ChrisB

http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/parhelia/home.cfm

£279 for the 128MB version.

Interesting to see the spec sheet says 300w PSU and only mentions W2000 / XP.

Somebody hide my wallet quick!

Mr Footlong

iTrader: (7)

Damn, that price sounds good!

ChrisB

Slippery slope if you get one of these - you'll be hankering after a triple monitor setup for UT2003 in no time

IWatkins

The card is a work of art and is by far the fastest card I've ever used.

Quality and speed is approaching SGI Reality Monsters of only a few years ago. And all on a single card

Nice price too.

Cheers

Ian

ChrisB

You already got one then Ian?

IWatkins

Got three

But they are pre-production models but am assured they are pretty much the finished item (just cosmetic changes).

Unfortunately they have to go back when we have finished our testing work

Cheers

Ian

ChrisB

Jammy git

I presume you've heavily tested the triple monitor support?

IWatkins

Chris,

Running them on a triple LCD setup. Nice LG 18 inch jobbies and the display is just wonderful.

We are supposed to be doing useability testing, but spend most of our time sucked in watching the Helios screen saver all day

Cheers

Ian

ChrisB

Double jammy git!

AlexM

ian - so where are the benchmarks then?? your NDA should be up by now?

IWatkins

The cards actually went back on Tuesday and we didn't actually run industry benchmarks on it as we were more interested in a card that can do triple monitor and still be blinding quick. It is for scientific data visulisation rather than game play. Lets just say it was quick enough using our own benchmarks (mainly planer and volume rendering), faster than we actually need in most cases.

None the less, for reasons of completeness, MOHAA ran *really* well on it and the colours (both in the game and other applications) were noticable in being especially "natural" regardless of which monitors we used.

I think our order went in for them today, that is how much we like them

Cheers

Ian

ChrisB

Does MOHAA support the triple monitors Ian?

My fingers are itching already

DazV

NDA is over on the 25th - when you can expect to see reviews of the finished product, along with final drivers...

Matrox Parhelia (128MB Retail Version)

- 220MHz core clock
- 275MHz DDR memory clock (17.6GB/s of memory bandwidth)
- $399 Estimated Street Price

Matrox Parhelia (128MB OEM Version)

- 200MHz core clock
- 250MHz DDR memory clock (16GB/s of memory bandwidth)
- ~$300 Estimated Street Price?


Matrox always flattered to deceive, in terms of their performance against NVidia and Ati but it'll be a nice surprise if this puts them ahead of the pack, at least til their competition's next part comes out.

[Edited by DazV - 6/20/2002 7:02:58 PM]

IWatkins

Chris,

No, couldn't see an easy way to run MOHAA over three screens. But no doubt there probably is a way to do it. That would be very cool if you did as you really suffer from lack of preipheral (sp?) vision in that game.

Cheers

Ian

DazV

Ian, here's a thought - what about Colin Macrae Rally III, on 3 monitors...

left monitor shows view out of left window
middle monitor shows view out of windscreen
right monitor view out of right window

IWatkins

Daz,

You are not wrong, that would be cool. Especially as I can't see where I'm going half the time from being sideways

Roll on cheap, large LCDs is what I say.

Cheers

Ian

DazV

"The card is a work of art and is by far the fastest card I've ever used.

Quality and speed is approaching SGI Reality Monsters of only a few years ago. And all on a single card"

Ian, can you elaborate on that - what software were you using it with that impressed you so much ?

IWatkins

Daz,

Mainly OpenGL code, mostly written in house as its scientific visualisation software. We are mainly testing for 3D viewing of weather data. If you are familiar with Vis5D, the software we are using is based on this. Also using stuff like PV_Wave and Array Visualiser.

Mainly doing stuff like real-time production of colour shaded slices through 3D numerical model data, including realtime zooming, rotation etc. And the datasets are not small

Also doing a limited amount of volume rendering, but I've never seen this run really fast on *any* PC based equipment, but the Parhelia does the job, not quite realtime, but certainly interactive.

For the money, it is an awful lot of graphics power. But our techy graphics people are moaning that they will ship initially with AGPx4 support only with the x8 coming "later". Don't know, guess it is in the docs somewhere.

OK, it will not replace a dedicated graphics workstation from the likes of SGI or Intergraph, but its getting close in my book.

Cheers

Ian

ChrisB

Not many AGP 8x chipsets out yet though are there?

DazV

Cheers Ian. It'll be interesting to hear how it fairs when the benchmarks are released next week.

Expected something faster for the core clock but thats not neccesarily a bad indicator for performance.

Thanks for the info anyways.

IWatkins

Chris,
No, not many x8 chipsets yet, but you know what these techies are like..

Daz,
No probs. I can say that the performance was better than I expected for the spec of the card. But as always with pre-release hardware, I want to see the retail product before committing myself (although work have already ordered theirs). However, I'm told that the core of the card and most other compoents on the card have the potential for further development with quite "large" speed increases. But I couldn't get a definite number for "large". No doubt come the proper launch, there will be loads of info, about future versions.

Cheers

Ian

Mr Footlong

iTrader: (7)

Oops, at least in the 3D gaming stakes, this card has been getting it's *** whipped all over the place! Read 4 reviews today on retail grade cards, so full core/RAM speeds and the card just doesn't live upto the hype at all in at least one major field where Matrox really needed it.... Oh well, aat least my Ti4600 is well and truly safe for now

Cheers,

Nick

jfrf

Think this card has been overhyped big time.
Even a gf4 ti200 for 130 quid is significantly faster.
And the parhalia is supposed to cost 300 quid

dogmaul

look at www.tomshardware.com it basically says its not really up to much

ChrisB

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1645

For hardcore gamers, raw performance it loses and not many can afford 3 TFTs to enjoy triple monitor gaming.

For workstation use it looks very promising though from Ian's comments.

I'm still tempted - it will be faster than my G400 and I can dream about buying three 18" TFTs

ChrisB

Ti 4400 looks very good value in the Anand benchmarks.