Next Matrox card

[Enak]

Well it's good to know that Matrox are spending their money on things other than redundency pay...

From what I remember reading, Matrox are going directly to 0.9 micron achitecture which would have obvious benifits.. Coupled with new asic dev. tools this could be rather interesting.

The Parhelia was a breakthrough in gaming... anyone using the card with 3 displays will swear on it. And several times Haig has stated that Matrox are NOT giving up on surround gaming... Like in the past Matrox just take their time between releases. Unfortunately the Parhelia was overhyped and ended up with lower than expected sales.

The fundamental uses of surround setups are design (CAD) and gaming. Principle to this is 3D graphics performance (Autodesk inventor for example) which is obviously important from a gaming aspect too.

Matrox can use this technology and knowledge to update the Parhelia.

I would expect to see a full directx 9 part in AGP x8 that is at the very least on par with the latest offerings from ATI and NVIDIA. PCI and PCI Express models will follow. Also expect the first triple DVI mainstream graphics card and memory configurations from 128mb - 512mb.

Matrox will achieve this.. the question will be whether it enters the market too late like the Parhelia. My guess is this time not. The jump to 0.9 micron will mean much better clock speeds and lower power consumption. A much, MUCH faster card.

Of course, this is the crystal ball!

[K6-III]

A DX9 refresh of the Parhelia with decent X86-64 Windows and Linux drivers would be sure to find a home in my computer!

[PAugustin]

Well considering Matrox's usual planing, it probably won't be a refreshed Parhelia. More likely a new architecture that would be full DX9.
Surely they will take many ideas used in the Parhelia as it is full of good things. But there's a lot of room for improvements

After failure of the pas years at least Parhelia's one, Matrox will probably be more careful next time...

[knirfie]

they should have switched to new routing software before the parhelia if you ask me... but good to know they're doing their best. to bad they've lost to many people by now.

[SaTaN^666]

yea matrox should definetly be working on new card for doom 3 and hl2. my rig is
amd2600+
512 ddr 400mhz
parhelia 20% overclocked

I played doom 3 and got a disgusting 10-20 fps. after tweaking the config and graphics to lowest everything and a res of 400x300 I got 20-30. doom 3 is released on april 15th 2004, I reserved a copy but I might cancel untill I get a new video card, I dont want no ati nor nvidia because Im hooked with matrox. I do wantt o get a new vid card that can handle doom3 when I get it...but I dun think a parhelia 2 is gonne be released n/e time on april. :/ which is kinda sad since Im an id fan and have every single id legally bought....buying games for me is almost never possible, so taht shows something.

[K6-III]

John Carmack told me personally that the Parhelia will perform "Like Shit" under Doom3.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

Originally posted by Enak
From what I remember reading, Matrox are going directly to 0.9 micron achitecture which would have obvious benifits.. Coupled with new asic dev. tools this could be rather interesting.

The jump to 0.9 micron will mean much better clock speeds and lower power consumption. A much, MUCH faster card.

Where did you read this? Matrox got new tools for ASIC dev?

Jumping to 0.09 doesn't necessarily much higher clock speed.

Take a look at Parhelia vs. Radeon 9800. Both cores are done on a 0.15um process. The Radeon 9800 has so 100 million transistors; Parhelia has some 80 million transistors. Radeon 9800 PRO is running 380MHz, while Parhelia is running 220MHz. And don't forget Parhelia is a bit close to limit. There is also the OCed version 9800XT. Having a smaller lit process doesn't necessarily mean higher speed. They need the tools to be able to clock higher, which Matrox managements refuse to buy after the G400 age. I don't see any decent gaming core anytime within these few years. Maybe we will see a new core when Longhorn arrives.

[K6-III]

We might see a light refresh of the Parhelia for PCI-Express, though...

[Kruzin]

Originally posted by K6-III
We might see a light refresh of the Parhelia for PCI-Express, though...

I doubt it.
My prediction is that they will just slap a sundog (P-LX) chip on a PCI_express pcb.

[SaTaN^666]

yea Im agreeing with kruzin, and even if they do that.... it wont be playable for doom 3 still, or at least 40 frames and above, I had to tweak doom 3 to 400x300 people, and NO Shadows and took off many other things in the game and still only got around 20-30, and btw this was during no battle, I would be standing perfectly still with nothing moving around me, never mind the monsters, I managed to get into an actual fight with onna the monsters and got a perfect 2-5 fps, with those setttings. IM sorry to disapoint all doom 3 fans with parhelias but if u really wanna play this game, id take a: a look at some high end ati or nvidiot cards. or b:wait who knows how long for the new matrox card. right now IM voting for "a" either that or IM getting a whole new system for doom 3 and future games because I donnot want to give up my sg, Im too hooked on sg to give it up for another card.

[Marshmallowman]

Over a weekend, with no assistance or training at all, our engineer wrote a script that succeeded in rerouting the chip using NanoRoute Ultra

Well that sounds good...except they only have one engineer?

As to power and speed, the PCI-express allows a lot more current than AGP, so they do have headroom their, and the shrink to .09 should certainly help.

Whether they actualy want to make afast consumer card is another story, but still there still is no proven .09 fabricaors around so it going to be awhile yeteither way.

My bet is we will get a reaonably well performing new consumer part soon enough, even if it main purpose of those parts will be for use in their pro video and imaging stuff.

The basic parhelia is quite good they just have to do some tweaking and get it running faster...pity they will still price it out of my price range FFS

[PAugustin]

I guess IBM has .09 working. They could build chips for Matrox Yeah that would do :P

[VJ]

Woohoo!

http://forum.matrox.com/mga/viewtopic.php?t=8436&sid=e5e1a4003efc18ff60d915db6b24774a

Look at this answer by Haig:

Do you plan to release a card that is faster than the Parhelia for Professional 3D applications?

As of this moment, yes.

Jörg

[PAugustin]

SOON (tm)

[Twilight]

From what scraps of information I have seen, Matrox is definitely working on a upgraded Parhelia chip. They certainly want to have a card ready for the new workstations that come later this year. My guess is PCI Express, a die shrink, a graphic core that run a little faster and several tweaks and fixes. Basically a Parhelia Pro sort of chip.

That's at least what I'm praying for.
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Eirik Andersen