Absolutely Amazing

[flee]

I hope the subject got your attention.

Its just so eerily quiet in this forum since the Parhelia has been released. I'm Matrox are working on something new to replace the Parhelia. I don't mean in the next 6 - 12 months as we all know Matrox's product cycle is not the same as Nvidia & ATI.

I would like to know what Matrox is working on know and what this new baby will be called.

Anyone have any ideas.

[mdhome]

I cant imagine Matrox starting from scratch and trying to build a new core within the next few years unless *converting* Parhelia to DX9 becomes too much of a problem (thats assuming they want to make dx9 compatible). However, I think that a redesign of the core to make the memory subsystems more efficient and to allow for higher speed clocks (without moving to a new process) should improve Parhelias performance.

Regards MD

[Evildead666]

They may try to up the number of pipelines, rather than have 4 texture units per pipe.
It might be better to have 8 pipes with 2 texture units...
Parhgelias prob is that it is too complex.
its fine for those complex games, but the simple ones are the problem!!

A rework must be in order. They have a hell of a chip, and they will be working on a better version. The G400/450/550 all came out a year or so after each other, so they could do the same.

[mdhome]

It does indeed seem that having so many texture units per pipeline may be a case of overkill, even for some of the newer games (though the Reef and a few other demos seem to do well on Parhelia).

Regards MD

[knirfie]

8 pipelines with 4 texture units per pipeline should do nicely, plus a redesign to make it run at 333/333, will fix all of matrox' problems

[mdhome]

Hello knirfie

Somehow I dont believe that all the available memory bandwith is being used to its full potential. Adding another 4 pipelines may not be the answer. Does any of our more technical friends out there know how easy it would be to add another 4 pipelines to this chip?

Regards Michael

[borat]

id say its a big redesign and not going to happen, we may see some "max" type cards in the next few months as well as 64 meg and 256 meg other than that look forward to .09 micron near the end of next year with all the bells and whistles of parhelia but a rediesigned and at least dx 9 core.(prob even more than dx9 given the .09 process reducing size.

[rylan]

Yeah, adding additional pipelines is a pretty major redesign, and would require reverification of the new chip core and possible some intermediate pre-release revisions for tweaking.

Taking the current core design and doing some optimising tweaks wouldn't be much of a big deal however. Moving to a new die process is also fairly major, but not like adding additional chunks to the chip.

[Pace]

Anyone know what processes the G200, G400, G450 and G550 were made on?

[pabst]

G200=0.35
G400=0.25
G450=0.18
G550=0.18


pabst.

[Greebe]

Forgot one...

Parhelia=0.15

[Wombat]

And the G250

[CaineTanathos]

direct x 9 texture units work quite differently than parhelia's
it uses a loop back so it can process more than 1 texture.

[Gix]

From Reactor Critical, about DX 9.0:
According to one of our readers, shaders 3.0 are intended for NV30 because CineFX specs answer 3.0 demands, while 2.1 are for the updated version of Matrox Parhelia that is set for this Winter.

[mutz]

...uh-oh...