Parhelia 2 suggestions

[cjolley]

Parhelia 2 my house!
chuck

[UtwigMU]

www.3dcenter.de has a sum up of rumours on R300, NV30 and the like. Suggestions should be based on those.

I just wan't the ability to get a card with Matrox 2D quality and features + 3D speed of current topoftheline from competition.

[CaineTanathos]

I still wonder why matrox didn't use 10 bits for the alpha buffer...
and why no loop back for the textures (just not worth it ? )

[Unam]

Foolish me, if I'm spending $600 CDN on a top of the line video card, I want the best, not just quality but speed as well. I have owned several Matrox video cards, they were the best in display quality and the fastest hands down. There is no way I would spend that kind of money on a card that is not the best period. The next time around, I want a card that has Matrox quality and real speed! The rest is window dressing!

[Technoid]

Originally posted by UtwigMU
Let's analyse Parhelia.

If I make a GXXX analogy I'd say that Parhelia is something like G300 (between G200 and G400).
- excellent 2D like entire GXXX line
- lot's of features like G400
- 3D speed not on par with competition much like G200

For a company to be successful it is crucial to gain share in all segments or substantial share in high margin segments
Parhelia is a good card but if it outbenched the competition in most benchmarks (many people just go to tom's) it would sell even better.

In Hi-end 2D (DTP and video) parhelia is the ultimate card (gigacolor, glyph antialiasing, good IQ)
Unfortunately macs dominate this segment OTOH I think PC penetration is bigger
For 3D (CAD, modelling) it will suffice for midrange if opengl ICD will be OK - awaiting Ace's review
For 3D gaming alone price performance is not the best and it's performance is not the highest so I don't see many gamers getting one for gaming alone
For business/home 2D (DH) G4/550 has better price performance
The soho freelancer/enthusiast/gamer will also be satisfied with multiple features which none of the cards have

What Matrox should do is to develop a kind of powered by Matrox programme for service bureaus, marketing agencies and commercial printers with special offers, subscriptions and successful user stories
The business segment should be informed of the productivity boost of large desktop real estate (AFAIK P is the only card that can do dual DVI 1600×1200)
(brokers, architects, IT, ...) but I believe MMS line suits them better.
For gamers there should be cool factor like bundles, case stickers, blue pcb perhaps but without performance crown it will be harder to take a big share at this price

I think that Matrox jumped back on the 3D performance wagon in the right moment with DX9 and Longhorn later on the horizon

By the time parhelia 2 comes arround drivers and core will be optimized an we can expect better if not best performance comparing to competition

Matrox should develop 2 products
Midrange (G350 analogy)
Parhelia 2 (2LE/2MX)
- dieshrink to 9µm - considering UMC will skip 13µm process
- core cleanup
- full DX9 features - 2.0 pixelshader, 16 textures/clock
- appropriate clockbump 300/350DDR
- AGP 3.0 if enough boards out
This product should position itself between midrange gaming and entry workstation cards (200-300$ range) thus endangering nVs Quadro line

Hirange (G400 analogy)
- dieshrink to 9µm
- crossbar memory or revision of current memory controller
- lossless memory compression
- 8 rendering pipelines/4 tex filters per pass
- 2.0 pixelshaders
- stencil buffering
- clock 350/400 (I'm guessing here)
- 16bits/CC 128colour
- hardware video alpha
- HW MPEG decoding
- improved 16FAA or 4FSAA w/ minimum performance penalty
- independent 3H/3DVI
- 3D/CAD certified OpenGL icd, good workstation performance
This product should position itself between performance gaming and midrange PRO (400-500$) again diminishing nV30/40 quadro line

Thus Matrox would be fully 3D competitive and considering info about roadmap on anand I hope they will go into this direction.

About RSN - fairy in G400 tech demo was pointing into right direction, where did they got lost. Perhaps nudecasting should be considered as well - your ultimate cyber6 experince.

there we go again:
Nvidia thinking!

[The_King]

The Parhelia release reminds me of the G200. Great card but not quite up there in performance. I think this is just the foundation to build on to create a card like the G400 was...

[TdB]

each time matrox release a card they always add something new and innovative, something the competition doesn´t have.
so far all I have seen in this tread is the wishes for greater speed, and dx9/opengl2 compliance, or specific technological solutions from the competition.

so I wan´t to give this topic a new spin: if we assume the next card will be dx9/opengl2 compliant and it is fast enough, then what dx10 feature do you think matrox will invent?

Nobody knows what dx10 will bring, so you just have to guess

so far most dx/opengl stuff seems to come from the pro3d world like cgi(computer effects in movies and such), now i don´t much about that, but if should take a guess, i would take one of the features used in that area.

but which one would we see in the next gpu from matrox...?

does anyone with experience in that area, want to take a guess?

[piaxVirus]

RSN, RSN, RSN!

Accually I was going to post some ideas for new features. But I couldn't think of any at the time.

Now I have thought of some things that Matrox could improve on.

HDM works well for landscapes and models. But it may not be usable for the high detail of trees and hair. Some kind of hardware trick that would make realistic trees and hair possible in realtime. Would be a great feature.

The one thing that all cards seem to choke on is smoke and fog. A way to improve performance when redering these effects would be nice.

[CaineTanathos]

pixelshaders 3.0
vertexshaders 3.0
16 lights without performance loss
each texture unit capable of processing 2 "16x anisostropic filterered textures " in 1 clock and one pass
z-occlusion + z-compression
voxel unit
12 bits per color and a 12 bit alpha buffer
Global Illumination unit ,Sophisticated adaptive sampling for area lights
32x FAA

btw Technoid, 8 pixelpipelines and each 4 texture units.. ? I think the chip would be too bit
better 8 pixelpipelines and with each 2 of my texture units