Matrox Parhelia review @ Toms

[Leon]

Before, when GF4 excelled there, people said "No-one plays at low-res/witout FSAA/no aniso!". But now that Parhelia beats GF4 with those settings, people ignore it because "GF4 beats it at lower settings!". And just while ago those same peope said that "on-one plays at low settings!".

How do you define "low settings"?

Does 1600 1200 32bit sounds low to you? GF4 beats Parhelia by 50%-70% here.

Does 1600 1200 32bit 64tap anisotropic sounds low to you? GF4 still beats Parhelia by 30%-50%. Not the mention superior textures quality on GF4 (unless it's a bug that will not allow Parhelia achieve higher anisotropic levels, in which case framerate will go even lower when 8x lvl is enabled)

So, what is not low? 1600 1200 32bit 16xFSAA, where framerates already way below being playable? And that's with 3 year old Quake3 engine.

Leon

 

[FuManStan]

I think another issue to remember is that the Parhelia comes in between product cycles for both ATI and Nvidia, which makes it even harder to reason for the purchase of a 400 dollar card that struggles to outperform other solutions. With R300 coming in late august and already being touted by Carmack for Doom 3, and the NV30 coming in fall with some steep promises from Nvidia, i dont understand how the Parhelia is a reasonable buy.

 

[BFG10K]

Well I think it's safe to say that this card is so far a disaster. What should be easily beating a Ti4600 is hammered across the board in most cases and in the cases it isn't, it's not playable anyway. In addition, nVidia's anisotropic image quality is clearly better countering the trashy "sure nVidia is faster but Matrox has better IQ" and "buy an nVidia card if you don't care about IQ" arguments.

What surprises me is the level of zealotry displayed by the Matrox fanboys in this thread. Despite such dysmal performance they expect somebody to pay $400 when they can get better 3D performance from a $99 Radeon 8500. Also the "you only need 60 FPS" argument used in this thread is wrong on so many levels that I'm not even going to bother giving it the flaming it deserves.

We'll have to wait for new drivers of course but at this stage it doesn't look too promising at all.

 

[Piano Man]

LOL, Matrox really crapped all over the place on this one. 20GB of bandwith don't mean jack if you can't use it. It sux though for the user. It would have been nice to have another contender. Oh well...........

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Well I think it's safe to say that this card is so far a disaster. What should be easily beating a Ti4600 is hammered across the board in most cases and in the cases it isn't, it's not playable anyway.

Like I said, there's still alot of room for improvement in the drivers. And it beats GF4 in higher-settings (the same setting people have been raving about recently). If it runs UT2003 in three monitoris smoothly, I'm confident that it will run other games good enough as well. When 85000 was released, it barely competed with GF3, now it competes with GF4. Drivers are the thing that matters.

 

[spanky]

where are the benchmarks? i don't see them.

 

[Nemesis77]

Another review (in German). Parhelia beats GF4 in several benchmarks!

 

[MrGrim]

Blind Matrox Fan: "OMG I can't wait for that miracle of 3D technology called parhelia 512 to come out. It is going to OWN EVERYTHING! MUAHAHAH!!!!"

A couple of months later ...

A sensible human being: "Er, a $400 Parhelia is outperformed by a $100 Radeon 8500. What is going on here?"
Blind Matrox Fan: "Nothing is going on man, can't you see how kick ass this card is? TRIPLE HEAD!! Enough said. I've pre-ordered 4 of them."
A sensible human being: "Yes but wouldn't rendering three screens instead of one have a huge impact on the already very disappointing performance?"
Blind Matrox Fan: "No it runs smoothly, ask the guys that make UT2k3."
A sensible human being: "Well, if you get an average of 43fps @ 1024x768 with one screen you will be getting about 15fps when using three of them."
Blind Matrox Fan: "Anything above 3fps is smooth, now stop bashing! Plus FPS is not everything, image quality is! So there."
A sensible human being: "Yes, but didn't you see the AF screenshots? They are all blurry and stuff."
Blind Matrox Fan: "OMG you really are an idiot aren't you? Do you know how good a 1600x1200x32bit wallpaper looks when you use a Parhelia? F*cking sweet man, 2D for ever!"

A sensible human being shoots himself.

 

[Idoxash]

LMAO dude that was so frigen funny!!!!!

Man I think i save that too a file and show some of my gaming buds hahahahahahahahahaha.....

 

[First]

Originally posted by: MrGrim
Blind Matrox Fan: "OMG I can't wait for that miracle of 3D technology called parhelia 512 to come out. It is going to OWN EVERYTHING! MUAHAHAH!!!!"

A couple of months later ...

A sensible human being: "Er, a $400 Parhelia is outperformed by a $100 Radeon 8500. What is going on here?"
Blind Matrox Fan: "Nothing is going on man, can't you see how kick ass this card is? TRIPLE HEAD!! Enough said. I've pre-ordered 4 of them."
A sensible human being: "Yes but wouldn't rendering three screens instead of one have a huge impact on the already very disappointing performance?"
Blind Matrox Fan: "No it runs smoothly, ask the guys that make UT2k3."
A sensible human being: "Well, if you get an average of 43fps @ 1024x768 with one screen you will be getting about 15fps when using three of them."
Blind Matrox Fan: "Anything above 3fps is smooth, now stop bashing! Plus FPS is not everything, image quality is! So there."
A sensible human being: "Yes, but didn't you see the AF screenshots? They are all blurry and stuff."
Blind Matrox Fan: "OMG you really are an idiot aren't you? Do you know how good a 1600x1200x32bit wallpaper looks like when you use a Parhelia? F*cking sweet man, 2D for ever!"

A sensible human being shots himself.

LMAO! 🙂

 

[mcveigh]

dangit when is Anand gonna get his review up!?:frown:

 

[Shagga]

This is a bit sad really. I was expecting better, much better. I will wait for Anand to do his bit before making any really rash comments. BUT, makes me think of all the Electric Amish posts and how it was going to be the best thing EVER!...Muhahaha...

Amish, when things settle down and tried and tested reviews are up I hope you come up trumps, if it doesn't well, I suppose you can't trust anyone, even if they do work at Matrox, or where ever your contact came from! 🙂

 

[Chumster]

If it runs UT2003 in three monitoris smoothly.....

I'm sorry, but I don't see the allure of 3 monitor gaming - at least in reference to FPS. A) Who has the money to drop 3 CRT/LCDs on their desktop (perhaps the same that has $400 for this underachieving card?) B) In an FPS game, it would seem that having a larger FOV would only make it more difficult to play.

With that being said, I'd really like to see a number of articles before passing final judgement.

Chum

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: Chumster

If it runs UT2003 in three monitoris smoothly.....

I'm sorry, but I don't see the allure of 3 monitor gaming

I was not talking about the feasibility of surround-gaming (altrough I think everyone should reserve their judgement on SG 'till they see it in action). All I was saying that I find it rather weird that Parhelia could run UT2003 in triple-head smoothly, but it couldn't do that with older games using single-head.

 

[woolmilk]

dangit when is Anand gonna get his review up!?

Yeah, I hope he spends some time making a decent review

 

[NFS4]

GamePC's Review

It looks as though the Parhelia's bleeding from the a$$ continues 😀

From what we can tell, the Matrox Parhelia is a victim of it's own massive hype. Everyone has been expecting this card to absolutely crush the competition and bring in a new era of Matrox-dominated graphics. Everyone who forecasted the downfall of nVidia and ATI at the hands of Matrox is most likely eating their words right now. As the benchmarks clearly show, nVidia is not giving up the 3D performance crown anytime soon.

BUAHAHA 😀

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: NFS4
GamePC's Review

It looks as though the Parhelia's bleeding from the a$$ continues 😀

Not really. Parhelia did really well in max-quality settings, just like Matrox said it would. Not bad for early drivers IMO.

EDIT: I find it rather strange that you take pleasure when you see that Parhelia doesn't "massacre" GF4. I would have thought that you like additional competition, but I guess I was wrong...

 

[Mem]

EDIT: I find it rather strange that you take pleasure when you see that Parhelia doesn't "massacre" GF4. I would have thought that you like additional competition, but I guess I was wrong...

Competition is always good,however speaking as a gamer I`m not impressed with the early results & was expecting more ,don`t forget you`ve the R300 and NV30 etc down the road and I can see a lot of gamers will be waiting for them.

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: Mem

EDIT: I find it rather strange that you take pleasure when you see that Parhelia doesn't "massacre" GF4. I would have thought that you like additional competition, but I guess I was wrong...

Competition is always good,however speaking as a gamer I`m not impressed with the early results & was expecting more ,don`t forget you`ve the R300 and NV30 etc down the road and I can see a lot of gamers will be waiting for them.

Well, I was talking to NFS4, not you. And like I said, in max-quality setting, Parhelia often beats GF4, and that's with early drivers. I don't think that's bad at all. It just seems to me that Matrox-fanboys want their card do succeed, whereas NVIDIA-fanboys want other cards to fail. There seems to be a clear difference between those two.

 

[NFS4]

EDIT: I find it rather strange that you take pleasure when you see that Parhelia doesn't "massacre" GF4. I would have thought that you like additional competition, but I guess I was wrong...

$400 for a slaughter isn't my idea of competition.

Every review has said the card is dissappointing and it is. That's all there is to it. Plopping down $400 right now for this card is laughable IMHO. That's why I find it so funny😀

Pay $250 -275 for it when the drivers are worked out

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: NFS4

EDIT: I find it rather strange that you take pleasure when you see that Parhelia doesn't "massacre" GF4. I would have thought that you like additional competition, but I guess I was wrong...

$400 for a slaughter isn't my idea of competition.

On to R300 and NV30...moving on...

Like I have said, in many cases when you crank up the level of detail and/or use FSAA, Parhelia beats GF4. And that's with early drivers. Can you honestly say that it's performance is bad? When NVIDIA improved their FSAA-performance, people raved about it. Now that in many cases Parhelia beats GF4 with FSAA, nvidiots just stare at the low-detail and/or non-FSAA'ed results and scream how GF4 kills Parhelia.

Yep, Parhelias initial performance could have been better. But it is still good, and it will only get better.

 

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: Nemesis77

Originally posted by: NFS4

EDIT: I find it rather strange that you take pleasure when you see that Parhelia doesn't "massacre" GF4. I would have thought that you like additional competition, but I guess I was wrong...

$400 for a slaughter isn't my idea of competition.

On to R300 and NV30...moving on...

Like I have said, in many cases when you crank up the level of detail and/or use FSAA, Parhelia beats GF4. And that's with early drivers. Can you honestly say that it's performance is bad? When NVIDIA improved their FSAA-performance, people raved about it. Now that in many cases Parhelia beats GF4 with FSAA, nvidiots just stare at the low-detail and/or non-FSAA'ed results and scream how GF4 kills Parhelia.

Yep, Parhelias initial performance could have been better. But it is still good, and it will only get better.

Who said anything about the GF4? The GF4 AND the 8500 beat it most of the time.

This isn't lookin good for when R300 and NV30 get here (R300 VERY soon). Then it won't be funny at all. It will be sad

 

[Mem]

Well, I was talking to NFS4, not you

Sorry I thought these forums were for all members 😉,but I stand by my post speaking as a gamer.It`s not a question of wanting it to fail,after 3 years of waiting most of us were expecting something better. It has some good features don`t get me wrong like the triple head and the great image quality etc,that will be a selling feature to some people.

🙂

 

[NFS4]

Don't get me wrong, the Parhelia has some nice gimmics like triple-head and GREAT features like 16x EA, but other than that I'm not impressed at all. Only about 5 people on this whole board are impressed with the card as a whole😉

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: NFS4
Who said anything about the GF4? The GF4 AND the 8500 beat it most of the time.

With max-settings and/or FSAA things are more or less even, with Parhelia some cases clearly beating GF4. haven't nvidiot raved all this time how "no-one plays at lower settings and without FSAA these days!". Now that we have a card that's competetive with GF4 in those cases, they ignore those results and stare at the non-FSAA/low-quality results?

This isn't lookin good for when R300 and NV30 get here (R300 VERY soon). Then it won't be funny at all. It will be sad

Maybe, maybe not. Performance of Parhelia will go up, that much is certain. And can R300 match Parhelias other features?