New cards from Matrox

[IlllI]

Text

 

[Schmide]

I remember Microsoft DirectX Meltdown 99 where the whole new graphics talk was by Matrox.

Sniff

 

[alyarb]

the parhelia? yeah. my pentium 100 machine had a matrox mga.

 

[Stumps]

Are these cards just PCI-E updates of the old Parhelia?

If so then they are nothing to go and get excited about....

 

[FalseChristian]

Ah, yes. I remember my 4MB Matrox M3D made by PowerVR. I had excellent IQ and one of the 3 APIs for Quake2.

 

[IlllI]

Originally posted by: Stumps
Are these cards just PCI-E updates of the old Parhelia?

If so then they are nothing to go and get excited about....

Parhelia came out like in 1999, so i seriously doubt it.

and i'd say that a low profile, passively cooled card that can run 3-4 monitors in 1920x1200+ is pretty intriguing to me

 

[skyofavalon]

i wish the Kyro cards lasted and were still around.The Kyro 2 was awsome plus its a cool name.

 

[nismotigerwvu]

Parhelia was more like 2002 than 1999.
My first 3d era rig had a mystique for some top tier 2D to go along with the Voodoo I, later getting video upgrades to a Voodoo II and an ATI xpert@play for 2d and dvd playback.
I love obscure hardware

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: IlllI

Originally posted by: Stumps
Are these cards just PCI-E updates of the old Parhelia?

If so then they are nothing to go and get excited about....

Parhelia came out like in 1999, so i seriously doubt it.

and i'd say that a low profile, passively cooled card that can run 3-4 monitors in 1920x1200+ is pretty intriguing to me

I don't know what your smoking but the Parhelia cam out in 2002 just before the ATi 9700 PRO was released.

All Matrox's cards to date have been based on the Parhelia.

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: skyofavalon
i wish the Kyro cards lasted and were still around.The Kyro 2 was awsome plus its a cool name.

Kryo's were pretty cool but had horrible drivers and too many bugs in a lot of games.

I remember selling quite a few of the Hercules 4500 Kryo 2 based cards, Hercules were about the only manufacturers that had decent Kryo 2 cards and drivers...they where comparable to the GF2 GTS in performance IIRC.

 

[IlllI]

Originally posted by: Stumps

I don't know what your smoking but the Parhelia cam out in 2002 just before the ATi 9700 PRO was released.

All Matrox's cards to date have been based on the Parhelia.

oh big deal, i was off by TWO WHOLE years! oh my, how can i sleep tonight.


also, if you can't contribute anything meaningful to my topic then kindly get the hell out.

i didn't post this topic just to have people b!tch about them not being impressed. maybe, just MAYBE some people would like to know of other alternatives out there other than ati/nv.

 

[allies]

These cards aren't an alternative for those looking for performance, but rather for multi monitor solutions. If someone needs a card for more than 2 monitors this would fit the bill excellently.

 

[Modelworks]

Unfortunately the cards really don't have enough processing power to support the applications where 3 or more monitors is needed.
They might be okay for displaying multiple security cameras or text, but things like air traffic control or video effects work they are just too slow.

I was looking at one last year, but ended up just using both ports on a nvidia card and using a pci card for the third output.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: IlllI

Originally posted by: Stumps

I don't know what your smoking but the Parhelia cam out in 2002 just before the ATi 9700 PRO was released.

All Matrox's cards to date have been based on the Parhelia.

oh big deal, i was off by TWO WHOLE years! oh my, how can i sleep tonight.


also, if you can't contribute anything meaningful to my topic then kindly get the hell out.

i didn't post this topic just to have people b!tch about them not being impressed. maybe, just MAYBE some people would like to know of other alternatives out there other than ati/nv.

2002 - 1999 = 3 years, and in computer years its more like 30.

also, if you can't stand to be corrected, you might be better staying away from the internet.

and he DID contribute meaningful information to this thread - there was discussion about what technology was in these cards and he has thus far confirmed that all of Matrox's stuff the past several years has indeed been based off of the Parhelia...again, which was introduced in 2002.

 

[Bateluer]

Matrox hasn't built performance oriented cards in years.

 

[tommo123]

and it's a shame. i loved my G400

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: IlllI

Originally posted by: Stumps

I don't know what your smoking but the Parhelia cam out in 2002 just before the ATi 9700 PRO was released.

All Matrox's cards to date have been based on the Parhelia.

oh big deal, i was off by TWO WHOLE years! oh my, how can i sleep tonight.


also, if you can't contribute anything meaningful to my topic then kindly get the hell out.

i didn't post this topic just to have people b!tch about them not being impressed. maybe, just MAYBE some people would like to know of other alternatives out there other than ati/nv.

FAIL

So you are getting upset from the fact that I pointed out that these cards are not viable alternatives to ATI or Nvidia cards because of the ancient chipset they are based on?

hmmm not very good at this whole internet thing are you?

Even if Matrox did introduce a new chipset it still wouldn't even remotely be competive with ATI or Nvidia as Matrox haven't had a decent real gaming based chipset since the G450.

As a professional video card, Matrox cards are mildly interesting because of the advanced multi monitor support and decent high res output quality (a major selling point in 1999) but for anything else they are completely pointless and very overpriced.

which is a shame because if they introduce something competitive I would be interested, I still have my old G550 lying about somewhere and I have fond memory of it.

 

[Stumps]

Just as I thought other than doubling the memory all other specs are the same as matrox's older cards, DX8 and slower than a GF4 TI4200 performance as usual.

here are the specs anyway.

http://www.matrox.com/graphics...series/m9138lppciex16/
http://www.matrox.com/graphics...series/m9148lppciex16/

 

[postmortemIA]

if they are DX8 parts, then they even can't run aero..

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
if they are DX8 parts, then they even can't run aero..

yeah, that's the confusing part for me, the Parhelia's original specification was DX 8 part with VS 2.0 support...so it shouldn't be able to run aero.

It's possible Matrox has updated the specification to full support DX9 and just didn't announce it.

I'll try to dig up any info on that.

 

[Scali]

We discussed the M series at Beyond3D earlier this year:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/show...51551&highlight=matrox

So they actually support SM3.0, and can run Vista Aero. So these are not just Parhelia's in a new packaging. There's more to them. No DX10 though, sadly (although... Intel's 3000/4000 initially didn't support DX10 either, not because the hardware couldn't do it, but because Intel's DX10 drivers weren't finished yet. May just be wishful thinking, but who knows... would be cool if Matrox could enable DX10 on them with a driver update).

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: Scali
We discussed the M series at Beyond3D earlier this year:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/show...51551&highlight=matrox

So they actually support SM3.0, and can run Vista Aero. So these are not just Parhelia's in a new packaging. There's more to them. No DX10 though, sadly (although... Intel's 3000/4000 initially didn't support DX10 either, not because the hardware couldn't do it, but because Intel's DX10 drivers weren't finished yet. May just be wishful thinking, but who knows... would be cool if Matrox could enable DX10 on them with a driver update).

Is the DX9 features the only addition to the chipset or have other features been changed as well (High clockspeeds etc)?

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: Stumps

Originally posted by: Scali
We discussed the M series at Beyond3D earlier this year:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/show...51551&highlight=matrox

So they actually support SM3.0, and can run Vista Aero. So these are not just Parhelia's in a new packaging. There's more to them. No DX10 though, sadly (although... Intel's 3000/4000 initially didn't support DX10 either, not because the hardware couldn't do it, but because Intel's DX10 drivers weren't finished yet. May just be wishful thinking, but who knows... would be cool if Matrox could enable DX10 on them with a driver update).

Is the DX9 features the only addition to the chipset or have other features been changed as well (High clockspeeds etc)?

Although the inital specs listed on Matrox's website just make them look like a PCI-E x16 Parhelia

 

[Scali]

Originally posted by: Stumps
Is the DX9 features the only addition to the chipset or have other features been changed as well (High clockspeeds etc)?

I don't think they made the clockspeeds public. These chips are designed to be low power, so likely they've gone through some die-shrinks at least.

 

[secretanchitman]

whoa matrox? i remember getting the matrox millenium II...ah what a good old card that was.

good to see them still here though!