhelia you would be limited by lack of DX9, limited AF, slow driver updates, banding, etc. There are many reasons for getting one, but would they be compelling enough for you to overlook all of the faults?

[a_h]

3. How are matrox drivers when it comes to performance?

The hardware makes the performance. If you say you want a driver update that brings you 25% more performance, I say the old driver was crap, just inefficient crap.

Besides: the beyond3d-revs are generally very good ones.

The P isn't maybe the strongest performer (what about a 9600 Pro then? But then you can't play nwn :-((), but imho the smartest. Why? The antialiasing is pretty smart, resulting in just a small fps hit, providing high average fps which is - at least for me - an important point.

But for the money you should get even a 9800pro which has more power in every (performance) aspect. And is DX9, if you care about that.

However I just love this smart tv-out (if they only squished that tossing bug...)

[Chrono_Wanderer]

but then of course, you do get surround gaming with P. But then the perforamcen of P is no good for that purpose.

As for FAA, its faulty. Keep in mind the algorithm doesn't always work with all games. Matrox has lots of good ideas and approches, but just doesn't work well.

For gaming, Matrox is never the king anyways. (except for G400)

many faithful MURCers have switched to other brands, esp. ATI, for their main rig. And i think there is a good reason for that.

[DaveBaumann]

Originally posted by Chrono_Wanderer
But I heard ATI is also cheating in their drivers. While nVIDIA is boosting their quality, ATI is decreasing their quality.

Whats are you basing this on?

So far I've not see much in the way of any variance in ATI's image quality - they have been very consistent since Cat3.2.

[bsdgeek]

Welcome to MURC DaveB!

[Novdid]

Originally posted by gangster
It's not likely better in image quality though. This is not based on C&C specifically, just general comments.

Like chrono pointed out, with candy like aniso it'll smoke the mighty P.

[iampedro]

That is a bummer that they have stopped pursuing the 3d gaming market ..

[treilanin]

I am utterly confused? ATI cheating in their drivers reducing image quality.... and NVidia doing so much more and better with their Det50s? Somehow we must have this backwards.... ATI has in all honesty done a good job of bringing up the quality of their drivers and Nvidia, regardless of what they tell have had the quality of their drivers plummet with the release of GF-FX series of cards.

To be honest, how can translating code paths in the driver to so called "efficient" codepaths really be a boon for performance. Taking that approach is almost akin to what emulators do, and no matter what anyone says it is always a hit to performance if you are doing more work then you really need to.

[Che Guevara]

9500 non pro against the mighty P?

That's always a question of benchmarks.
For example:

Q3A and the 3dMarks: no chance for Parhelia I think

but:

Aquamark & UT2003: Parhelia would be as fast as the Radeon or perhaps beat it, depending from quality settings

That's all I have to say

Matrox drivers are very good, Generals performs great on Parhelia (further, more important is the cpu).

[iampedro]

Well you see my system what do you think? Also what if I had a AMD XP 3000 FSB 333 ?

[Chrono_Wanderer]

Originally posted by DaveBaumann
Whats are you basing this on?

So far I've not see much in the way of any variance in ATI's image quality - they have been very consistent since Cat3.2.

go read reviews around the net on the new Cats. I think I read about radeons not rendering as much smoke as nv does/reference in aquamark. I can probably find links on that.

Cheers

Ron