Matrox Parhelia Prototype on eBay

[Tom]

Anyone think that this is a scam?
A 64MB Matrox Parhelia 128?
Matrox Parhelia 64 - PROTOTYPE! 128mb

[Wombat]

It's probably a scam. First, I'd be kind of surprised if Matrox even made a functional card like this. Most likely, this would show half of the data bus missing, not just half the amount. It could be designed smarter than that, but I doubt it.
Second, Matrox would have to be quite desparate to have such a card out as a test unit.
And even if they did, I doubt that the contract would allow the company to legally own it, even after paying the fine.

[Kruzin]

Doesn't seem right to me.
All the prototypes I saw picture of had enourmous heatsinks with avvid fans on them. They didn't start using that smaller HSF with the Parhelia logo on it till they where doing the pre-production samples (like the ones the BBs got). And then, those pre-production boards where green-wire specials (a minor hand-wired revision, which this board doesn't have).
I never once heard of any 64meg samples being made.

[Kruzin]

Welp, seems it could very well be real. Apparently there where a limited number of 64meg prototypes built and passed out to developers. Obviously they never made it to final production.

[bsdgeek]

Well, it's still not OK for them to be selling it, is it?

[Wombat]

I don't know why you'd make it with only two RAM chips. If you had some kind of back-up mechanism where you <I>could</I> run on two chips, how would you know you needed to until it was already assembled with all four?

[K6-III]

Weird card...not a bad deal for the current price...

[thop]

I wonder what clock speed it runs on.

[SteveC]

"we were all asked to return them after our evaluations, "

we weren't

[borat]

frankly if the retail 128 performance was "rubbish" (please dont argue with that as im just trying to aleviate peoples hopes), then its very unlikely that a 64 meg card with normal cooling will be any faster than it just because its got a funny wire attatched to it, why are the pictures all fuzzy as well?surely if you had such a "speacial" item you would take a decent photo.

[gt40]

I wonder if Matrox would be interested in re-aquiring this card?

[thop]

probably not. since the P8x is delayed into infinity they are probably still sitting on more than enough parhelias.

[Kruzin]

Winning bid: US $165.50

If it woulda been $50-75 near the end, I woulda bid on it...but it aint worth $165. My info is telling me that it's just a regular P (most likely at OEM speed) with 1/2 the memory. coulda been a decent replacement for my kid's G400.

Main problem the winner is going to run into is that the card will have a device ID that's not recognised by most (if any) public drivers. I coulda scrounged up some old non-public betas that woulda had the proper ID in it, but most ppl are not going to be able to get the thing to work. Definatly none of the newer drivers are gonna work on it...

[Wombat]

Kruzin, you think that thing even works? I mean, I could see it working with maybe one channel of the dual-channel bus, but I wouldn't count on the drivers working - they'd probably just expect the dual-bus to be there.

[Kruzin]

Who says it isn't dual channel?
It looks to be the same board as the 128meg, just 1/2 the RAM.
That's like assuming the 256meg board is quad-channel, just because it has more memory chips.

I would expect it would work with any P drivers, IF the drivers included the necessary ID. Perhaps whoever got the card can hack the .inf to make them work with newer drivers...